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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Sinister Street, vol. 1, by Compton Mackenzie
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Sinister Street, vol. 1
+
+Author: Compton Mackenzie
+
+Release Date: September 22, 2010 [EBook #33797]
+[Last updated: March 5, 2012]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SINISTER STREET, VOL. 1 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
+produced from scanned images of public domain material
+from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+SINISTER STREET
+
+
+BY
+
+COMPTON MACKENZIE
+
+SOME PRESS OPINIONS OF OTHER BOOKS BY COMPTON MACKENZIE
+
+
+SOME PRESS OPINIONS OF
+
+Kensington Rhymes
+
+_By_ COMPTON MACKENZIE
+
+_SATURDAY REVIEW:_
+
+     "These are particularly jolly rhymes, that any really good sort of
+     a chap, say a fellow of about ten would like. Mr. J. R. Monsell's
+     pictures are exceptionally jolly too.... If we may judge by
+     ourselves, not only the children, but the grown-ups of the family
+     will be enchanted by this quite delightful and really first-rate
+     book."
+
+_DAILY MAIL:_
+
+     "Among the picture-books of the season, pride of place must go to
+     Mr. Compton Mackenzie's 'Kensington Rhymes.' They are full of quiet
+     humour and delicate insight into the child-mind."
+
+_OBSERVER:_
+
+     "Far the best rhymes of the year are 'Kensington Rhymes,' by
+     Compton Mackenzie, almost the best things of the kind since the
+     'Child's Garden of Verse.'"
+
+_ATHENAEUM:_
+
+     "Will please children of all ages, and also contains much that will
+     not be read without a sympathetic smile by grown-ups possessed of a
+     sense of humour."
+
+_TIMES:_
+
+     "The real gift of child poetry, sometimes almost with a
+     Stevensonian ring."
+
+_OUTLOOK:_
+
+     "What Henley did for older Londoners, Mr. Compton Mackenzie and Mr.
+     Monsell have done for the younger generation."
+
+_STANDARD:_
+
+     "Our hearts go out first to Mr. Compton Mackenzie's 'Kensington
+     Rhymes.'"
+
+_SUNDAY TIMES:_
+
+     "Full of whimsical observation and genuine insight, 'Kensington
+     Rhymes' by Compton Mackenzie are certainly entertaining."
+
+_EVENING STANDARD:_
+
+     "Something of the charm of Christina Rossetti's."
+
+_VOTES FOR WOMEN:_
+
+     "They breathe the very conventional and stuffy air of
+     Kensington.... We are bound to say that the London child we tried
+     it on liked the book."
+
+
+MARTIN SECKER, NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET, ADELPHI
+
+
+SOME PRESS OPINIONS OF
+
+The Passionate Elopement
+
+_By_ COMPTON MACKENZIE
+
+
+_TIMES:_
+
+     "We are grateful to him for wringing our hearts with the 'tears and
+     laughter of spent joys.'"
+
+_SPECTATOR:_
+
+     "As an essay in literary bravura the book is quite remarkable."
+
+_COUNTRY LIFE:_
+
+     "In the kindliness, the humour and the gentleness of the treatment,
+     it comes as near to Thackeray, as any man has come since
+     Thackeray."
+
+_DAILY CHRONICLE:_
+
+     "Thanks for a rare entertainment! And, if the writing of your story
+     pleased you as much as the reading of it has pleased us,
+     congratulations too."
+
+_GLOBE:_
+
+     "A little tenderness, a fragrant aroma of melancholy laid away in
+     lavender, a hint of cynicism, an airy philosophy--and so a wholly
+     piquant, subtly aromatic dish, a rosy apple stuck with cloves."
+
+_GLASGOW NEWS:_
+
+     "Fresh and faded, mocking yet passionate, compact of tinsel and
+     gold is this little tragedy of a winter season in view of the pump
+     room.... Through it all, the old tale has a dainty, fluttering,
+     unusual, and very real beauty."
+
+_ENGLISH REVIEW:_
+
+     "All his characters are real and warm with life. 'The Passionate
+     Elopement' should be read slowly, and followed from the smiles and
+     extravagance of the opening chapters through many sounding and
+     poetical passages, to the thrilling end of the Love Chase. The
+     quiet irony of the close leaves one smiling, but with the wiser
+     smile of Horace Ripple who meditates on the colours of life."
+
+_WESTMINSTER GAZETTE:_
+
+     "Mr. Mackenzie's book is a novel of genre, and with infinite care
+     and obvious love of detail has he set himself to paint a literary
+     picture in the manner of Hogarth. He is no imitator, he owes no
+     thanks to any predecessor in the fashioning of his book.... Mr.
+     Mackenzie recreates (the atmosphere) so admirably that it is no
+     exaggeration to say that, thanks to his brilliant scene-painting,
+     we shall gain an even more vivid appreciation of the work of his
+     great forerunners. Lightly and vividly does Mr. Mackenzie sketch in
+     his characters ... but they do not on that account lack
+     personality. Each of them is definitely and faithfully drawn, with
+     sensibility, sympathy, and humour."
+
+
+MARTIN SECKER, NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET, ADELPHI
+
+
+SOME PRESS OPINIONS OF
+
+CARNIVAL
+
+_By_ COMPTON MACKENZIE
+
+_ATHENAEUM_:
+
+
+"Mr. Mackenzie's second novel amply fulfils the promise of his first....
+Its first and great quality is originality. The originality of Mr.
+Mackenzie lies in his possession of an imagination and a vision of life
+that are as peculiarly his own as a voice or a laugh, and that reflect
+themselves in a style which is that of no other writer.... A prose full
+of beauty."
+
+_PUNCH_:
+
+"After reading a couple of pages I settled myself in my chair for a
+happy evening, and thenceforward the fascination of the book held me
+like a kind of enchantment. I despair, though, of being able to convey
+any idea of it in a few lines of criticism.... As for the style, I will
+only add that it gave me the same blissful feeling of security that one
+has in listening to a great musician.... In the meantime, having
+recorded my delight in it, I shall put 'Carnival' upon the small and by
+no means crowded shelf that I reserve for 'keeps.'"
+
+_OUTLOOK_:
+
+"In these days of muddled literary evaluations, it is a small thing to
+say of a novel that it is a great novel; but this we should say without
+hesitation of 'Carnival,' that not only is it marked out to be the
+leading success of its own season, but to be read afterwards as none but
+the best books are read."
+
+_OBSERVER_:
+
+"The heroic scale of Mr. Compton Mackenzie's conception and achievement
+sets a standard for him which one only applies to the 'great' among
+novelists."
+
+_ENGLISH REVIEW_:
+
+"An exquisite sense of beauty with a hunger for beautiful words to
+express it."
+
+_ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS_:
+
+"The spirit of youth and the spirit of London."
+
+_NEW YORK TIMES_:
+
+"We hail Mr. Mackenzie as a man alive--who raises all things to a
+spiritual plane."
+
+_MR. C. K. SHORTER in the SPHERE_:
+
+"'Carnival' carried me from cover to cover on wings."
+
+_NEW AGE_:
+
+"We are more than sick of it."
+
+MARTIN SECKER, NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET, ADELPHI
+
+
+
+
+SINISTER STREET
+
+_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
+
+     CARNIVAL
+
+     THE PASSIONATE ELOPEMENT
+
+     KENSINGTON RHYMES
+
+                 For some press opinions, see preceding pages
+
+     SINISTER STREET: VOLUME II
+
+     METROPOLITAN NIGHTS
+
+                    These volumes are in preparation
+
+
+
+
+SINISTER STREET
+
+_By COMPTON MACKENZIE_
+
+LONDON: MARTIN SECKER
+
+NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET ADELPHI MCMXIII
+
+
+TO
+THE REVEREND
+E. D. STONE
+
+
+_My dear Mr. Stone,_
+
+_Since you have on several occasions deprecated the length of my books,
+I feel that your name upon the dedicatory page of this my longest book
+deserves explanation, if not apology._
+
+_When I first conceived the idea of 'Sinister Street,' I must admit I
+did not realize that in order to present my theme fully in accord with
+my own prejudice, I should require so much space. But by the time I had
+written one hundred pages I knew that, unless I was prepared against my
+judgment to curtail the original scheme, I must publish my book in a
+form slightly different from the usual._
+
+_The exigencies of commercial production forbid a six shilling novel of
+eight or nine hundred pages, and as I saw no prospect of confining
+myself even to that length, I decided to publish in two volumes, each to
+contain two divisions of my tale._
+
+_You will say that this is an aggravation of the whole matter and the
+most impenitent sort of an apology. Yet are a thousand pages too long
+for the history of twenty-five years of a man's life, that is to say if
+one holds as I hold that childhood makes the instrument, youth tunes the
+strings, and early manhood plays the melody?_
+
+_The tradition of the English novel has always favoured length and
+leisure; nor do I find that my study of French and Russian literature
+leads me to strain after brevity. I do not send forth this volume as the
+first of a trilogy. It is actually the first half of a complete book. At
+the same time, feeling as I do that in these days of competitive
+reading, the sudden vision of over a thousand pages would be inevitably
+depressing, I give you the opportunity of rest at the five-hundredth
+page, which reaches a climax at least as conclusive as any climax can be
+that is not death. I do not pretend that I shall not be greatly
+disappointed if next January or February you feel disinclined to read
+'Dreaming Spires' and 'Romantic Education,' which will complete the
+second volume. Yet I will be so considerate as to find someone else to
+bear the brunt of dedication, and after all there will be no compulsion
+either upon you or upon the public to resume._
+
+_Yours ever affectionately,_
+
+_Compton Mackenzie._
+
+_Let me add in postscript that 'Sinister Street' is a symbolic title
+which bears no reference to an heraldic euphemism._
+
+_Phillack, August 3, 1913._
+
+
+
+
+VOLUME ONE
+
+CONTAINING
+
+I. THE PRISON HOUSE
+
+II. CLASSIC EDUCATION
+
+     "_The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination
+     of a man is healthy; but there is a space of life between, in which
+     the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of life
+     uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted._"
+
+     JOHN KEATS.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+_Book One: The Prison House_
+
+PAGE
+
+I. THE NEW WORLD                     1
+
+II. BITTERSWEET                     20
+
+III. FEARS AND FANTASIES            39
+
+IV. UNENDING CHILDHOOD              46
+
+V. THE FIRST FAIRY PRINCESS         70
+
+VI. THE ENCHANTED PALACE            85
+
+VII. RANDELL HOUSE                  97
+
+VIII. SIAMESE STAMPS               113
+
+IX. HOLIDAYS IN FRANCE             129
+
+
+_Book Two: Classic Education_
+
+I. THE JACOBEAN                    141
+
+II. THE QUADRUPLE INTRIGUE         159
+
+III. PASTORAL                      176
+
+IV. BOYHOOD'S GLORY                188
+
+V. INCENSE                         208
+
+VI. PAX                            232
+
+VII. CLOVEN HOOFMARKS              248
+
+VIII. MIRRORS                      262
+
+IX. THE YELLOW AGE                 281
+
+X. STELLA                          308
+
+XI. ACTION AND REACTION            321
+
+XII. ALAN                          346
+
+XIII. SENTIMENT                    355
+
+XIV. ARABESQUE                     378
+
+XV. GREY EYES                      397
+
+XVI. BLUE EYES                     416
+
+XVII. LILY                         427
+
+XVIII. EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD          447
+
+XIX. PARENTS                       469
+
+XX. MUSIC                          479
+
+
+
+
+BOOK ONE
+
+THE PRISON HOUSE
+
+    _"What youth, Goddess--what guest_
+    _Of Gods or mortals?"_
+
+    MATTHEW ARNOLD.
+
+
+    _"Slow on your dials the shadows creep,_
+    _So many hours for food and sleep,_
+    _So many hours till study tire,_
+        _So many hours for heart's desire."_
+
+                     ROBERT BRIDGES.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I: _The New World_
+
+
+From a world of daisies as big as moons and of mountainous green
+hillocks Michael Fane came by some unrealized method of transport to the
+thin red house, that as yet for his mind could not claim an individual
+existence amid the uniformity of a long line of fellows. His arrival
+coincided with a confusion of furniture, with the tramp of men backwards
+and forwards from a cavernous vehicle very dry and dusty. He found
+himself continually being lifted out of the way of washstands and
+skeleton chests of drawers. He was invited to sit down and keep quiet,
+and almost in the same breath to walk about and avoid hindrance.
+Finally, Nurse led him up many resonant stairs to the night-nursery
+which at present consisted of two square cots that with japanned iron
+bars stood gauntly in a wilderness of oilcloth surrounded by four walls
+patterned with a prolific vegetation. Michael was dumped down upon a
+grey pillow and invited to see how well his sister Stella was behaving.
+Nurse's observation was true enough: Stella was rosily asleep in an
+undulation of blankets, and Michael, threatened by many whispers and
+bony finger-shakes, was not at all inclined to wake her up. Nurse
+retired in an aura of importance, and Michael set out to establish an
+intimacy with the various iron bars of his cage. For a grown-up person
+these would certainly have seemed much more alike than even the houses
+of Carlington Road, West Kensington: for Michael each bar possessed a
+personality. Minute scratches unnoticed by the heedless adult world lent
+variety of expression: slight irregularities infused certain groups
+with an air of deliberate consultation. From the four corners royal
+bars, crowned with brass, dominated their subjects. Passions, intrigues,
+rumours, ambitions, revenges were perceived by Michael to be seething
+below the rigid exterior of these iron bars: even military operations
+were sometimes discernible. This cot was guarded by a romantic
+population, with one or two of whose units Michael could willingly have
+dispensed: one bar in particular, set very much askew, seemed sly and
+malignant. Michael disliked being looked at by anybody or anything, and
+this bar had a persistent inquisitiveness which already worried him.
+'Why does he look at me?' Michael would presently ask, and 'Nobody wants
+to look at such an ugly little boy,' Nurse would presently reply. So one
+more intolerable question would overshadow his peace of mind.
+
+Meanwhile, far below, the tramp of men continued, until suddenly an
+immense roar filled the room. Some of the bars shivered and clinked, and
+Michael's heart nearly stopped. The roar died away only to be succeeded
+by another roar from the opposite direction. Stella woke up crying.
+Michael was too deeply frightened so to soothe himself, as he sat
+clutching the pointed ears of the grey pillow. Stella, feeling that the
+fretful tears of a sudden awakening were insufficient, set up a bellow
+of dismay. Michael was motionless, only aware of a gigantic heart that
+shook him horribly. At last the footsteps of Nurse could be heard, and
+over them, the quick 'tut-tut-tuts' that voiced her irritation.
+
+"You naughty boy, to wake up your little sister."
+
+"What was that noise?" asked Michael.
+
+"Your own noise," said Nurse sharply.
+
+"It wasn't. It was lions."
+
+"And if it _was_ lions, what next?" said Nurse. "Lions will always come,
+when little boys are naughty. Lions don't like naughty boys."
+
+"Michael doesn't like lions."
+
+He took refuge in the impersonal speech of earlier days, and with a
+grave obstinacy of demeanour resisted the unreasonableness of his nurse.
+
+"What was that noise, Nanny? Do tell me."
+
+"Why a train, of course. There's a molly-coddle. Tut-tut!"
+
+"A train like we rode in from down in the country?"
+
+"Yes, a train like we rode in from down in the country!" Nurse mimicked
+him in an outrageous falsetto.
+
+"Not lions at all?"
+
+"Not if you're a good boy."
+
+"Nor bears--nor tigers--nor wolverines?"
+
+The last was a dreadful importation of fancy from some zoological
+gift-book.
+
+"Now that's enough," Nurse decided.
+
+"Nor laughing hyenas?"
+
+"Am I to speak to you again? As if there wasn't enough to do without
+children why-why-whying morning, noon and night."
+
+Michael recognized finality of argument. The mention of morning, noon
+and night with their dreary suggestion of the infinite and unattainable
+plunged him into silence. Nurse, gratified by her victory and relieved
+to find that Stella was crooning happy mysteries to a rag doll,
+announced that she was prepared in return for the very best behaviour to
+push the two cots against the window. This done, she left the children
+to their first survey of London airs, to silent wonder amid the cheeping
+of countless sparrows.
+
+Stella sat blinking at the light and the sailing clouds. She soon began
+to chant her saga. Primitive and immemorial sounds flowed from that dewy
+mouth; melodies and harmonies, akin to the day itself, voiced the
+progress of the clouds; and while she told her incommunicable delight
+there was actually no one to say 'Stella, will you stop that 'umming?'
+Michael could not compete with his sister in her interpretation of the
+clouds' courses. He had, indeed, tried once or twice; but Stella either
+stopped abruptly, leaving him to lag for a while with a lame tune of his
+own, or else she would burst into tears. Michael preferred an
+inspiration more immediately visual to Stella's incomprehensibly
+boundless observations. Michael would enjoy holding in his hand a bunch
+of blue cornflowers; Stella would tear them to pieces, not irritably,
+but absently in a seclusion of spacious visions. On this occasion
+Michael paid no attention to Stella's salutation of light; he was merely
+thankful she showed no sign of wishing to be amused by 'peep-bo,' or by
+the pulling of curious faces. Both these diversions were dangerous to
+Michael's peace of mind, because at some period of the entertainment he
+was bound, with disastrous results, to cross the line between Stella's
+joy and Stella's fear. Michael turned to look out of the window, finding
+the details of the view enthralling. He marked first of all the long row
+of poplar trees already fresh and vivid with young May's golden green.
+Those trees, waving with their youthfulness in the wind, extended as far
+as could be observed on either side. Three in every garden were planted
+close to the farthest wall. How beautiful they looked, and how the
+sparrows hopped from branch to branch. Michael let his eyes rove along
+the pleasant green line whose slightness and evenness caressed the
+vision, as velvet might have caressed a hand running lightly over the
+surface. Suddenly, with a sharp emotion of shame, Michael perceived that
+the middle tree opposite his own window was different from the rest. It
+was not the same shape; it carried little blobs such as hang from
+tablecloths and curtains; it scarcely showed a complete leaf. Here was a
+subject for speculation indeed; and the more Michael looked at the other
+trees, the more he grew ashamed for the loiterer. This problem would
+worry him interminably: he would return to it often and often. But the
+exquisite pleasure he had taken in the trim and equable row was gone;
+for as soon as the eye caressed it, there was this intolerably naked
+tree to affront all regularity.
+
+After the trees, Michael examined the trellis that extended along the
+top of a stuccoed wall without interruption on either side. This trellis
+was a curiosity, for if he looked at it very hard, the lozenges of space
+came out from their frame and moved about in a blur--an odd business
+presumably inexplicable for evermore like everything else. Beyond the
+trellis was the railway; and while Michael was looking a signal shot
+down, a distant roar drew near, and a real train rumbled past which,
+beheld from Michael's window, looked like a toy train loaded with dolls,
+one of whom wore a red tam-o'-shanter. Michael longed to be sitting once
+again in that moving wonderland and to be looking out of the window,
+himself wearing just such another red tam-o'-shanter. Beyond the railway
+was surely a very extraordinary place indeed, with mountains of coal
+everywhere and black figures roaming about; and beyond this, far far
+away, was a very low line of houses with a church steeple against an
+enormous sky.
+
+"Dinner-time! Tut-tut," said Nurse, suddenly bustling into the room to
+interrupt Stella's saga and Michael's growing dread of being left alone
+in that wilderness beyond the railway lines.
+
+"Could I be left there?" he asked.
+
+"Left where?"
+
+"There." He pointed to the coal-yard.
+
+"Don't point!" said Nurse.
+
+"What is that place?"
+
+"The place where coal comes from."
+
+"Could I be left there?" he persisted.
+
+"Not unless one of the coalmen came over the wall and carried you off
+and left you there, which he will do unless you're a good boy."
+
+Michael caught his breath.
+
+"Can coalmen climb?" he asked, choking at the thought.
+
+"Climb like kittens," said Nurse.
+
+A new bogey had been created, black and hairy with yellow cat's eyes and
+horrid prehensile arms.
+
+Michael and Stella were now lifted out of the cots and dumped on to the
+cold oilcloth and marched into the adjacent bathroom, where their faces
+and hands were sponged with a new sponge that was not only rough in
+itself, but also had something that scratched buried in one of the
+pores. During this operation, Nurse blew violent breaths through her
+tightly closed lips. When it was over, Stella was lifted up into Nurse's
+arms; Michael was commanded to walk downstairs in front and not to let
+go of the banisters; then down they went, down and down and down--past
+three doors opening into furniture-heaped rooms, past a door with upper
+panels of coloured glass in a design of red and amber sparrows upon a
+crude blue vegetation--a beautiful door, Michael thought, as he went by.
+Down and down and down into the hall which was strewn with bits of straw
+and shavings and had another glass-panelled door very gaudy. Here the
+floor was patterned with terra-cotta, yellow, black and slate-blue
+tiles. Two more doors were passed, and a third door was reached, opening
+apparently on a box into which light was let through windows of such
+glass as is seen round the bottom of bird-cages. This final staircase
+was even in the fullest daylight very dim and eerie, and was permeated
+always with a smell of burnt grease and damp cloths. Half-way down
+Michael shrunk back against Nurse's petticoats, for in front of him
+yawned a terrible cavern exuding chill.
+
+"What's that?" he gasped.
+
+"Bless the boy, he'll have me over!" cried Nurse.
+
+"Oh, Nanny, what is it--that hole? Michael doesn't like that hole."
+
+"There's a milksop. Tut-tut! Frightened by a coal-cellar! Get on with
+you, do."
+
+Michael, holding tightly to the banisters, achieved the ground and was
+hustled into the twilight of the morning-room. Stella was fitted into
+her high chair; the circular tray was brought over from behind and
+thumped into its place with a click: Michael was lifted up and thumped
+down into another high chair and pushed close up to the table so that
+his knees were chafed by the sharp edge and his thighs pinched by a
+loose strand of cane. Nurse, blowing as usual through closed lips, cut
+up his meat, and dinner was carried through in an atmosphere of greens
+and fat and warm, milk-and-water and threats of Gregory-powder, if every
+bit were not eaten.
+
+Presently the tramping of furniture-men was renewed and the
+morning-room, was made darker still by the arrival of a second van which
+pulled up at right angles to the first. In the course of dinner, Cook
+entered. She was a fat masculine creature who always kept her arms
+folded beneath a coarse and spotted apron; and after Cook came Annie the
+housemaid, tall and thin and anaemic. These two watched the children
+eating, while they gossiped with Nurse.
+
+"Isn't Mrs. Fane coming at all, then?" enquired Cook.
+
+"For a few minutes--for a few minutes," said Nurse quickly, and Michael
+would not have been so very suspicious had he not observed the nodding
+of her head long after there was any need to nod it.
+
+"Is mother going to stay with us?" he asked.
+
+"Stay? Stay? Of course she'll stay. Stay for ever," asserted Nurse in
+her bustling voice.
+
+"Funny not to be here when the furniture came," said Cook.
+
+"Yes, wasn't it?" echoed Annie. "It _was_ funny. That's what I thought.
+How funny, I thought."
+
+"Not that I suppose things will be what you might call properly arranged
+just yet?" Cook speculated.
+
+"Everything arranged. Everything arranged," Nurse snapped. "Nothing to
+arrange. Nothing to arrange."
+
+And as if to stifle for ever any ability in Michael to ask questions,
+she proceeded to cram his mouth with a dessert-spoonful of rice pudding
+from her own plate, jarring his teeth with the spoon when she withdrew
+it.
+
+Then Michael's lovely mother in vivid rose silk came into the room, and
+Cook squeezed herself backwards through the door very humbly and so
+quietly that Annie found herself alone before she realized the fact; so
+that in order to cover her confusion and assist her retreat she was
+compelled to snatch away Michael's plate of rice pudding before he had
+finished the last few clotted grains. Michael was grateful to Annie for
+this, and he regarded her from that moment as an ally. Thenceforth he
+would often seek her out in what she called 'her' pantry, there to
+nibble biscuits, while Annie dried cups and swung them from brass hooks.
+
+"How cosy you all look," said mother. "Darling Stella, are you enjoying
+your rice pudding? And, darling Michael," she added, "I hope you're
+being very good."
+
+"Oh, yes," said Nurse, "Good! Yes. He's very good. Oh, yes. Tut-tut!
+Tut-tut!"
+
+After this exhalation of approval Nurse blew several breaths, leaned
+over him, pulled down his blue and white sailor-top, and elevated his
+chin with the back of her hand.
+
+"There's no need to bother about the drawing-room or the dining-room or
+my bedroom or, in fact, any of the rooms except the night-nursery and
+the day-nursery. You're quite straight in here. I shall be back by the
+end of June."
+
+Nurse shook her head very violently at this, and Michael felt tears of
+apprehension welling up into his eyes. Mrs. Fane paused a moment
+doubtfully; then she waved beautiful slim gloves and glided from the
+room. Michael listened to delicate footsteps on the stairs, and the
+tinkle of small ornaments. A bleak silence followed the banging of the
+front door.
+
+"She's gone away. I know she's gone away," he moaned.
+
+"Who's She?" demanded Nurse. "She's the cat's mother."
+
+"Mother! Mother!" he wailed. "She always goes away from Michael."
+
+"And no wonder," said Nurse. "Dear, dear! I Yes--tut-tut!--but goodness
+gracious, she won't be gone long. She'll be back in June."
+
+"What's June?" Michael asked.
+
+"If you ask any more silly questions you'll go to bed, young man; but if
+you're a good boy, I'll tell you a story."
+
+"A real story? A nice long story?" asked Michael.
+
+"I'll tell you a story about Jack o' my Nory And now my story's begun.
+I'll tell you another about Jack and his brother And now my story's
+done."
+
+Nurse twiddled her thumbs with a complacent look, as she smacked her
+palate upon the final line.
+
+"That isn't a story," said Michael sullenly. "When will mother be back?"
+
+"In June. That's enough," said Nurse.
+
+Michael went to sleep that night, trying to materialize this mysterious
+June. It came to mean a distant warmth of orange light towards which he
+waited very slowly. He lay awake thinking of June in the luminousness of
+a night-light shielded from his direct vision by a basin. His hands were
+muffled in fingerless gloves to prevent thumb-sucking. Suddenly upon the
+quiet came a blaze of light. Had he reached June? His sleepy eyelids
+uncurled to the scented vision of his beautiful mother. But it was only
+gaslight playing and fluttering over the figure of anaemic Annie taking
+hairpin after hairpin from her hair. Yet there was a certain interest in
+watching Annie undress. Her actions were less familiar than those of
+Nurse. Her lips were softer to kiss. Then the vision of June, rising and
+falling with Annie's breath, recurred from distances unattainable, faded
+again into the blackness of the night, and after a while came back
+dazzling and golden. It was morning, and in a chirping of sparrows and
+depth of quiet sunlight Michael began to wonder why he was sleeping
+beside Annie in a big bed. It was an experience that stood for a long
+time in his memory as the first adventure of his life.
+
+The adventure of Annie was a solitary occasion. By the following night
+the regular night-nursery was ready for occupation, and the pea-green
+vegetation of the walls was hidden by various furniture. Nurse's bed
+flanked by the two cots occupied much of its space. Round the fire was a
+nursery fender on which hung perpetually various cloths and clothes and
+blankets and sheers which, as it was summer at the time, might all have
+been dried much more easily out of doors. Pictures were hung upon the
+wall--pictures that with the progress of time became delightfully
+intimate experiences. They were mostly framed chromolithographs saved
+from the Christmas numbers of illustrated papers. There was Cherry
+Ripe--a delicious and demure girl in a white dress with a pink sash, for
+whom Michael began to feel a romantic affection. There was the picture
+of a little girl eating a slice of bread-and-butter on a doorstep,
+watched by a fox terrier and underneath inscribed 'Give me a piece,
+please.' Michael did not know whether to feel more sorry for the little
+girl or the dog; some sort of compassion, he thought, was demanded. It
+was a problem picture insoluble over many years of speculation. The
+night-nursery seemed always full of Nurse's clothes. Her petticoats were
+usually chequered or uniform red, preternaturally bright in contrast
+with the blackness of the exterior apparel. The latter of heavy serge or
+similar material was often sown with jet bugles which scratched
+Michael's face when he played 'Hide-Oh' among the folds of such obvious
+concealment. Apart from these petticoats and skirts, the most individual
+possession of Nurse's wardrobe was a moon-shaped bustle of faded crimson
+which Michael loved to swing from the bedpost whence out of use it was
+suspended. There was also in a top drawer, generally unattainable, a
+collection of caps threaded with many different velvet ribbons and often
+coquettish with lace flowers. Michael was glad when Nurse put on her
+best cap, a proceeding which took place just before tea. Her morning cap
+was so skimpy as scarcely to hide the unpleasant smoothness of her thin
+hair. In the amber summer afternoons or blue spring twilights, Nurse
+looked comparatively beautiful under the ample lace, with a softer apron
+and a face whose wrinkles were smoothed out by the consciousness of
+leisure and the pleasant brown teapot. Mostly, Michael was inclined to
+compare her with a monkey, so squab was her nose, so long her upper lip,
+and such a multitude of deep furrows twisted up her countenance. That
+Nurse was ever young, Michael could not bring himself to believe, and
+daguerreotypes framed in tin-foil which she produced as evidence of
+youth from a square box inlaid with mother-o'-pearl, never convinced him
+as a chromolithograph might have convinced him. At the same time the
+stories of her childhood, which Nurse was sometimes persuaded to tell,
+were very enthralling; moreover, by the fact of her obvious antiquity,
+they had the dimness and mystery of old fairy-tales.
+
+On the whole Michael was happy in his pea-green nursery. He was well
+guarded by the iron soldiers of his cot. He liked the warmth and the
+smallness of the room; he liked to be able to climb from his cot on to
+Nurse's bed, from Nurse's bed into Stella's cot, and with this expanse
+of safe territory he felt sorry for the chilly and desolate and
+dangerous floor. Michael also liked the day-nursery. To begin with, it
+possessed a curious and romantic shape due to its nearness to the roof.
+The ceiling sloped on either side of the window almost to the floor. It
+was not a room that was square and obvious, for round the corner from
+the door was a fairly large alcove which was not destined to lose its
+romance for many years. The staircase that led up to the day-nursery was
+light and cheerful owing to the skylight in the roof. Yet this skylight
+Michael could have wished away. It was a vulnerable spot which made the
+day-nursery just a little uneasy at dusk--this and the cistern cupboard
+with its dark boomings and hammerings and clankings and utter
+inexplicableness. However, the day-nursery was a bright room, with a
+cosy atmosphere of its own. The pleasantest meal of the day was taken
+there, and in a black cupboard lived the golden syrup and the heraldic
+mugs and the dumpy teapot and the accessories of tea. What a much
+pleasanter cupboard this was than the smaller one in the night-nursery
+which revealed, when opened, slim and ugly ipecacuanha, loathsome
+Gregory-powder with wooden cap and squat cork, wicked envelopes of grey
+powders and slippery bottles of castor-oil. There, too, was the
+liver-coloured liquorice-powder, the vile rhubarb and the deceitful
+senna. In fact, apart from a bag of jaded acid-drops, there were only
+two pleasant inmates of this cupboard--the silvery and lucent syrup of
+squills and a round box of honey and borax. There were no pills because
+Nurse objected to pills. She was always telling Michael as he listened,
+sick at heart, to the stirring-up of the Gregory-powder with a muffled
+spoon, so different from the light-hearted tinkle and quick fizz of
+magnesia, to be thankful he was not on the verge of taking a pill. That
+she represented as something worthy of a struggle. Michael imagined the
+taking of a pill to be equivalent to swallowing a large painted ball
+full of a combination of all the nastiest medicines in the world. Even
+the omnipotent, omniscient Nanny could not take a pill.
+
+There were other jolly cupboards in the day-nursery--one in particular
+pasted over with 'scraps' and varnished--a work of art that was always
+being added to for a treat. There was a patchwork hearthrug very
+comfortable to lie upon beside the cat and her two black kittens. There
+was Nanny's work-table in the window, gay with coloured silks and wools.
+There was a piano locked up until Michael's first lesson, but
+nevertheless wonderful on account of the smooth curve of the lid that
+allowed one moment's delicious balance and then an equally delicious
+slide on to the floor.
+
+Certainly the day-nursery was the best room in the tall thin house, just
+as the morning-room was the worst. The morning-room was odious. In it
+were eaten breakfast and dinner, both nasty meals. Near it was the
+coal-cellar and the area-door with its grinning errand boys. The windows
+afforded foothold to strange cats that stared abominably with yellow
+eyes. Tramps and sweeps walked past the area-railings or looked in
+evilly. Horrid gipsies smirked through the window, and pedlars often
+tapped. The morning-room was utterly abominable, fit only for the boiled
+mutton and caper sauce and suet puddings that loaded its table.
+
+The kitchen, although it was next to the morning-room, was a far
+pleasanter resort. So far as any ground-floor now could be considered
+safe, the kitchen was safe. It looked out upon its own fortified
+basement whose perforated iron staircase had a spiked door at the top,
+which could be securely shut. The kitchen contained a large number of
+objects of natural interest, among which was a shallow cupboard that
+included upon an attainable shelf jars of currants, sultanas, and rice
+much more edible in the raw state than cooked. There was the
+electric-bell case, recording with mysterious discs a far-off summons.
+There was the drawer in the kitchen table that contained, besides knives
+and forks, a rolling-pin, a tin-opener, a corkscrew, skewers and, most
+exciting of all, a club-shaped cage for whipping eggs. There was also a
+deep drawer in the dresser which held many revelations of the private
+history of Annie and Cook. Michael could easily have spent days in the
+kitchen without exhausting its treasures, and as for Cook, gross though
+she was and heavily though she smelt of onions and beer, her tales were
+infinitely superior to anything ever known in the way of narration.
+
+Towards the end of June, Mrs. Fane came back. Her arrival was heralded
+by the purchase of several pots of marguerites and calceolarias--the
+latter to Michael a very objectionable flower because, detecting in it
+some resemblance to his dearly loved snapdragons, he pressed open the
+mouth of a flower and, finding inside a small insect, had to drop the
+whole pot in a shudder. This brought the punishment of not being allowed
+to watch from the steps for his mother's cab rounding the corner into
+Carlington Road, and made calceolarias for ever hateful. However, Mrs.
+Fane arrived in the richness of a midsummer twilight, and Michael forgot
+all about calceolarias in his happiness. All day long for many golden
+days he pattered up and down the house and in and out of all the rooms
+at his mother's heels. He held coils of picture-wire and hooks and
+hammers and nails and balls of wool and reels of silk and strands of
+art-muslin and spiders of cotton-wool and Japanese fans and plumes of
+pampas grass and all the petty utilities and beauties of house
+arrangement. By the end of July every room was finally arranged, and
+Michael and Stella with their mother, accompanied by Nurse and Annie,
+went down to the seaside to spend two wonderful months. Michael was
+often allowed to sit up an extra half-hour and even when he went to bed
+his mother would come to hear him say his prayers. She would sit by him,
+her lovely face flushed by the rose-red August sunsets that floated in
+through the open window on a sound of sea-waves. As it grew darker and,
+over the noise of happy people walking about in the cool evening, a
+distant band played music, his mother would lean over and kiss him good
+night. He would be loath to let her go, and just as she was closing the
+door quietly he would call her back and whisper 'One more kiss,' and
+because that good-night kiss was the most enchanting moment in his day,
+he would whisper as he held her to him very close, 'Only one more, but
+much, much, much the longest kiss in all the world.'
+
+They were indeed two very wonderful months. In the morning Michael would
+sit beside his mother at breakfast, and for a great treat he would be
+given the segment she so cleverly cut off from the tip of her egg. And
+for another treat, he would be allowed to turn the finished egg upside
+down and present it to her as a second untouched, for which she would be
+very grateful and by whose sudden collapse before the tapping of the
+spoon, she would be just as tremendously surprized. After the egg would
+always come two delicious triangles of toast, each balancing a single
+strawberry from the pot of strawberry jam. After breakfast, Michael
+would walk round the heap of clinkers in the middle of the parched
+seaside garden while his mother read her letters, and very soon they
+would set out together to the beach, where in time they would meet Nurse
+and Stella with the perambulator and the camp-stools and the bag of
+greengages or William-pears. Sand castles were made and boats were
+sailed or rather were floated upside down in pools, and just as the
+morning was getting too good to last, they would have to go home to
+dinner, joining on to the procession of people returning up the cliffs.
+Michael would be armed with a spade, a boat with very wet sails, and
+sometimes with a pail full of sea-water and diminutive fish that died
+one by one in the course of the afternoon heat. After dinner Mrs. Fane
+would lie down for a while, and Michael would lie down for a great treat
+beside her and keep breathless and still, watching the shadows of light
+made by the bellying of the blind in the breeze. Bluebottles would
+drone, and once to his bodeful apprehension a large spider migrated to
+another corner of the ceiling. But he managed to restrain himself from
+waking his mother.
+
+One afternoon Michael was astonished to see on the round table by the
+bed the large photograph in a silver frame of a man in knee-breeches
+with a sword--a prince evidently by his splendid dress and handsome
+face. He speculated during his mother's sleep upon this portrait, and
+the moment Annie had left the cup of tea which she brought in to wake
+his mother Michael asked who the man was.
+
+"A friend of mine," said Mrs. Fane.
+
+"A prince?"
+
+"No, not a prince."
+
+"He looks like a prince," said Michael sceptically.
+
+"Does he, darling?"
+
+"I think he does look like a prince. Is he good?"
+
+"Very good."
+
+"What's wrote on it?" Michael asked. "Oh, mother, when will I read
+writing?"
+
+"When you're older."
+
+"I wish I was older now. I want to read writing. What's wrote on it?"
+
+"Always," his mother told him.
+
+"Always?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Always what? Always good?"
+
+"No, just plain 'always,'" said Mrs. Fane.
+
+"What a funny writing. Who wrote it?"
+
+"The man in the picture."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"To please mother."
+
+"Shall I write 'always' when I can write?" he asked.
+
+"Of course, darling."
+
+"But what is that man for?"
+
+"He's an old friend of mother's."
+
+"I like him," said Michael confidently.
+
+"Do you, darling?" said his mother, and then suddenly she kissed him.
+
+That evening when Michael's prayers were concluded and he was lying very
+still in his bed, he waited for his mother's tale.
+
+"Once upon a time," she began, "there was a very large and enormous
+forest----"
+
+"No, don't tell about a forest," Michael interrupted. "Tell about that
+man in the picture."
+
+Mrs. Fane was staring out of the window, and after a moment's hesitation
+she turned round.
+
+"Because there _are_ fairy-tales without a prince," said Michael
+apologetically.
+
+"Well, once upon a time," said his mother, "there lived in an old old
+country house three sisters whose mother had died when they were quite
+small."
+
+"Why did she die?"
+
+"She was ill."
+
+Michael sighed sympathetically.
+
+"These three sisters," his mother went on, "lived with their father, an
+old clergyman."
+
+"Was he kind to them?"
+
+"According to his own ideas he was very kind. But the youngest sister
+always wanted to have her own way and one day when she was feeling very
+cross because her father had told her she was to go and stay with an
+aunt, who should come riding along a lane but----"
+
+"That man," interrupted Michael, greatly excited.
+
+"A rider on horseback. And he said good morning, and she said good
+morning, though she had no business to."
+
+"Why hadn't she?"
+
+"Because it isn't right for girls to speak to riders on horseback
+without being introduced. But the rider was very handsome and brave and
+after that they met very often, and then one day he said, 'Won't you
+ride away with me?' and she rode away with him and never saw her father
+or her sisters or the old house any more."
+
+Mrs. Fane had turned her face to the sunset again.
+
+"Is that all?" Michael asked.
+
+"That's all."
+
+"Was they happy ever afterwards?"
+
+"Very happy--too happy."
+
+"Are they happy now?"
+
+"Very happy--too happy."
+
+"Did they live in a castle?"
+
+"Sometimes, and sometimes they lived in a beautiful ship and went
+sailing away to the most beautiful cities in the world."
+
+"Can't Michael go with you?" he asked.
+
+"Darling boy, it's a fairy-tale."
+
+"Is it?" he said doubtfully.
+
+The two wonderful months were over. One long day of packing up was the
+end of them, and when they got back to London there was more packing up,
+after a few days of which Mrs. Fane took Michael in her arms and kissed
+him good-bye and told him to be very good. Michael tried not to cry; but
+the tears were forced out by a huge lump in his throat when he saw a cab
+at the door, pointing the other way from London. He could not bear the
+heaped-up luggage and Nurse's promises of sitting up late that evening
+for a great treat. He did not want to sit up late, and when his mother
+whispered there was a surprize for him in the drawing-room, he did not
+care at all for a surprize. But nothing could make the minutes stay
+still. He was allowed to watch the cab going down the road, but he had
+no heart to wave his handkerchief in farewell, and when presently he
+went back with Nurse into the thin red house and was triumphantly led
+into the drawing-room, he was not raised to any particular happiness by
+the lancer's uniform, displayed on a large square of cardboard. He
+suffered himself to be dressed up and to have the scarlet breast-plate
+strapped around him and the plumed helmet to be pushed over his nose and
+the sabre-tache to be entangled with his legs; but there was no spirit
+of hope and adventure flaming in his breast--only an empty feeling and a
+desire to look out of the night-nursery window at the trains going by
+with happy people inside.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II: _Bittersweet_
+
+
+His mother's absence made very sad for Michael the tall thin house, in
+Carlington Road. He felt enclosed in the restraint from which his mother
+had flown like a bird. Time stretched before him in unimaginable
+reckonings. It was now the beginning of autumn, and the leaves of the
+lime trees, falling to lie stained and unlovely in sodden basements,
+moved Michael with a sense of the long winter before him, with the
+unending black nights and the dark wet dawns. From the window of the
+night-nursery he recognized for the first time the beauty of the
+unsymmetrical plane tree that now, when the poplars were mere swishing
+bundles of twigs, still defied the October winds with wide green leaves.
+Soon, however, by a damp frost the plane tree was conquered, and its
+blobs jigged to November gusts. Fogs began, and the morning-room was
+always gaslit, even for dinner at one o'clock. Stella was peevish, and
+games became impossible. The two black kittens were an entertainment and
+took part with Michael in numberless dramas of revenge and punishment,
+of remorse and exaggerated cherishing. These histrionic pastimes became
+infused with a terrible reality, when one day the favourite kitten
+jumped from Michael's arms over the banisters and fell on to the tiled
+floor of the hall, hurting herself internally so that she had to be
+poisoned. He stood by her grave in the blackened mould of the garden,
+and wished poignantly that he had never spoken harshly to her, had never
+banished her to a waste-paper basket prison for the length of a long
+foggy afternoon.
+
+Christmas arrived with more uniforms, with a fishmonger's shop and a
+mechanical mackerel which when wound up would click in finny progress
+from one end of the bath to the other and back. It was wound up every
+Sunday afternoon for a treat, and was afterwards replaced in a high
+corner-cupboard that always attracted Michael's extreme curiosity and
+was the object of many vows to solve its secret, when he grew bigger.
+All these presents came from his mother together with half a dozen
+books. He received no other presents except from the household. Nurse
+gave him a china house, romantic when illuminated by a night-light;
+Annie shyly placed before him a crystal globe that when shaken gave a
+wonderful reproduction of a snow-storm falling upon a weather-worn tin
+figure with a green face, blue legs and an unpainted coat. Mrs. Frith
+the cook gave him a box of tops, none of which he or she or anyone else
+could spin. In addition to these presents Santa Claus allowed him on a
+still December night an orange, an apple, a monkey on a stick, five nuts
+(three of them bad) and a selection of angular sweets. As Michael with
+foresight had hung up two of Nurse's stockings as well as his own socks,
+he felt slightly resentful towards Santa Claus for the meagre response.
+
+Christmas passed away in a week of extravagant rain, and a visit was
+paid to the pantomime of Valentine and Orson at the Surrey Theatre that
+reduced Michael to a state of collapse owing to the fight between the
+two protagonists, in which Orson's fingers were lacerated by the
+glittering sword of Valentine. Nurse vainly assured him the blood was so
+much red paint. He howled the louder and dreamed ghastly dreams for a
+month afterwards.
+
+About this time Michael read many books in a strange assortment. Nurse
+had a collection of about a dozen in her trunk from which Michael was
+allowed to read three to himself. These were The Lamplighter, The
+Arabian Nights in a small paper-bound volume of diminutive print, and a
+Tale of the Black Rising in Jamaica which included an earthquake. In The
+Arabian Nights he read over and over again the stories of Aladdin, The
+Forty Thieves and Sinbad, owing to their familiarity through earlier
+narratives. On Sunday afternoons Nurse always read aloud from
+Baring-Gould's Lives of the Saints and Mrs. Gatti's Parables from
+Nature, and told the story of Father Machonochie's death in Argyll and
+of his faithful Skye terriers, whose portraits she piously possessed in
+Oxford frames. Michael's own books included at this period several
+zoological works, the Swiss Family Robinson, Holiday House,
+Struwwelpeter, Daddy Darwin's Dovecote, Jackanapes, The Battles of the
+British Army and an abbreviated version of Robinson Crusoe.
+
+The winter and cold wet spring dragged by. Day by day life varied very
+little. In the morning after breakfast, if it was fairly fine, a visit
+would be paid to Kensington Gardens, a dull business; for the Round Pond
+was not visited, and indeed the Gardens were only penetrated as far as
+the Palace, with occasional promenades along the flower-walk for a
+treat. Treats were important factors in Michael's life. Apparently
+anything even mildly pleasant came under the category of treats. It was
+a treat to walk on the grass in the Gardens; it was a treat to help to
+push Stella's perambulator; it was a treat to have the sponge floating
+beside him in the bath, to hum, to laugh, to read, to stay up one minute
+after half-past six, to accompany Nurse on her marketing, and most of
+all to roll the slabs of unbaked dough down in the kitchen. The great
+principle of a treat was its rarity. As anything that had to be asked
+for became a treat automatically and as the mere fact of asking was made
+a reason for refusing to grant a treat, the sacred infrequency of the
+treat was secured. The result of this was that the visit to Kensington
+Gardens instead of being the jolly business it seemed to be for other
+children, became a tantalizing glimpse of an unattainable paradise.
+Michael would stand enraptured by the March winds, every impulse bidding
+him run and run eternally through the blowy spring weather; yet if he so
+much as climbed the lowest rung of the scaly part-railings, if he
+dallied one moment to watch a kite launched on the air, Nanny would haul
+him back to the perambulator's side. As for talking to other children,
+not even could the magic treat effect that. If Nurse was to be believed,
+conversation with strange children was the lowest depth to which human
+nature could sink. The enforced solitariness of his life bred in Michael
+a habit of contemplation. Much of his morning walk was passed in a
+dream, in which he seemed to be standing still while the world of houses
+and trees and railings and people swam by him unheeded. This method of
+existence led to several unpleasant shocks, as when he walked into a
+lamp-post and bruised his nose. Nanny used to jeer at him, calling him
+Little Johnny Head-in-air; but Michael was so much used to her
+derogatory opinions that he cared very little and made no attempt to
+cure himself of the habit, but even encouraged himself to put himself
+into these nihilistic trances.
+
+It was probably owing to this habit that one morning Michael, looking
+round in Kensington Gardens, could discern no familiar figure. He was by
+himself in the middle of a broad gravel walk. Nurse and the perambulator
+had vanished. For a moment a sickening horror seized him. He would never
+see Carlington Road again; he would never see Stella or his mother; he
+would never go to the seaside; he was lost. Then he recalled to himself
+the knowledge of his name and address: he reassured himself by repeating
+both aloud, Charles Michael Saxby Fane, 64 Carlington Road, Kensington.
+A name and address he had often been warned was a talisman to enlist
+the service of policemen. His heart beat more gently again; his
+breathing became normal. He looked around him at the world seen for the
+first time with freedom's eyes. With waves of scent the beds of
+hyacinths impressed themselves upon his memory. He was free under a
+great gusty sky, free to climb railings, to pick up shells from the
+gravel walk, to lie on his back in the grass and brood upon the huge
+elm-trees that caught the clouds in their net. Michael wandered along to
+a drinking-fountain to which, access had often been forbidden. He drank
+four cups of water from the captive metal mug: he eyed curiously the
+many children who, as free as himself, ran up and down the steps of the
+fountain. He wished for barley-sugar that he might offer it to them and
+earn their approbation and company. He was particularly attracted to one
+group consisting of three funny little girls with splashed pinafores and
+holes in their stockings, and of two little boys with holes in their
+knickerbockers and half-peeled sticks. The group moved away from the
+fountain and Michael followed at a distance. The group turned
+somersaults over the highest railings and Michael watched it hungrily.
+The group strolled on, the girls nonchalant and enlaced, the boys still
+peeling their sticks with perseverance. Michael squeezed through the
+railings, and followed in the group's wake. The two boys finished
+peeling their sticks and pushed over in a heap the three little girls.
+There was laughter and shouting, and a confusion of pinafores and black
+stockings and hair and caps. Michael stood close to them, wide-eyed with
+admiration. Suddenly the group realized his propinquity and flocked
+together critically to eye him, Michael became self-conscious and turned
+away; he heard giggling and spluttering. He blushed with shame and began
+to run. In a moment he fell over a turret of grass and the group jeered
+openly. He picked himself up and fled towards the gate of the Gardens,
+anxious only to escape ridicule. He ran on with beating heart, with
+quickening breath and sobs that rose in his throat one after another
+like bubbles, breaking because he ran so fast. He was in Kensington High
+Street, among the thickening crowds of people. He seemed to hear
+pursuing shouts and mocking laughter. At last he saw a policeman whose
+tunic he clutched desperately.
+
+"What's all this about?" demanded the constable.
+
+"Please, my name is Charles Michael Saxby Fane and I live at 64
+Carlington Road and I want to go home."
+
+Michael burst into tears and the policeman bent over and led him by a
+convulsed hand to the police station. There he was seated in a wooden
+chair, while various policemen in various states of undress came and
+talked kindly to him, and in the end, riding on the shoulder of his
+original rescuer, he arrived at the tall thin house from whose windows
+Nurse was peering, anxious and monkey-like.
+
+There seemed to be endless talk about his adventure. All day the affair
+was discussed, all day he was questioned and worried and scolded and
+threatened. Treats faded from possible granting for months to come.
+Restrictions and repressions assumed gigantic proportions, and it was
+not until Nanny went upstairs to put Stella to bed and left Michael in
+the kitchen with Mrs. Frith and Annie that his adventure came to seem a
+less terrible breach of natural law. Away from Nurse, the cook and the
+housemaid allowed a splendid laxity to gild their point of view.
+
+"Well, what a fuss about nothing," said Mrs. Frith comfortably. "I
+declare. And what was _she_ doing? That's what some people would like to
+know. You can't lose a child the same as you might lay down a thimble. I
+call it very careless."
+
+"Yes. What a shame!" Annie agreed. "Supposing he'd of been run over."
+
+"He might of been run over a dozen times," said Mrs Frith. "It's all
+very fine to put all the blame on the poor child, but what was _she_
+doing?"
+
+Then Mrs. Frith closed her right eye, tightened her mouth and very
+slowly nodded her head until the most of her pleated chin was buried in
+the bib of her apron.
+
+"That's what I thought," said Annie mysteriously.
+
+"What did you think, Annie?" Michael asked fretfully.
+
+"She thought you hadn't no business to be so daring," said Mrs, Frith.
+"But there! Well! And I was daring myself. Very daring _I_ was. Out and
+about. Hollering after boys. The slappings I've had. But I enjoyed
+myself. And if I sat down a bit tender, that's better than a sore heart,
+I used to think."
+
+"I expect you enjoyed yourself," said Annie. "I was one of the quiet
+ones, I was. Any little trip, and I was sick."
+
+"Couldn't bear the motion, I suppose?" Cook enquired.
+
+"Oh, it wasn't the travelling as did it. It was the excitement. I was
+dreadfully sick in the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral."
+
+"What a grand place it is, though," said Mrs. Frith, nodding. "Oh,
+beautiful. So solemn. I've sat there with my late husband, eating nuts
+as peaceful as if we was in a real church. Beautiful. And that
+whispering gallery! The things you hear. Oh--well. I like a bit of fun,
+I do. I remember----"
+
+Then Nurse came downstairs, and Michael was taken up to bed away from
+what he knew would be an enthralling conversation between Annie and
+Cook. It was hateful to be compelled to march up all those stairs
+farther and farther away from the cheerful voices in the basement.
+
+August arrived without bringing Michael's mother, and he did not care
+for the days by the sea without her. Stella, to be sure, was beginning
+to show signs of one day being an intelligent companion, but Nurse under
+the influence of heat grew more repressive than ever, and the whole
+seaside ached with his mother's absence. Michael was not allowed to
+speak to strange children and was still dependent on rare treats to
+illuminate his dulness. The landlady's husband, Mr. Wagland, played the
+harmonium and made jokes with Nurse, while Mrs. Wagland sang hymns and
+whispered with Nurse. A gleam of variety came into Michael's life when
+Mr. Wagland told him he could catch birds by putting salt on their
+tails, and for many afternoons, always with a little foolscap of salt,
+Michael walked about the sunburnt-grass patch in front of the house,
+waiting for sparrows to perch and vainly flinging pinches of salt in the
+direction of their tails.
+
+Church was more exciting by the seaside than at home, where every Sunday
+morning during the long sermon Michael subsided slowly from a wooden
+bench in the gallery on to a disembowelled hassock, or languished
+through the Litany with a taste of varnish in his mouth caused by an
+attempt to support his endurance by licking the back of the pew in
+front. Nurse told him of wonderful churches with music and incense and
+candles and scarlet and lace, but, for some reason of inexplicable
+contrariness, she took Michael to an old Calvinistic church with a
+fire-breathing vicar, a sniffling vicar's wife and a curate who
+sometimes clasped Michael's head with a damp hand that always felt as if
+it were still there when it had long been removed, like a cold linseed
+poultice. Now at the seaside, Michael went to a beautiful church and was
+so much excited by the various events that he pressed forward, peering
+on tiptoe. Luckily the two ladies in front of him were so devout and
+bobbed up and down so often that he was able to see most of what was
+happening. How he longed to be the little boy in scarlet who carried a
+sort of silver sauce-boat and helped to spoon what looked like brown
+sugar into the censer. Once during a procession, Michael stepped out
+into the aisle and tried to see what actually was carried in the boat.
+But the boat-boy put out his tongue very quickly, as he walked piously
+by, and glared at Michael very haughtily, being about the same size.
+
+After submitting without pleasure to a farewell kiss from Mrs. Wagland,
+and after enduring much shame on account of Stella's behaviour in the
+crowded railway carriage, Michael came back to Carlington Road. During
+the space between arrival and bed-time he was gently happy in welcoming
+his toys and books, in marvelling at the quick growth of the black
+kitten and in a brief conversation with Mrs. Frith and Annie; but on the
+next morning which was wet with a wetness that offered no prospect of
+ever being dry, he was depressed by the thought of the long time before
+Christmas, by the foreboding of yellow days of fog and the fact that
+to-morrow was Sunday. He had been told to sit in the dining-room in
+order to be out of the way during the unpacking and, because he had been
+slow in choosing which book should accompany him, he had been called Mr.
+Particular and compelled to take the one book of all others that he now
+felt was most impossible even to open. So Michael sat in the bay-window
+and stared at the rainy street. How it rained, not ferociously as in a
+summer storm, when the surface of the road was blurred with raindrops
+and the water poured along the gutters, carrying twigs and paper and
+orange-peel towards the drain, and when there almost seemed a chance of
+a second flood, an event Michael did not fear, having made up his mind
+to float on an omnibus to the top of the Albert Hall which had once
+impressed him with its perfect security. Now it was raining with the
+dreary mediocrity of winter, dripping from the balcony above on to the
+sill below, trickling down the window-panes, lying in heavy puddles
+about the road, a long monotonous grey soak. He sighed as he looked out
+of the window at the piece of waste ground opposite, that was bordered
+in front by a tumble-down fence and surrounded on the three other sides
+by the backs of grey houses. A poor old woman was picking groundsel with
+a melancholy persistence, and the torn umbrella which wavered above her
+bent form made her look like a scarecrow. Presently round the corner a
+boy appeared walking very jauntily. He had neither coat nor waistcoat
+nor shoes nor stockings, his shirt was open in front, and a large piece
+of it stuck out behind through his breeches; but he did not seem to
+mind either the rain or his tattered clothes. He whistled as he walked
+along, with one hand stuck in his braces and with the other banging the
+wooden fence. He went by with tousled hair and dirty face, a glorious
+figure of freedom in the rain, Michael envied him passionately, this
+untrammelled fence-banging whistling spirit; and for a long time this
+boy walked before Michael's aspirations, leading them to his own merry
+tune. Michael would often think of this boy and wonder what he was doing
+and saying. He made up his mind in the beeswaxed dining-room that it was
+better to be a raggle-taggle wanderer than anything else. He watched the
+boy disappear round the farther corner, and wished that he could
+disappear in such company round corner after corner of the world beyond
+the grey house-backs.
+
+The climax of this wet morning's despair was reached when a
+chimney-sweep came into sight, whooping and halloaing nearer and nearer.
+Of the many itinerant terrors that haunted polite roads, Michael dreaded
+sweeps most of all. So he hastily climbed down from the chair in the
+window and sat under the dining-room table until the sound had passed,
+shivering with apprehension lest it should stop by Number Sixty-four. It
+went by, however, without pausing, and Michael breathed more freely, but
+just as he was cautiously emerging from the table, there was an extra
+loud postman's knock which drove him back in a panic, so that when
+Nurse came fussing in to fetch him to wash his hands for dinner, he had
+to invent a plausible excuse for such a refuge. As he could not find
+one, he was told that for a punishment he could not be allowed to hear
+the message his mother had written at the end of what was evidently a
+very important letter, to judge by the many tut-tuts the reading of it
+provoked Nurse to click.
+
+However, under the influence of tea Nanny softened, and the message was
+read just as the rain stopped and the sun glittered through the
+day-nursery window right across the room in a wide golden bar.
+
+     _Como._
+
+     _Darling Michael_,
+
+     _You are to go to kindergarten which you will enjoy. You will only
+     go for the mornings and you will have to learn all sorts of jolly
+     things--music and painting and writing. Then you'll be able to
+     write to Mother. I'm sure you'll be good and work hard, so that
+     when Mother comes home at Christmas, you'll be able to show her
+     what a clever boy she has. You would like to be in this beautiful
+     place. As I write I can see such lovely hills and fields and lakes
+     and mountains. I hope darling Stella is learning to say all sorts
+     of interesting things. I can't find any nice present to send you
+     from here, so I've told Nanny that you and she can go and buy two
+     canaries, one for you and one for Stella--a boy canary and a girl
+     canary. Won't that be fun? Love and kisses from_
+
+     _Mother_.
+
+Michael sat in a dream when the letter was finished. It had raised so
+many subjects for discussion and was so wonderful that he could scarcely
+speak.
+
+"Will mother really come home at Christmas?" he asked.
+
+"You heard what I said."
+
+"Christmas!" he sighed happily.
+
+"Aren't you glad to go to school?" Nurse wanted to know.
+
+"Yes, but I'd like Christmas to come," he said.
+
+"Was there ever in this world anyone so hard to please?" Nurse
+apostrophized.
+
+"When will we go to get these canaries, Nanny?"
+
+"Plenty of time. Plenty of time."
+
+"Soon, will we?"
+
+"One more question and there'll be no canaries at all," said Nurse.
+
+However, the sun shone so brightly, and the prospect of a visit to
+Hammersmith Broadway on a Saturday afternoon appealed so strongly to
+Nurse that she put on her bonnet and trotted off with Michael up
+Carlington Road, and stopped a red omnibus, and fussed her way into it,
+and held the tickets in her mouth while she put away her purse, and told
+Michael not to fidget with his legs and not to look round behind him at
+what was passing on that side of the road, until at last they arrived.
+The canary-shop was found, and two canaries and a bird-cage were bought,
+together with packets of seed and a bird's bath and a pennyworth of
+groundsel and plantains. Nurse told Michael to wait in the shop while
+the birds were being prepared for travelling, and while she herself went
+to the chemist to buy a remedy for the neuralgia which she prophesied
+was imminent. Michael talked to the canary-man and asked a lot of
+questions which the canary-man seemed very glad to answer; and finally
+Nurse, looking much better, came back from the chemist with a large
+bottle wrapped up in a newspaper. In the omnibus, going home, Michael
+never took his eyes from the cage, anxious to see how the birds bore the
+jolting. Sometimes they said 'sweet,' and then Michael would say
+'sweet,' and a pleasant old lady opposite would say 'sweet,' and soon
+all the people inside the omnibus were saying 'sweet,' except Nurse,
+who was chewing her veil and making the most extraordinary faces.
+
+It was very exciting to stand on tiptoe in the kitchen while Mrs. Frith
+cut the string and displayed the canaries in all the splendour of their
+cage.
+
+"Beautiful things," said Mrs. Frith. "I'm that fond of birds."
+
+"Don't they hop!" said Annie. "Not a bit frightened they don't seem, do
+they?"
+
+"What are their names?" Mrs. Frith enquired.
+
+Michael thought for a long time.
+
+"What _are_ their names, Mrs. Frith?" he asked at last.
+
+"That's your business," said Cook.
+
+"Why is it?" Michael wanted to know.
+
+"Because they're your birds, stupid."
+
+"One's Stella's."
+
+"Well, Stella isn't old enough to choose for herself. Come along, what
+are you going to call them?"
+
+"You call them," said Michael persuasively.
+
+"Well, if they was mine I should call them----" Cook paused.
+
+"What would you?" said Michael, more persuasively than ever.
+
+"I'm blessed if I know. There, Annie, what does anyone call a canary?"
+
+"Don't ask me, I'm sure. No," simpered Annie.
+
+"I shouldn't call them nothing, I shouldn't," Mrs. Frith finally
+decided. "It isn't like dogs."
+
+"What's the matter?" said Nurse, bustling into the kitchen. "Has one got
+out? Has one got out?"
+
+"I was telling Master Michael here," said Cook, "as how I shouldn't call
+neither of them nothing. Not if I was he."
+
+"Call what? Call what?" Nurse asked quickly.
+
+"His new dicky-birds."
+
+"Must have names. Yes. Yes. Must have names. Dick and Tom. Dick and
+Tom."
+
+"But one's a girl," Michael objected.
+
+"Can't be changed now. Must be Dick and Tom," Nurse settled, blowing
+rapidly as usual.
+
+The decision worried Michael considerably, but as they both turned out
+to be hens and laid twenty-three eggs between them next spring, it
+ceased to bother him any more.
+
+The Miss Marrows' School and Kindergarten, kept by Miss Marrow and Miss
+Caroline Marrow assisted by Miss Hewitt and Miss Hunt, struck Michael as
+a very solemn establishment indeed. Although its outward appearance was
+merely that of an ordinary house somewhat larger than others on account
+of its situation at the corner of Fairfax Terrace, it contained inside a
+variety of scholastic furniture that was bound to impress the novice.
+
+At twenty minutes past nine on the first day of the autumn term, Nurse
+and Michael stood before a brass plate inscribed
+
+    +-------------------------+
+    |    THE MISSES MARROW    |
+    | SCHOOL AND KINDERGARTEN |
+    +-------------------------+
+
+while a bell still jangled with the news of their arrival. They were
+immediately shown into a very small and very stuffy room on the right of
+the front door--a gloomy little room, because blinds of coloured beads
+shut out the unscholastic world. This room was uncomfortably crowded
+with little girls taking off goloshes and unlacing long brown boots,
+with little boys squabbling over their indoor shoes, with little girls
+chatting and giggling and pushing and bumping, with little boys
+shouting and quarrelling and kicking and pulling. A huddled and heated
+knot of nurses and nursemaids tried to help their charges, while every
+minute more little boys and more little girls and more bigger girls
+pushed their way in and made the confusion worse. In the middle of the
+uproar Miss Marrow herself entered and the noise was instantly lulled.
+
+"The new boys will wait in here and the new girls will _quietly_ follow
+Helen Hungerford down the passage to Miss Caroline's room. Nurses need
+not wait any longer."
+
+Then a bell vibrated shrilly. There was a general scamper as the nurses
+and the nursemaids and the old boys and the old girls hurried from the
+room, leaving Michael and two other boys, both about two years older
+than himself, to survey each other with suspicion. The other boys
+finding Michael beneath the dignity of their notice spoke to each other,
+or rather the larger of the two, a long-bodied boy with a big head and
+vacant mouth, said to the other, a fidgety boy with a pink face, a
+frog-like smile and very tight knickerbockers:
+
+"I say, what's your name?"
+
+The pink-faced boy gulped "Edward Ernest Arnott."
+
+"What is it then?" asked the long-bodied boy.
+
+"Arnott is my surname. Edward and Ernest," he gulped again, "are my
+Christian names."
+
+"Mine's Vernon Brown. I say, what's your father?"
+
+"A solicitor," said Edward. "What's yours?"
+
+"A cricket--I mean a critic," said Vernon.
+
+"What's that?"
+
+This seemed to upset the long-bodied boy, who replied:
+
+"Coo! Don't you know what a cricket is? I mean critic. You must be a
+kid."
+
+Michael thought this was the most extraordinary conversation he had ever
+heard. Not even Mrs. Frith and Annie could be so incomprehensible.
+
+"I don't believe you know yourself," said the pink-faced boy, deepening
+to crimson.
+
+"Don't I? I bet I do."
+
+"I bet you don't."
+
+"I know better than you anyway."
+
+"So do I than you."
+
+Michael would have found a conversation between two fox-terriers more
+intelligible. It ended abruptly, however, with the entrance of Miss
+Marrow, who waved them all to follow her to the severity of her own
+room. Edward Arnott and Vernon Brown were despatched upstairs to take
+their places in the class above the Kindergarten for which Michael was
+destined and whither he followed Miss Marrow, wondering at the size and
+ugliness of her. Miss Marrow's base was a black bell, on which was set a
+black cushion, above which was Miss Marrow's round beetroot-coloured
+face. Miss Caroline was like a green curtain through the folds of which
+seemed to have burst a red face like her sister's but thinner. Miss
+Caroline was pleasanter than Miss Marrow and never shouted, perhaps
+because she was never without a cold in the head.
+
+Michael was handed over to the care of Miss Hewitt, the Kindergarten
+mistress, who was very kind and very jolly. Michael enjoyed the
+Kindergarten. There he learned to write pothooks and hangers and very
+soon to write proper letters. He learned to sew alternate red and blue
+lines of wool upon a piece of cardboard. He learned to weave bookmarkers
+with shining slips of chocolate and yellow paper, and to pleat chequered
+mats of the same material: these, when term was over, appeared at the
+prize-giving, beautifully enhanced with paper frills cut by the clever
+Miss Hewitt. He learned to paint texts and to keep his pencil-box tidy
+and to play the treble of a very unmelodious duet with Miss Hunt, in
+whose bony fingers his own fingers would from time to time get
+entangled. He tried the treble without the bass accompaniment at home
+on Stella, but she cried and seemed as Annie, who was in charge, said
+'to regular shudder.' Altogether Kindergarten was a pleasure to Michael,
+and he found the days went by more quickly, though still far too slowly.
+
+About a week before Christmas his mother came back, and Michael was
+happy. All the rooms that were only used when she was at home changed
+from bare beeswaxed deserts to places of perfect comfort, so rosy were
+the lamp-shades, so sweet was the smell of flowers and so soft and
+lovely were his mother's scattered belongings. Christmas Day brought
+presents--a box of stone bricks, a rocking-horse, a doll's house for
+Stella, boxes of soldiers, a wooden battleship, and books--Hans Andersen
+and Grimm and the Old French Fairy-tales. As for the stockings that
+year, it was amazing how much managed to get into one stocking and how
+deliciously heavy it felt, as it was unhooked from the end of the cot
+and plumped down upon the bed in the gaslight of Christmas morning.
+There was only one sadness that hung over the festivities--the thought
+that his mother would be going away in two days. Boxing Day arrived and
+there were ominous open trunks and the scattered contents of drawers.
+To-morrow she was going. It was dreadful to think of. Michael was
+allowed the bitter joy of helping his mother to pack, and as he stood
+seriously holding various articles preparatory to their entombment, he
+talked of the summer and heard promises that mother would spend a long
+long time with Michael.
+
+"Mother," he said suddenly, "what is my father?"
+
+"What makes you ask that?"
+
+"The boys at Miss Marrow's all ask me that. Have I got a father? Must
+boys have fathers? Oh, mother, do tell me," pleaded Michael.
+
+Mrs. Fane seemed worried by this question.
+
+"Your father was a gentleman," she said at last.
+
+"What is a gentleman?"
+
+"A good man, always thoughtful and considerate to others."
+
+"Was that man in the photograph my father?"
+
+"What photograph?" Mrs. Fane parried.
+
+"By your bed at the seaside?"
+
+"I don't remember," she said, "Anyway, your father's dead."
+
+"Is he? Poor man!" said sympathetic Michael.
+
+"And now run to Nanny and ask her if she remembers where mother put her
+large muff."
+
+"Nanny," said Michael, when he had received Nurse's information, "why
+did my father die?"
+
+"Die? Die? What questions. Tut-tut! Whatever next?" And Nurse blew very
+violently to show how deeply she disapproved of Michael's
+inquisitiveness.
+
+That evening, just when Michael was going to bed, there came a knock at
+the door, and a tall fair man was shown into the drawing-room.
+
+"How d'ye do, Mrs. Fane? I've come to ask you if you'll go to the
+theatre to-night. Saxby is coming on later."
+
+"Oh, thank you very much, Mr. Prescott, but I really think I must stay
+in. You see," she said smilingly, "it's Michael's last night of me for a
+long time."
+
+Michael stood gazing at Mr. Prescott, hating him with all his might and
+sighing relief at his mother's refusal to go out.
+
+"Oh, Michael won't mind; will you, Michael?"
+
+Nurse came in saying 'Bed-time! Tut-tut-tut! Bed-time!' and Michael's
+heart sank.
+
+"There you are," said Mr. Prescott. "Here's Nurse to say it's bed-time.
+Now do come, Mrs. Fane."
+
+"Oh, I really think I ought to stay."
+
+"Now what nonsense. Saxby will be furiously disappointed. You must.
+Come along, Michael, be a brave chap and tell your mother she's got to
+go out; and here's something to square our account."
+
+He pressed a little gold coin into Michael's unwilling hand.
+
+"Would you mind very much, if I went?" his mother asked.
+
+"No," said Michael tonelessly. The room was swimming round him in
+sickening waves of disappointment.
+
+"Of course he won't," decided Mr. Prescott boisterously.
+
+While he was being undressed, Nurse asked what he was holding. Michael
+showed the half-sovereign.
+
+"Spoiling children," muttered Nanny. "That's for your money-box."
+
+Michael did not care what it was for. He was listening for his mother's
+step. She came in, while he lay round-eyed in his cot, and leaned over
+to kiss him. He held her to him passionately; then he buried his face in
+the bedclothes and, while she rustled away from him, sobbed soundlessly
+for a long while.
+
+In the morning he watched her go away until the warm summer-time and
+felt abandoned as he walked through the wintry rooms, where lately he
+and his mother had sat by the fire. As for the ten-shilling piece, he
+thought no more about it. Soon afterwards he fell ill with
+whooping-cough, he and Stella together, and the days dragged unendurably
+in the stuffy nursery away from school.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter III: _Fears and Fantasies_
+
+
+During whooping-cough Michael was sometimes allowed to sit in a room
+called the library, which was next to his mother's bedroom on the first
+floor and was therefore a dearly loved resort. Here he discovered the
+large volume of Don Quixote illustrated by Dore that influenced his
+whole life. He would pore over this work for hours, forgetting
+everything under a spell of chivalry. He read the tale seriously and
+thought it the saddest tale ever known. He wept over the knight's
+adventures, and big teardrops would spatter the page. He had not yet
+encountered much more than mild teazing at the Kindergarten, that with
+the unreasonableness of Nurse and his mother's absence made up the sum
+of the incomprehensible crosses which he had to bear. But even these
+were enough to make him sympathize with Don Quixote. He perceived that
+here was a man intent upon something--he could not understand exactly
+what--thwarted always by other people, thwarted and jeered at and even
+physically maltreated. Yet he was a man whose room was full of dragons
+and fairies, whose counterpane was the adventurous field of little
+knights-at-arms, whose curtains were ruffled by dwarfs, whose cupboards
+held enchanters. Michael loved the tall thin knight and envied Sancho
+Panza.
+
+When whooping-cough was over, and Michael went back to Kindergarten,
+Nurse decided that he should sleep by himself in the room next to the
+night-nursery. She never explained to Michael her reasons for this step,
+and he supposed it to be because lately he had always woken up when she
+came to bed. This was not his fault, because Nurse always bumped into
+his cot as she came, into the room, shaking it so violently that no one
+could have stayed asleep. She used to look at him in a funny way with
+angry staring eyes, and when he sometimes spoke she would blow
+cheese-scented breath at him and turn away and bump into the washstand.
+
+Everything in this new room was by Michael anticipated with dread. He
+would go to bed at half-past six: he would settle down in the wide white
+bed that stretched a long way on either side of him: the gas would be
+turned down: the door would be left ajar: Nurse's footsteps would
+gradually die away and he would be left alone.
+
+The night was divided into two portions of equal horror. First of all he
+had to concentrate on closing his mouth when asleep, because Annie had
+told him a tale about a woman who slept with her mouth open, the result
+of which bad habit was that one night a mouse ran down it and choked
+her. Then he had to explore cautiously with his feet the ice-cold end of
+the bed, in case he should touch a nest of mice--another likely
+occurrence vouched for by Annie. Then outside, various sounds would
+frighten him. A dog would howl in the distance: cats would spit and
+wail, making Michael wonder whether they were coming through his window
+to claw his face. Presently, far up the street, newsboys would cry
+hoarsely the details of a murder or suicide. As they passed beneath his
+bedroom window their voices would swell to a paralyzing roar, and as the
+voices died away round the corner, Michael would be left shaking with
+fear. Once he was so frightened by a succession of these murder-shouts
+that he got out of bed and crept forth on to the landing, whence he
+peered down between the banisters into the quiet red light burning in
+the hall far below. While he was leaning over, a door banged suddenly
+on the top floor, and Michael fled barefooted down the stairs, until he
+reached the cold tiles of the front hall. Should he dare to descend
+still lower and disturb Nurse at her supper in the kitchen? Or were they
+all lying there, Cook and Annie and Nurse, with their throats cut? The
+door leading to the basement stairs was open, and he stole down over the
+oilcloth, past the yawning cellar, past the laundry-basket in the
+passage, past the cupboard under the stairs, to listen by the kitchen
+door. There was a murmur of voices, familiar yet unfamiliar: the kitchen
+door was ajar and he peered round stealthily. There was Nurse with a
+very red face in a heap on a chair, shaking her forefinger at Mrs.
+Frith, who with an equally red face was talking very indistinctly to
+Nurse; while between them, bolt upright and very pale, sat Annie
+nervously shaving from the cheese very thin segments which she ate from
+the knife's edge. They seemed to Michael, as he watched them, like
+people in a nightmare, so unreal and horrible were they: they frightened
+him more than ever, sitting there nodding at each other in the kitchen
+where the blackbeetles ran slyly in and out beneath the fender. Suddenly
+Annie saw Michael and waved him back; he turned at her gesture and
+withdrew from sight. While he stood shivering in the dark passage, Annie
+came out and, picking him up, carried him out of hearing.
+
+"Whatever made you come downstairs?" she panted on the first-floor
+landing.
+
+"I was frightened."
+
+"You frightened _me_."
+
+"Who are they murdering?"
+
+"You've been having a bad dream," said Annie.
+
+She led him upstairs again to his room and tucked him up, and at his
+earnest request turned the gas a trifle higher.
+
+"Why did Nanny and Mrs. Frith look like that?" he asked.
+
+"They're tired," said Annie.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"They have to work so hard to look after you."
+
+Then she left him alone, and he fell asleep before they all came up to
+bed.
+
+Generally speaking, the first part of the night, however bad the outside
+noises, was not so fearful as the second part. Mostly the second portion
+of the night was preceded by a bad dream in which Michael's nerves were
+so much shaken that he had no courage or common-sense left to grapple
+with the long hours in the ghastly stillness of his room. There was one
+dream in particular which he dreaded, and indeed it was the only one
+that repeated itself at regular intervals without any essential change.
+He would find himself alone in a long street in the middle of the night.
+Usually it would be shining with wet, but sometimes it would be dry and
+airless. This street stretched as far as one could see. It had on either
+side lamp-posts which burned with a steady staring illumination, long
+rows of lamp-posts that converged in the farthest distance. The houses
+all seemed empty, yet everyone was in some way a malignant personality.
+Down this street Michael would have to walk on and on. He would meet
+nobody, and the only living thing was a bony hound that pattered behind
+him at whatever pace he went, whether he ran or whether he loitered. He
+would in his dream be filled with a desire to enter one of these houses,
+and often he would mount the steps and knock a summons on the door--a
+knock that echoed all over the gloom within. While he knocked, the bony
+hound would howl in the shadows of the basement. Every house at which he
+knocked Michael would be more and more anxious to pass, more and more
+fearful to disturb. Yet however much he struggled against it, he would
+ultimately be compelled to knock his loud challenge. The street would
+now stretch for miles of lighted lamps before and behind him, and the
+knowledge would gradually be borne in upon Michael that sooner or later
+in one of these grey houses the door would open. He would hurry along,
+but however fast he travelled some house would draw him inexorably to
+its threshold, and he would wait in agony lest slowly the great door
+should swing back to a dim hall. The climax of the dream would now be
+reached. One house would simultaneously repel and draw him more than any
+of those left behind. He would struggle to go by, but he would find
+himself on the steps with legs that refused to carry him away. He would
+knock: very slowly the door would swing back and, convulsed and choking
+and warding off horror, Michael would wake in a frenzy of fear to his
+own real house of ghastly stillness, where no longer did even a belated
+luggage-train or jingling hansom assure him of life's continuity.
+
+He did not always wake up suddenly: sometimes he would be aware that he
+was slowly waking and would struggle to keep asleep, lying for a long
+time without moving a muscle, in order to cheat himself into the belief
+that he was not awake. But gradually the strain would be too much and he
+would have to become conscious of the room. First of all he would turn
+on to his left side and view apprehensively the door ajar. This would
+seem to tremble, as he looked, to some invisible hand trying it. Then
+along the wall the wardrobe would creak, and every knot of its varnished
+surface would take on a fantastic countenance. He would wonder what was
+inside, and try to gain comfort and the sense of commonplace daytime
+existence by counting the cats swinging on a roundabout in one of Louis
+Wain's Christmas pictures. In the corner beyond the wardrobe was a large
+clothes-basket that crackled and snapped and must surely hold somebody
+inside, hidden as the Forty Thieves were hidden in the oil-jars. The
+fire-place, opposite the foot of the bed, seemed a centre for the noise
+of mice. How he hoped they would be content to play upon the hearth and
+not venture to leap over the fender and scuttle about the room. Then the
+door would begin to frighten him again, and Michael would turn very
+quietly on to his back, staring at the luminous ceiling where the
+gas-jet made a huge moon whose edges wavered perpetually. But the
+gas-jet itself became terrifying, when looked at too long, with its
+queer blue base and slim solemn shape, so melancholy, so desolate, so
+changeless. The ceiling would very soon become unendurable because
+various black marks would seem with intensest contemplation more and
+more like spiders and beetles. Michael would have to give up lying on
+his back and turn upon his right side. He would count each slat of the
+Venetian blinds and long passionately and sadly for the grey streaks to
+appear at the sides in proclamation of the approach of day. Without
+these grey streaks the windows were unbearable, so menacing were they
+with the unknown infinite night behind them. The curtains, too, would
+quiver, and even Michael's clothes, heaped upon a chair, would assume a
+worm-like vitality. The washstand made him feel oppressed, so silent and
+white were the jug and basin and soap-dish, so cold and chill were they.
+There was nothing to be done but to bury his head beneath the clothes
+and, trembling, try to believe in the reality of guardian angels. He
+would shut his eyes very tightly until the wheels of coloured lights
+thus evoked would circle and revolve, changing their colours in some
+mysterious way. These dissolving spots were a great consolation and
+passed the time for a little while, until the dread of fire began to
+come. He would fling back the clothes in a paroxysm and, heedless of any
+other danger, sit up with staring eyes and listening ears and keen
+nostrils, dreading and imagining and doubting. Surely he could hear a
+crackle; he could smell smoke. The house was on fire; yet not for
+anything could he have got out of bed to reassure himself. What might
+not be underneath, a burglar, a dead body, a murderer, a skeleton, a mad
+dog?
+
+Underneath the clothes he would plunge, and then he would be sure that
+someone was coming into the room to smother him. He held his breath,
+waiting; with an effort he flung back the clothes again. There was
+nothing but the ghastly stillness and the solemn gaslight and the
+viewless blinds and the expectant door ajar. The bedposts would now take
+on a sort of humanity. They would look at him and wink and shiver. The
+wall-paper, normally a pattern of rosebuds and roses, began to move, to
+swim with unnatural life. The cistern upstairs began to clank; the bath
+began to drip. It must be blood--Nanny had been murdered. The blood was
+dripping slowly. Michael choked with horror. Somebody was tapping at the
+window-pane, yes, somebody was tapping. It was horrible this endless
+tapping. Cats must be coming in. The wardrobe creaked and rapped and
+groaned. Some of his clothes slid off the chair on to the floor with a
+soft plump; Michael tried to shriek his dismay; but his tongue was dry.
+Underneath him a knife was being pushed through the bed. A death-watch
+was ticking in the fastness of the wall at his head. A rat was gnawing
+his way into the room. Black-beetles were coming up the stairs.
+
+Then along the edge of the Venetian blinds appeared a blue streak. It
+widened. It became more luminous. It turned from blue to grey. It turned
+from grey to dimmest silver. Hark! 'Cheep, cheep, cheep, cheep!' The
+sparrows were beginning. Their chorus rose. Their noise was cool as
+water to Michael's fever. An early cart rattled cheerfully down the
+road. It was morning.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IV: _Unending Childhood_
+
+
+After whooping-cough came chicken-pox, and it was settled that Michael
+should leave the Kindergarten where these illnesses were caught. A
+French governess was to teach him every morning and to walk with him
+every afternoon. Mrs. Fane wrote to Nurse to tell her of this decision
+and to announce that a Madame Flauve would on Monday next arrive at 64
+Carlington Road to superintend the education of Michael. This news
+reached Nurse on the preceding Friday and threw her into an agitation.
+The whole house was turned upside down: curtains were changed; floors
+were beeswaxed; furniture was polished; pictures were dusted. All
+Saturday and Friday a great cleaning took place, and on Sunday every
+cushion was smoothed and patted; chairs were adjusted; mats were shaken;
+flowers were distributed, until in the evening Nurse and Cook and Annie,
+followed by Michael, marched over the house and examined their
+handiwork.
+
+"Well, I hope we shall see something worth looking at," said Mrs. Frith.
+"I never worked so hard in all my natural."
+
+"Oh, yes. Must get the place nice. Not going to have strange people come
+here and grumble," said Nurse.
+
+"What is this Madame Flauve? Is she a lady?" Cook asked.
+
+"Oh, yes. Yes. A lady. French. Very particular," Nurse replied.
+
+Michael wondered what his governess would be like. He never remembered
+to have seen Nanny so reverently excited before.
+
+"I've heard a lot about these French women," said Mrs. Frith. "A lot
+about them, I have. They live very gay, don't they?"
+
+"Doesn't matter how they live. No. No. Must have everything at its
+best," Nurse insisted.
+
+By the time the scouring of the house was done, Michael was prepared for
+the advent of a creature so lovely that he made up his mind the mere
+sight of her would fill him with joy. He had not settled exactly which
+princess she would most nearly resemble. As he turned over the pages of
+his fairy-books, he would fancy with every illustration that here was to
+be seen the image of his beautiful French governess. As he lay awake in
+his bed on a quiet Sunday evening, so pleasant was the imagination of
+her radiancy that fears and horrors were driven away by the power of her
+beauty's spell. The night acquired something of the peace and sanctity
+of Christmas Eve, when the air was hallowed by Santa Claus on his jovial
+pilgrimage. He had never felt so little oppressed by the night, so
+confident in the might of good.
+
+On Monday morning Michael jigged through his dressing, jigged downstairs
+to breakfast, jigged through the meal itself and jigged upstairs to the
+dining-room to watch for the splendid arrival. He tambourinated upon the
+window-pane a gay little tune, jigging the while from foot to foot in an
+ecstasy of anticipation.
+
+Nurse had decided that the morning-room was not a fit place for such a
+paragon to perform her duties. Nor did she feel that the day-nursery was
+worthy of her. So, even while Michael jigged at his vigil, Nurse was
+arming the dining-room table for an encounter with greatness. Inkpots
+were dusted and displayed; blotting-pads, including one poker--worked
+with a view of Antwerp Cathedral, were unfolded. Pens and pencils and
+pieces of india-rubber and pen-wipers and boxes of nibs and drawing-pins
+were lavishly scattered about the green tablecloth. Various blue
+exercise-books gleamed in the April sunlight and, to set the seal upon
+the whole business, a calendar of Great Thoughts was roughly divested of
+ninety-eight great thoughts at once, in order that for this rare female
+a correct announcement should celebrate the ninth of April, her famous
+date. At five minutes to ten Nurse and Michael were both in a state of
+excitement; Cook was saying that she had never regretted the inadequacy
+of the kitchen arrangements of Sixty-four until this moment; and Annie
+was bracing herself for the real effort, the opening of the door to
+Madame Flauve. The only calm person was Stella who, clasping a rubber
+doll with tight curly rubber hair and a stomachic squeak, chanted to
+herself the saga of Madame Flauve's arrival.
+
+At two minutes past ten Michael said somebody was coming up the steps,
+and a ring confirmed his assertion. The door was opened. Madame Flauve
+was heard rubbing her boots on the SALVE of the mat, was heard putting
+away her umbrella in the peacock-blue china umbrella-stand, was heard
+enquiring for Mrs. Fane and was announced inaudibly by Annie.
+
+Michael's heart sank when he beheld a fat young French-woman with a
+bilious complexion and little pig's eyes and a dowdy black mantle and a
+common black hat. As for Nurse, she sniffed quite audibly and muttered
+an insincere hope that Madame Flauve would find everything to her
+liking. The governess answered in the thick voice of one who is always
+swallowing jujubes that without a doubt she would find everything, and
+presently Nurse left the room with many a backward glance of contempt
+towards Madame Flauve.
+
+When the lessons began (or rather before they began) a time-table was
+drawn up by Madame Flauve:
+
+              { 10--11 French
+    Monday    { 11--12 Geography        2.30--4 Walk
+              { 12--1  History
+
+              { 10--11 Geography
+    Tuesday   { 11--12 History          2.30--4 Walk
+              { 12--1  French
+
+              { 10--11 History
+    Wednesday { 11--12 Geography        2.30--4 Walk
+              { 12--1  French
+
+    Thursday  { 10--11 French
+              { 11--12 History          2.30--4 Walk
+              { 12--1  Geography
+
+              { 10--11 Geography
+    Friday    { 11--12 French           2.30--4 Walk
+              { 12--1  History
+
+Michael, when he saw the programme of his work, felt much depressed. It
+seemed to lack variety and he was not very much cheered up to hear that
+at meals only French would be spoken. Those meals were dreadful. At
+first Nurse and Stella were present, but when Nanny found that Madame
+wanted to teach Stella the French for knife and fork, she declined to
+have dinner downstairs any longer, and Michael and Madame Flauve were
+left to dine tete-a-tete on dull food and a languishing conversation.
+
+"Madam indeed," Nurse would sniff, when the governess had left after
+tea, "I never heard of such a thing in all my life. Madam! A fine
+Madam!"
+
+"What an imperence," agreed Mrs. Frith. "Fancy, a ordinary volgar thing
+like that to go calling herself Madam, whatever shall we come to?"
+
+"It does seem a cheek, don't it?" said Annie.
+
+"I never!" Cook gasped. "I never! Madam! Well, I could almost laugh at
+the sauce of it. And all that cleaning as you might say for a person as
+isn't a scrap better than you and me."
+
+"Oh, I've written to Mrs. Fane," said Nurse. "I said there must be some
+mistake been made. Oh, yes, a mistake--must be a mistake."
+
+Michael did not much enjoy the walks with his governess. He was always
+taken to a second-hand furniture-shop in the Hammersmith Road, not a
+pleasant old furniture-shop with Toby mugs and stuffed birds and coins;
+but a barrack full of red washing-stands and white-handled chests of
+drawers. Madame Flauve informed him that she was engaged in furnishing
+at that moment, and would immediately show him a locket with the
+portrait of her husband inset. Michael could not gain any clear idea of
+what M. Flauve was like, since all that remained was a nebulous profile
+smothered by a very black moustache. Madame Flauve told him that M.
+Flauve was 'tout-a-fait charmant, mais charmant, mon petit. Il etait si
+aimable, si gentil et d'un coeur tres tres bon.' Michael grew very
+tired of being jostled outside the furniture-shop every afternoon, while
+his governess grubbed around the ugly furniture and argued with the man
+about the prices. The only article she ever bought was a commode, which
+so violently embarrassed Michael that he blushed the whole way home. But
+Madame Flauve often made him blush and would comment upon subjects not
+generally mentioned except by Mrs. Frith, and even by her only in a
+spirit of hearty coarseness that did not make Michael feel ashamed like
+this Frenchwoman's suggestion of the nasty. He was on one occasion very
+much disgusted by her remarks on the inside of an egg that was slightly
+set. Yet while he was disgusted, his curiosity was stimulated by the
+information imparted, and he made further enquiries from Nurse that
+evening. Nanny was horrified, and said plainly that she considered this
+governess no better than a low beast and that she should write
+accordingly to Mrs. Fane.
+
+After a month or two Michael was sent back to school in the morning,
+though the afternoon walks still continued for a time. When Michael
+returned to the Misses Marrow, he was promoted to the class above the
+Kindergarten and was set to learn the elements of Latin in a desultory
+and unpractical way, that is to say he was made to learn--
+
+    Nominative, mensa,  a table
+    Vocative,   mensa,  O table
+    Accusative, mensam, a table
+
+and the rest of the unintelligible rigmarole. He had no clear notion
+what Latin was, and so far as he could make out nobody else at the Miss
+Marrows' school had any clearer notion. Indeed, the only distinct
+addition to his knowledge of life was gained from Vernon Brown who with
+great ingenuity had hollowed out a cork and by the insertion of several
+pins in the front had made of it a miniature cage in which he kept a
+fly. All the other boys were much impressed by Vernon Brown's
+achievement, and very soon they all came to school with flies captive in
+excavated corks. Michael longed to be like these bigger boys and pined
+for a cage. One day Edward Arnott gave him one, and all the rest of that
+day Michael watched the fly trying to escape. When he showed it to
+Madame Flauve, she professed herself shocked by the cruelty of it and
+begged him to release the fly, asserting that she would find him a
+substitute which would deceive all the other boys. Michael agreed to
+release his captive and the long-imprisoned fly walked painfully out of
+his cell. Then Madame Flauve chipped off a little piece of coal and tied
+it round with one of her own hairs and showed Michael how by cunningly
+twisting this hair, the coal would gain the appearance of mobility.
+Michael was doubtful at first, but Madame's exaggerated encouragement
+led him to suppose that it was safe to practise the deception on his
+companions. So on the next day he proceeded to exhibit his 'fly.' But
+everybody knew it was coal and jeered at Michael and made him very
+unhappy and anxious never again to attempt to differentiate himself or
+his actions from the rest of mankind.
+
+Michael's mother came home towards the end of July, and Madame Flauve
+vanished to her husband and house and furniture. Michael did not regret
+her. Mrs. Fane asked him many questions and particularly she wanted to
+know if he was perfectly happy. Michael said 'yes,' and his mother
+seemed satisfied. She was now very much taken up with Stella, who was a
+lovely little girl with grey eyes and light brown glinting hair. Michael
+did not exactly feel jealous of his sister, but he had an emotion of
+disappointment that no longer could he be alone with his mother in a
+fragrant intimacy from which the perpetually sleeping Stella was
+excluded. Now Stella no longer slept all the time, but, on the contrary,
+was very much awake and very eager to be entertained. Michael also felt
+a twinge of regret that Stella should be able out of her own self to
+entertain grown-up people. He wished that he could compose these
+wonderful, endless songs of hers. He could not but admit that they were
+wonderful, and exactly like real poetry. To be sure their subjects were
+ordinary enough. There was no magic in them. Stella would simply sing of
+getting up in the morning and of the morning bath and the towel and the
+bread and milk for breakfast. She would sing, too, of the ride in the
+perambulator and of the ladies who paid her compliments as she passed.
+It was a little galling to Michael that he, so long his mother's only
+companion, should have to share her love with such an insidious rival.
+Curious men with long hair came to the house, apparently just to see
+Stella; for they took no notice at all of Michael. These long-haired
+visitors would sit round in the drawing-room, while Stella played at the
+piano pieces that were not half so hummable as those which Michael had
+already learned to play in violent allegretto. Stella would sit upright
+in her starchiest frock and widest sash and play without any music a
+long and boring noise that made Michael feel very fidgety. He would
+endure it for a while and then he would have to go out of the room. The
+first time he had done this he had expected somehow that people would
+run after him to bring him back. But nobody moved. Everyone was intent
+upon Stella and her noise. They were all grunting and clearing their
+throats and making unintelligible exclamations. Michael was glad that
+they had begun to build houses in the waste ground opposite. It was
+better to watch men climbing up ladders and walking over planks and
+messing with lumps of mortar than to sit there among those guttural men
+in an atmosphere of Stella worship. He felt sometimes that he would like
+to pinch Stella's legs--they looked so sleek and well-behaved, as she
+sat there playing the piano. Michael was never invited to play on the
+drawing-room piano. He was only allowed to play up in the day-nursery,
+with merely the ambition of one day being able to reach the pedals to
+stir him on.
+
+"Ach, Mrs. Vane," he heard these long-haired men declare. "Your daughter
+is wonderful. Ach! Ach! Ach! She is a genius. She will be the great
+bianist of the new generation. Ach! Ach! Ach!"
+
+Michael began to feel that his love for his mother or her love for him
+did not matter. He began to feel that only what he himself thought and
+wanted did matter; and when she went away again he was sorry, but not so
+sorry as he used to be. One of these long-haired men now began to come
+every day to give Stella lessons on the drawing-room piano. He would
+give a very loud knock and hang up a wide-brimmed black hat in the hall
+and clear his throat and button up his coat very tightly and march into
+the drawing-room to wait for Stella to be brought down. Stella would
+come down the stairs with her grey eyes shining and her hair all fuzzy
+and her hands smelling of pink soap, while Nurse would blow very
+importantly and tell Michael not to peep round corners. Stella's music
+lessons were much grander than Michael's in the stuffy back-room of Miss
+Marrow's. Besides, Michael's music lessons were now particularly
+unpleasant, because Miss Hunt, his mistress, had grown two warts on her
+first finger during the summer holidays, which made him feel sick during
+their eternal duets.
+
+The withdrawal of Madame Flauve from the superintendence of Michael's
+afternoon walks was apparently a great blow to Nurse. She had acquired a
+habit either of retiring to the night-nursery or of popping out of the
+back-door on secret errands. Stella in the charge of Annie was perfectly
+happy upstairs, and Nurse resented very strongly Michael's enquiries as
+to where she was going. Michael had no ulterior reasons for his
+questions. He was sincerely interested by these afternoon walks of
+Nurse, and speculated often upon her destination. She would always
+return very cheerful and would often bring him home small presents--a
+dark blue bird on a pin at boat-race time (for Nurse was staunchly
+Oxford), a penny packet of stamps most of which were duplicates inside,
+penny illustrated books of Cock Robin or Tom Thumb; and once she brought
+him home a Night Companion. This Night Companion was a club-headed
+stick, very powerful and warranted to secure the owner from a murderous
+attack. It was one of a row in the window of a neighbouring
+umbrella-shop, a long row of Night Companions that cost one shilling
+each. Michael liked his stick and took it to bed with him and was
+comforted, when he woke up, by the sight of its knotted head upon the
+bolster. He grew very intimate with the stick and endowed it with
+character and temperament and humanity. He would often stare at the
+still unpurchased Night Companions in the shop, trying to discover if
+any other of them were so beneficent and so pleasant a companion as his
+own. In time he took a fancy to another, and begged Nurse to be allowed
+to buy this for Stella. Nurse was gratified by his appreciation of her
+present and gave him leave to break into the ten-shilling piece to endow
+Stella with a Companion. Michael himself carried it home, wrapped in a
+flimsy brown paper and tied up as he thought unnecessarily with a flimsy
+string. Stella was told to take it to bed with her and did so, but by
+some accident grazed her forehead on the Night Companion's knotty head
+and cried so much that it was taken away from her. This was all the
+better for Michael who thenceforth had two Night Companions--one on
+either side of him to guard him from the door and the window.
+
+Still, notwithstanding these presents, Nurse grew more and more
+irritable to find Michael watching her exits from and entrances into 64
+Carlington Road. Once, she was so much annoyed to see Michael's face
+pressed against the pane of the morning-room window that she slid all
+the way down the area-steps and sent Michael to bed as a punishment for
+peeping. At last she decided that Michael must go for walks by himself
+and lest he should be lost or get into mischief, every walk must be in
+the same direction, along the same road to the same place and back. He
+was to walk up Carlington Road into the Hammersmith Road and along the
+Kensington Road as far as the Earl's Court Road. Here he was to stop and
+turn round and walk back to Carlington Road on his traces.
+
+Michael detested this walk. He would stump up the area-steps, watched by
+Nurse, and he would walk steadily, looking neither to the right nor to
+the left according to orders, as far as 44 Carlington Road. Here in the
+morning-room window was a small aquarium, sadly mobile with half a
+dozen pale goldfish, that Michael would be compelled to watch for a few
+seconds before he turned round and acknowledged the fact that Nurse was
+flicking him on with her hand. Michael would proceed past the other
+houses until he came to 22 Carlington Road, where a break occurred,
+caused by a house entirely different from any of the others, at the side
+of which was a huge double door. This was sometimes open, and inside
+could be seen men hammering with chisels at enormous statues including
+representations of Queen Victoria and of a benignant lion. Next to this
+house was a post office, not an ordinary post office where stamps could
+be bought, but a harum-scarum place, full of postmen running up and down
+and emptying bags and hammering on letters and talking very loudly and
+very quickly. By this office Carlington Road made an abrupt rectangular
+turn past a tumble-down tarred fence, through whose interstices could be
+seen a shadowy garden full of very long pale grass and of trees with
+jet-black trunks. Beyond the trees was a tumble-down house with big bare
+windows glinting amongst the ivy. After this Carlington Road went on
+again with smaller houses of a deeper red brick than those in the part
+where Michael lived. They had no basements, and one could see into their
+dining-rooms, so close were they to the road. When 2 Carlington Road was
+reached a tall advertisement hoarding began, and for a hundred yards the
+walk became absolutely interesting. Then Carlington Mansions rose
+majestic, and Michael, who had been told that they were flats and had
+heard people wondering at this strange new method of existence, loitered
+for a moment in order to watch a man in a uniform, sitting on a wooden
+chair and reading a pink newspaper. He also read the names of people who
+were either out or in, and settled, when he was older, to live in a flat
+in the security of many other families and a man in a green uniform. The
+roar of the Hammersmith Road burst upon him, and dreams were over for a
+while, as he hurried along past eight shops, at none of which he would
+dare to look since he read in a book of a boy who had been taken off to
+the police station on a charge of theft, though he was actually as
+innocent as Michael himself and was merely interested by the contents of
+a shop window. The next turning to Carlington Road was a queer terrace,
+very quiet except that it overlooked the railway, very quiet and
+melancholy and somehow wicked. Nothing ever turned down here except an
+occasional dog or cat; no servants stood gossiping by area-gates, and at
+the end of it loomed the tumble-down house whose garden Michael had
+already seen near the post office. He used to think as he left Padua
+Terrace behind him that one day for a great adventure he would like to
+walk along under its elm-trees to discover if anyone did live in those
+dark houses; but he never managed to be brave enough to do so. Michael
+now crossed the railway bridge and looked at the advertisements: then
+followed a dull line of iron railings with rusty pineapples on top of
+each of them. These were bounded at each end by gates that were marked
+'Private. No Thoroughfare,' and after the second gate came the first
+crossing. Michael had been told to be very careful of crossings, and he
+used to poise himself on the kerb for a moment to see if any carts were
+near. If none were even in sight, he used to run across as quickly as he
+could. There were three other crossings before Earl's Court Road was
+reached, and one of them was so wide that he was very glad indeed when
+it was put behind him. All the way, terrace after terrace of grim
+houses, set back from the high road behind shrubberies, had to be
+passed, and all the way Michael used to hum to himself for company and
+diversion and encouragement. The only interesting event was a
+pavement-artist, and he was very often not there. It was an exasperating
+and monotonous walk, and he hated it for the gloom it shed upon all his
+afternoons.
+
+Sometimes Michael would arrive home before Nanny, and then he would have
+to endure a long cross-examination upon his route. The walk was not
+sufficiently interesting to invent tales about, and he resented Nurse's
+incredulous attitude and wrinkled obstinate face. Indeed, Michael began
+to resent Nurse altogether, and so far as he was able he avoided her.
+His scheme of things was logical: he had already a philosophy, and his
+conception of the wonder inherent in everything was evidently not
+unique, because the pictures in Don Quixote proved conclusively that
+what Michael thought, other people besides himself thought. He might be
+old-fashioned, as Nurse assured him he was; but if to be old-fashioned
+was to live in the world of Don Quixote, he certainly preferred it to
+the world in which Nanny lived. That seemed to him a circumscribed and
+close existence for which he had no sympathy. It was a world of poking
+about in medicine-cupboards, of blind unreasonableness, of stupidity and
+malice and blank ugliness. He would sit watching Nanny nibbling with her
+front teeth the capers of the caper sauce, and he would hate her. She
+interfered with him, with his day-dreams and toys and meals; and the
+only time when he wanted her presence was in the middle of the night,
+when she was either drinking her glass of ale in the kitchen or snoring
+heavily in the next room. Michael's only ambition was to live in his own
+world. This he would have shared with his mother, but her visits were
+now so rare that it was unwise to rely on her presence for happiness. He
+was learning to do without her: Nurse he had never yet learnt to endure.
+She charged ferociously into his fancies, shattering them with her fussy
+interference, just as she would snatch away his clay pipe, when the most
+perfect bubble was trembling on the edge of the bowl.
+
+"Time for tea," she would mutter. "Time for bed," she would chatter.
+Always it was time for something unpleasant.
+
+Mrs. Frith, on the other hand, was a person whose attractions grew with
+longer friendship, as Nurse's decreased even from the small quantity she
+originally possessed. As Michael month by month grew older, Mrs. Frith
+expanded towards him. She found him an attentive, even a breathless
+listener to her rollicking tales. Her life Michael plainly perceived to
+have been crammed with exciting adventures. In earliest youth she had
+been forced by cunning to outwit a brutal father with the frightening
+habit of coming home in the evening and taking off his belt to her and
+her brothers and her sisters. The house in which she lived had been full
+of hiding-places, and Mrs. Frith, picturing herself to Michael of less
+ample girth, described wonderfully how her father had actually routed
+for her with a broom-handle while her mother sat weeping into an apron.
+Then it appeared that it was the custom of small boys in the street of
+her youth to sell liquorice-water in exchange for pins.
+
+"But was it nice?" asked Michael, remembering liquorice-powder.
+
+"Lovely stuff," Mrs. Frith affirmed. "They used to go calling up and
+down, 'Fine liquorice-water! Fine liquorice-water! Bring out your pins
+and have a bottle of liquorice-water.'"
+
+"And did you?" asked Michael.
+
+"Did we? Of course we did--every pin in the place. There wasn't a pin in
+the whole street after those boys had gone by."
+
+"What else did you do when you were little, Mrs, Frith?"
+
+"What else? Why everything."
+
+"Yes, but tell me what," Michael begged, clasping his knees and looking
+earnestly at Cook.
+
+"Why once I went to a Sunday-school treat and got thrown off of a donkey
+and showed more than I meant and the boys all hollered after me going to
+Sunday-school and I used to stand behind a corner and dodge them. The
+saucy demons!"
+
+These tales were endless, and Michael thought how jolly it would be to
+set out early one summer morning with Mrs. Frith and look for adventures
+like Don Quixote. This became a favourite day-dream, and he used to
+fancy Mrs. Frith tossed in a blanket like Sancho Panza. What company she
+would be, and it would be possible with two donkeys. He had seen women
+as fat as her riding on donkeys by the seaside.
+
+One day Mrs. Frith told him she was thinking of getting married again,
+and on a Sunday afternoon Michael was introduced to her future husband,
+a certain Mr. Hopkins, who had a shining red head and an enormous
+coloured handkerchief into which he trumpeted continuously. Mr. Hopkins
+also had a daughter three or four years older than Michael--a wizened
+little girl called Flossie who spoke in a sort of hiss and wore very
+conspicuous underclothing of red flannelette. Michael and Flossie played
+together shyly under the admiring patronage of Mrs. Frith and Mr.
+Hopkins, and were just beginning to be friendly when Nurse came in and
+said:
+
+"Can't be allowed. No, no. Never heard of such a thing. Tut-tut."
+
+After this Nurse and Mrs. Frith did not seem to get on very well, and
+Mrs. Frith used to talk about 'people as gave theirselves airs which
+they had no business to of done.' She was kinder than ever to Michael
+and gave him as many sultanas as he wanted and told him all about the
+house into which she and Mr. Hopkins and Flossie would presently depart
+from Carlington Road.
+
+"Are you going away?" Michael asked, aghast.
+
+"Going to be married," said Mrs. Frith.
+
+"But I don't want you to go."
+
+"There, bless your heart, I've a good mind to stay. I believe you'll
+miss your poor old Mrs. Frith, eh, ducky?"
+
+Everybody nice went away, Michael thought. It was extraordinary how only
+nasty food and nasty people were wholesome.
+
+Mrs. Frith's departure was even more exciting than her stories. One
+afternoon Michael found her in the kitchen, dancing about with her
+skirts kilted above her knees. He was a little embarrassed at first, but
+very soon he had to laugh because she was evidently not behaving like
+this in order to show off, but because she enjoyed dancing about the
+kitchen.
+
+"Why are you dancing, Mrs. Frith?" he asked.
+
+"Happy as a lark, lovey," she answered in an odd voice. "Happy as a
+lark, for we won't go home till morning, we won't go home till morning,"
+and singing, she twirled round and round until she sank into a wicker
+arm-chair. At this moment Annie came running downstairs with Nurse, and
+both of them glared at Mrs. Frith with shocked expressions.
+
+"What ever are you doing, Cook?" said Nurse.
+
+"That's all right, lovey. That's All Sir Garnet, and don't you make no
+mistake. Don't you--make no mistake."
+
+Here Mrs. Frith gave a very loud hiccup and waved her arms and did not
+even say 'beg pardon' for the offensive noise.
+
+"Michael," said Nurse, "go upstairs at once. Mrs. Frith, get up. You
+ignorant and vulgar woman. Get up."
+
+"And you ought to be ashamed of yourself," said Cook to Nurse. "You old
+performing monkey, that's what you are."
+
+"Annie," said Nurse, "fetch a policeman in, and go and get this woman's
+box."
+
+"Woman!" said Mrs. Frith. "Woman yourself. Who's a woman? I'm not a
+woman. No, I'm not. And if I am a woman, you're not the one to say so.
+Ah, I know how many bottles have gone out of this house and come
+in--not by me."
+
+"Hold your impudent tongue," said Nurse.
+
+"I shall not hold my tongue, so now," retorted Mrs. Frith.
+
+Michael had squeezed himself behind the kitchen door fascinated by this
+duel. It was like Alice in Wonderland, and every minute he expected to
+see Cook throwing plates at Nanny, who was certainly making faces
+exactly like the Duchess. The area door slammed, and Michael wondered
+what was going to happen. Presently there came the sound of a deep tread
+in the passage and a policeman entered.
+
+"What's all this?" he said in a deep voice.
+
+"Constable," said Nurse, "will you please remove this dreadful woman?"
+
+"What's she been doing?" asked the policeman.
+
+"She's drunk."
+
+Mrs. Frith apparently overwhelmed by the enormity of the accusation
+tottered to her feet and seized a saucepan.
+
+"None of that now," said the policeman roughly, as he caught her by the
+waist.
+
+"Oh, I'm not afraid of a bluebottle," said Mrs. Frith haughtily. "Not of
+a bluebottle, I'm not."
+
+"Are you going to charge her?" the policeman asked.
+
+"No, no. Nothing but turn her out. The girl's packing her box. Give her
+the box and let her go."
+
+"Not without my wages," said Mrs. Frith. "I'm not going to leave my
+wages behind. Certaintly I'm not."
+
+Nurse fumbled in her purse, and at last produced some money.
+
+"That's the easiest way," said the policeman. "Pay her the month and let
+her go. Come on, my lady."
+
+He seized Mrs. Frith and began to walk her to the door as if she were a
+heavy sack. Michael began to cry. He did not want Mrs. Frith to be hurt
+and he felt frightened. In the passage she suddenly broke loose and,
+turning round, pushed Nurse into the laundry-basket and was so pleased
+with her successful effort that she almost ran out of the house and
+could presently be heard singing very cheerfully 'White wings, they
+never grow weary,' to the policeman. In the end her trunk was pushed
+down the front-door steps, and after more singing and arguing a
+four-wheeler arrived and Mrs. Frith vanished for ever from Carlington
+Road.
+
+The effect of this scene on Nurse was to make her more repressive and
+secretive. She was also very severe on vulgarity; and all sorts of old
+words were wrapped up in new words, as when bread and dripping became
+bread and honey, because dripping was vulgar. The house grew much
+gloomier with Mrs. Frith's departure. The new cook whose name Michael
+never found out, because she remained the impersonal official, was very
+brusque and used to say: "Now then, young man, out of my kitchen or I'll
+tell Nurse. And don't hang about in the passage or in two-twos you'll be
+sorry you ever came downstairs."
+
+It was autumn again, and the weather was dreary and wet. Michael
+suffered a severe shock one morning. It was too foggy to go to school
+and he was sitting alone in the window of the morning-room, staring at
+the impenetrable and fearful yellowness of the air. Suddenly he heard
+the cry, 'Remember, remember the Fifth of November, and gunpowder,
+treason and plot,' and, almost before he had time to realize it was the
+dreaded Guy Fawkes, a band of loud-voiced boys with blackened faces came
+surging down the area steps and held close to the window a nodding Guy.
+Michael shrieked with fear and ran from the room, only to be told by
+Nurse that she'd never heard such old-fashioned nonsense in all her
+life.
+
+During that November the fogs were very bad and, as an epidemic term had
+compelled the Misses Marrow to close their school, Michael brooded at
+home in the gaslit rooms that shone dully in the street of footsteps.
+The long morning would drag its length out, and dinner would find no
+appetite in Michael. Stella seemed not to care to play and would mope
+with round eyes saddened by this eternal gloom. Dusk was merely marked
+by the drawing down of the blinds at the clock's hour without regard to
+the transit from day to night. Michael used to wonder if it were
+possible that this fog would last for ever, if for ever he would live in
+Carlington Road in this yellow twilight, if his mother had forgotten
+there ever was such a person as Michael Fane. But, at any rate, he would
+have to grow up. He could not always be the same size. That was a
+consolation. It was jolly to dream of being grown-up, to plan one's
+behaviour and think of freedom. The emancipation of being grown-up
+seemed to Michael to be a magnificent prospect. To begin with it was no
+longer possible to be naughty. He realized, indeed, that crimes were a
+temptation to some grown-ups, that people of a certain class committed
+murders and burglaries, but as he felt no inclination to do either, he
+looked forward to a life of unbroken virtue.
+
+So far as he could ascertain, grown-up people were exempt from even the
+necessity to distinguish between good and evil. If Michael examined the
+Commandments one by one, this became obvious. _Thou shalt have none
+other gods than me_. Why should one want to have? One was enough. The
+Children of Israel must be different from Michael. He could not
+understand such peculiar people. _Make not to thyself any graven image_.
+The only difficulty about this commandment was its length for learning.
+Otherwise it did not seem to bear on present-day life. _Thou shalt not
+take the name of the Lord thy God in vain_. This was another vague
+injunction. Who wanted to? _Remember thou keep holy the Sabbath Day_. It
+was obviously a simple matter for grown-up people, who no longer enjoyed
+playing with toys, to keep this commandment. At present it was
+difficult to learn and difficult to keep. _Honour thy father and thy
+mother_. He loved his mother. He would always love her, even if she
+forgot him. He might not love her so much as formerly, but he would
+always love her. _Thou shalt do no murder_. Michael had no intention of
+doing murder. Since the Hangman in Punch and Judy he was cured of any
+inclination towards murder. _Thou shalt not commit adultery_. Why should
+he ever want to marry another man's wife? At present he could not
+imagine himself married to anybody. He supposed that as one result of
+growing up he would get married. But, forewarned, he would take care not
+to choose somebody else's wife. _Thou shalt not steal_. With perfect
+freedom to eat when and where and what one liked, why should one steal?
+_Thou shalt not bear false witness_. It would not be necessary to lie
+when grown up, because one could not then be punished. _Thou shalt not
+covet thy neighbour's ox_. He would covet nothing, for when he was grown
+up he would be able to obtain whatever he wanted.
+
+This desire to be grown up sustained him through much, even through the
+long foggy nights which made his bedroom more fearfully still than
+before. The room would hardly seem any longer to exist in the murk which
+crept through it. The crocus-shaped jet of the gas burned in the
+vaporous midnight with an unholy flame somehow, thought Michael, as
+candles must look, when at the approach of ghosts they burn blue. How
+favourable to crime was fog, how cleverly the thief might steal over the
+coal-yard at the back of the house and with powerful tools compel the
+back-door to open. And the murderers, how they must rejoice in the
+impenetrable air as with long knives they stole out from distant streets
+in search of victims. Michael's nerves were so wrought upon by the
+unchanging gloom of these wintry days that even to be sent by Nurse to
+fetch her thimble or work-bag before tea was a racking experience.
+
+"Now then, Michael, run downstairs like a good boy and fetch my needle
+and cotton which I left in the morning-room," Nurse would command. And
+in the gathering dusk Michael would practically slide downstairs until
+he reached the basement. Then, clutching the object of his errand, he
+would brace himself for the slower ascent. Suppose that when he reached
+the hall there were two skeletons sitting on the hall chest? Suppose
+that on the landing above a number of rats rushed out from the
+housemaid's closet to bite his legs and climb over him and gnaw his
+face? Suppose that from the landing outside his own room a masked
+burglar were stealing into his room to hide himself under the bed?
+Suppose that when he arrived back at the day-nursery, Stella and Nurse
+were lying with their heads chopped off, as he had once seen a family
+represented by a pink newspaper in the window of a little shop near
+Hammersmith Broadway? Michael used to reach his goal, white and shaking,
+and slam the door against the unseen follower who had dogged his
+footsteps from the coal-cellar. The cries of a London twilight used to
+oppress him. From the darkening streets and from the twinkling houses
+inexplicable sounds floated about the air. They had the sadness of
+church-bells, and like church-bells they could not be located exactly.
+Michael thought that London was the most melancholy city in the world.
+Even at Christmas-time, behind all the gaiety and gold of a main road
+lay the trackless streets that were lit, it seemed, merely by pin-points
+of gas, so far apart were the lamp-posts, such a small sad circle of
+pavement did they illuminate. The rest was shadows and glooms and
+whispers. Even in the jollity of the pantomime and comfortable smell of
+well-dressed people the thought of the journey home through the rainy
+evening brooded upon the gayest scene. The going home was sad indeed, as
+in the farthest corner of the jolting omnibus they jogged through the
+darkness. The painted board of places and fares used to depress
+Michael. He could not bear to think of the possibilities opened up by
+the unknown names beyond Piccadilly Circus. Once in a list of fares he
+read the word Whitechapel and shivered at the thought that an omnibus
+could from Whitechapel pass the corner of Carlington Road. This very
+omnibus had actually come from the place where murders were done.
+Murderers might at this moment be travelling in his company. Michael
+looked askance at the six nodding travellers who sat opposite, at the
+fumes of their breath, at their hands clasped round the handles of their
+umbrellas. There, for all he knew, sat Jack the Ripper. It happened that
+night that one of the travellers, an old gentleman with gold-rimmed
+eye-glasses, alighted at the corner and actually turned down Carlington
+Road. Michael was horrified and tugged at Nanny's arm to make her go
+faster.
+
+"Whyever on earth are you dancing along like a bear for? Do you want to
+go somewhere, you fidgety boy?" said Nurse, pulling Michael to her side
+with a jerk.
+
+"Oh, Nanny, there's a man following us, who got out of our bus."
+
+"Well, why shouldn't he get out? Tut-tut. Other people besides you want
+to get out of buses. I shan't ever take you to the pantomime again, if
+you aren't careful."
+
+"Well, I will be careful," said Michael, who, perceiving the lamp in
+their front hall, recovered from his fright and became anxious to
+propitiate Nanny.
+
+"So I should think," muttered Nurse. "Tut-tut-tut-tut-tut." Michael
+thought she would never stop clicking her tongue.
+
+About this time with the fogs and the rain and the loneliness and
+constant fear that surrounded him, Michael began to feel ill. He worried
+over his thin arms, comparing them with the sleek Stella's. His golden
+hair lost its lustre and became drab and dark and skimpy. His cheeks
+lost their rose-red, and black lines ringed his large and sombre blue
+eyes. He cared for little else but reading, and even reading tired him
+very much, so that once he actually fell asleep over the big Don
+Quixote. About two hundred pages were bent underneath the weight of his
+body, and the book was taken away from him as a punishment for his
+carelessness. It was placed out of his reach on top of the bookcase and
+Michael used to stand below and wish for it. No entreaties were well
+enough expressed to move Nurse; and Don Quixote remained high out of
+reach in the dust and shadows of the ceiling. Nurse grew more and more
+irrational in her behaviour and complained more and more of the
+neuralgia to which she declared she was a positive martyr. Annie went
+away into the country because she was ill and a withered housemaid took
+her place, while the tall thin house in Carlington Road became more grim
+every day.
+
+Then a lucky event gave Michael a new interest. Miss Caroline Marrow
+began to teach him the elements of Botany, and recommended all the boys
+to procure window-boxes for themselves. Michael told Nurse about this;
+and, though she muttered and clicked and blew a great deal, one day a
+bandy-legged man actually came and fitted Michael's window-sills with
+two green window-boxes. He spent the whole of his spare time in prodding
+the sweet new mould, in levelling it and patting it, and filling in
+unhappy little crevices which had been overlooked. Then on a fine spring
+morning he paid a visit to the old woman who sold penny packets of
+seeds, and bought nasturtiums, mignonette, Virginia stocks and
+candytuft, twelve pansy roots and twelve daisy roots. Michael's flowers
+grew and flourished and he loved his window-boxes. He liked to turn
+towards his window at night now. Somehow those flowers were a
+protection. He liked to lie in bed during the sparrow-thronged mornings
+of spring and fancy how the birds must enjoy hopping about in his
+window-boxes. He was always careful to scatter plenty of crumbs, so that
+they should not be tempted to peck up his seeds or pull to pieces the
+pansy buds. He was disappointed that neither the daisies nor the pansies
+smelt sweet, and when the mignonette bloomed, he almost sniffed it away,
+so lovely was the perfume of it during the blue days of June. He had a
+set of gardening tools, so small and suitable to the size of his garden
+that rake and hoe and spade and fork were all originally fastened to one
+small square of cardboard.
+
+But, best of all, when the pansies were still a-blowing and the Virginia
+stocks were fragrant, and when from his mother's window below he could
+see his nasturtium flowers, golden and red and even tortoiseshell
+against the light, his mother came home suddenly for a surprize, and the
+house woke up.
+
+"But you're not looking well, darling," she said.
+
+"Oh, yes, quite well. Quite well," muttered Nurse, "Quite well. Mustn't
+be a molly-coddle. No. No."
+
+"I really must see about a nice governess for you," said Mrs. Fane.
+Nurse sniffed ominously.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter V: _The First Fairy Princess_
+
+
+Miss Carthew's arrival widened very considerably Michael's view of life.
+Nurse's crabbed face and stunted figure had hitherto appropriately
+enough dominated such realities of existence as escaped from the glooms
+and shadows of his solitary childhood. Michael had for so long been
+familiar with ugliness that he was dangerously near to an eternal
+imprisonment in a maze of black fancies. He had come to take pleasure in
+the grotesque and the macabre, and even on the sunniest morning his
+imagination would turn to twilight and foggy eves, to basements and
+empty houses and loneliness and dust. Michael would read furtively the
+forbidden newspapers that Nurse occasionally left lying about. In these
+he would search for murders and crimes, and from their association with
+thrills of horror, the newspapers themselves had gradually acquired a
+definitely sinister personality. If at dusk Michael found a newspaper by
+Nurse's arm-chair, he would approach it with beating heart, and before
+he went over to read it where close to the window the light of day
+lingered, he would brood upon his own daring, as if some Bluebeard's
+revenge might follow.
+
+When Michael's mother was at home, he was able to resume the
+cheerfulness of the last occasion on which her company had temporarily
+relieved his solitude; but always behind the firelit confidences, the
+scented good mornings and good nights, the gay shopping walks and all
+the joys which belonged to him and her, stood threatening and inevitable
+the normal existence with Nurse in which these rosy hours must be
+remembered as only hours, fugitive and insecure and rare. Now came Miss
+Carthew's brisk and lively presence to make many alterations in the life
+of 64 Carlington Road, Kensington.
+
+Michael's introduction to his governess took place in the presence of
+his mother and, as he stood watching the two women in conversation, he
+was aware of a tight-throated feeling of pleasure. They were both so
+tall and slim and beautiful: they were both so straight and clean that
+they gave him the glad sensation of blinds pulled up to admit the sun.
+
+"I think we're going to be rather good friends," said Miss Carthew.
+
+Michael could only stare his agreement, but he managed to run before
+Miss Carthew in order to open the door politely, when she was going out.
+In bed that night he whispered to his mother how much he liked Miss
+Carthew and how glad he was that he could leave the Miss Marrows' for
+the company of Miss Carthew all day long.
+
+"And all night?" he asked wistfully.
+
+"No, not at present, darling," she answered. "Nanny will still look
+after you at night."
+
+"Will she?" Michael questioned somewhat doubtfully.
+
+After Mrs. Fane went away, there was a short interval before the
+new-comer assumed her duties. During this time Michael hummed
+incessantly and asked Nurse a thousand questions about Miss Carthew.
+
+"Goodness gracious, what a fuss about a governess," commented Nanny.
+"Tut-tut. It might be the Queen of England. She'll be here quite soon
+enough for everyone, I dare say."
+
+It fell out that Miss Carthew was to arrive on Valentine Day, and
+Michael with a delicious breathlessness thought how wonderful it would
+be to present her with a Valentine. He did not dare tell Nurse of his
+intention; but he hoped that by sending Valentines to every inmate of
+the house he might be allowed to include Miss Carthew. Nurse was
+agreeable to the notion of receiving a token, and in her company Michael
+set out to a neighbouring stationer's shop to make his purchases. A
+Valentine for Cook was bought, and one of precisely the same design for
+Gladys the withered housemaid, and a rather better one for Stella, and a
+better one still for Nurse.
+
+"Come along now," said Nanny.
+
+"Oh, but can't I get one for Miss Carthew? Do let me."
+
+"Tut-tut-tut. What nonsense. I do declare. Whatever do you want to give
+her a Valentine for?" Nurse demanded, as she tried to hustle Michael
+from the shop.
+
+"Oh, do let me, Nanny."
+
+"Well, come along, and don't be all day choosing. Here, this will do,"
+said Nurse, as she picked one from the penny tray.
+
+But Michael had other ideas. He had noticed an exquisite Valentine of
+apple-green satin painted with the rosiest of Cupids, the most crimson
+of pierced hearts, a Valentine that was almost a sachet so thick was it,
+so daintily fringed with fretted silver-paper.
+
+"That one," he declared, pointing.
+
+"Now what have I told you about pointing?"
+
+"That large one's a shilling," said the stationer.
+
+"Come along, come along," grumbled Nurse. "Wasting good money."
+
+"But I want to have that one," said Michael.
+
+For the first time in his life he did not feel at all afraid of Nurse,
+so absolutely determined was he to present Miss Carthew with the
+Valentine of his own free choice.
+
+"I will have that one," he added. "It's my money."
+
+"You will, will you, you naughty boy? You won't, then. So now! You dare
+defy me. I never heard of such a thing. No, nothing more this morning,
+thank you," Nurse added, turning to the stationer. "The little boy has
+got all he wants. Say 'thank you' to the gentleman and 'good morning,'"
+Nurse commanded Michael.
+
+"I won't," he declared. "I won't." Scowling so that his nose nearly
+vanished into his forehead, and beating back the tears that were surging
+to his eyes, Michael followed Nurse from the shop. As he walked home, he
+dug his nails wrathfully into the envelope of Valentines, and then
+suddenly he saw a drain in the gutter. He hastily stooped and pushed the
+packet between the bars of the grating, and let it fall beyond the
+chance of recovery. When they reached their house, Nurse told him to
+give her the cards, so that they might not be soiled before
+presentation.
+
+"I've dropped them," said Michael sullenly.
+
+"Dropped them? Dropped them? What do you mean--dropped them?"
+
+"I threw them away," said Michael.
+
+"On purpose?"
+
+"Yes. I can do what I like with my own things."
+
+"You ungrateful wicked boy," said Nurse, horrified by such a claim.
+
+"I don't care if I am," Michael answered. "I wanted to give Miss Carthew
+a Valentine. Mother would have let me."
+
+"Your mother isn't here. And when she isn't here, I'm your mother," said
+Nurse, looking more old and wrinkled and monkey-like than ever.
+
+"How dare you say you're my mother?" gasped the outraged son. "You're
+not. You're not. Why, you're not a lady, so you couldn't ever be my
+mother."
+
+Hereupon Nurse disconcerted Michael by bursting into tears, and he
+presently found himself almost petting her and declaring that he was
+very sorry for having been so unkind. He found a certain luxury in this
+penitence just as he used to enjoy a reconciliation with the black
+kittens. Perhaps it was this scene with Nurse that prompted him soon
+afterwards to the creation of another with his sister. The second scene
+was brought about by Stella's objection to the humming with which
+Michael was somewhat insistently celebrating the advent of Miss Carthew.
+
+"Don't hum, Michael. Don't hum. Please don't hum," Stella begged very
+solemnly. "Please don't hum, because it makes my head hurt."
+
+"I _will_ hum, and every time you ask me not to hum, I'll hum more
+louder," said Michael.
+
+Stella at once went to the piano in the day-nursery and began to play
+her most unmelodious tune. Michael ran to the cupboard and produced a
+drum which he banged defiantly. He banged it so violently that presently
+the drum, already worn very thin, burst. Michael was furious and
+immediately proceeded to twang an over-varnished zither. So furiously
+did he twang the zither that finally he caught one of his nails in a
+sharp string of the treble, and in great pain hurled the instrument
+across the room. Meanwhile, Stella continued to play, and when Michael
+commanded her to stop, answered annoyingly that she had been told to
+practise.
+
+"Don't say pwactise, you silly. Say practise," Michael contemptuously
+exclaimed.
+
+"Shan't," Stella answered with that cold and fat stolidity of demeanour
+and voice which disgusted Michael like the fat of cold mutton.
+
+"I'm older than you," Michael asserted.
+
+Stella made no observation, but continued to play, and Michael, now
+acutely irritated, rushed to the piano and slammed down the lid. Stella
+must have withdrawn her fingers in time, for there was no sign of any
+pinch or bruise upon them. However, she began to cry, while Michael
+addressed to her the oration which for a long time he had wished to
+utter.
+
+"You are silly. You are a cry-baby. Fancy crying about nothing. I
+wouldn't. Everybody doesn't want to hear your stupid piano-playing. Boys
+at school think pianos are stupid. You always grumble about my humming.
+You are a cry-baby.
+
+  What are little boys made of?
+  Sugar and spice and all that's nice,
+  That's what little boys are made of.
+  What are little girls made of?
+  Slugs and snails and puppy-dogs' tails,
+  Ugh! that's what little girls are made of."
+
+"They're not," Stella screamed. "They're not!" Michael's perversion of
+the original rhyme made her inarticulate with grief and rage. "They're
+not, you naughty boy!"
+
+Michael, contented with his victory, left Stella to herself and her
+tears. As he hummed his way downstairs, he thought sensuously of the
+imminent reconciliation, and in about ten minutes, having found some
+barley-sugar buried against an empty day, Michael came back to Stella
+with peace-offerings and words of comfort.
+
+Miss Carthew arrived on the next morning and the nervous excitement of
+waiting was lulled. Miss Carthew came through the rain of Valentine Day,
+and Michael hugged himself with the thought of her taking off her
+mackintosh and handing it to Gladys to be dried. With the removal of her
+wet outdoor clothes, Miss Carthew seemed to come nearer to Michael and,
+as they faced each other over the schoolroom table (for the day-nursery
+in one moment had become the schoolroom), Michael felt that he could
+bear not being grown up just for the pleasure of sitting opposite to his
+new governess.
+
+It was not so much by these lessons that Michael's outlook was widened
+as by the conversations he enjoyed with Miss Carthew during their
+afternoon walks. She told him, so far as she could, everything that he
+desired to know. She never accused him of being old-fashioned or
+inquisitive, and indeed as good as made him feel that the more questions
+he asked the better she would like it. Miss Carthew had all the mental
+and imaginative charm of the late Mrs. Frith in combination with an
+outward attractiveness that made her more dearly beloved. Indeed Miss
+Carthew had numberless pleasant qualities. If she promised anything, the
+promise was always kept to the letter. If Michael did not know his
+lesson or omitted the performance of an ordained task, Miss Carthew was
+willing to hear the explanation of his failure and was never
+unreasonable in her judgment. One morning very soon after her arrival,
+Michael was unable to repeat satisfactorily the verse of the psalm
+Venite Adoremus set for him to learn.
+
+"Why don't you know it, Michael?" Miss Carthew asked.
+
+"I had to go to bed."
+
+"But surely you had plenty of time before you went to bed?" Miss Carthew
+persisted.
+
+"Nanny wanted to go out, and I went to bed early," Michael explained.
+
+For a moment or two Miss Carthew considered the problem silently. Then
+she rang the bell and told withered Gladys that she wished to speak to
+Nurse. Presently Nurse came in, very aggressive and puckered.
+
+"Did Michael have to go to bed very early last night?" Miss Carthew
+enquired.
+
+"Oh, yes. Yes," Nurse blew out. "Early last night. Wednesday night. Yes.
+I had to go out. Yes."
+
+"What time did he go to bed?" Miss Carthew went on.
+
+"What time?" repeated Nurse. "Why the proper time, of course."
+
+"Don't be insolent," said Miss Carthew very tranquilly.
+
+Nurse blustered and wrinkled her nose and frowned and came very close to
+Miss Carthew and peered up into her face, blowing harder than ever.
+
+"The arrangements can't be altered for governesses," said Nurse. "No.
+Tut-tut. Never heard of such a thing."
+
+"The arrangements _will_ be altered. In future Michael will go to bed at
+half-past seven. It's not good for him to go to bed earlier. Do you
+understand?"
+
+"Do I understand? No, I don't understand," Nurse snapped.
+
+"Very well," said Miss Carthew. "You need not wait, Nurse."
+
+Nurse blinked and peered and fumed, but Miss Carthew paid so little
+attention that Michael felt himself blushing for her humiliation.
+However, he did not go to bed that night till half-past seven and at the
+end of the week could rattle off the Venite in two breaths. It was
+extraordinary how Nurse shrank into nothing at Miss Carthew's approach,
+like a witch in the presence of a good fairy.
+
+The nights were still a trial to Michael, but gradually they became less
+terrible, as Miss Carthew's conversation gave him something better to
+meditate upon than the possibilities of disaster and crime. On the
+afternoon walks would be told stories of Miss Carthew's youth in the
+West Country, of cliffs and sea-birds and wrecks, of yachting cruises
+and swimming, of golden sands and magical coves and green islands. Miss
+Carthew's own father had been a captain in the Royal Navy and she had
+had one brother, a midshipman, who was drowned in trying to save the
+life of his friend. By all accounts the Carthews must have lived in as
+wonderful a house as was ever known. From the windows it was possible to
+look down into the very sea itself, and from the front door, all
+wreathed in roses, ran a winding path edged with white stones down to
+the foot of the cliff. Day and night great ships used to sail from the
+harbour, some outward bound with the crew singing in the cool airs of a
+summer morning, some homeward bound, battered by storms. Miss Carthew,
+when a little girl, had been the intimate friend of many coastguards,
+had been allowed to peep through their long telescopes, had actually
+seen a cannon fired at close quarters. Before her own eyes the lifeboat
+had plunged forth to rescue ships and with her own hands she had caught
+fish on quiet sunny mornings and on windless nights under the moon. Her
+most valuable possession, however, must have been that father who could
+sit for hours and never tell the same tale twice, but hold all who heard
+him entranced with a narrative of hostile Indians, of Chinese junks, of
+cannibals and wrecks and mutinies and bombardments. It was sad to hear
+that Captain Carthew was now dead: Michael would have been glad to make
+his acquaintance. It was sad to hear that the Carthews no longer lived
+in the West within the sound of waves and winds; but it was consoling to
+learn that they still lived in the depth of the country and that some
+time, perhaps during this very next summer, Michael should certainly pay
+Mrs. Carthew a visit. He would meet other Miss Carthews, one of whom was
+only fourteen and could obviously without ceremony be hailed immediately
+as Nancy. Of Joan and May, who were older, Michael spoke in terms of the
+familiar Christian name with embarrassment, and he was much perplexed in
+his own mind how he should address them, when actually they met.
+
+"I wish you were going to take us away for our holidays to the seaside,"
+Michael said.
+
+"Perhaps I will another time," Miss Carthew replied. "But this year you
+and Stella are going with Nurse, because Stella isn't going to begin
+lessons with me till you go to school."
+
+"Am I really going to school?"
+
+"Yes, to St. James' Preparatory School," Miss Carthew assured him.
+
+In consideration of Michael's swiftly approaching adventure, he was
+allowed to take in the Boy's Own Paper monthly, and as an even greater
+concession to age he was allowed to make friends with several boys in
+Carlington Road, some of whom were already scholars of St. James'
+Preparatory School and one of whom actually had a brother at St. James'
+School itself, that gigantic red building whose gates Michael himself
+would enter of right one day, however difficult at present this was to
+believe.
+
+What with the prospect of going to school in the autumn and Miss
+Carthew's tales of freedom and naval life, Michael began to disapprove
+more than ever of Nurse's manners and appearance. He did not at all
+relish the notion of passing away the summer holidays in her society. To
+be sure, for the end of the time he had been invited by Mrs. Carthew's
+own thin writing to spend a week with her in Hampshire; but that was at
+least a month away, and meanwhile there was this month to be endured
+with Nurse at Mr. and Mrs. Wagland's lodgings, where the harmonium was
+played and conversation was carried on by whispers and the mysterious
+nods of three heads. However, the beginning of August arrived, and Miss
+Carthew said good-bye for a month. Wooden spades, still gritty with last
+year's sand, were produced from the farthest corners of cupboards:
+mouldy shrimping nets and dirtied buckets and canvas shoes lay about on
+the bed, and at last, huddled in paraphernalia, Nurse and Stella and
+Michael jogged along to the railway station, a miserable hour for
+Michael, who all the time was dreading many unfortunate events, as for
+the cabman to get down from his box and quarrel about the fare, or for
+the train to be full, or for Stella to be sick during the journey, or
+for him and her to lose Nurse, or for all of them to get into the wrong
+train, or for a railway accident to happen, or for any of the
+uncomfortable contingencies to which seaside travellers were liable.
+
+During these holidays Michael grew more and more deeply ashamed of
+Nurse, and more and more acutely sensitive to her manners and
+appearance. He was afraid that people on the front would mistake him and
+Stella for her children. He grew hot with shame when he fancied that
+people looked at him. He used to loiter behind on their walks and
+pretend that he did not belong to Nurse, and hope sincerely that nobody
+would think of connecting him with such an ugly old woman. He had heard
+much talk of 'ladies and gentlemen' at the Kindergarten, and since then
+Miss Carthew had indirectly confirmed his supposition that it was a
+terrible thing not to be a gentleman and the son of a gentleman. He grew
+very critical of his own dress and wished that he were not compelled to
+wear a sailor-top that was slightly shabby. Once Mr. and Mrs. Wagland
+accompanied them to church on a Sunday morning, and Michael was
+horrified. People would inevitably think that he was the son of Mr.
+Wagland. What a terrible thing that would be. He loitered farther behind
+than ever, and would liked to have killed Mr. Wagland when he offered
+him the half of his hymn-book. This incident seemed to compromise him
+finally, to drag him down from the society of Miss Carthew to a degraded
+status of unutterable commonness. Mr. Wagland would persist in digging
+him with his elbow and urging him to sing up. Worse even, he once said
+quite audibly 'Spit it out, sonny.' Michael reeled with shame.
+
+September arrived at last, and then Michael realized suddenly that he
+would have to make the journey to Hampshire alone. This seemed to him
+the most astonishing adventure of his life. He surveyed his existence
+from the earliest dawn of consciousness to the last blush caused by
+Nurse's abominable habits, and could see no parallel of daring. He was
+about to enter upon a direct relationship with the world of men. He
+would have to enquire of porters and guards; he would have to be polite
+without being prodded to ladies sitting opposite. No doubt they would
+ask questions of him and he would have to answer distinctly. And beyond
+this immediate encounter with reality was School. He had not grasped how
+near he was to the first morning. A feeling of hopelessness, of
+inability to grapple with the facts of life seized him. Growing old was
+a very desperate business after all. How remote he was getting from
+Nurse, how far away from the dingy solitude which had so long oppressed
+his spirit. Already she seemed unimportant and already he could almost
+laugh at the absurdity of being mistaken for a relation of hers. The
+world was opening her arms and calling to him.
+
+On the day before he was to set out for Hampshire, he and Nurse and
+Stella and Mr. Wagland and Mrs. Wagland drove in a wagonette to picnic
+somewhere in the country behind the sea. It had been a dry August and
+the rolling chalk downs over which they walked were uniformly brown. The
+knapweed was stunted and the scabious blooms drooped towards the dusty
+pasture. Only the flamy ladies' slippers seemed appropriate to the miles
+of heat that flickered against the landscape. Michael ran off alone,
+sliding as he went where the drouth had singed the close-cropped grass.
+The rabbits ran to right and left of him, throwing distorted shadows on
+the long slopes, and once a field-mouse skipped anxiously across his
+path. On the rounded summit of the highest hill within reach he sat down
+near a clump of tremulous harebells. The sky was on every side of him,
+the largest sky ever imagined. Far away in front was the shining sea,
+above whose nebulous horizon ships hung motionless. Up here was the
+sound of summer airs, the faint lisp of wind in parched herbage, the
+twitter of desolate birds, and in some unseen vale below the bleating of
+a flock of sheep. Bumble-bees droned from flower to flower of the
+harebells and a church clock struck the hour of four. The world was
+opening her arms and calling to Michael. He felt up there in the silver
+weather as the ugly duckling must have felt when he saw himself to be a
+radiant swan. Michael almost believed, in this bewitching meditation,
+that he was in a story by Hans Christian Andersen. Always in those tales
+the people flew above the world whether in snow-time or in spring-time.
+It was really like flying to sit up here. For the first time Michael
+flung wide his arms to grasp the unattainable; and, as he presently
+charged down the hill-side in answer to distant holloas from the picnic
+party, he saw before him a flock of sheep manoeuvring before his
+advance. Michael shouted and kept a swift course, remembering Don
+Quixote and laughing when he saw the flock break into units and gallop
+up the opposite slope.
+
+"Tut-tut," clicked Nurse. "What a mess you do get yourself into, I'm
+sure. Can't you sit down and enjoy yourself quietly?"
+
+"Did you see me make those silly old sheep run away, Nanny?" Michael
+asked.
+
+"Yes, I did. And I should be ashamed to frighten poor animals so. You'll
+get the policeman on your tracks."
+
+"I shouldn't care," said Michael boastfully. "He wouldn't be able to
+catch me."
+
+"Wouldn't he?" said Nurse very knowingly, as she laid out the tea-cups
+on a red rug.
+
+"Oh, Michael," Stella begged, "don't make a policeman come after you."
+
+Michael was intoxicated by the thought of his future. He could not
+recognize the ability of any policeman to check his desires, and because
+it was impossible to voice in any other way the impulses and ambitions
+and hopes that were surging in his soul, he went on boasting.
+
+"Ha, I'd like to see an old policeman run after me. I'd trip him up and
+roll him all down the hill, I would. I'd put his head in a rabbit hole.
+I would. I can run faster than a policeman, I can."
+
+Michael was swaggering round and round the spread-out cups and saucers
+and plates.
+
+"If you put your foot on those jam sandwiches, you'll go straight back
+to the carriage and wait there till we've finished tea. Do you hear?"
+
+Michael considered for a moment the possibility that Nanny might execute
+this threat. He decided that she might and temporarily sobered down. But
+the air was in his veins and all tea-time he could not chatter fast
+enough to keep pace with the new power which was inspiring him with
+inexpressible energy. He talked of what he was going to do in Hampshire;
+he talked of what he was going to do on the journey; he talked of what
+he was going to do at school and when he was grown up. He arranged
+Stella's future and bragged and boasted and fidgeted and shouted, so
+that Nurse looked at him in amazement.
+
+"Whatever's the matter with you?" she asked.
+
+Just then a tortoiseshell butterfly came soaring past and Michael,
+swinging round on both his legs to watch the flight, swept half the
+tea-cups with him. For a moment he was abashed; but after a long sermon
+of reproof from Nurse he was much nearer to laughter than tears.
+
+A gloomy reaction succeeded, as the party drove home through the grey
+evening that was falling sadly over the country-side. A chilly wind
+rustled in the hedgerows and blew the white dust in clouds behind the
+wagonette. Michael became his silent self again and was now filled with
+apprehensions. All that had seemed so easy to attain was now complicated
+by the unknown. He would have been glad of Miss Carthew's company. The
+green-shaded lamp and creaking harmonium of the seaside lodgings were a
+dismal end to all that loveliness of wind and silver so soon finished.
+Nevertheless it had made him very sleepy and he was secretly glad to get
+to bed.
+
+The next day was a dream from which he woke to find himself clinging
+affectionately to Miss Carthew's arm and talking shyly to Nancy Carthew
+and a sidling spaniel alternately, as they walked from the still country
+station and packed themselves into a pony-chaise that was waiting
+outside behind a dun pony.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VI: _The Enchanted Palace_
+
+
+The dun pony ambled through the lanes to the village of Basingstead
+Minor where Mrs. Carthew and her four daughters lived in a house called
+Cobble Place. It stood close to the road and was two stories high, very
+trim and covered with cotoneaster. On either side of the door were two
+windows and above it in a level row five more windows: the roof was
+thatched. On the left of the house were double doors which led into the
+stable-yard, a large stable-yard overlooked by a number of irregular
+gables in the side of the house and continually fluttered by white
+fantail pigeons. Into the stable-yard the dun pony turned, where,
+clustered in the side entrance of Cobble Place under a clematis-wreathed
+porch, stood Mrs. Carthew and Miss May Carthew and Miss Joan Carthew,
+all smiling very pleasantly at Michael and all evidently very glad to
+see him safely arrived. Michael climbed out of the chaise and politely
+shook hands with Mrs. Carthew and said he was very well and had had a
+comfortable journey and would like some tea very much, although if Nancy
+thought it was best he was quite ready to see her donkey before doing
+anything else. However, Nancy was told that she must wait, and soon
+Michael was sitting at a large round table in a shady dining-room,
+eating hot buttered tea-cake and chocolate cake and macaroons, with
+bread-and-butter as an afterthought of duty. He enjoyed drinking his tea
+out of a thin teacup and he liked the silver and the satin tea-cosy and
+the yellow Persian cat purring on the hearthrug and the bullfinch
+flitting from perch to perch of his bright cage. He noticed with
+pleasure that the pictures on the wall were full of interest and detail,
+and was particularly impressed by two very long steel engravings of the
+Death of Nelson and the Meeting of Wellington and Blucher on the field
+of Waterloo. The only flaw in his pleasure was the difficulty of
+addressing Miss May Carthew and Miss Joan Carthew, and he wished that
+his own real Miss Carthew would suggest a solution. As for the bedroom
+to which he was taken after tea, Michael thought there never could have
+been such a jolly room before. It was just the right size, as snug as
+possible with its gay wall-paper and crackling chintzes and ribboned
+bed. The counterpane was patchwork and therefore held the promise of
+perpetual entertainment. The dressing-table was neatly set with china
+toilet articles whose individual importance Michael could not discover.
+One in particular like the antler of a stag stuck upright in a china
+tray he was very anxious to understand, and when he was told it was
+intended for rings to hang upon, he wished he had a dozen rings to adorn
+so neat a device.
+
+After he had with Miss Carthew's help unpacked and put his clothes away,
+Michael joined Nancy in the stable-yard. He stroked the donkey and the
+dun-coloured pony and watched the fantail pigeons in snowy circles
+against the pale blue sky. He watched the gardener stirring up some
+strange stuff for the pig that grunted impatiently. He watched the
+pleasant Carthew cook shelling peas in the slanting sunlight by the
+kitchen door. The air was very peaceful, full of soft sounds of lowing
+cows, of ducks and hens and sheep. The air was spangled with glittering
+insects: over a red wall hung down the branch of a plum tree, loaded
+with creamy ovals of fruit, already rose-flushed with summer. Nancy said
+they must soon go into the garden.
+
+"Is there a garden more than this?" Michael asked. His bedroom window
+had looked out on to the stable-yard.
+
+"Through here," said Nancy. She led the way to a door set in the wall,
+which when open showed a green glowing oblong of light that made Michael
+catch his breath in wonder.
+
+Then together he and Nancy sauntered through what was surely the
+loveliest garden in the world. Michael could scarcely bear to speak, so
+completely did it fulfil every faintest hope. All along the red walls
+were apples and pears and plums and peaches; all along the paths were
+masses of flowers, phloxes and early Michaelmas daisies and Japanese
+anemones and sunflowers and red-hot pokers and dahlias. The air was so
+golden and balmy that it seemed as though the sunlight must have been
+locked up in this garden for years. At the bottom of the vivid path was
+a stream with real fish swimming backwards and forwards, and beyond the
+stream, safely guarded and therefore perfectly beautiful, were cows
+stalking through a field beyond which was a dark wood beyond which was a
+high hill with a grey tower on the top of it. Some princess must have
+made this garden. He and Nancy turned and walked by the stream on which
+was actually moored a punt, a joy for to-morrow, since, explained Nancy,
+Maud had said they were not to go on the river this afternoon. How
+wonderful it was, Michael thought, to hear his dearest Miss Carthew
+called Maud. Never was spoken so sweet a name as Maud. He would say it
+to himself in bed that night, and in the morning he would wake with Maud
+calling to him from sleep. Then he and Nancy turned from the tempting
+stream and walked up a pleached alley of withies woven and interarched.
+Over them September roses bloomed with fawn and ivory and copper and
+salmon-pink buds and blossoms. At the end of the pleached alley was a
+mulberry tree with a seat round its trunk and a thick lawn that ran
+right up to the house itself. On the lawn Nancy and Michael played
+quoits and bowls and chased Ambrose the spaniel, until the sun sent
+still more slanting shadows across the garden and it was possible to
+feel that night was just behind the hill beyond the stream. The sun went
+down. The air grew chilly and Miss Carthew appeared from the door,
+beckoning to Michael. She sat with him in the dusky dining-room while he
+ate his bread and milk, and told him of her brother the midshipman,
+while he looked pensively at the picture of the Death of Nelson. Then
+Michael went to the drawing-room where all the sisters and Mrs. Carthew
+herself were sitting. He kissed everybody good night in turn, and Mrs.
+Carthew put on a pair of spectacles in order to follow his exit from the
+room with a kindly smile. Miss Carthew sat with him while he undressed,
+and when he was in bed, she told him another story and kissed him good
+night and blew out the candle, and before the sound of pleasant voices
+coming upstairs from the supper-table had ceased, Michael was fast
+asleep.
+
+In the morning while he was lying watching the shadows on the ceiling,
+Nancy's freckled face appeared round the door.
+
+"Hurry up and dress," she cried. "Fishing!"
+
+Michael had never dressed so quickly before. In fact when he was ready,
+he had to wait for Nancy who had called him before she had dressed
+herself. Nancy and Michael lived a lifetime of delight in that golden
+hour of waiting for breakfast.
+
+However, at Cobble Place every minute was a lifetime of delight to
+Michael. He forgot all about everything except being happy. His
+embarrassment with regard to the correct way of addressing May and Joan
+was terminated by being told to call them May and Joan. He was shown the
+treasures of their bedrooms, the butterfly collections, the sword of
+Captain Carthew, the dirk of their brother the midshipman, the birds'
+eggs, the fossils, the bones, the dried flowers, the photographs, the
+autographs, in fact everything that was most absorbing to look at. With
+Mrs. Carthew he took sedate walks into the village, and held the flowers
+while she decorated the altar in church, and sat with her while she
+talked to bed-ridden old women. With Nancy on one memorable day he
+crossed the river and disembarked on the other side and walked through
+the field of cows, through the meadowsweet and purple loosestrife and
+spearmint. Then they picked blackberries and dewberries by the edge of
+the wood and walked on beneath the trees without caring about
+trespassing or tramps or anything else. On the other side they came out
+at the foot of the high hill. Up they walked, up and up until they
+reached the grey tower at the top, and then, to Michael's amazement,
+Nancy produced the key of the tower and opened the door.
+
+"Can we really go in?" asked Michael, staggered by the adventure.
+
+"Of course. We can always get the key," said Nancy.
+
+They walked up some winding stone steps that smelt very damp, and at the
+top they pushed open a trap-door and walked out on top of the tower.
+Michael leaned over the parapet and for the second time beheld the
+world. There was no sea, but there were woods and streams and spires and
+fields and villages and smoke from farms. There were blue distances on
+every side and great white clouds moving across the sky. The winds
+battled against the tower and sang in Michael's ears and ruffled his
+hair and crimsoned his cheeks. He could see the fantail pigeons of
+Cobble Place circling below. He could look down on the wood and the
+river they had just crossed. He could see the garden and his dearest
+Miss Carthew walking on the lawn.
+
+"Oh, Nancy," he said, "it's glorious."
+
+"Yes, it is rather decent," Nancy agreed.
+
+"I suppose that's almost all of England you can see."
+
+"Only four counties," said Nancy carelessly. "Berkshire and I forget the
+other three. We toboggan down this hill in winter. That's rather decent
+too."
+
+"I'd like to come here every day," sighed Michael. "I'd like to have
+this tower for my very own. What castle is it called?"
+
+"Grogg's Folly," said Nancy abruptly.
+
+Michael wished the tower were not called Grogg's Folly, and very soon
+Nancy and he, shouting and laughing, were running at full speed down the
+hill towards Cobble Place, while the stalks of the plantains whipped his
+bare legs and larks flew up in alarm before his advance.
+
+The time of his stay at Cobble Place was drawing to a close: the hour of
+his greatest adventure was near. It had been a visit of unspoiled
+enjoyment; and on his last night, Michael was allowed for a treat to
+stay up to supper, to sit at the round table rose-stained by the
+brooding lamp, while the rest of the room was a comfortable mystery in
+which the parlour-maid's cap and apron flitted whitely to and fro. Nor
+did Michael go to bed immediately after supper, for he actually sat
+grandly in the drawing-room, one of a semicircle round the autumnal fire
+of logs crackling and leaping with blue flames. He sat silent, listening
+to the pitter-pat of Mrs. Carthew's Patience and watching the halma
+board waiting for May to encounter Joan, while in a low voice Nancy read
+to him one of Fifty-two Stories of Adventure for Girls. Bed-time came at
+the end of the story and Michael was sad to say good night for the last
+time and sad to think, when he got into his ribboned bed, that to-morrow
+night he would be in Carlington Road among brass knobs and Venetian
+blinds and lamp-posts and sounds of London. Then came a great surprize
+that took away nearly all the regrets he felt at leaving Cobble Place,
+for Miss Carthew leaned over and whispered that she was coming to live
+at Sixty-four.
+
+"Oh!" Michael gasped. "With us--with Stella and me?"
+
+Miss Carthew nodded.
+
+"I say!" Michael whispered. "And will Stella have lessons when I'm going
+to school?"
+
+"Every morning," said Miss Carthew.
+
+"I expect you'll find her rather bad at lessons," said Michael
+doubtfully.
+
+He was almost afraid that Miss Carthew might leave in despair at
+Stella's ineptitude.
+
+"Lots of people are stupid at first," said Miss Carthew.
+
+Michael blushed: he remembered a certain morning when capes and
+promontories got inextricably mixed in his mind and when Miss Carthew
+seemed to grow quite tired of trying to explain the difference.
+
+"Will you teach her the piano now?" he enquired.
+
+"Oh dear, no. I'm not clever enough to do that."
+
+"But you teach me."
+
+"That's different. Stella will be a great pianist one day," said Miss
+Carthew earnestly.
+
+"Will she?" asked Michael incredulously. "But I don't like her to play a
+bit--not a bit."
+
+"You will one day. Great musicians think she is wonderful."
+
+Michael gave up this problem. It was another instance of the chasm
+between youth and age. He supposed that one day he would like Stella's
+playing. One day, so he had been led to suppose, he would also like fat
+and cabbage and going to bed. At present such a condition of mind was
+incomprehensible. However, Stella and the piano mattered very little in
+comparison with the solid fact that Miss Carthew was going to live in
+Carlington Road.
+
+On the next morning before they left, Michael and Mrs. Carthew walked
+round the garden together, while Mrs. Carthew talked to him of the new
+life on which he was shortly going to enter.
+
+"Well, Michael," she said, "in a week, so my daughter tells me, you will
+be going to school."
+
+"Yes," corroborated Michael.
+
+"Dear me," Mrs. Carthew went on. "I'm glad I'm not going to school for
+the first time; you won't like it at all at first, and then you'll like
+it very much indeed, and then you'll either go on liking it very much or
+you'll hate it. If you go on liking it--I mean when you're quite
+old--sixteen or seventeen--you'll never do anything, but if you hate it
+then, you'll have a chance of doing something. I'm glad my daughter Maud
+is going to look after you. She's a good girl."
+
+Michael thought how extraordinary it was to hear Miss Carthew spoken of
+in this manner and felt shy at the prospect of having to agree verbally
+with Mrs. Carthew.
+
+"Take my advice--never ask questions. Be content to make a fool of
+yourself once or twice, but don't ask questions. Don't answer questions
+either. That's worse than asking. But after all, now I'm giving advice,
+and worst of anything is listening to other people's advice. So pick
+yourself some plums and get ready, for the chaise will soon be at the
+door."
+
+Nurse was very grumpy when he and Miss Carthew arrived. She did not seem
+at all pleased by the idea of Miss Carthew living in the house, and
+muttered to herself all the time. Michael did no more lessons in the
+week that remained before the autumn term began; but he had to go with
+Miss Carthew to various outfitters and try on coats and suits and
+generally be equipped for school. The afternoons he spent in Carlington
+Road, trying to pick up information about St. James' Preparatory School
+from the boys already there. One of these boys was Rodber, the son of a
+doctor, and probably by his manner and age and appearance the most
+important boy in the school. At any rate Michael found it difficult to
+believe that there could exist a boy with more right to rule than this
+Rodber with his haughty eye and Eton suit and prominent ears and quick
+authoritative voice.
+
+"Look here," said Rodber one evening, "can you borrow your mail-cart? I
+saw your sister being wheeled in one this morning. We've got three
+mail-carts and we want a fourth for trains."
+
+Michael ran as fast as he could back to Sixty-four, rushed down the area
+steps, rang the bell half a dozen times and tapped continuously on the
+ground glass of the back door until Cook opened it.
+
+"Whatever's the matter?" said Cook.
+
+Michael did not stop to answer, but ran upstairs, until breathless he
+reached the schoolroom.
+
+"Please, Miss Carthew, may we have Stella's mail-cart? Rodber wants
+it--for trains. Do let me. Rodber's the boy I told you about who's at
+school. Oh, do let us have the cart. Rodber's got three, but he wants
+ours. May I, Miss Carthew?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+Michael rushed downstairs in a helter-skelter of joy and presently, with
+Cook's assistance in getting it up the steps, Michael stood proudly by
+the mail-cart which was of the dogcart pattern, very light and swift
+when harnessed to a good runner. Rodber examined it critically.
+
+"Yes, that's a fairly decent one," he decided.
+
+Michael was greatly relieved by his approval.
+
+"Look here," said Rodber, "I don't mind telling you, as you'll be a new
+kid, one or two tips about school. Look here, don't tell anybody your
+Christian name and don't be cocky."
+
+"Oh, no, I won't," Michael earnestly promised.
+
+"And don't, for goodness' sake, look like that when chaps speak to you,
+or you'll get your head smacked."
+
+This was the sum of Rodber's advice, and presently Michael was stationed
+as signalman by the junction which was a pillar-box, while Rodber went
+off at express speed, bound for the next station which was a lamp-post.
+A signalman's life on the Carlington Road line was a lonely one, and it
+was also a very tiring one, when any obstruction caused the signals to
+be up. Michael's arm ached excruciatingly when Rodber's train got
+entangled with Garrod's train and Macalister's train had to be kept from
+running into them. Moreover, the signalman's life had none of the
+glories of controlling other people; a signalman on the Carlington Road
+line was dependent on the train for his behaviour. He was not allowed to
+interfere with the free running of any freight, but if the engine-driver
+insisted he had to let him go past, and if there was an accident, he was
+blamed. A signalman's life was lonely, tiring, humiliating and
+dangerous.
+
+These few fine days of mid-September went quickly by and one evening
+Rodber said casually, almost cruelly it seemed to Michael:
+
+"Well, see you to-morrow in the break, young Fane."
+
+Michael wondered what on earth a 'break' was; he longed to ask Rodber,
+but he dared not display at the very beginning of his career what would
+evidently be a disgraceful ignorance, and so he said that he would see
+Rodber in the 'break' to-morrow. He asked Miss Carthew when he got home
+what a 'break' was, and she told him it was a large wagonette sometimes
+driven by four horses. Michael was very much puzzled, but thought school
+would be fun if large wagonettes were commonplace objects of school
+life, and dreamed that night of driving furiously with Rodber in a
+gigantic mail-cart along the Hammersmith Road.
+
+At breakfast Miss Carthew asked Michael if he would like her to come
+with him. He thought for a moment, and wished that Rodber had invited
+him to accompany him that first morning.
+
+"You know, it's for you to choose, Michael," said Miss Carthew.
+
+"Well, I would like you to come," said Michael at last.
+
+So at ten minutes past nine they set out. All sorts of boys were going
+to school along the Hammersmith Road, boys of every size carrying
+satchels or bags or loose bundles of books. Most of them wore the
+Jacobean cap, and Michael eyed them with awe; but many wore the cap of
+St. James' Preparatory School, and these Michael eyed with curiosity as
+well as awe. He spoke very little during the walk and felt all the way a
+sinking of the heart. When actually he reached the gate of Randell
+House, the less formal appellation of St. James' Preparatory School, he
+longed to turn back with Miss Carthew, as he thought with sentimental
+pangs of the pleasant schoolroom and of Stella sitting by Miss Carthew,
+learning to read through a sunlit morning.
+
+"Don't come in with me," he whispered.
+
+"Quite right," said Miss Carthew approvingly. "Much better without me."
+
+"And don't wave, will you?" he begged. Then with an effort he joined the
+stream of boys walking confidently through the big gate.
+
+In the entrance hall a ginger-haired foxy-faced man in a green uniform
+said sharply:
+
+"New boy?"
+
+Michael nodded.
+
+"Stand on one side, please. Mr. Randell will see you presently."
+
+Michael waited. He noticed with pride that the boy next to him had
+brought with him either his mother or his sister or his governess.
+Michael felt very superior and was glad he had resisted the temptation
+to ask Miss Carthew to come in with him. He noticed how curiously the
+other boys eyed this lady and fancied that they threw contemptuous
+glances at the boy who had introduced her. Michael was very glad indeed
+that he had let Miss Carthew turn back.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VII: _Randell House_
+
+
+The preliminaries of Michael's career at St. James' Preparatory School
+passed in a dream-like confusion of thought and action. First of all he
+waited anxiously in the Headmaster's study in an atmosphere of
+morocco-leather and large waste-paper baskets. Like every other room in
+which Michael had waited, whether of dentist or doctor, the outlook from
+the window was gloomy and the prospect within was depressing. He was
+glad when Mr. Randell led him and several other boys towards the First
+Form, where in a dream, peopled by the swinging legs of many boys, he
+learnt from a scarlet book that while Cornelia loved Julia, Julia
+returned Cornelia's affection. When this fact was established in both
+English and Latin, all the boys shuffled to their desks and the record
+of a great affection was set down largely and painfully.
+
+    1. Cornelia Juliam amat.
+    2. Julia Corneliam amat.
+
+Blotted and smudged and sprawling though it ultimately appeared, Michael
+felt a great satisfaction in having dealt successfully with two
+nominatives, two accusatives and a verb. The first part of the morning
+passed away quickly in the history of this simple love. At eleven
+o'clock a shrill electric bell throbbed through the school, and Michael,
+almost before he knew what was happening, was carried in a torrent of
+boys towards the playground. Michael had never felt supreme loneliness,
+even at night, until he stood in the middle of that green prairie of
+recreation, distinguishing nobody, a very small creature in a throng of
+chattering giants. Some of these giants, who usually walked about arm in
+arm, approached him.
+
+"Hullo, are you a new kid?"
+
+Michael breathed his 'yes.'
+
+"What's your name?"
+
+With an effort Michael remembered Rodber's warning and replied simply:
+
+"Fane."
+
+"What's your Christian name?"
+
+This was a terribly direct attack, and Michael was wondering whether it
+would be best to run quickly out of the playground, to keep silence or
+to surrender the information, when the quick and authoritative voice of
+Rodber flashed from behind him.
+
+"Fish and find out, young Biden."
+
+"Who are you calling young, young Rodber?"
+
+"You," said Rodber. "So you'd jolly well better scoot off and leave this
+kid alone."
+
+"Church said I was to collar all the new kids for his army," Biden
+explained.
+
+"Did he? Well, this kid's in our army, so sucks! And you can tell young
+Church that Pearson and me are going to jolly well lam him at four
+o'clock," announced Rodber very fiercely.
+
+"Why don't you tell him yourself?" asked Biden, whose teeth seemed to
+project farther and farther from his mouth as his indignation grew.
+
+"All right, Toothy Biden," jeered Rodber. "We'll tell the whole of your
+rotten army at four o'clock, when we give you the biggest lamming you've
+ever had. Come on, young Fane," he went on, and Michael, somewhat
+perturbed by the prospect of being involved in these encounters,
+followed at his heels.
+
+"Look here," said Rodber presently, "you'd better come and show
+yourself to Pearson. He's the captain of our army; and for goodness'
+sake look a bit cheerful."
+
+Michael forced an uncomfortable grin such as photographers conjure.
+
+Under the shade of a gigantic tree stood Pearson the leader, languidly
+eating a very small and very unripe pear.
+
+"Hullo, Pinky," he drawled.
+
+"I say, Pearson," said Rodber in a reverent voice, "I know this kid at
+home. He's awfully keen to be allowed to join your army."
+
+Pearson scarcely glanced at Michael.
+
+"All right. Swear him in. I've got a new oath written down in a book at
+home, but he can take the old one."
+
+Pearson yawned and threw away the core of the pear.
+
+"He's awfully glad he's going to join your army, Pearson. Aren't you,
+young Fane?"
+
+"Yes, awfully glad," Michael echoed.
+
+"It's the best army," said Pearson simply.
+
+"Oh, easily," Rodber agreed. "I say, Pearson, that kid Biden said Church
+was going to lam you at four o'clock."
+
+The offended Pearson swallowed a large piece of a second unripe pear and
+scowled.
+
+"Did he? Tell the army to line up behind the lav. at four o'clock."
+
+Rodber's eyes gleamed.
+
+"I say, Pearson, I've got an awfully ripping plan. Supposing we ambush
+them."
+
+"How?" enquired the commander.
+
+"Why, supposing we put young Fane and two or three more new kids by the
+tuckshop door and tell them to run towards the haunted house, we could
+cop them simply rippingly."
+
+"Give the orders before afternoon school," said Pearson curtly, and just
+then the bell for 'second hour' sounded.
+
+"Wait for me at half-past twelve," Rodber shouted to Michael as he ran
+to get into school.
+
+Michael grew quite feverish during 'second hour' and his brain whirled
+with the imagination of battles, so that the landing of Julius Caesar
+seemed of minor importance. Tuckshops and haunted houses and doors and
+ambushes and the languid pale-faced Pearson occupied his thoughts fully
+enough. At a quarter-past twelve Mr. Whichelo the First Form master told
+Michael and the other new boys to go to the book-room and get their
+school caps, and at half-past twelve Michael waited outside on the
+yellow gravel for Rodber, splendidly proud of himself in a blue cap
+crested with a cockleshell worked in silver wire. He was longing to look
+at himself in the glass at home and to show Miss Carthew and Stella and
+Nanny and Cook and Gladys his school cap.
+
+However, before he could go home Rodber took him round to where the
+tuckshop ambush would ensue at four o'clock. He showed him a door in a
+wall which led apparently into the narrow shady garden of an empty house
+next to the school. He explained how Michael was to hang about outside
+this door and when the Churchites demanded his presence, he told him
+that he was to run as hard as he could down the garden towards the
+house.
+
+"We'll do the rest," said Rodber. "And now cut off home."
+
+As soon as Michael was inside Number 64 he rushed upstairs to his
+bedroom and examined himself critically in the looking-glass. Really the
+new cap made a great difference. He seemed older somehow and more
+important. He wished that his arms and legs were not so thin, and he
+looked forward to the time when like Rodber he would wear Etons.
+However, his hair was now pleasantly and inconspicuously straight: he
+had already seen boys woefully teazed on account of their curls, and
+Michael congratulated himself that generally his dress and appearance
+conformed with the fashion of the younger boys' dress at Randell's. It
+would be terrible to excite notice. In fact, Michael supposed that to
+excite notice was the worst sin anybody could possibly commit. He hoped
+he would never excite notice. He would like to remain perfectly
+ordinary, and very slowly by an inconspicuous and gradual growth he
+would thus arrive in time at the dignity and honour enjoyed by Rodber,
+and perhaps even to the sacred majesty that clung to Pearson. Already he
+was going to take an active part in the adventures of school; and he
+felt sorry for the boys who without Rodber's influence would mildly go
+straight home at four o'clock.
+
+Indeed, Michael set out for afternoon school in a somewhat elated frame
+of mind, and when he turned into the schoolyard, wearing the school cap,
+he felt bold enough to watch a game of Conquerors that was proceeding
+between two solemn-faced boys. He thought that to try to crack a
+chestnut hanging on a piece of string with another chestnut similarly
+suspended was a very enthralling pastime, and he was much upset when one
+of the solemn-faced antagonists suddenly grabbed his new school-cap and
+put it in his pocket and, without paying any attention to Michael, went
+on with the game as if nothing had happened. Michael had no idea how to
+grapple with the situation and felt inclined to cry.
+
+"I say, give me my cap," he said at last.
+
+The solemn-faced boys went on in silence with the game.
+
+"I say, please give me my cap," Michael asked again.
+
+No notice was taken of his appeal and Michael, looking round in despair,
+saw Rodber. He ran up to him.
+
+"I say, Rodber, that boy over there has got my cap," he said.
+
+"Well, don't come sneaking to me, you young ass. Go and smack his
+head."
+
+"Am I to really?" asked Michael.
+
+"Of course."
+
+Michael was not prepared to withstand Rodber's advice, so he went up to
+the solemn-faced boy and hit him as hard as he could. The solemn-faced
+boy was so much surprized by this attack that he did not for a moment
+retaliate, and it was only his friend's gasp 'I say, what fearful
+cheek,' that restored him to a sense of what had happened.
+
+In a moment Michael found himself lying on his back and almost smothered
+by the solemn-faced boy's whole body and presently suffering agony from
+the pressure of the solemn-faced boy's knees upon his arms pinioned
+cross-wise. Excited voices chattered about him from an increasing
+circle. He heard the solemn-faced boy telling his horrified auditors
+that a new kid had smacked his head. He heard various punishments
+strongly recommended, and at last with a sense of relief he heard the
+quick authoritative voice of the ubiquitous Rodber.
+
+"Let him get up, young Plummer. A fight! A fight!"
+
+Plummer got up, as he was told, and Michael in a circle of eager faces
+found himself confronted by Plummer.
+
+"Go on," shouted Rodber. "I'm backing you, young Fane."
+
+Michael lowered his head and charged desperately forward for the honour
+of Rodber; but a terrible pain in his nose and another in his arm and a
+third in his chin brought tears and blood together in such quantity that
+Michael would have liked to throw himself on to the grass and weep his
+life out, too weak to contend with solemn-faced boys who snatched caps.
+
+Then over his misery he heard Rodber cry, 'That's enough. It's not fair.
+Give him back his cap.' The crowd broke up except for a few admirers of
+Rodber, who was telling Michael that he had done tolerably well for a
+new kid. Michael felt encouraged and ventured to point out that he had
+not really blabbed.
+
+"You cocky young ass," said Rodber crushingly. "I suppose you mean
+'blubbed.'"
+
+Michael was overwhelmed by this rebuke and, wishing to hide his shame in
+a far corner of the field, turned away. But Rodber called him back and
+spoke pleasantly, so that Michael forgot the snub and wandered for the
+rest of the dinner-hour in Rodber's wake, with aching nose, but with a
+heart beating in admiration and affection.
+
+Within a fortnight Michael had become a schoolboy, sharing in the
+general ambitions and factions and prejudices and ideals of
+schoolboyhood. He was a member of Pearson's victorious army; he
+supported the London Road Car Company against the London General Omnibus
+Company, the District Railway against the Metropolitan Railway; he was
+always ready to lam young boarders who were cheeky, and when an older
+boarder called him a 'day-bug' Michael was discreetly silent, merely
+registering a vow to take it out of the young boarders at the first
+opportunity. He also learnt to speak without blushing of the gym. and
+the lav. and arith. and hols. and 'Bobbie' Randell and 'my people' and
+'my kiddy sister.' He was often first with the claimant 'ego,' when
+someone shouted 'quis?' over a broken pocket-knife found. He could shout
+'fain I' to be rid of an obligation and 'bags I' to secure an advantage.
+He was a rigid upholder of the inviolableness of Christian names as
+postulated by Randellite convention. He laid out threepence a week in
+the purchase of sweets, usually at four ounces a penny; while during the
+beggary that succeeded he was one of the most persistent criers of
+'donnez,' when richer boys emerged from the tuckshop, sucking gelatines
+and satin pralines and chocolate creams and raspberry noyau. As for the
+masters, he was always ready to hear scandalous rumours about their
+un-official lives, and he was one of the first to fly round the
+playground with the news that 'Squeaky' Mordaunt had distinctly muttered
+'damn' beneath his breath, when Featherstone Minor trod on his toe
+towards the close of first hour. Soon also with one of the four hundred
+odd boys who made up the population of this very large private school,
+Michael formed a great friendship. He and Buckley were inseparable for
+sixteen whole weeks. During that time they exchanged the most intimate
+confidences. Buckley told Michael that his Christian names were Claude
+Arnold Eustace, and Michael told Buckley that he was called Charles
+Michael Saxby, and also that his mother was generally away from home,
+that his father was dead, that his governess was called Miss Carthew,
+that he had a sister who played the piano and that one day when he grew
+up he hoped to be an explorer and search for orchids in Borneo.
+Sometimes on Saturday or Wednesday half-holidays Buckley came to tea
+with Michael and sometimes Michael went to tea with Buckley, and
+observed how well Buckley kept in order his young brothers and kiddy
+sisters. Buckley lived close to Kensington Gardens and rode to school
+every morning on a London Road Car, which was the reason of Michael's
+keen partizanship of that company. In the eleven o'clock break between
+first and second hours, Michael and Buckley walked arm in arm round the
+field, and in the dinner-hour Michael and Buckley shared a rope on the
+Giant Stride and talked intimately on the top of the horizontal ladder
+in the outdoor gymnasium. During the Christmas holidays they haunted the
+banks of the Round Pond and fished for minnows and sailed capsizable
+yachts and cheeked keepers. Every night Michael thought of Buckley and
+every night Michael hoped that Buckley thought of him. Even in
+scholarship they were scarcely distinguishable; for when at the end of
+the autumn term Michael was top of the class in Divinity and English,
+Buckley headed the Latin list. As for Drawing they were bracketed equal
+at the very bottom of the form.
+
+Then towards the middle of the Lent term Randell House was divided
+against itself; for one half of the school became Oxford and the other
+half Cambridge, in celebration of the boat-race which would be rowed at
+the end of March. When one morning Michael saw Buckley coming into
+school with a light blue swallow pinned to the left of his sailor-knot
+and when Buckley perceived attached to Michael's sailor-top a medal
+dependent from a dark blue ribbon, they eyed each other as strangers.
+This difference of opinion was irremediable. Neither romance nor
+sentiment could ever restore to Michael and Buckley their pristine
+cordiality, because Michael was now a despised Oxtail and Buckley was a
+loathed Cabbage-stalk.
+
+They shouted to one another from the heart of massed factions mocking
+rhymes. Michael would chant:
+
+"Oxford upstairs eating all the cakes; Cambridge downstairs licking up
+the plates."
+
+To which Buckley would retort:
+
+"Cambridge, rowing on and on for ever; Oxford in a matchbox floating
+down the river."
+
+Snow fell in February, and great snow-ball fights took place between the
+Oxtails and the Cabbage-stalks in which the fortunes of both sides
+varied from day to day. During one of these fights Michael hit Buckley
+full in the eye with a snow-ball alleged to contain a stone, and the
+bitterness between them grew sharper. Then Oxford won the boat-race, and
+Buckley cut Michael publicly. Finally, owing to some alteration in the
+Buckley home, Buckley became a boarder, and was able with sneering voice
+to call Michael a beastly 'day-bug.' Such was the friendship of Michael
+and Buckley, which lasted for sixteen weeks and might not indeed have so
+much wounded Michael, when the rupture was made final, if Buckley had
+proved loyal to that friendship. Unfortunately for Michael's belief in
+human nature Buckley one day, stung perhaps by some trifling advantage
+gained by day-boys at the expense of boarders, divulged Michael's
+Christian names. He called out distinctly, "Ha! ha! Charles Michael
+Saxby Fane! Oh, what a name! Kiddy Michael Sacks-of-coals Fane!"
+
+Michael regretted his intimacy with one who was not within the circle of
+Carlington Road. In future he would not seek friends outside Carlington
+Road and the six roads of the alliance. There all secrets must be kept,
+and all quarrels locally adjusted, for there Christian names were known
+and every household had its skeleton of nurse or governess.
+
+Meanwhile, Mrs. Fane did not come home and Miss Carthew assumed more and
+more complete control of Number 64, until one day in spring Nurse
+suddenly told Michael that she was leaving next day. Somehow, Nurse had
+ceased to influence Michael's life one way or the other, and he could
+only feel vaguely uncomfortable over her departure. Nurse cried a good
+deal particularly at saying good-bye to Stella, whom she called her own
+girl whatever anybody might say. When Michael perceived Nurse's tears he
+tried hard to drag up from the depths of his nature a dutiful
+sentimentality. For the last time he kissed that puckered monkey-like
+face, and in a four-wheeler Nurse vanished without making any difference
+in the life of Sixty-four, save by a convenient shifting about of the
+upstair rooms. The old night-nursery was redecorated and became for many
+years Michael's bedroom. Miss Carthew slept in Michael's old big lonely
+front room, and Stella slept in a little dressing-room opening out of
+it. Down in the kitchen, whence withered Gladys and the impersonal cook
+had also vanished, Michael gleaned a certain amount of gossip and found
+that the immediate cause of Nurse's departure was due to Miss Carthew's
+discovery of her dead drunk in a kitchen chair. It seemed that Miss
+Carthew, slim and strong and beautiful, had had to carry the old woman
+up to her bedroom, while Michael lay sleeping, had had to undress and
+put her to bed and on the next day to contend with her asseverations
+that the collapse was due to violent neuralgia. It seemed also that for
+years the neighbourhood had known of Nurse's habits, had even seen her
+on two occasions upset Stella's perambulator. Indeed, so far as Michael
+could gather, he and Stella had lived until Miss Carthew's arrival in a
+state of considerable insecurity.
+
+However, Nurse was now a goblin of the past, and the past could be
+easily forgotten. In these golden evenings of the summer-term, there was
+too much going forward in Carlington Road to let old glooms overshadow
+the gaiety of present life. As Mrs. Carthew had prophesied, Michael
+enjoyed being at school very much, and having already won a prize for
+being top of his class in Divinity and English at Christmas with every
+prospect of being top of his class again in the summer, he was anxious
+to achieve the still greater distinction of winning a prize in the
+school sports which were to be held in July. All the boys who lived in
+the Carlington Confederate Roads determined to win prizes, and Rodber
+was very much to the fore in training them all to do him credit. It was
+the fashion to choose colours in which to run, and Michael after a
+week's debate elected to appear in violet running-drawers and
+primrose-bordered vest. The twin Macalisters, contemporaries of Michael,
+ran in cerise and eau-de-nil, while the older Macalister wore
+ultramarine and mauve. Garrod chose dark green and Rodber looked
+dangerously swift in black and yellow. Every evening there was steady
+practice under Rodber, either in canvas shoes from lamp-post to
+lamp-post or, during the actual week before the sports, in spiked
+running-shoes on the grass-track, with corks to grip and a temperamental
+stop-watch to cause many disputes. It was a great humiliation for the
+Confederate Roads when Rodber himself failed to last the half-mile
+(under 14) on the day itself. However, the Macalister twins won the
+sack-race (under 11) and in the same class Michael won the hundred yards
+Consolation Race and an octagonal napkin-ring, so Carlington Road
+congratulated itself. In addition to athletic practice there were
+several good fights with 'cads' and a disagreeable Colonel had his
+dining-room window starred by a catapult. Other notable events included
+a gas explosion at Number 78, when the front door was blown across the
+street and flattened a passer-by against the opposite wall. There was a
+burglary at Number 33 and the housemaid at Number 56 fell backwards from
+the dining-room window-sill and bruised her back on the lid of the
+dustbin in the area.
+
+With all these excitements to sustain the joy of life Michael was very
+happy and, when school broke up for the summer holidays, he had never
+yet looked forward so eagerly to the jolly weeks by the sea. Miss
+Carthew and Michael and Stella went to Folkestone that year, and Michael
+enjoyed himself enormously. Miss Carthew, provided that she was allowed
+a prior inspection, offered no opposition to friendship with strange
+children, and Michael joined an association for asking everybody on the
+Leas what the time was. The association would not have been disbanded
+all the holidays if one of the members had not asked the time from the
+same old gentleman twice in one minute. The old gentleman was so acutely
+irritated by this that he walked about the Leas warning people against
+the association, until it became impossible to find out the time, when
+one really wanted to know. Michael moved inland for a while after this
+and fell into Radnor Park pond, when he returned to the sea and got
+stung by a jelly-fish while he was paddling, and read Treasure Island in
+the depths of his own particular cave among the tamarisks of the Lower
+Sandgate Road.
+
+After about a fortnight of complete rest a slight cloud was cast over
+the future by the announcement at breakfast one morning that he was to
+do a couple of hours' work at French every day with a French governess:
+remembering Madame Flauve, he felt depressed by the prospect. But Miss
+Carthew found a charming and youthful French governess at a girls'
+school, where about half a dozen girls were remaining during the
+holidays, and Michael did not mind so much. He rather liked the
+atmosphere of the girls' school, although when he returned to Randell's
+he gave a very contemptuous account of female education to his masculine
+peers. An incident happened at this girls' school which he never told,
+although it made a great impression on his imagination.
+
+One afternoon he had been invited to take tea with the six girls and
+Mademoiselle, and after tea the weather being wet, they all played games
+in the recreation-room. One of the smaller girls happened to swing
+higher than decorum allowed, and caused Michael to blush and to turn his
+head quickly and look intently at houses opposite. He knew that the girl
+was unaware of the scandal she had created, and therefore blushed the
+deeper and hoped that the matter would pass off quietly. But very soon
+he heard a chatter of reproof, and the poor little girl was banished
+from the room in disgrace, while all the other girls discussed the
+shameful business from every point of view, calling upon Mademoiselle
+and Michael to endorse their censure. Michael felt very sorry for the
+poor little girl and wished very much that the others would let the
+matter drop, but the discussion went on endlessly and as, just before he
+went home, he happened to see the offending girl sitting by a window
+with tear-stained face, Michael felt more sorry than ever and wished
+that he dared to say a comforting word, to explain how well he
+understood it was all an accident. On the way home, he walked silently,
+meditating upon disgrace, and for the first time he realized something
+of human cruelty and the lust to humiliate and submerge deeper still the
+fallen. At the same time he himself experienced, in retrospect of the
+incident, a certain curious excitement, and did not know whether, after
+all, he had not taken pleasure in the little girl's shame, whether,
+after all, he would not have liked to go back and talk the whole matter
+out again. However, there was that exciting chapter in Treasure Island
+to finish and the September Boy's Own Paper to expect. On the next day
+Michael, walking with Miss Carthew on the Leas, met General Mace, and
+girls' schools with their curious excitements and blushes were entirely
+forgotten. General Mace, it appeared, was an old friend of Miss
+Carthew's father and was staying by himself at Folkestone. General Mace
+had fought in the Indian Mutiny and was exactly what a general should
+be, very tall with a white moustache fiercely curling and a rigid back
+that bent inwards like a bow and a magnificent ebony walking-stick and a
+gruff voice. General Mace seemed to take a fancy to Michael and actually
+invited him to go for a walk with him next day at ten o'clock.
+
+"Sharp, mind," said the General as he saluted stiffly. "Ten o'clock to
+the minute."
+
+Michael spent the rest of the day in asking questions of Miss Carthew
+about General Mace, and scarcely slept that night for fear he might be
+late. At nine o'clock, Michael set out from the lodgings and ran all the
+way to the General's house on the Leas, and walked about and fidgeted
+and fretted himself until the clock struck the first chime of ten, when
+he rang the bell and was shown upstairs and was standing on the
+General's hearthrug before the echo of the last chime had died away.
+
+The General cleared his throat and after saluting Michael suggested a
+walk. Proudly Michael walked beside this tall old soldier up and down
+the Leas. He was told tales of the Mutiny; he learned the various ranks
+of the British Army from Lance-corporal to Field-marshal; he agreed at
+the General's suggestion to aim at a commission in the Bengal Cavalry,
+preferably in a regiment which wore an uniform of canary-yellow. Every
+morning Michael walked about Folkestone with General Mace, and one
+morning they turned into a toy-shop where Michael was told to choose two
+boxes of soldiers. Michael at first chose a box of Highlanders doubling
+fiercely with fixed bayonets and a stationary Highland Regimental Band,
+each individual of which had a different instrument and actually a
+music-stand as well. These two boxes together cost seven shillings, and
+Michael was just leaving the shop when he saw a small penny box
+containing twelve very tiny soldiers. Michael was in a quandary. For
+seven shillings he would be able to buy eighty-four penny boxes, that is
+to say one thousand and eight soldiers, whereas in the two boxes of
+Highlanders already selected there were only twelve with bayonets,
+twelve with instruments and twelve music-stands. It was really very
+difficult to decide, and General Mace declined to make any suggestion as
+to which would be the wiser choice, Michael was racked by indecision and
+after a long debate chose the original two boxes and played with his
+Highlanders for several years to come.
+
+"Quite right," said the General when they reached the sunlight from the
+dusty little toy-shop. "Quite right. Quality before quantity, sir. I'm
+glad to see you have so much common sense."
+
+Almost before the holidays seemed to have begun, the holidays were over.
+There was a short and melancholy day of packing up, and a farewell visit
+through the rain to General Mace. He and Michael sat for a while in his
+room, while they talked earnestly of the Indian Army and the glories of
+patriotism. Michael told tales, slightly exaggerated, of the exploits of
+Pearson's army and General Mace described the Relief of Lucknow.
+Michael felt that they were in profound sympathy: they both recognized
+the splendour of action. The rain stopped, and in a rich autumnal sunset
+they walked together for the last time over the golden puddles and
+spangled wetness of the Leas. Michael went through the ranks of the
+British Army without a single mistake, and promised faithfully to make
+the Bengal Lancers his aim through youth.
+
+"Punctuality, obedience and quality before quantity," said the General,
+standing up as tall and thin as Don Quixote against the sunset glow.
+"Good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye," said Michael.
+
+They saluted each other ceremoniously, and parted. The next day Michael
+was in London, and after a depressing Sunday and an exciting Monday
+spent in buying a Norfolk suit and Eton collars, the new term began with
+all the excitements of 'moving up,' of a new form-master, of new boys,
+of seeing who would be in the Football Eleven and of looking forward to
+Christmas with its presents and pantomimes.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII: _Siamese Stamps_
+
+
+In the Upper Fourth class, under the tutorship of Mr. Macrae, Michael
+began to prosecute seriously the study of Greek, whose alphabet he had
+learnt the preceding term. He now abandoned the scarlet book of
+Elementary Latin for Henry's Latin Primer, which began with 'Balbus was
+building a wall,' and looked difficult in its mulberry-cloth binding.
+This term in the Upper Fourth was very trying to Michael. Troubles
+accumulated. Coincident with the appearance of Greek irregular verbs
+came the appearance of Avery, a new boy who at once, new boy though he
+was, assumed command of the Upper Fourth and made Michael the target for
+his volatile and stinging shafts. Misfortune having once directed her
+attention to Michael, pursued him for some time to come. Michael was
+already sufficiently in awe of Avery's talent for hurting his feelings,
+when from the Hebrides Mrs. Fane sent down Harris tweed for Michael's
+Norfolk suits. He begged Miss Carthew to let him continue in the
+inconspicuous dark blue serge which was the fashion at Randell's; but
+for once she was unsympathetic, and Michael had to wear the tweed.
+Avery, of course, was very witty at his expense and for a long time
+Michael was known as 'strawberry-bags,' until the joke palled. Michael
+had barely lived down the Harris tweed, when Avery discovered, while
+they were changing into football shorts, that Michael wore combinations
+instead of pants and vest. Combinations were held to be the depth of
+effeminacy, and Avery often enquired when Michael was going to appear in
+petticoats and stays. Michael spoke to Miss Carthew about these
+combinations which at the very moment of purchase he had feared, but
+Miss Carthew insisted that they were much healthier than the modish
+pants and vest, and Michael was not allowed to change the style of his
+underclothing. In desperation he tied some tape round his waist, but the
+observant Avery noticed this ruse, and Michael was more cruelly teazed
+than ever. Then one Monday morning the worst blow of all fell suddenly.
+The boys at Randell's had on Saturday morning to take down from
+dictation the form-list in a home-book, which had to be brought back on
+Monday morning signed by a parent, so that no boy should escape the
+vigilance of the paternal eye. Of course, Miss Carthew always signed
+Michael's home-book and so far no master had asked any questions. But
+Mr. Macrae said quite loudly on this Monday morning:
+
+"Who is this Maud Carthew that signs your book, Fane?"
+
+Michael felt the pricking of the form's ears and blushed hotly.
+
+"My mother's away," he stammered.
+
+"Oh," said Mr. Macrae bluntly, "and who is this person then?"
+
+Michael nearly choked with shame.
+
+"My governess--my sister's governess, I mean," he added, desperately
+trying to retrieve the situation.
+
+"Oh, yes," said Mr. Macrae. "I see."
+
+The form tittered, while the crimson Michael stumbled back to his desk.
+It was a long time before Avery grew tired of Miss Carthew or before the
+class wearied of crying 'Maudie' in an united falsetto whenever Michael
+ventured to speak. Mr. Macrae, too, made cruel use of his advantage, for
+whenever Michael tripped over an irregular verb, Mr. Macrae would
+address to the ceiling in his soft unpleasant voice sarcastic remarks
+about governesses, while every Monday morning he would make a point of
+putting on his glasses to examine Michael's home-book very carefully.
+The climax of Michael's discomfort was reached, when a snub-nosed boy
+called Jubb with a cockney accent asked him what his father was.
+
+"He's dead," Michael answered.
+
+"Yes, but what was he?" Jubb persisted.
+
+"He was a gentleman," said Michael.
+
+Avery happened to overhear this and was extremely witty over Michael's
+cockiness, so witty that Michael was goaded into retaliation,
+notwithstanding his fear of Avery's tongue.
+
+"Well, what is your father?" he asked.
+
+"My father's a duke, and I've got an uncle who's a millionaire, and my
+governess is a queen," said Avery.
+
+Michael was silent: he could not contend with Avery. Altogether the
+Upper Fourth was a very unpleasant class; but next term Michael and half
+of the class were moved up to the Lower Fifth, and Avery left to go to a
+private school in Surrey, because he was ultimately destined for
+Charterhouse, near which school his people had, as he said, taken a
+large house. Curiously enough the combination of half the Upper Fourth
+with the half of the Lower Fifth left behind made a rather pleasant
+class, one that Michael enjoyed as much as any other so far,
+particularly as he was beginning to find that he was clever enough to
+avoid doing as much school-work as hitherto he had done, without in any
+way permanently jeopardizing his position near the top of the form. To
+be sure Mr. Wagstaff, the cherub-faced master of the Lower Fifth,
+complained of his continually shifting position from one end of the
+class to the other; but Michael justified himself and incidentally
+somewhat annoyed Mr. Wagstaff by coming out head boy in the Christmas
+examinations. Meanwhile, if he found Greek irregular verbs and Latin
+gender rhymes tiresome, Michael read unceasingly at home, preferably
+books that encouraged the private schoolboy's instinct to take sides.
+Michael was for the Trojans against the Greeks, partly on account of the
+Greek verbs, but principally because he once had a straw hat inscribed
+H.M.S. Hector. He was also for the Lancastrians against the Yorkists,
+and, of course, for the Jacobites against the Hanoverians. Somewhat
+illogically, he was for the Americans against the English, because as
+Miss Carthew pointed out he was English himself and the English were
+beaten. She used to teaze Michael for nearly always choosing the beaten
+side. She also used to annoy him by her assertion that in taking the
+part of the Americans in the War of Independence, he showed that most of
+his other choices were only due to the books he read. She used to make
+him very angry by saying that he was at heart a Roundhead and a Whig,
+and even hinted that he would grow up a Radical. This last insinuation
+really annoyed him very much indeed, because at Randell House no boy
+could be anything but a Conservative without laying himself open to the
+suggestion that he was not a gentleman.
+
+In time, after an absence of nearly two years, Mrs. Fane came home for a
+long time; but Michael did not feel any of those violent emotions of joy
+that once he used to feel when he saw her cab rounding the corner. He
+was shy of his mother, and she for her part seemed shy of him and told
+Miss Carthew that school had not improved Michael. She wondered, too,
+why he always seemed anxious to be playing with other boys.
+
+"It's quite natural," Miss Carthew pointed out.
+
+"Darling Michael. I suppose it is," Mrs. Fane agreed vaguely. "But he's
+so grubby and inky nowadays."
+
+Michael maintained somewhat indignantly that all the boys at Randell's
+were like him, for he was proud that by being grubby and inky no boy
+could detect in him any inclination to differentiate himself from the
+mass. At Randell's, where there was one way only of thinking and
+behaving and speaking, it would have been grossly cocky to be brushed
+and clean. Michael resented his mother's attempt to dress him nicely and
+was almost rude when she suggested ideas for charming and becoming
+costumes.
+
+"I do think boys are funny," she used to sigh.
+
+"Well, mother," Michael would argue, "if I wore a suit like that, all
+the other boys would notice it."
+
+"But I think it's nice to be noticed," Mrs. Fane would contend.
+
+"I think it's beastly," Michael always said.
+
+"I wish you wouldn't use that horrid word," his mother would say
+disapprovingly.
+
+"All the boys do," was Michael's invariable last word.
+
+Then, "Michael," Miss Carthew would say sharply, as she fixed him with
+that cold look which he so much dreaded. Michael would blush and turn
+away, abashed; while Stella's company would be demanded by his mother
+instead of his, and Stella would come into the room all lily-rosed
+beside her imp-like brother.
+
+Stella was held by Michael to be affected, and he would often point out
+to her how little such behaviour would be tolerated at a boys' school.
+Stella's usual reply was to pout, a form of expression which came under
+the category of affectations, or she would cry, which was a degree worse
+and was considered to be as good as sneaking outright. Michael often
+said he hoped that school would improve Stella's character and
+behaviour; yet when she went to school, Michael thought that not only
+was she none the better for the experience, but he was even inclined to
+suggest that she was very much the worse. Tiresome little girl friends
+came to tea sometimes and altered Michael's arrangements; and when they
+came they used to giggle in corners and Stella used to show off
+detestably. Once Michael was so much vexed by a certain Dorothy that he
+kissed her spitefully, and a commotion ensued from the middle of which
+rose Miss Carthew, grey-eyed and august like Pallas Athene in The
+Heroes. It seemed to Michael that altogether too much importance was
+attached to this incident. He had merely kissed Dorothy in order to show
+his contempt for her behaviour. One would think from the lecture given
+by Miss Carthew that it was pleasant to kiss giggling little girls.
+Michael felt thoroughly injured by the imputation of gallantry, and
+sulked instead of giving reasons.
+
+"I really think your mother is right," Miss Carthew said at last. "You
+are quite different from the old Michael."
+
+"I didn't want to kiss her," he cried, exasperated.
+
+"Doesn't that make it all the worse?" Miss Carthew suggested.
+
+Michael shrugged his shoulders feeling powerless to contend with all
+this stupidity of opinion.
+
+"Surely," said Miss Carthew at last, "Don Quixote or General Mace or
+Henry V wouldn't have kissed people against their will in order to be
+spiteful."
+
+"They might," argued Michael; "if rotten little girls came to tea and
+made them angry."
+
+"I will not have that word 'rotten' used in front of me," Miss Carthew
+said.
+
+"Well, fat-headed then," Michael proposed as a euphemism.
+
+"The truth is," Miss Carthew pointed out, "you were angry because you
+couldn't have the Macalisters to tea and you vented your anger on poor
+Stella and her friends. I call it mean and unchivalrous."
+
+"Well, Stella goes to mother and asks for Dorothy to come to tea, when
+you told me I could have the Macalisters, and I don't see why I should
+always have to give way."
+
+"Boys always give way to girls," generalized Miss Carthew.
+
+"I don't believe they do nowadays," said Michael.
+
+"I see it's hopeless to argue any more. I'm sorry you won't see you're
+in the wrong. It makes me feel disappointed."
+
+Michael again shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I don't see how I can possibly ask your mother to let Nancy stay here
+next Christmas. I suppose you'll be trying to kiss her."
+
+Michael really had to laugh at this.
+
+"Why, I like Nancy awfully," he said. "And we both think kissing is
+fearful rot--I mean frightfully stupid. But I won't do it again, Miss
+Carthew. I'm sorry. I am really."
+
+There was one great advantage in dealing with Miss Carthew. She was
+always ready to forgive at once, and, as Michael respected her enough to
+dislike annoying her, he found it perfectly easy to apologize and be
+friends--particularly as he had set his heart on Nancy's Christmas
+visit.
+
+Carlington Road and the Confederate Roads were now under the control of
+Michael and his friends. Rodber had gone away to a public school: the
+elder Macalister and Garrod had both got bicycles which occupied all
+their time: Michael, the twin Macalisters and a boy called Norton were
+in a very strong position of authority. Norton had two young brothers
+and the Macalisters had one, so that there were three slaves in
+perpetual attendance. It became the fashion to forsake the school field
+for the more adventurous wasteland of the neighbourhood. At the end of
+Carlington Road itself still existed what was practically open country
+as far as it lasted. There were elm-trees and declivities and broken
+hedges and the excavated hollows of deserted gravel-pits. There was an
+attractive zigzag boundary fence which was sufficiently ruinous at
+certain intervals to let a boy through to wander in the allotments of
+railway workers. Bands of predatory 'cads' prowled about this
+wasteland, and many were the fierce fights at sundown between the cads
+and the Randellites. Caps were taken for scalps, and Miss Carthew was
+horrified to observe nailed to Michael's bedroom wall the filthiest cap
+she had ever seen.
+
+Apart from the battles there were the luxurious camps, where cigarettes
+at five a penny were smoked to the last puff and were succeeded by the
+consumption of highly scented sweets to remove the traces of tobacco.
+These camps were mostly pitched in the gravelly hollows, where Michael
+and the Macalisters and Norton used to sit round a camp-fire on the warm
+evenings of summer, while silhouetted against the blue sky above stood
+the minor Macalister and the junior Nortons in ceaseless vigilance. The
+bait held out to these sentries, who sometimes mutinied, was their
+equipment with swords, guns, pistols, shields, bows, arrows and
+breastplates. So heavily and decoratively armed and sustained by the
+prospect of peppermint bull's-eyes, Dicky Macalister and the two Nortons
+were content for an hour to scan the horizon for marauding cads, while
+down below the older boys discussed life in all its ambiguity and
+complication. These symposiums in the gravel-pit tried to solve certain
+problems in a very speculative manner.
+
+"There must be _some_ secret about being married," said Michael one
+Saturday afternoon, when the sun blazed down upon the sentries and the
+last cigarette had been smoked.
+
+"There _is_," Norton agreed,
+
+"I can't make out about twins," Michael continued, looking critically at
+the Macalisters.
+
+Siegfried Macalister, generally known as 'Smack' in distinction to his
+brother Hugh always called 'Mac,' felt bound to offer a suggestion.
+
+"There's twenty minutes' difference between us. I heard my mater tell a
+visitor, and besides I'm the eldest."
+
+Speculation was temporarily interrupted by a bout between Smack and Mac,
+because neither was allowed to claim priority. At the end of an
+indecisive round Michael struck in:
+
+"But why are there twins? People don't like twins coming, because in
+Ally Sloper there's always a joke about twins."
+
+"I know married people who haven't got any children at all," said Norton
+in order still more elaborately to complicate the point at issue.
+
+"Yes, there you are," said Michael. "There's some secret about
+marriage."
+
+"There's a book in my mater's room which I believe would tell us,"
+hinted Smack.
+
+"There's a good deal in the Bible," Norton observed. "Only it's
+difficult to find the places and then you can't tell for certain what
+they mean."
+
+Then came a long whispering at the end of which the four boys shook
+their heads very wisely and said that they were sure that was it.
+
+"Hullo!" Michael shouted, forgetting the debate. "Young Dicky's
+signalling."
+
+"Indians," said Mac.
+
+"Sioux or Apaches?" asked Smack anxiously.
+
+"Neither. It's Arabs. Charge," shouted Norton.
+
+All problems went to the winds in the glories of action, in the clash of
+stick on stick, in the rending of cad's collar and cad's belt, and in
+the final defeat of the Arabs with the loss of their caravan--a
+sugar-box on a pair of elliptical wheels.
+
+In addition to the arduous military life led by Michael at this period,
+he was also in common with Smack and Mac and Norton a multiplex
+collector. At first the two principal collections were silkworms and
+silver-paper. Afterwards came postage stamps and coins and medals and
+autographs and birds' eggs and shells and fossils and bones and skins
+and butterflies and moths and portraits of famous cricketers. From the
+moment the first silkworm was brought home in a perforated cardboard-box
+to the moment when by some arrangement of vendible material the first
+bicycle was secured, the greater part of Michael's leisure was
+mysteriously occupied in swapping. This swapping would continue until
+the mere theory of swapping for swapping's sake as exemplified in a
+paper called The Exchange and Mart was enough. When this journal became
+the rage, the most delightful occupation of Michael and his friends was
+that of poring over the columns of this medium of barter in order to
+read of X.Y.Z. in Northumberland who was willing to exchange five Buff
+Orpingtons, a suit, a tennis racket and Cowper's Poems for a mechanical
+organ or a 5 ft. by 4 ft. greenhouse. All the romance of commerce was to
+be found in The Exchange and Mart together with practical hints on the
+moulting of canaries or red mange in collies. Cricket was in the same
+way made a mathematical abstraction of decimals and initials and
+averages and records. All sorts of periodicals were taken in--Cricket,
+The Cricketer, Cricketing amongst many others. From an exact perusal of
+these, Michael and the Macalisters knew that Streatham could beat
+Hampstead and were convinced of the superiority of the Incogniti C.C.
+over the Stoics C.C. With the collections of cricketers' portraits some
+of these figures acquired a conceivable personality; but, for the most
+part, they remained L.M.N.O.P.Q. Smith representing 36.58 an innings and
+R.S.T.U.V.W. Brown costing 11.07 a wicket. That they wore moustaches,
+lived and loved like passionate humanity did not seem to matter compared
+with the arithmetical progression of their averages. When Michael and
+Norton (who was staying with him at St. Leonards) were given shillings
+and told to see the Hastings' Cricket Week from the bowling of the
+first ball to the drawing of the final stump, Michael and Norton were
+very much bored indeed, and deprecated the waste of time in watching
+real cricket, when they might have been better occupied in collating the
+weekly cricketing journals.
+
+At Christmas Michael emerged from a successful autumn term with Stories
+from the Odyssey by Professor Church and a chestnut that was reputed to
+have conquered nine hundred and sixty-six other and softer chestnuts.
+That nine hundred and sixty-sixer of Michael's was a famous nut, and the
+final struggle between it (then a five hundred and forty-oner) and the
+four hundred and twenty-fourer it smashed was a contest long talked of
+in circles where Conquerors were played. Michael much regretted that the
+etiquette of the Lent term, which substituted peg-tops for Conquerors,
+should prevent his chestnut reaching four figures. He knew that next
+autumn term, if all fell out as planned, he would be at St. James'
+School itself, where Conquerors and tops and marbles were never even
+mentioned, save as vanities and toys of early youth. However, he swapped
+the nine hundred and sixty-sixer for seven white mice and a slow-worm in
+spirits of wine belonging to Norton; and he had the satisfaction of
+hearing later on that after a year in rejuvenating oil the nine hundred
+and sixty-sixer became a two thousand and thirty-threer before it fell
+down a drain, undefeated.
+
+After Christmas Nancy Carthew came up from Hampshire to spend a
+fortnight at Carlington Road, and the holidays were spent in a fever of
+theatres and monuments and abbeys. Michael asked Nancy what she thought
+of Stella and her affectation, and was surprized by Nancy saying she
+thought Stella was an awfully jolly kid and 'no end good' at the piano.
+Michael in consideration of Nancy's encomium tried to take a fresh view
+of Stella and was able sincerely to admit that, compared with many other
+little girls of the neighbourhood, Stella was fairly pretty. He decided
+that it would be a good thing for Norton to marry her. He told Norton
+that there seemed no reason why he and Stella should not come together
+in affection, and Norton said that, if Michael thought he should, he was
+perfectly willing to marry Stella, when he was grown up. Michael
+thereupon swapped a box of somewhat bent dragoons for a ring, and
+presented this ring to Norton with the injunction that he should on no
+account tell Stella that he was engaged to her, in case it made her
+cocky. He also forbade Norton to kiss her (not that he supposed Norton
+wanted to kiss Stella), because Miss Carthew would be annoyed and might
+possibly close the area door to Norton for the future.
+
+When Nancy went back to Hampshire, Michael felt lonely. The Macalisters
+and the Nortons had gone away on visits, and Carlington Road was dreary
+without them. Michael read a great deal and by reason of being at home
+he gradually became less grubby, as the holidays wore on. Also his hair
+grew long and waved over his forehead with golden lights and shadows and
+curled in bunches by his ears. A new Eton suit well became him, and his
+mother said how charming he looked. Michael deplored good looks in boys,
+but he managed to endure the possession of them during the little space
+that remained before the Lent term began. He took to frequenting the
+drawing-room again as of old and, being nowadays allowed to stay up till
+a quarter to nine, he used to spend a rosy half-hour after dinner
+sitting on a footstool in the firelight by his mother's knee. She used
+to stroke his hair and sigh sometimes, when she looked at him.
+
+One afternoon just before term began Mrs. Fane told him to make himself
+as tidy as possible, because she wanted to take him out to pay a call.
+Michael was excited by this notion, especially when he heard that they
+were to travel by hansom, a form of vehicle which he greatly admired.
+The hansom bowled along the Kensington Road with Michael in his Eton
+suit and top-hat sitting beside his mother scented sweetly with
+delicious perfumes and very silky to the touch. They drove past
+Kensington Gardens all dripping with January rains, past Hyde Park and
+the Albert Memorial, past the barracks of the Household Cavalry, past
+Hyde Park Corner and the Duke of Wellington's house. They dashed along
+with a jingle and a rattle over the slow old omnibus route, and Michael
+felt very much distinguished as he turned round to look at the
+melancholy people crammed inside each omnibus they passed. When they
+came to Devonshire House, they turned round to the left and pulled up
+before a grand house in a square. Michael pressed the bell, and the door
+opened immediately, much more quickly than he had ever known a door
+open.
+
+"Is his lordship in?" asked Mrs. Fane.
+
+"His lordship is upstairs, ma'am," said the footman.
+
+The hall seemed full of footmen, one of whom took Michael's hat and
+another of whom led the way up a wide soft staircase that smelt like the
+inside of the South Kensington Museum. All the way up, the walls were
+hung with enormous pictures of men in white wigs. Presently they stood
+in the largest room Michael had ever entered, a still white room full of
+golden furniture. Michael had barely recovered his breath from
+astonishment at the size of the room, when he saw another room round the
+corner, in which a man was sitting by a great fire. When the footman had
+left the room very quietly, this man got up and held Mrs. Fane's hand
+for nearly a minute. Then he looked at Michael, curiously, Michael
+thought, so curiously as to make him blush.
+
+"And this is the boy?" the gentleman asked.
+
+Michael thought his mother spoke very funnily, as if she were just going
+to cry, when she answered:
+
+"Yes, this is Michael."
+
+"My God, Valerie," said the man, "it makes it harder than ever."
+
+Michael took the opportunity to look at this odd man and tried to think
+where he had seen him before. He was sure he had seen him somewhere. But
+every time just as he had almost remembered, a mist came over the
+picture he was trying to form, so that he could not remember.
+
+"Well, Michael," said the gentleman, "you don't know who I am."
+
+"Ah, don't, Charles," said Mrs. Fane.
+
+"Well, he's not so wise as all that," laughed the gentleman.
+
+Michael thought it was a funny laugh, more sad than cheerful.
+
+"This is Lord Saxby," said Mrs. Fane.
+
+"I say, my name is Saxby," Michael exclaimed.
+
+"Nonsense," said Lord Saxby, "I don't believe it."
+
+"It is really. Charles Michael Saxby Fane."
+
+"Well, that's a very strange thing," said Lord Saxby.
+
+"Yes, I think it's awfully funny," Michael agreed. "Because I never
+heard of anyone called Saxby. My name's Charles too. Only, of course,
+that's quite a common name. But nobody at our school knows I'm called
+Saxby except a boy called Buckley who's an awful beast. We don't tell
+our Christian names, you know. If a chap lets out his Christian name he
+gets most frightfully ragged by the other chaps. Chaps think you're an
+awfully silly ass if you let out your Christian name."
+
+Michael was finding it very easy to talk.
+
+"I must hear some more about this wonderful school," Lord Saxby
+declared.
+
+Then followed a delightful conversation in which due justice was done to
+the Macalister twins and to Norton, and to the life they shared with
+Michael.
+
+"By gad, Valerie, he ought to go to Eton, you know," declared Lord
+Saxby, turning to Michael's mother.
+
+"No, no. I'm sure you were right, when you said St. James'," persisted
+Mrs. Fane.
+
+"Perhaps I was," Lord Saxby sighed. "Well, Valerie--not again. It's too
+damnably tantalizing."
+
+"I thought just once while he was still small," said Mrs. Fane softly.
+"Photographs are so unsatisfactory. And you haven't yet heard Stella
+play."
+
+"Valerie, I couldn't. Look at this great barrack of a house. If you only
+knew how I long sometimes for--what a muddle it all is!"
+
+Then a footman came in with tea, and Michael wondered what dinner was
+like in this house, if mere tea were so grand and silvery.
+
+"I think I must drive you back in the phaeton," said Lord Saxby.
+
+"No, no, Charles. No more rules must be broken."
+
+"Yes, I suppose you're right. But don't--not again, please. I can't bear
+to think of the 'ifs.'"
+
+Then Lord Saxby turned to Michael.
+
+"Look here, young man, what do you want most?"
+
+"Oh, boxes of soldiers and an unused set of Siamese," said Michael.
+
+"Siamese what? Siamese cats?"
+
+"No, you silly," laughed Michael, "Stamps, of course!"
+
+"Oh, stamps," said Lord Saxby. "Right--and soldiers, eh? Good."
+
+All the way back in the hansom Michael wished he had specified Artillery
+to Lord Saxby; but two days afterwards dozens of boxes of all kinds of
+soldiers arrived, and unused sets not merely of Siamese, but of North
+American Tercentenaries and Borneos and Labuans and many others.
+
+"I say," Michael gasped, "he's a ripper, isn't he? What spiffing boxes!
+I say, he is a decent chap, isn't he? When are we going to see Lord
+Saxby again, mother?"
+
+"Some day."
+
+"I can have Norton to tea on Wednesday, can't I?" begged Michael. "He'll
+think my soldiers are awfully ripping."
+
+"Darling Michael," said his mother.
+
+"Mother, I will try and not be inky," said Michael in a burst of
+affectionate renunciation.
+
+"Dearest boy," said his mother gently.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IX: _Holidays in France_
+
+
+In Michael's last term at St. James' Preparatory School, Mrs. Fane
+settled that he should for the holidays go to France with Mr. Vernon and
+Mr. Lodge, two masters who were accustomed each year to take a few boys
+away with them to the coast of Brittany. Five boys were going this
+summer--Michael and Hands and Hargreaves and Jubb and Rutherford; and
+all five of them bragged about their adventure for days before school
+broke up. Miss Carthew drove with Michael to Victoria Station and handed
+him over to Mr. Lodge who was walking about in a very thick and romantic
+overcoat. Mr. Lodge was a clean-shaven, large-faced and popular master,
+and Mr. Vernon was an equally popular master, deep-voiced,
+heavy-moustached, hook-nosed. In fact it was impossible to say which of
+the two one liked the better. Mr. Lodge at once produced two packets of
+Mazawattee tea which he told Michael to put in his pocket and say
+nothing about when he landed in France, and when Hands, Hargreaves,
+Rutherford and Jubb arrived, they were all given packets of tea by Mr.
+Lodge and told to say nothing about them when they landed in France. Mr.
+Vernon appeared, looking very business-like and shouting directions
+about the luggage to porters, while Mr. Lodge gathered the boys together
+and steered them through the barrier on to the platform and into the
+train for Newhaven. The steamer by which they were going to cross was
+not an ordinary packet-boat, but a cargo-boat carrying vegetable ivory.
+For Channel voyagers they were going to be a long while at sea, calling
+at Havre and afterwards rounding Cherbourg and Brest, before they
+reached St. Corentin, the port of their destination at the mouth of the
+Loire. It was rough weather all the way to Havre, and Michael was too
+ill to notice much the crew or the boat or any of the other boys.
+However, the excitement of disembarking at Havre about midnight put an
+end to sea-sickness, for it was very thrilling at such an hour to follow
+Mr. Lodge and Mr. Vernon through the gloomy wharves and under their
+dripping archways. When after this strange walk, they came to a wide
+square and saw cafes lighted up and chairs and tables in the open air
+before the doors, Michael felt that life was opening out on a vista of
+hitherto unimagined possibilities. They all sat down at midnight,
+wrapped up in their travelling coats and not at all too much tired to
+sip grenadine sucree and to crunch Petit Beurre biscuits. Michael
+thought grenadine sucree was just as nice as it looked and turned to
+Hands, a skull-headed boy who was sitting next to him:
+
+"I say, this is awfully decent, isn't it?"
+
+"Rather," squeaked Hands in his high voice. "Much nicer than
+Pineappleade."
+
+After they had stayed there for a time, watching isolated passers-by
+slouch across the wind-blown square, Mr. Lodge announced they must hurry
+back to the boat and get a good night's sleep. Back they went between
+the damp walls of the shadowy wharves, plastered with unfamiliar
+advertizements, until they reached their boat and went to bed. In the
+morning when Michael woke up, the steamer was pitching and rolling:
+everything in the cabin was lying in a jumble on the floor, and
+Rutherford and Hargreaves were sitting up in their bunks wideawake.
+Rutherford was the oldest boy of the party and he was soon going in for
+his Navy examination; but he had been so sea-sick the day before that
+Michael felt that he was just as accessible as the others and was no
+longer afraid to talk to this hero without being spoken to first.
+Rutherford, having been so sick, felt bound to put on a few airs of
+grandeur; but he was pleasant enough and very full of information about
+many subjects which had long puzzled Michael. He spoke with authority on
+life and death and birth and love and marriage, so that when Michael
+emerged into the wind from the jumbled cabin, he felt that to dress
+beside Rutherford was an event not easily to be forgotten: but later on
+as he paced the foam-spattered deck, and meditated on the facts of
+existence so confidently revealed, he began to fear that the learned
+Rutherford was merely a retailer of unwarranted legends. Still he had
+propounded enough for Michael, when he returned to Carlington Road, to
+theorize upon and impart to the Macalisters; and anyway, without
+bothering about physiological problems, it was certainly splendid to
+walk about the deck in the wind and rain, and no longer to hate, but
+even to enjoy the motion of the boat. It was exhilarating to clamber
+right up into the bows among coils of rope and to see how the boat
+charged through the spuming water. Michael nearly made up his mind to be
+a sailor instead of a Bengal Lancer, and looked enviously at the ship's
+boy in his blue blouse. But presently he heard a savage voice, and one
+of the sailors so much admired kicked the ship's boy down the companion
+into the forecastle. Michael was horrified when, late in the grey and
+stormy afternoon, he heard cries of pain from somewhere down below. He
+ran to peer into the pit whence they came, and in the half-light he
+could see a rope's-end clotted with blood. This sight dismayed him, and
+he longed to ask Mr. Lodge or Mr. Vernon to interfere and save the poor
+ship's boy, but a feeling of shame compelled silence and, though he was
+sincerely shocked by the thought of the cruel scenes acted down there in
+the heart of the ship, he could not keep back a certain exultation and
+excitement similar to that which he had felt at Folkestone in the
+girls' school last summer.
+
+Soon the steamer with its cargo of vegetable ivory and tortured ship's
+boy and brutal crew were all forgotten in the excitement of arriving at
+St. Corentin, of driving miles into the country until they reached the
+house where they were going to spend six weeks. It was an old house set
+far back from the high road and reached by a long drive between
+pollarded acacias. All round the house were great fig trees and pear
+trees and plum trees. The garden was rank with unpruned gooseberry and
+currant bushes, untidy with scrambling gourds and grape vines. It was a
+garden utterly unlike any garden that Michael had ever known. There
+seemed to be no flowers in this overwhelming vegetation which matted
+everything. It was like the garden of the Sleeping Beauty's palace. The
+crumbling walls were webbed with briars; their foundations were buried
+in thickets of docks and nettles, and the fruit trees that grew against
+them had long ago broken loose from any restraint. It was a garden that
+must surely take a very long time to explore, so vast was it, so
+trackless, so much did every corner demand a slow advance.
+
+When the boys had unpacked and when they had been introduced to Mrs.
+Wylde, the mistress of the house, and when they had presented to her the
+packets of Mazawattee tea and when they themselves had eaten a
+deliciously novel dinner at the unusual hour of six, they all set out to
+explore the luxuriant wilderness behind the house. Mr. Vernon and Mr.
+Lodge shouted to them to eat only the ripe fruit and with this solitary
+injunction left them to their own amusements until bed-time. Rutherford,
+Hargreaves and Jubb at once set out to find ripe fruit, and as the first
+tree they came to was loaded with greengages, Rutherford, Hargreaves and
+Jubb postponed all exploration for the present. Michael and Hands, who
+was sleeping in his room and with whom he had already made friends,
+left the others behind them. As they walked farther from the house, they
+spoke in low tones, so silent was this old garden.
+
+"I'm sure it's haunted," said Michael. "I never felt so funny, not
+exactly frightened, you know, but sort of frightened."
+
+"It's still quite light," squeaked the hopeful Hands.
+
+"Yes, but the sun's behind all these trees and you can't hear anything,
+but only us walking," whispered Michael.
+
+However, they went on through a jungle of artichokes and through an
+orchard of gnarled apple trees past a mildewed summer-house, until they
+reached a serpentine path between privet bushes, strongly scented in the
+dampness all around.
+
+"Shall we?" murmured Hands doubtfully.
+
+"Yes. We can bunk back if we see anything," said Michael. "I like this."
+
+They walked on following the zigzags of the path, but stopped dead as a
+blackbird shrilled and flapped into the bushes affrighted.
+
+"By Jove, that beastly bird made me awfully funky," said Michael.
+
+"Let's go back," said Hands. "Suppose we got murdered. People do in
+France."
+
+"Rot," said Michael. "Not in a private garden, you cuckoo."
+
+With mutual encouragement the two boys wandered on, until they found
+farther progress barred by a high hedge, impenetrable apparently and
+viewless to Michael and Hands who were not very tall.
+
+"What sucks!" said Michael. "I hate turning back. I think it's rotten to
+turn back. Don't you? Hullo!" he cried. "Look here, Hands. Here's a
+regular sort of tunnel going down hill. It's quite steep."
+
+In a moment Hands and Michael were half sliding, half climbing down a
+cliff. The lower they went, the faster they travelled and soon they were
+sliding all the way, because they had to guard their faces against the
+brambles that twined above them.
+
+"Good Lord!" gasped Michael, as he bumped down a sheer ten-feet of loose
+earth. "I'm getting jolly bumped. Look out, Hands, you kicked my neck,
+you ass."
+
+"I can't help it," gasped Hands. "I'm absolutely slipping, and if I try
+to catch hold, I scratch myself."
+
+They were sliding so fast that the only thing to do was to laugh and
+give way. So, with shouts and laughter and bumps and jolts and the
+pushing of loose stones and earth before them, Michael and Hands came
+with a run to the bottom of the cliff and landed at last on soft
+sea-sand.
+
+"By gum," said Michael, "we're right on the beach. What a rag!"
+
+The two boys looked back to the scene of their descent. It was a high
+cliff covered with shrubs and brambles, apparently unassailable. Before
+them was the sea, pale blue and gold, and to the right and to the left
+were the flat lonely sands. They ran, shouting with excitement, towards
+the rippling tide. The sand-hoppers buzzed about their ankles: Hands
+tripped over a jelly-fish and fell into several others: sea-gulls
+swooped above them, crying continually.
+
+"It's like Robinson Crusoe," Michael declared.
+
+He was mad with the exhilaration of possession. He owned these sands.
+
+"Oh, young Hands fell down on the sands," he cried, bursting into
+uncontrollable laughter at the absurdity of the rhyme. Then he found
+razor-shells and waved his arms triumphantly. He found, too,
+wine-stained shells and rosy shells and great purple mussels. He and
+Hands took off their shoes and stockings and ran through the limpid
+water that sparkled with gold and tempted them to wade for ever ankle
+deep. They reached a broken mass of rock which would obviously be
+surrounded by water at high tide; they clambered up to the summit and
+found there grass and rabbits' holes.
+
+"It's a real island," said Michael. "It is! I say, Hands, this is our
+island. We discovered it. Bags I, we keep it."
+
+"Don't let's get caught by the tide," suggested cautious Hands.
+
+"All right, you funk," jeered Michael.
+
+They came back to the level sands and wandered on towards the black
+point of cliff bounding the immediate view.
+
+"I say, there's a cave. I bet you there's a cave," Michael called to his
+companion who was examining a dead fish.
+
+"Wait a jiffy," shouted Hands; but Michael hurried on to the cave. He
+wanted to be the first to enter under its jagged arch. Already he could
+see the silver sand shimmering upon the threshold of the inner darkness.
+He walked in, awed by the secrecy of this sea-cavern, almost expectant
+of a mermaid or octopus in the deepest cranny. Suddenly he stopped. His
+heart beat furiously: his head swam: his legs quivered under him. Then
+he turned and ran towards the light.
+
+"Good lummy!" said Hands, when Michael came up to him. "Whatever's the
+matter? You're simply frightfully white."
+
+"Come away," said Michael. "I saw something beastly."
+
+"What was it?"
+
+"There's a man in there and a woman. Oh, it was beastly."
+
+Michael dragged Hands by the arm, but not before they had left the cave
+far behind would he speak.
+
+"What was it really?" asked Hands, when they stood at the bottom of the
+cliff.
+
+"I couldn't possibly tell anybody ever," said Michael.
+
+"You're making it up," scoffed Hands.
+
+"No, I'm not," said Michael. "Look here, don't say anything to the
+others about that cave. Promise."
+
+Hands promised silence; and he and Michael soon discovered a pathway up
+the cliff. When they reached the garden, it was a deeper green than ever
+in the falling twilight, and they did not care to linger far from the
+house. It was a relief to hear voices and to see Rutherford, Hargreaves
+and Jubb still eating plums. Presently they played games on a lawn with
+Mr. Vernon and Mr. Lodge, and soon, after reading sleepily for a while
+in the tumble-down room which was set apart for the boys' use, Michael
+and Hands went to bed and, after an exciting encounter with a bat, fell
+asleep.
+
+The days in Brittany went by very swiftly. In the morning at eight
+o'clock there were great bowls of cafe au lait and rolls with honey and
+butter waiting in the dining-room for the boys, when they came back from
+bathing. All the other boys except Michael had come to France to improve
+their French; but he worked also at the first book of Ovid's
+Metamorphoses and at Lucian's Charon, because he was going in for a
+scholarship at St. James'. However, these classical subjects were put
+away at eleven o'clock, when dejeuner with all sorts of new and
+delicious dishes was served. After this there was nothing to do until
+six o'clock but enjoy oneself. Sometimes the boys made expeditions into
+St. Corentin, where they wondered at the number of dogs to each
+inhabitant and bought cakes and sweets at a pastrycook's and gas-filled
+balloons which they sent up in the market-place. Or they would stroll
+down to the quays and watch the shipping and practise their French on
+sailors looking more like pirates than ordinary sailors.
+
+Once, while Michael was gazing into a shop window at some dusty foreign
+stamps in a brass tray, a Capuchin friar spoke to him in very good
+English and asked if he collected stamps. Michael said that he did, and
+the Capuchin invited him to come back to the convent and see his
+collection. Michael thought this was a splendid invitation and willingly
+accompanied the Capuchin whom, except for a sore on his lip, he liked
+very much. He thought the inside of the convent was rather like the
+inside of an aquarium, but he enjoyed the stamps very much. The friar
+gave him about a dozen of his duplicates, and Michael promised to write
+to him, when he got home, and to send him some of his own. Then they had
+tea in the friar's cell, and afterwards Michael set out to walk back to
+St. Antoine. It was not yet six o'clock when he reached the house, but
+there was a terrible fuss being made about his adventure. Telegrams had
+been despatched, the gendarmerie had been informed, and the British
+Vice-consul had been interviewed. Mr. Vernon asked in his deepest voice
+where the deuce he had been, and when Michael told him he had been
+taking tea with a monk, Mr. Vernon was more angry than ever.
+
+"Don't do things like that. Good heavens, boy, you might have been
+kidnapped and turned into a Catholic, before you knew where you were.
+Hang it all, remember I'm responsible for your safety and never again
+get into conversation with a wandering monk."
+
+Michael explained about the stamps, but Mr. Vernon said that was a very
+pretty excuse, and would by no means hear of Michael visiting the
+convent again. When Michael thought over this fuss, he could not
+understand what it had all been about. He could not imagine anything
+more harmless than this Capuchin friar with the sore on his lip.
+However, he never did see him again, except once in the distance, when
+he pointed him out to Mr. Vernon, who said he looked a dirty ruffian.
+Michael discovered that grown-up people always saw danger where there
+was no danger, but when, as on the occasion when Hands and he plainly
+perceived a ghost in the garden, there was every cause for real alarm,
+they merely laughed.
+
+The weather grew warmer as August moved on, and Michael with Mr. Vernon
+and Mr. Lodge used sometimes to plunge into the depths of the country,
+there to construe Ovid and Lucian while the other boys worked at French
+with the Frenchman who came in from St. Corentin to teach them. Michael
+enjoyed these expeditions with Mr. Vernon and Mr. Lodge. They would sit
+down in the lush grass of a shady green lane, close to a pool where the
+bull-frogs croaked. Michael would construe the tale of Deucalion and
+Pyrrha to Mr. Lodge, while Mr. Vernon lay on his back and smoked a large
+pipe. Then a White Admiral butterfly would soar round the oak trees, and
+Ovid would be thrown behind them like Deucalion's stones; while Michael
+and Mr. Vernon and Mr. Lodge manoeuvred and shouted and ran up and
+down, until the White Admiral was either safely bottled with the cyanide
+of potassium or soared away out of sight. When Ovid was finished for the
+day, Mr. Lodge used to light a big pipe and lie on his back, while
+Michael construed the Dialogue of Charon to Mr. Vernon. Then an Oak
+Eggar moth would fly with tumbling reckless flight beyond the pool,
+luring Michael and Mr. Lodge and Mr. Vernon to charge through in
+pursuit, not deterred by the vivid green slime of the wayside water as
+the ghosts were deterred by gloomy Styx. Indeed, as the hot August days
+went by, each one was marked by its butterflies more definitely than by
+anything else. Michael thought that France was a much better place for
+collecting them than England. Scarce Swallow-tails and Ordinary
+Swallow-tails haunted the cliffs majestically. Clouded Yellows were
+chased across the fields of clover. Purple Emperors and Camberwell
+Beauties and Bath Whites were all as frequent as Heath Browns at home.
+Once, they all went a long expedition to Bluebeard's Castle on the other
+side of the Loire, and, while they sat in a garden cafe, drinking their
+grenadine sucree, hundreds of Silver-washed Fritillaries appeared over
+the tables. How the fat French bourgeois stared to see these mad English
+boys chasing butterflies in their sunny bee-haunted garden. But how
+lovely the Fritillaries looked, set upside down to show their powdered
+green and rosy wings washed by silver streaks. Perhaps the most exciting
+catch of all happened, close to the shutting in of a September dusk, in
+the avenue of pollarded acacias. Michael saw the moth first on the
+lowest bough of a tree. It was jet-black marked with thick creamy
+stripes. Neither he nor Hands had a net, and they trembled with
+excitement and chagrin. Michael threw a stone rather ineffectively and
+the moth changed its position, showing before it settled down on a
+higher branch underwings of glowing vermilion.
+
+"Oh, what can it be?" Michael cried, dancing.
+
+"It's frightfully rare," squeaked Hands.
+
+"You watch it carefully, while I scoot for a net," commanded Michael.
+
+He tore along up the darkening drive, careless of ghosts or travelling
+seamen bent on murder and robbery. He rushed into the hall and shouted,
+'A terribly rare moth in the drive! Quick, my net!' and rushed back to
+the vigilant Hands. The others followed, and after every cunning of the
+hunter had been tried, the moth was at last secured and after a search
+through Kirby's Butterflies and Moths pronounced to be a Jersey Tiger,
+not so rare, after all, in fact very common abroad. But it was a
+glorious beast when set, richly black, barred and striped with damasked
+cream over a flame of orange-scarlet.
+
+The six weeks were over. Michael had to leave in advance of the others,
+in order to enter for his scholarship examination at St. James'. Mr.
+Lodge took him to St. Malo and handed him over to the charge of
+Rutherford's older brother, who was already at St. James' and would see
+Michael safely to London. Michael could scarcely believe that this
+Rutherford was a boy, so tall was he, such a heavy black moustache had
+he and so pleasant was he to Michael. Michael thought with regret of the
+green and golden days in Brittany, as he waved to Mr. Lodge standing on
+the St. Malo jetty. He felt, as the steamer sailed across the glassy sea
+through a thick September haze, that he was coming back to greater
+adventures, that he was older and, as he paced beside Rutherford up and
+down the deck, that he was more important. But he thought with regret of
+Brittany and squeaky Hands and the warm days of butterflies. He hoped to
+return next year and see again the fig tree by his bedroom window and
+the level shore of the Loire estuary and the tangled tumble-down garden
+on the cliff's edge. He would always think of Mr. Lodge and Mr. Vernon,
+those very dearly loved schoolmasters. He would think of the ghostly
+Breton lanes at twilight and the glorious Sundays unspoilt by church or
+best clothes and of the bull-frogs in the emerald pools.
+
+Michael disliked the examination very much indeed. He hated the way in
+which all the other competitors stared. He disliked the speed with which
+they wrote and the easy manners of some of them. However, he gained his
+scholarship mostly by age marks and was put in the Lower Third, the
+youngest boy in the class by two years, and became a Jacobean, turning
+every morning round the same gate, walking every morning up the same
+gravel path, running every morning up the same wide steps, meeting every
+morning the same smell of hot-water pipes and hearing every day the same
+shuffle of quick feet along the corridors past the same plaster cast of
+the Laocoon.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK TWO
+
+
+CLASSIC EDUCATION
+
+    _"What is it then that thou hast got_
+      _By drudging through that five-year task?_
+    _What knowledge or what art is thine?_
+      _Set out thy stock, thy craft declare."_
+                                        IONICA.
+
+
+     _"Sic cum his, inter quos eram, voluntatum enuntianaarum signa
+     conmunicavi; et vitae humanae procellosam societatem altius
+     ingressus sum, pendens ex parentum auctoritate nutuque maiorum
+     hominum."_
+
+     ST. AUGUSTINE.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I: _The Jacobean_
+
+
+Michael found the Lower Third at St. James' a jolly class. He was so
+particularly young that he was called 'Baby,' but with enough obvious
+affection to make the dubious nickname a compliment. To be sure, Mr.
+Braxted would often cackle jokes in a raucous voice about his age, and
+if Michael made a false quantity he would grumble and say he was paid as
+a schoolmaster not as a wet-nurse. However, Mr. Braxted was such a dandy
+and wore such very sharply creased and tight trousers and was so well
+set up and groomed that the class was proud of his neat appearance, and
+would inform the Upper Third that Foxy Braxted did, at any rate, look a
+gentleman, a distinction which the Upper Third could scarcely claim for
+their own form-master.
+
+Michael liked the greater freedom of a public school. There were no
+home-books to be signed by governesses: there was no longer any taboo
+upon the revelation of Christian names. Idiosyncrasies were overlooked
+in the vaster society of St. James'. The senior boys paid no attention
+to the juniors, but passed them by scornfully as if they were grubs not
+worth the trouble of squashing. There was no longer the same zest in the
+little scandals and petty spitefulness of a private school. There was
+much greater freedom in the choice of one's friends, and Michael no
+longer felt bound to restrict his intimacy to the twin Macalisters and
+Norton. Sometimes in the 'quarter' (as the break was now called) Michael
+would stand on the top of the steps that led down from the great red
+building into the school-ground. From this point he would survey the
+huge green field with its archipelago of countless boys. He would think
+how few of their names he knew and from what distances many of them
+travelled each morning to school. He could wander among them by himself
+and not one would turn a curious head. He was at liberty even to stare
+at a few great ones whom athletic prowess had endowed already with
+legendary divinity, so that among small boys tales were told of their
+daring and their immortality gradually woven into the folk-lore of St.
+James'. Sometimes a member of the first fifteen would speak to Michael
+on a matter of athletic business.
+
+"What's your name?"
+
+"Fane," Michael would answer, hoping the while that his contemporaries
+might be passing and see this colloquy between a man and a god.
+
+"Oh, yes," the hero would carelessly continue, "I've got you down
+already. Mind you turn up to Little Side at 1.45 sharp."
+
+Little Side was the football division that included the smallest third
+of the school. Sometimes the hero would ask another question, as:
+
+"Do you know a kid called Smith P.L.?"
+
+And Michael with happy blushes would be able to point out Smith P.L. to
+the great figure.
+
+Michael played football on Little Side with great regularity, rushing
+home to dinner and rushing off again to change and be in the field by a
+quarter to two. He could run very fast and for that reason the lords of
+Little Side made him play forward, a position for which the slightness
+of his body made him particularly unsuited. One day, however, he managed
+to intercept a pass, to outwit a three-quarter, to dodge the full-back
+and to score a try, plumb between the posts. Luckily one of the heroes
+had strolled down from Pelion that afternoon to criticize Little Side
+and Michael was promoted from the scrum to play three-quarter back on
+the left wing, in which position he really enjoyed football very much
+indeed.
+
+It fell out that year that the St. James' fifteen was the most
+invincible ever known in the school's history, and every Saturday
+afternoon, when there was a home match, Michael in rain or wind or pale
+autumnal sunlight would take up his position in the crowd of spectators
+to cheer and shout and urge St. James' to another glorious victory.
+Match after match that year earned immortal fame in the school records,
+sending the patriotic Jacobeans of every size and age home to a happy
+tea in the rainy twilight. Those were indeed afternoons of thunderous
+excitement. How everybody used to shout--School--Schoo-oo-ol--Schoo-ol!
+Play up--Schoo-oo-ool! James! Ja-a-a-mes! Oh, go low. Kick! Touch!
+Forward! Held! Off-side! Go in yourself! Schoo-ool!
+
+How Michael's heart beat at the thud of the Dulford forwards in their
+last desperate rush towards the School 'twenty-five.' Down went the
+School halves, and over them like a torrent swept the Dulford pack. Down
+went the three-quarters in a plucky attempt to sit on the ball. Ah!
+There was an unanimous cry of agony, as everybody pressed against the
+boundary rope and craned towards the touch-line until the posts creaked
+before the strain. Not in vain had those gallant three-quarters been
+smeared with mud and bruised by the boots of the surging Dulford pack;
+for the ball had been kicked on too far and Cutty Jackson, the School
+back, had fielded it miraculously. He was going to punt. 'Kick!' yelled
+the despairing spectators. And Jackson, right under the disappointed
+groans of the Dulford forwards whose muscles cracked with the effort to
+fetch him down, kicked the ball high, high into the silvery November
+air. Up with that spinning greasy oval travelled the hopes of the
+onlookers, and, as it fell safely into touch, from all round the field
+rose like a rocket a huge sigh of relief that presently broke into
+volleys and paeans of exultation, as half-time sounded with St. James' a
+goal to the good. How Michael admired the exhausted players when they
+sucked the sliced lemons and lay about in the mud; how he envied Cutty
+Jackson, when the lithe and noble fellow leaned against the goalpost and
+surveyed his audience. 'Sidiness' could be easily forgiven after that
+never-to-be-forgotten kick into touch. Why, thought Michael, should not
+he himself be one day ranked as the peer of Cutty Jackson? Why should
+not he, six or seven years hence, penetrate the serried forces of
+Dulford and score a winning try, even as the referee's whistle was
+lifted to sound 'time'? Ambition woke in Michael, while he surveyed upon
+that muddy field the prostrate forms of the fifteen, like statues in a
+museum. Then play began and personal desires were merged in the great
+hope of victory for the School. Hardly now could the spectators shout,
+so tense was the struggle, so long was each full minute of action.
+Michael's brain swam with excitement. He saw the Dulford team as giants
+bull-necked and invulnerable. He saw the School halves shrinking, the
+School three-quarters shiver like grass and the School forwards crumple
+before the Dulford charges. They were beaten: the untarnished record was
+broken: Michael could have sobbed for his side. Swifter than swallows,
+the Dulford three-quarters flew down the now all too short field of
+play. They were in! Look! they were dancing in triumph. A try to
+Dulford! Disconsolately the School team lined up behind their disgraced
+goal. Jauntily the Dulford half walked away with the shapely leather.
+The onlookers held their breath, as the ball, evilly accurate,
+dangerously direct, was poised in position for the kick at goal. The
+signal was given: the School team made their rush: the ball rose in the
+air: hung for a moment motionless, hit a goalpost, quivered and fell
+back. One goal to a try--five points to three--and St. James' was
+leading. Then indeed did the School play up. Then indeed did every man
+in the team 'go low': and for the rest of the game to neither side did
+any advantage incline. Grunts and muttered oaths, the thud of feet, the
+smack of wet leather lasted continually. In the long line-ups for the
+throw in from touch, each man marked his man viciously: the sweat poured
+down from hanging jaws: vests were torn, knees were grimed with mud and
+elbows were blackened. The scrimmages were the tightest and neatest ever
+watched, and neither scrum could screw the other a foot. At last the
+shrill whistle of the referee proclaimed the end of an immortal contest.
+There were cheers for the victors by the vanquished, by the vanquished
+for their conquerors. The spectators melted away into the gathering mist
+and rain, a flotsam of black umbrellas. In a few moments the
+school-ground was desolate and silent. Michael, as he looked at the
+grass ploughed into mud by the severe struggle, thought what superb
+heroes were in his School team; and just as he was going home, content,
+he saw a blazer left on a post. It was Jackson's, and Michael,
+palpitating with the honour, ran as fast as he could to the
+changing-room through the echoing cloister beneath the school.
+
+"I say, Jackson, you left this on the ground," he said shyly.
+
+Jackson looked up from a conversation with the Dulford full-back.
+
+"Oh, thanks very much," he murmured, and went on with his talk.
+
+Michael would not have missed that small sentence for any dignity in the
+world.
+
+During his first term at St. James', Michael went on with his study of
+the art of dancing, begun during the previous winter without much
+personal satisfaction and with a good deal of self-consciousness. These
+dancing lessons took place in the hall at Randell's, and Michael
+revisited his old school with a new confidence. He found himself
+promoted to stay beyond the hour of pupilage in order pleasantly to pass
+away a second hour by dancing formally with the sisters and cousins of
+other boys. He had often admired last year those select Jacobeans who,
+buttoning white gloves, stood in a supercilious group, while their
+juniors clumped through the Ladies' Chain uninspired by the swish of a
+single petticoat. Now he was of their sacred number. It was not
+surprizing that under the influence of the waltz and the Circassian
+circle and the schottische and the quadrille and the mazurka that
+Michael should fall in love. He was not anxious to fall in love: many
+times to other boys he had mocked at woman and dilated upon the folly of
+matrimony. He had often declared on his way to and from school that
+celibacy should be the ideal of every man. He used to say how little he
+could understand the habit of sitting in dark corners and kissing. Even
+Miss Carthew he grew accustomed to treat almost with rudeness, lest some
+lynx-eyed friend of his should detect in his relation with her a
+tendency towards the sentimental. However, Muriel in her
+salmon-coloured, accordion-pleated frock bowled Michael off his superior
+pedestal. He persuaded himself that this was indeed one of those
+unchangeable passions of which he read or rather did read now. This
+great new emotion was certainly Love, for Michael could honestly affirm
+that as soon as he saw Muriel sitting on a chair with long black legs
+outstretched before her, he loved her. No other girl existed, and when
+he moved towards her for the pleasure of the next dance, he felt his
+heart beating, his cheeks on fire. Muriel seemed to like him after a
+fashion. At any rate, she cordially supported him in a project of
+long-deferred revenge upon Mr. Macrae of the Upper Fourth at Randell's,
+and she kept 'cave' while Michael tried the door of his empty class-room
+off the top gallery of the hall. It was unlocked, and Michael crept in
+and quickly threw the contents of Mr. Macrae's desk out of the window
+and wrote on the blackboard: 'Mr. Macrae is the silliest ass in
+England.' Then he and Muriel walked demurely back to join the tinkling
+mazurka down below and, though many enquiries were set on foot as to the
+perpetrator of the outrage, Michael was never found out.
+
+Michael's passion for Muriel increased with every evening of her
+company, and he went so far as to make friends with a very unpopular boy
+who lived in her road, for the sake of holding this unpopular boy in
+close conversation by his threshold on the chance of seeing Muriel's
+grey muff in the twilight. Muriel was strangely cold for the heroine of
+such a romance, and indeed Michael only once saw her really vivacious,
+which was when he gave her a catapult. Yet sometimes she would make a
+clandestine appointment and talk to him for twenty minutes in a secluded
+terrace, so that he consoled himself with a belief in her untold
+affection. Michael read Don Quixote again on account of Dulcinea del
+Toboso, and he was greatly moved by the knight's apostrophes and
+declamations. He longed for a confidant and was half inclined to tell
+Stella about Muriel; but when he came to the point Stella was engrossed
+in a new number of Little Folks and Michael feared she was unworthy of
+such a trust. The zenith of his passion was attained at the Boarders'
+dance to which he and Muriel and even Stella were invited. Michael had
+been particularly told by Miss Carthew that he was to dance four times
+at least with Stella and never to allow her to be without a partner. He
+was in despair and felt, as he encountered the slippery floor with
+Stella hanging nervously on his arm, that round his neck had been tied a
+millstone of responsibility. There in a corner was Muriel exquisite in
+yellow silk, and in her hair a yellow bow. Boys flitted round her, like
+bees before a hive, and here was he powerless with this wretched sister.
+
+"You wait here," said Michael. "I'll be back in half a jiffy."
+
+"Oh, no," pouted Stella. "You're not to leave me alone, Michael. Miss
+Carthew said you were to look after me."
+
+Michael groaned.
+
+"Do you like ices?" he asked desperately. "You do, don't you?"
+
+"No," said Stella. "They make my tooth ache."
+
+Michael almost wept with chagrin. He had planned to swap with Stella for
+unlimited ices all her dances with him. Then he saw a friend whom he
+caught hold of, and with whom he whispered fiercely for a moment.
+
+"I say, you might dance with my kiddy sister for a bit. She's awfully
+fond of ices, so you needn't really dance."
+
+The friend said he preferred to remain independent at a dance.
+
+"No, I say, do be a decent chap," begged Michael. "Just dance with her
+once and get another chap to dance with her after you've had your shot.
+Oh, do. Look here. What'll you swap for the whole of her programme?"
+
+The friend considered the proposition in its commercial side.
+
+"Look here," Michael began, and then, as he nervously half turned his
+head, he saw the crowd thickening about Muriel. He waved his arm
+violently in the hope that she would realize his plight and keep the
+rivals at arm's length. "Look here," he went on, "you know my bat with
+the whalebone splice?" This bat was Michael's most precious possession,
+and even as he bartered it for love, he smelt the fragrant linseed-oil
+of the steeped bandages which now preserved it for summer suns.
+
+The friend's eyes twinkled greedily.
+
+"I'll swap that bat," said Michael, "if you'll make sure my kiddy sister
+hasn't got a single empty place on her programme all the dance."
+
+"All right," said the friend. And as he was led up to Stella, Michael
+whispered hurriedly, when the introduction had been decorously made:
+
+"This chap's frightfully keen on you, Stella. He simply begged me to
+introduce him to you."
+
+Then from the depths of Michael's soul a deep-seated cunning inspired
+him to add:
+
+"I wouldn't at first, because he was awfully in love with another girl
+and I thought it hard cheese on her, because she's here to-night. But he
+said he'd go home if he didn't dance with you. So I had to."
+
+Michael looked enquiringly at Stella, marked the smirk of satisfaction
+on her lips, then recklessly, almost sliding over the polished floor, he
+plunged through Muriel's suitors and proffered his programme. They
+danced together nearly all the evening, and alas, Muriel told him that
+she was going to boarding-school next term. It was a blow to Michael,
+and the dance programme with Muriel's name fourteen times repeated was
+many times looked at with sentimental pangs each night of next term
+before Michael went to bed a hundred miles away from Muriel at her
+boarding-school.
+
+However, Muriel and her porcelain-blue eyes and the full bow of her lips
+and the slimness and girlishness of her were forgotten in the
+complexities of life at a great public school. Michael often looked back
+to that first term in the Lower Third as a period of Arcadian
+simplicity, a golden age. In his second term Michael after an
+inconspicuous position in the honest heart of the list was not moved up,
+for which he was very glad, as the man who took the Upper Third was by
+reputation a dull driver without any of the amenities by which Foxy
+Braxted seasoned scholastic life.
+
+One morning, when the Lower Third had been pleasantly dissolved in
+laughter by Foxy's caustic jokes at the expense of a boy who had
+pronounced the Hebrides as a dissyllable, following a hazardous guess
+that the capital of New South Wales was New York, the door of the
+class-room opened abruptly and Dr. Brownjohn the Headmaster sailed in.
+
+"Is there a boy called Fane in this class?" he demanded deeply.
+
+The laughter had died away when the tip of Dr. Brownjohn's nose
+glistened round the edge of the door, and in the deadly silence Michael
+felt himself withering away.
+
+"Oh, yes," said Mr. Braxted, cheerfully indicating Michael with his long
+forefinger.
+
+"Tell him to pack up his books and go to Mr. Spivey in the Hall. I'll
+see him there," rumbled Dr. Brownjohn as, after transfixing the Lower
+Third with a glance of the most intense ferocity, he swung round and
+left the room, slamming the door behind him.
+
+"You'd better take what you're doing to Mr. Spivey," said Mr. Braxted in
+his throatiest voice, "and tell him with my compliments you're an idle
+young rascal. You can get your books at one o'clock."
+
+Michael gathered together pens and paper, and left his desk in the Lower
+Third.
+
+"Good-bye, sir," he said as he went away, for he knew Foxy Braxted
+really rather liked him.
+
+"Good-bye," cackled his late form-master.
+
+The Lower Third followed his exit from their midst with an united grin
+of farewell, and Michael was presently interviewing Mr. Spivey in the
+Hall. He realized that he was now a member of that assorted Purgatory,
+the Special, doomed to work there for a term of days or weeks and after
+this period of intensive culture to be planted out in a higher form
+beyond the ordinary mechanics of promotion. Mostly in the Special class
+Michael worshipped the two gods [Greek: ei] and [Greek: ean],
+and his whole life was devoted to the mastery of Greek conditional
+sentences in their honour.
+
+The Special form at St. James' never consisted of more than fourteen or
+fifteen boys, all of whom were taught individually, and none of whom
+knew when they would be called away. The Special was well called
+Purgatory. Every morning and every afternoon the inmates toiled away at
+their monotonous work, sitting far removed from one another in the great
+echoing hall, concentrated for the most part on [Greek: ei] and
+[Greek: ean]. Every morning and every afternoon at a fatal moment
+the swinging doors of the lower end of the Hall would clash together,
+and the heavy tread of Dr. Brownjohn would be heard as he rolled up one
+of the two aisles between the long desks. Every morning and every
+afternoon Dr. Brownjohn would sit beside some boy to inspect his work;
+and every morning and every afternoon hearts would beat the faster,
+until Dr. Brownjohn had seized his victim, when the other boys would
+simultaneously work with an almost lustful concentration.
+
+Dr. Brownjohn was to Michael the personification of majesty, dominion,
+ferocity and awe. He was huge of build, with a long grey beard to which
+adhered stale morsels of food and the acrid scent of strong cigars. His
+face was ploughed and fretted with indentations volcanic: scoriac
+torrents flowed from his eyes, his forehead was seared and cleft with
+frowning crevasses and wrinkled with chasms. His ordinary clothes were
+stained with soup and rank with tobacco smoke, but over them he wore a
+full and swishing gown of silk. When he spoke his voice rumbled in the
+titanic deeps of his body, or if he were angry, it burst forth in an
+appalling roar that shook the great hall. His method of approach was
+enough to frighten anyone, for he would swing along up the aisle and
+suddenly plunge into a seat beside the chosen boy, pushing him along the
+form with his black bulk. He would seize the boy's pen and after
+scratching his own head with the end of the holder would follow word by
+word the liturgy of [Greek: ei] and [Greek: ean], tapping the
+paper between the lines as he read each sentence, so that at the end of
+his examination the page was peppered with dots of ink. Dr. Brownjohn,
+although he had a voice like ten bulls, was himself very deaf and after
+bellowing in a paralyzing bass he would always finish a remark with an
+intoned 'um?' of tenor interrogation to exact assent or answer from his
+terrified pupil. When due reverence was absent from Michael's worship of
+[Greek: ei] and [Greek: ean] Dr. Brownjohn would frown at him and
+roar and bellow and rumble and thunder and peal his execration and
+contempt. Then suddenly his fury would be relieved by this eruption, and
+he would affix his initials to the bottom of the page--S. C. B. standing
+for Samuel Constantine Brownjohn--after which endorsement he would pat
+Michael's head, rumble an unintelligible joke and plunge down beside
+another victim.
+
+One of Michael's greatest trials was his inability to convince Miss
+Carthew how unutterably terrific Dr. Brownjohn really was. She insisted
+that Michael exaggerated his appearance and manners, and simply would
+not believe the stories Michael told of parents and guardians who had
+trembled with fear when confronted by the Old Man. In many ways Michael
+found Miss Carthew was very contentious nowadays, and very seldom did an
+evening pass without a hot argument between him and her. To be sure, she
+used to say it was Michael who had grown contradictory and
+self-assertive, but Michael could not see that he had radically altered
+since the first moment he saw Miss Carthew, now nearly four years ago.
+
+Michael's purgatory in the Special continued for several weeks, and he
+grew bored by the monotony of his work that was only interrupted by the
+suspense of the Headmaster's invasions. Sometimes Dr. Brownjohn would
+make his dreadful descent early in the 'hour,' and then relieved from
+the necessity to work with such ardour, Michael would gaze up to the
+raftered roof of the hall and stare at the long lancet windows filled
+with the coats of arms in stained glass of famous bygone Jacobeans. He
+would wonder whether in those windows still unfilled a place would one
+day be found for his name and whether years and years hence, boys doing
+Greek conditional sentences would speculate upon the boyhood of Charles
+Michael Saxby Fane. Then Mr. Spivey would break into his dreams with
+some rather dismal joke, and Michael would make blushing amends to
+[Greek: ei] and [Greek: ean] by writing as quickly as he could
+three complete conditional sentences in honour and praise of the twin
+gods. Mr. Spivey, the master in charge of the Special, was mild and
+good-humoured. No one could fail to like him, but he was not
+exhilarating; and Michael was greatly pleased when one morning Mr.
+Spivey informed him that he was to move into the Shell. Michael was glad
+to dodge the Upper Third, for he knew that life in the Shell under Mr.
+Neech would be an experience.
+
+Chaps had often said to Michael, "Ah, wait till you get into old Neech's
+form."
+
+"Is he decent?" Michael would enquire.
+
+"Some chaps like him," the chaps in question would ambiguously reply.
+
+When Mr. Spivey introduced Michael to the Shell, Mr. Neech was sitting
+in his chair with his feet on the desk and a bandana handkerchief over
+his face, apparently fast asleep. The inmates of the Shell were sitting,
+vigorously learning something that seemed to cause them great hardship;
+for every face was puzzled and from time to time sighs floated upon the
+class-room air.
+
+Mr. Spivey coughed nervously to attract Mr. Neech's attention, and when
+Mr. Neech took no notice, he tapped nervously on the desk with Mr.
+Neech's ruler. Somewhere in the back row of desks a titter of mirth was
+faintly audible. Mr. Neech was presumably aroused with great suddenness
+by Mr. Spivey's tapping and swung his legs off the desk and, sitting
+bolt upright in his chair, glared at the intruders.
+
+"Oh, the Headmaster has sent Fane from the Special," Mr. Spivey
+nervously explained.
+
+Mr. Neech threw his eyes up to the ceiling and looked as if Michael's
+arrival were indeed the last straw.
+
+"Twenty-six miserable boys are already having a detestable and
+stultifying education in this wretched class," lamented Mr. Neech. "And
+now comes a twenty-seventh. Very well. Very well. I'll stuff him with
+the abominable jargon and filthy humbug. I'll cram him with the
+undigested balderdash. Oh, you unhappy boy," Mr. Neech went on, directly
+addressing Michael. "You unfortunate imp and atom. Sit down, if you can
+find a desk. Sit down and fill your mind with the ditchwater I'm paid to
+teach you."
+
+Mr. Spivey had by this time reached the door and with a nervous nod he
+abruptly vanished.
+
+"Now then everybody," said Mr. Neech, closing his lips very tightly in a
+moment's pause and then breaking forth loudly. "You have had one quarter
+of an hour to learn the repetition you should all have learned last
+night. Begin, that mooncalf with a dirty collar, the boy Wilberforce,
+and if any stupid stoat or stockfish boggles over one word, I'll flay
+him. Begin! The boy Fane can sit still. The others stand up!" shouted
+Mr. Neech. "Now the boy Wilberforce!
+
+_Tityre tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi_---- Go on, you bladder of
+idiocy."
+
+Michael watched the boy Wilberforce concentrate all his faculties upon
+not making a single mistake, and hoped that he would satisfy this
+alarming master. While Wilberforce spoke the lines of the Eclogue,
+panting between each hexameter, Mr. Neech strode up and down the room
+with his arms crossed behind him, wagging the tail of his gown.
+Sometimes he would strike his chin and, looking upwards, murmur to
+himself the lines with an expression of profound emotion. Wilberforce
+managed to get through, and another boy called Verney took up the
+Eclogue successfully, and so on through the class it was successfully
+sustained.
+
+"You pockpuddings, you abysmal apes," Mr. Neech groaned at his class.
+"Why couldn't you have learned those lines at home? You idle young
+blackguards, you pestilent oafs, you fools of the first water, write
+them out. Write them out five times."
+
+"Oh, sir," the Shell protested in unison.
+
+"Oh, sir!" Mr. Neech mimicked. "Oh, sir! Well, I'll let you off this
+time, but next time, next time, my stars and garters, I'll flog any boy
+that makes a single mistake."
+
+Mr. Neech was a dried-up, snuff-coloured man, with a long thin nose and
+stringy neck and dark piercing eyes. He always wore a frock-coat green
+with age and a very old top-hat and very shiny trousers. He read Spanish
+newspapers and second-hand-book catalogues all the way to school and was
+never seen to walk with either a master or a boy. His principal hatreds
+were Puseyism and actors; but as two legends were extant, in one of
+which he had been seen to get into a first-class railway carriage with a
+copy of the Church Times and in the other of which he had been seen
+smoking a big cigar in the stalls of the Alhambra Theatre, it was rather
+doubtful whether his two hatreds were as deeply felt as they were
+fervently expressed. He was reputed to have the largest library in
+England outside the British Museum and also to own seven dachshunds. He
+was a man who fell into ungovernable rages, when he would flog a boy
+savagely and, the flogging done, fling his cane out of the window in a
+fit of remorse. He would set impositions of unprecedented length, and
+revile himself for ruining the victim's handwriting. He would keep his
+class in for an hour and mutter at himself for a fool to keep himself in
+as well. Once, he locked a boy in at one o'clock, and the boy's mother
+wrote a long letter to complain that her son had been forced to go
+without his dinner. Legend said that Mr. Neech had been reprimanded by
+Dr. Brownjohn on account of this, which explained Mr. Neech's jibes at
+the four pages of complaint from the parents that were supposed
+inevitably to follow his mildest rebuke of the most malignant boy.
+
+Michael enjoyed Mr. Neech's eccentricities after the drabness of the
+Special. He was lucky enough to be in Mr. Neech's good graces, because
+he was almost the only boy who could say in what novel of Dickens or
+Scott some famous character occurred. Mr. Neech had a conception of
+education quite apart from the mere instilling of declensions and
+genders and 'num' and 'nonne' and 'quin' and [Greek: ei] and [Greek:
+ean]. He taught Geography and English History and English Literature, so
+far as the school curriculum allowed him. Divinity and English meant
+more to Mr. Neech than a mere hour of Greek Testament and a pedant's
+fiddling with the text of Lycidas. Michael had a dim appreciation of his
+excellence, even in the Shell: he identified him in some way with Tom
+Brown's Schooldays, with prints of Eton and Westminster, with Miss
+Carthew's tales of her brother on the Britannia. Michael recognized him
+as a character in those old calf-bound books he loved to read at home.
+Once Mr. Neech called a boy a dog-eared Rosinante, and Michael laughed
+aloud and when fiercely Mr. Neech challenged him, denying he had ever
+heard of Rosinante, Michael soon showed that he had read Don Quixote
+with some absorption. After that Mr. Neech put Michael in one of the
+favoured desks by the window and would talk to him, while he warmed his
+parchment-covered hands upon the hot-water pipes. Mr. Neech was probably
+the first person to impress Michael with the beauty of the past or
+rather to give him an impetus to arrange his own opinions. Mr. Neech,
+lamenting the old days long gone, thundering against modernity and
+denouncing the whole system of education that St. James' fostered, was
+almost the only schoolmaster with a positive personality whom Michael
+ever encountered. Michael had scarcely realized, until he reached the
+Shell, in what shadowy dates of history St. James' was already a famous
+school. Now in the vulgarity of its crimson brick, in the servility with
+which it truckled to bourgeois ideals, in the unimaginative utility it
+worshipped, Michael vaguely apprehended the loss of a soul. He would
+linger in the corridors, reading the lists of distinguished Jacobeans,
+and during Prayers he would with new interest speculate upon the lancet
+windows and their stained-glass heraldry, until vaguely in his heart
+grew a patriotism more profound than the mere joy of a football victory,
+a patriotism that submerged Hammersmith and Kensington and made him
+proud that he himself was veritably a Jacobean. He was still just as
+eager to see St. James' defeat Dulford at cricket, just as proud to read
+that St. James' had won more open scholarships at the Universities than
+some North-country grammar school; but at the same time he was consoled
+in the event of defeat by pride in the endurance of his school through
+so many years of English History.
+
+It was about this time that Michael saw in a second-hand shop a print of
+the tower of St. Mary's College, Oxford. It was an old print and the
+people small as emmets, who thronged the base of that slim and lovely
+tower, were dressed in a bygone fashion that very much appealed to
+Michael. This print gave him the same thrill he experienced in listening
+to Mr. Neech's reminiscences or in reading Don Quixote or in poring over
+the inscriptions of famous Jacobeans. Michael had already taken it as an
+axiom that one day he would go to Oxford, and now he made up his mind
+he would go to St. Mary's College. At this moment people were hurrying
+past that tower, even as they hurried in this grey print and even as
+Michael himself would one day hurry. Meanwhile, he was enjoying the
+Shell and Mr. Neech's eccentricities and the prospect of winning the
+Junior Form Cricket Shield, a victory in which Michael would participate
+as scorer for the Shell.
+
+Summer suns shone down upon the green playground of St. James' rippling
+with flannelled forms. The radiant air was filled with merry cries, with
+the sounds of bat and ball, with boyhood in action. In the great red
+mass of the school buildings the golden clock moved on through each
+day's breathless hour of cricket. The Junior Shield was won by the
+Shell, and the proud victors, after a desperate argument with Mr. Neech,
+actually persuaded him to take his place in the commemorative
+photograph. School broke up and the summer holidays began.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II: _The Quadruple Intrigue_
+
+
+Michael, although Stella was more of a tie than a companion, was shocked
+to hear that she would not accompany Miss Carthew and himself to
+Eastbourne for the summer holidays. He heard with a recurrence of the
+slight jealousy he had always felt of Stella that, though she was not
+yet eleven years old, she was going to Germany to live in a German
+family and study music. To Michael this step seemed a device to spoil
+Stella beyond the limits of toleration, and he thought with how many new
+affectations Stella would return to her native land. Moreover, why
+should Stella have all the excitement of going abroad and living abroad
+while her brother plodded to school in dull ordinary London? Michael
+felt very strongly that the balance of life was heavily weighted in
+favour of girls and he deplored the blindness of grown-up people unable
+to realize the greater attractiveness of boys. It was useless for
+Michael to protest, although he wasted an evening of Henty in arguing
+the point with Miss Carthew. Stella became primed with her own
+importance before she left England, and Michael tried to discourage her
+as much as he could by pointing out that in Germany her piano-playing
+would be laughed at and by warning her that her so evident inclination
+to show off would prejudice against her the bulk of Teutonic opinion.
+However, Michael's well-meant discouragement did not at all abash
+Stella, who under his most lugubrious prophecies trilled exasperatingly
+cheerful scales or ostentatiously folded unimportant articles of
+clothing with an exaggerated carefulness, the while she fussed with her
+hair and threw conceited glances over her shoulder into the mirror.
+Then, one day, the bonnet of a pink and yellow Fraulein bobbed from a
+cab-window, and, after a finale of affectation and condescension on the
+front-door steps for the benefit of passers-by, Stella set out for
+Germany and Michael turned back into the house with pessimistic fears
+for her future. The arrangements for Stella's transportation had caused
+some delay in Michael's holidays, and as a reward for having been forced
+to endure the sight of Stella going abroad, he was told that he might
+invite a friend to stay with him at Eastbourne during the remainder of
+the time. Such an unexpected benefaction made Michael incredulous at
+first.
+
+"Anyone I like?" he said. "For the whole of the hols? Good Lord, how
+ripping."
+
+Forthwith he set out to consider the personal advantages of all his
+friends in turn. The Macalisters as twins were ruled out; besides, of
+late the old intimacy was wearing thin, and Michael felt there were
+other chaps with more claim upon him. Norton was ruled out, because it
+would be the worst of bad form to invite him without the Macalisters and
+also because Norton was no longer on the Classical side of St. James'.
+Suddenly the idea of asking Merivale to stay with him occurred like an
+inspiration. Merivale was not at present a friend with anything like the
+pretensions of Norton or the Macalisters. Merivale could not be
+visualized in earliest Randell days, indeed he had been at a different
+private school, and it was only during this last summer term that he and
+Michael had taken to walking arm in arm during the 'quarter.' Merivale
+turned to the left when he came out of school and Michael turned to the
+right, so that they never met on their way nor walked home together
+afterwards. Nevertheless, in the course of the term, the friendship had
+grown, and once or twice Michael and Merivale had sat beneath the
+hawthorn trees, between them a stained bag of cherries in the long cool
+grass, while intermittently they clapped the boundary hits of a school
+match that was clicking drowsily its progress through the summer
+afternoon. Tentative confidences had been exchanged, and by reason of
+its slower advance towards intimacy the friendship of Michael and
+Merivale seemed built on a firmer basis than most of the sudden
+affinities of school life. Now, as Michael recalled the personality of
+Merivale with his vivid blue eyes and dull gold hair and his laugh and
+freckled nose and curiously attractive walk, he had a great desire for
+his company during the holidays. Miss Carthew was asked to write to Mrs.
+Merivale in order to give the matter the weight of authority; but
+Michael and Miss Carthew went off to Eastbourne before the answer
+arrived. The sea sparkled, a cool wind blew down from Beachy Head; the
+tamarisks on the front quivered; Eastbourne was wonderful, so wonderful
+that Michael could not believe in the probability of Merivale, and the
+more he thought about it, the more he felt sure that Mrs. Merivale would
+write a letter of polite refusal. However, as if they were all people in
+a book, everything happened according to Michael's most daringly
+optimistic hopes. Mrs. Merivale wrote a pleasant letter to Miss Carthew
+to say that her boy Alan was just now staying at Brighton with his uncle
+Captain Ross, that she had written to her brother who had written back
+to say that Alan and he would move on to Eastbourne, as it did not
+matter a bit to him where he spent the next week. Mrs. Merivale added
+that, if it were convenient, Alan might stay on with Michael when his
+uncle left. By the same post came a letter from Merivale himself to say
+that he and his uncle Kenneth were arriving next day, and that he jolly
+well hoped Fane was going to meet him at the railway station.
+
+Michael, much excited, waited until the train steamed in with its
+blurred line of carriage windows, from one of which Merivale was
+actually leaning. Michael waved: Merivale waved: the train stopped:
+Merivale jumped out: a tall man with a very fair moustache and
+close-cropped fair hair alighted after Merivale and was introduced and
+shook hands and made several jokes and was on terms of equality before
+he and Merivale and Michael had got into the blue-lined fly that was to
+drive them to Captain Ross's hotel. During the few days of Captain
+Ross's stay, he and Michael and Merivale and Miss Carthew went sailing
+and climbed up Beachy Head and watched a cricket match in Devonshire
+Park and generally behaved like all the other summer visitors to
+Eastbourne. Michael noticed that Captain Ross was very polite to Miss
+Carthew and heard with interest that they both had many friends in
+common--soldiers and sailors and Royal Marines. Michael listened to a
+great deal of talk about 'when I was quartered there' and 'when he was
+stationed at Malta' and about Gunners and Sappers and the Service. He
+himself spoke of General Mace and was greatly flattered when Captain
+Ross said he knew him by reputation as a fine old soldier. Michael was
+rather disappointed that Captain Ross was not in the Bengal Lancers, but
+he concluded that next to being in the Bengal Lancers, it was best to be
+with him in the Kintail Highlanders (the Duke of Clarence's own
+Inverness-shire Buffs).
+
+"Uncle Ken looks jolly ripping in a kilt," Merivale informed Miss
+Carthew, when on the last evening of Captain Ross's stay they were all
+sitting in the rubied light of the hotel table.
+
+"Shut up, showman," said Captain Ross, banging his nephew on the head
+with a Viennese roll.
+
+"Oh, I say, Uncle Kenneth, that loaf hurts most awfully," protested
+Merivale.
+
+"Well, don't play Barnum," said the Captain as he twirled his little
+moustache. "It's not done, my lad."
+
+When Captain Ross went away next morning, Miss Carthew at his earnest
+invitation accompanied the boys to see him off, and, as they walked out
+of the station, Merivale nudged Michael to whisper:
+
+"I say, I believe my uncle's rather gone on Miss Carthew."
+
+"Rot," said Michael. "Why, she'd be most frightfully annoyed. Besides,
+chaps' uncles don't get gone on----" Michael was going to add 'chaps'
+sisters' governesses,' but somehow he felt the remark was all wrong, and
+blushed the conclusion of the sentence.
+
+The weather grew very hot, and Miss Carthew took to sitting in a canvas
+chair and reading books on the beach, so that Michael and Merivale were
+left free to do very much as they wanted which, as Michael pointed out,
+was rather decent of her.
+
+"I say, Merivale," Michael began one day, as he and his friend, arm in
+arm, were examining the credentials of the front on a shimmering
+morning, "I say, did you notice that Miss Carthew called you Alan?"
+
+"I know. She often does," replied Merivale.
+
+"I say, Merivale," said Michael shyly, "supposing I call you Alan and
+you call me Michael--only during the hols, of course," he added hastily.
+
+"I don't mind," Alan agreed.
+
+"Because I suppose there couldn't be two chaps more friends than you and
+me," speculated Michael.
+
+"I like you more than I do any other chap," said Alan simply.
+
+"So I do you," said Michael. "And it's rather decent just to have one
+great friend who you call by his Christian name."
+
+After this Michael and Alan became very intimate and neither held a
+secret from the other, as through the crowds of seaside folk they
+threaded their way along the promenade to whatever band of minstrels had
+secured their joint devotion. They greatly preferred the Pierrots to
+the Niggers, and very soon by a week's unbroken attendance at the three
+daily sessions, Michael and Alan knew the words and music of most of the
+repertory. Of the comic songs they liked best The Dandy Coloured Coon,
+although they admired almost equally a duet whose refrain was:
+
+    "We are a couple of barmy chaps, hush, not a word!
+     A little bit loose in our tiles, perhaps, hush, not a word!
+     We're lunatics, lunatics, everybody declares
+     We're a couple of fellows gone wrong in our bellows,
+     As mad as a pair of March hares."
+
+Gradually, however, and more especially under the influence of Japanese
+lanterns and a moon-splashed sea, Michael and Alan avowed openly their
+fondness for the more serious songs sung by the Pierrettes. The words of
+one song in particular were by a reiteration of passionate utterance
+deeply printed on their memory:
+
+    "Two little girls in blue, lad,
+     Two little girls in blue,
+     They were sisters, we were brothers,
+     And learnt to love the two.
+
+     And one little girl in blue, lad,
+     Who won your father's heart,
+     Became your mother: I married the other,
+     And now we have drifted apart."
+
+This lyric seemed to Michael and Alan the most profoundly moving
+accumulation of words ever known. The sad words and poignant tune wrung
+their hearts with the tears always imminent in life. This lyric
+expressed for the two boys the incommunicable aspirations of their most
+sacred moments. As they leaned over the rail of the promenade and gazed
+down upon the pretty Pierrette whose tremolo made the night air vibrant
+with emotion, Michael and Alan were moved by a sense of fleeting time,
+by thoughts of old lovers and by an intense self-pity.
+
+"It's frightfully decent, isn't it?" murmured Michael.
+
+"Ripping," sighed Alan. "I wish I could give her more than a penny."
+
+"So do I," echoed Michael. "It's beastly being without much tin."
+
+Then 'Encore' they both shouted as the Pierrette receded from the
+crimson lantern-light into obscurity. Again she sang that song, so that
+when Michael and Alan looked solemnly up at the stars, they became
+blurred. They could not bear The Dandy Coloured Coon on such a night,
+and, seeing no chance of luring Pierrette once more into the
+lantern-light, they pushed their way through the crowd of listeners and
+walked arm in arm along the murmurous promenade.
+
+"It's beastly rotten to go to bed at a quarter past nine," Michael
+declared.
+
+"We can talk up in our room," suggested Alan.
+
+"I vote we talk about the Pierrots," said Michael, affectionately
+clasping his chum's arm.
+
+"Yes, I vote we do too," Alan agreed.
+
+The next day the Pierrots were gone. Apparently they had had a quarrel
+with the Corporation and moved farther along the South Coast. Michael
+and Alan were dismayed, and in their disgust forsook the beach for the
+shrubberies of Devonshire Park where in gloomy by-ways, laurel-shaded,
+they spoke quietly of their loss.
+
+"I wonder if we shall ever see that girl again," said Michael. "I'd know
+her anywhere. If I was grown up I'd know her. I swear I would."
+
+"She was a clinker," Alan regretted.
+
+"I don't suppose we shall ever see a girl half as pretty," Michael
+thought.
+
+"Not by a long chalk," Alan agreed. "I don't suppose there is a girl
+anywhere in the world a quarter as pretty. I think that girl was simply
+fizzing."
+
+They paced the mossy path in silence and suddenly round a corner came
+upon a bench on which were seated two girls in blue dresses. Michael and
+Alan found the coincidence so extraordinary that they stared hard, even
+when the two girls put their heads down and looked sidelong and giggled
+and thumped each other and giggled again.
+
+"I say, are you laughing at us?" demanded Michael.
+
+"Well, you looked at us first," said the fairer of the two girls.
+
+In that moment Michael fell in love.
+
+"Come away," whispered Alan. "They'll follow us if we don't."
+
+"Do you think they're at all decent?" asked Michael. "Because if you do,
+I vote we talk to them. I say, Alan, do let's anyway, for a lark."
+
+"Supposing anyone we know saw us?" queried Alan.
+
+"Well, we could say _some_thing," Michael urged. He was on fire to
+prosecute this adventure and, lest Alan should still hold back, he took
+from his pocket a feverish bag of Satin Pralines and boldly offered them
+to the girl of his choice.
+
+"I say, would you like some tuck?"
+
+The girls giggled and sat closer together; but Michael still proffered
+the sweets and at last the girl whom he admired dipped her hand into the
+bag. As all the Satin Pralines were stuck together, she brought out half
+a dozen and was so much embarrassed that she dropped the bag, after
+which she giggled.
+
+"It doesn't matter a bit," said Michael. "I can get some more. These are
+beastly squashed. I say, what's your name?"
+
+So began the quadruple intrigue of Dora and Winnie and Michael and
+Alan.
+
+Judged merely by their dress, one would have unhesitatingly set down
+Dora and Winnie as sisters; but they were unrelated and dressed alike
+merely to accentuate, as girl friends do, the unanimity of their minds.
+They were both of them older by a year or more than Michael and Alan;
+while in experience they were a generation ahead of either. The
+possession of this did not prevent them from giggling foolishly and from
+time to time looking at each other with an expression compounded of
+interrogation and shyness. Michael objected to this look, inasmuch as it
+implied their consciousness of a mental attitude in which neither he nor
+Alan had any part. He was inclined to be sulky whenever he noticed an
+exchange of glances, and very soon insisted upon a temporary separation
+by which he and Dora took one path, while Alan with Winnie pursued
+another.
+
+Dora was a neatly made child, and Michael thought the many-pleated blue
+skirt that reached down to her knees and showed as she swung along a
+foam of frizzy white petticoats very lovely. He liked, too, the curve of
+her leg and the high buttoned boots and the big blue bow in her curly
+golden hair. He admired immensely her large shady hat trimmed with
+cornflowers and the string of bangles on her wrist and her general
+effect of being almost grown up and at the same time still obviously a
+little girl. As for Dora's face, Michael found it beautiful with the
+long-lashed blue eyes and rose-leaf complexion and cleft chin and
+pouting bow mouth. Michael congratulated himself upon securing the
+prettier of the two. Winnie with her grey eyes and ordinary hair and
+dark eyebrows and waxen skin was certainly not comparable to this
+exquisite doll of his own.
+
+At first Michael was too shy to make any attempt to kiss Dora.
+Nevertheless the kissing of her ran in his mind from the beginning, and
+he would lie awake planning how the feat was to be accomplished. He was
+afraid that if suddenly he threw his arms round her, she might take
+offence and refuse to see him again. Finally he asked Alan's advice.
+
+"I say, have you ever kissed Winnie?" he called from his bed.
+
+Through the darkness came Alan's reply:
+
+"Rather not. I say, have you?"
+
+"Rather not." Then Michael added defiantly, "But I jolly well wish I
+had."
+
+"She wouldn't let you, would she?"
+
+"That's what I can't find out," Michael said despondently. "I've held
+her hand and all that sort of rot, and I've talked about how pretty I
+think she is, but it's beastly difficult. I say, you know, I don't
+believe I should ever be able to propose to a girl--you know--a girl you
+could marry--a lady. I'm tremendously gone on Dora and so are you on
+Winnie. But I don't think they're ladies, because Dora's got a sister
+who's in a pantomime and wears tights, so you see I couldn't propose to
+her. Besides, I should feel a most frightful fool going down on my knees
+in the path. Still I must kiss her somehow. Look here, Alan, if you
+promise faithfully you'll kiss Winnie to-morrow, when the clock strikes
+twelve, I'll kiss Dora. Will you? Be a decent chap and kiss Winnie, even
+if you aren't beastly keen, because I am. So will you, Alan?"
+
+There was a minute's deliberation by Alan in the darkness, and then he
+said he would.
+
+"I say, you are a clinker, Alan. Thanks most awfully."
+
+Michael turned over and settled himself down to sleep, praying for the
+good luck to dream of his little girl in blue.
+
+On the next morning Alan and Michael eyed each other bashfully across
+the breakfast table, conscious as they were of the guilty vow not yet
+fulfilled. Miss Carthew tried in vain to make them talk. They ate in
+silence, oppressed with resolutions. They saw Winnie and Dora in
+Devonshire Park at eleven o'clock, and presently went their different
+ways along the mazy paths. Michael talked of subjects most remote from
+love. He expounded to Dora the ranks of the British Army; he gave her
+tips on birds'-nesting; he told her of his ambition to join the Bengal
+Lancers and he boasted of the exploits of the St. James' Football
+Fifteen. Dora giggled the minutes away, and at five minutes to twelve
+they were on a seat, screened against humanity's intrusion. Michael
+listened with quickening pulses to the thump of tennis balls in the
+distance. At last he heard the first stroke of twelve and looked
+apprehensively towards Dora. Four more strokes sounded, but Michael
+still delayed. He wondered if Alan would keep his promise. He had heard
+no scream of dismay or startled giggle from the shrubbery. Then as the
+final stroke of midday crashed forth, he flung his arms round Dora,
+pressed her to him and in his confusion kissed very roughly the tilted
+tip of her nose.
+
+"Oh, you cheek!" she gasped.
+
+Then Michael kissed her lips, coldly though they were set against his
+love.
+
+"I say, kiss me," he whispered, with a strange new excitement crimsoning
+his cheeks and rattling his heart so loudly that he wondered if Dora
+noticed anything.
+
+"Shan't!" murmured Dora.
+
+"Do."
+
+"Oh, I couldn't," she said, wriggling herself free. "You have got a
+cheek. Fancy kissing anyone."
+
+"Dora, I'm frightfully gone on you," affirmed Michael, choking with the
+emotional declaration. "Are you gone on me?"
+
+"I like you all right," Dora confessed.
+
+"Well then, do kiss me. You might. Oh, I say, do."
+
+He leaned over and sought those unresponsive lips that, mutely cold, met
+his. He spent a long time trying to persuade her to give way, but Dora
+protested she could not understand why people kissed at all, so silly as
+it was.
+
+"But it's not," Michael protested. "Or else everybody wouldn't want to
+do it."
+
+However, it was useless to argue with Dora. She was willing to put her
+curly golden head on his shoulder, until he nearly exploded with
+sentiment; she seemed not to mind how often he pressed his lips to hers;
+but all the time she was passive, inert, drearily unresponsive. The
+deeper she seemed to shrink within herself and the colder she stayed,
+the more Michael felt inclined to hurt her, to shake her roughly, almost
+to draw blood from those soft lifeless lips. Once she murmured to him
+that he was hurting her, and Michael was in a quandary between an
+overwhelming softness of pity and an exultant desire to make her cry out
+sharply with pain. Yet as he saw that golden head upon his shoulder, the
+words and tune of 'Two little girls in blue' throbbed on the air, and
+with an aching fondness Michael felt his eyes fill with tears. Such love
+as his for Dora could never be expressed with the eloquence and passion
+it demanded.
+
+Michael and Alan had tacitly agreed to postpone all discussion of their
+passionate adventure until the blackness of night and secret intimacy of
+their bedroom made the discussion of it possible.
+
+"I say, I kissed Dora this morning," announced Michael.
+
+"So did I Winnie," said Alan.
+
+"She wouldn't kiss me, though," said Michael.
+
+"Wouldn't she?" Alan echoed in surprize, "Winnie kissed me."
+
+"She didn't!" exclaimed Michael.
+
+"She did, I swear she did. She kissed me more than I kissed her. I felt
+an awful fool. I nearly got up and walked away. Only I didn't like to."
+
+"Good Lord," apostrophized Michael. He was staggered by Alan's success
+and marvelled that Alan, who was admittedly less clever than himself,
+should conquer when he had failed. He could not understand the reason;
+but he supposed that Dora, being so obviously the prettier, was
+deservedly the more difficult to win. However, Michael felt disinclined
+to pursue the subject, because it was plain that Alan took no credit to
+himself for his success, and he wished still to be the leader in their
+friendship. He did not want Alan to feel superior in anything.
+
+The next day Miss Carthew was laid up in bed with a sick headache, so
+that Michael and Alan were free to take Dora and Winnie upon the
+promenade without the risk of detection. Accordingly, when they met in
+Devonshire Park, Michael proposed this public walk. He was the more
+willing to go, because since Alan's revelation of Winnie, he took a
+certain pleasure in denying to her the attraction of Alan's company.
+Winnie was not very anxious for the walk, but Dora seemed highly
+pleased, and Dora, being the leader of the pair, Winnie had to give way.
+While they strolled up and down the promenade in a row, Dora pointed out
+to Michael and Alan in how many respects they both failed to conform to
+the standards of smartness, as she conceived them. For instance, neither
+of them carried a stick and neither of them wore a tie of any
+distinction. Dora called their attention to the perfectly dressed youths
+of the promenade with their high collars and butterfly ties and Wanghee
+canes and pointed boots and vivid waistcoats.
+
+After the walk the boys discussed Dora's criticism and owned that she
+was right. They marshalled their money and bought made-up bow-ties of
+purple and pink that were twisted round the stud with elastic and held
+in position by a crescent of whalebone. They bought made-up white silk
+knotted ties sown with crimson fleurs-de-lys and impaled with a
+permanent brass horseshoe. They spent a long time in the morning
+plastering back their hair with soap and water, while in the ribbons of
+their straw hats they pinned inscribed medallions. Finally they
+purchased Wanghee canes and when they met their two little girls in
+blue, the latter both averred that Michael and Alan were much improved.
+
+Miss Carthew remained ill for two or three days; so Michael and Alan
+were able to display themselves and their sweethearts all the length of
+the promenade. They took to noticing the cut of a coat as it went by and
+envied the pockets of the youths they met; they envied, too, the collars
+that surrounded the adolescent neck, and wished the time had come for
+them to wear 'chokers.' Sometimes, before they undressed, they would try
+to pin round their necks stiff sheets of note-paper in order to gauge,
+however slightly, the effect of high collars on their appearance.
+
+The weather was now steadily fine and hot, and Michael begged Miss
+Carthew to let him and Alan buy two blazers and cricket belts. Somewhat
+to his surprize, she made no objection, and presently Michael and Alan
+appeared upon the front in white trousers, blue and yellow blazers and
+cherry-coloured silk belts fastened in front by a convenient metal
+snake. Dora thought they looked 'all right,' and, as Miss Carthew had
+succumbed again to her headache, Michael and Alan were free to swagger
+up and down on the melting asphalt of the promenade. Miss Carthew grew
+no better, and one day she told the boys that Nancy was coming down to
+look after them. Michael did not know whether he were really glad or
+not, because, fond as he was of Nancy, he was deeply in love with Dora
+and he had a feeling that Nancy would interfere with the intrigues. In
+the end, as it happened, Nancy arrived by some mistake on the day before
+she was expected and, setting forth to look for the boys, she walked
+straight into them arm in arm with Dora and Winnie. Michael was very
+much upset, and told the girls to scoot, a command which they obeyed by
+rushing across the road, giggling loudly, standing on the opposite curb
+and continuing to giggle.
+
+"Hullo!" said Nancy, "who are your young friends in blue cashmere?"
+
+Michael blushed and said quickly they were friends of Alan, but Alan
+would not accept the responsibility.
+
+"Well, I don't admire your taste," said Nancy contemptuously. "No, and I
+don't admire your get-up," she went on. "Did you pick those canes up on
+the beach, what?"
+
+"We bought them," said Michael, rather affronted.
+
+"My goodness," said Nancy. "What dreadful-looking things. I say,
+Michael, you're in a fair way towards looking like a thorough young
+bounder. Don't you come to Cobble Place with that button on your hat.
+Well, don't let me disturb you. Cut off to the Camera Obscura with
+Gertie and Evangeline. I don't expect I'm smart enough for you two."
+
+"We don't particularly want to go with those girls," said Michael,
+looking down at his boots, very red and biting his under-lip. Alan was
+blushing too and greatly abashed.
+
+"Well," said the relentless Nancy, "it's a pity you don't black your
+faces, for I never saw two people look more like nigger minstrels. Where
+_did_ you get that tie? No wonder my sister feels bad. That belt of
+yours, Michael, would give a South Sea Islander a headache. Go on, hurry
+off like good little boys," she jeered. "Flossie and Cissie are waiting
+for you."
+
+Michael could not help admitting, as he suffered this persiflage from
+Nancy, that Dora and Winnie did look rather common, and he wished they
+would not stand, almost within earshot, giggling and prodding each
+other. Then suddenly Michael began to hate Dora and the quadruple
+intrigue was broken up.
+
+"I say, Alan," he said, looking up again, "let's bung these sticks into
+the sea. They're rotten sticks."
+
+Alan at once threw his as far as it would go and betted Michael he would
+not beat the distance. So Michael's stick followed its companion into
+oblivion. Nancy was great sport, after all, as both boys admitted, and
+when Michael grazed his finger very slightly on a barnacled rock, he
+bandaged it up with his silk tie. Very soon he discovered the cut was
+not at all serious, but he announced the tie was spoilt and dipped it
+casually into a rock pool, where it floated blatantly among the anemones
+and rose-plumed seaweed. Alan's tie vanished less obtrusively: no one
+noticed when or where. As for the buttons inscribed with mottoes they
+became insignificant units in the millions of pebbles on the beach.
+
+Nancy was great sport and ready to do whatever the boys suggested in the
+way of rock-climbing and walking, provided they would give her due
+notice, so that she could get into a hockey skirt and thick shoes. They
+had fine blowy days with Nancy up on Beachy Head above the sparkling
+blue water. They caught many blue butterflies, but never the famous
+Mazarin blue which legend in the butterfly-book said had once been taken
+near Eastbourne.
+
+Michael and Alan, even in the dark privacy of their room, did not speak
+again of Dora and Winnie. Michael had an idea that Alan had always been
+ashamed of the business, and felt mean when he thought how he had openly
+told Nancy that they were his friends. Once or twice, when Michael was
+lying on his back, staring up at the sky over Beachy Head, the wind
+lisping round him sadly made him feel sentimental, but sentimental in a
+dominion where Dora and Winnie were unknown, where they would have been
+regarded as unpleasant intruders. Up here in the daisy's eye, the two
+little girls in blue seemed tawdry and took their place in the
+atmosphere of Michael's earlier childhood with Mrs. Frith's tales and
+Annie's love-letters. For Michael the whole affair now seemed like the
+half-remembered dreams which, however pleasant at the time, repelled him
+in the recollection of them. Moreover, he had experienced a sense of
+inequality in his passion for Dora. He gave all: she returned nothing.
+Looking back at her now under the sailing clouds, he thought her nose
+was ugly, her mouth flabby, her voice odious and her hair beastly. He
+blushed at the memory of the ridiculous names he had called her, at the
+contemplation of his enthusiastic praise of her beauty to Alan. He was
+glad that Alan had been involved, however unwillingly. Otherwise he was
+almost afraid he would have avoided Alan in future, unable to bear the
+injury to his pride. This sad sensation promoted by the wind in the
+grasses, by the movement of the clouds and the companionship of Alan and
+Nancy, was more thrilling than the Pierrette's tremolo in the lantern
+light. Michael's soul was flooded with a vast affection for Alan and for
+Nancy. He wished that they all could stay here in the wind for ever. It
+was depressing to think of the autumn rain and the dreary gaslit hours
+of afternoon school. And yet it was not depressing at all, for he and
+Alan might be able to achieve the same class. It would be difficult, for
+Michael knew that he himself must inevitably be moved up two forms,
+while Alan was only in the Upper Third now and could scarcely from being
+ninth in his class get beyond the Lower Fourth, even if he escaped the
+Shell. How Michael wished that Alan could go into the Special for a
+time, and how pleasant it would be suddenly to behold Alan's entrance
+into his class, so that, without unduly attracting attention, he could
+manage to secure a desk for Alan next to himself.
+
+But when Michael and Alan (now again the austere Fane and Merivale) went
+back to school, Michael was in the Middle Fourth, and Alan just missed
+the double remove and inherited Michael's scrabbled desk in the Shell.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter III: _Pastoral_
+
+
+The new term opened inauspiciously; for Miss Carthew fell ill again more
+seriously, and Michael's mother came back, seeming cross and worried.
+She settled that, as she could not stay at home for long, Michael must
+be a boarder for a year. Michael did not at all like this idea, and
+begged that Nancy might come and look after him. But Mrs. Fane told him
+not to make everything more difficult than it was already by grumbling
+and impossible suggestions. Michael was overcome by his mother's
+crossness and said no more. Mrs. Fane announced her intention of
+shutting up the house in Carlington Road and of coming back in the
+summer to live permanently at home, when Michael would be able to be a
+day-boy again. Mrs. Fane seemed injured all the time she had to spend in
+making arrangements for Michael to go to Mr. Wheeler's House. She wished
+that people would not get ill just when it was most inconvenient. She
+could not understand why everything happened at exactly the wrong
+moment, and she was altogether different from the tranquil and lovely
+lady whom Michael had hitherto known. However, the windows of Number 64
+were covered with newspapers, the curtain-poles were stripped bare, the
+furniture stood heaped in the middle of rooms under billowy sheets, and
+Michael drove up with all his luggage to the gaunt boarding-house of Mr.
+Wheeler that overlooked the School ground.
+
+Michael knew that the alteration in his status would make a great
+difference. Long ago he remembered how his friendship with Buckley had
+been finally severed by the breaking up of Buckley's home and the
+collapse of all Buckley's previous opinions. Michael now found himself
+in similar case. To be sure, there was not at St. James' the same icy
+river of prejudice between boarders and day-boys which divided them so
+irreparably at Randell's. Nevertheless, it was impossible for a boarder
+to preserve unspoilt a real intimacy with a day-boy. To begin with, all
+sorts of new rules about streets being in and out of bounds made it
+impossible to keep up those delightful walks home with boys who went in
+the same direction as oneself. There was no longer that hurried appeal
+to 'wait for me at five o'clock' as one passed a friend in the
+helter-skelter of reaching the class-room, when the five minutes' bell
+had stopped and the clock was already chiming three. It was not
+etiquette among the boarders of the four Houses to walk home with
+day-boys except in a large and amorphous company of both. It was
+impossible to go to tea with day-boys on Saturday afternoons without
+special leave both from the Housemaster and from the captain of the
+House. A boarder was tied down mercilessly to athletics, particularly to
+rowing, which was the pride of the Houses and was exalted by them above
+every other branch of sport. Michael, as a promising light-weight, had
+to swim, every Saturday, until he could pass the swimming test at the
+Paddington Baths, when he became a member of the rowing club, in order
+to cox the House four. It did not add to his satisfaction with life,
+when by his alleged bad steering Wheeler's House was beaten by Marlowe's
+House coxed by the objectionable Buckley, now on the Modern Side and, as
+a result of his capable handling of the ropes likely to be cox of the
+School Eight in the race against Dulford from Putney Bridge to
+Hammersmith. The Christmas holidays were a dismal business in Mr.
+Wheeler's empty barracks. To be sure, Mrs. Wheeler made herself as
+plumply agreeable as she could; but the boredom of it all was
+exasperating and was only sustained by reading every volume that Henty
+had ever written. Four weeks never dragged so endlessly, even in the
+glooms of Carlington Road under Nurse's rule. The Lent term with its
+persistent rowing practice on the muddy Thames was almost as bad as the
+holidays. Michael hated the barges that bore down upon him and the
+watermen who pulled across the bows of his boat. He hated the mudlarks
+by the river-side who jeered as he followed the crew into the School
+boathouse, and he loathed the walk home with the older boys who talked
+incessantly of their own affairs. Nor did the culminating disaster of
+the defeat by Marlowe's House mitigate his lot. When the Lent term was
+over, to his great disappointment, some domestic trouble made it
+impossible for Michael to spend the Easter holidays with Alan, so that
+instead of three weeks to weld again that friendship in April
+wanderings, in finding an early white-throat's nest in the front of May,
+and in all the long imagined delights of spring, Michael was left again
+with Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler to spend a month of rain at a bleak
+golf-resort, where he was only kept from an unvoiced misery by reading
+'Brother takes the hand of brother' in Longfellow's Psalm of Life,
+melting thereat into a flood of tears that relieved his lonely
+oppression.
+
+Even the summer term was a bondage with its incessant fagging for balls,
+while the lords of the House practised assiduously at the nets. He and
+Alan walked together sometimes during the 'quarter' and held on to the
+stray threads of their friendship that still resisted the exacting knife
+of the House's etiquette; but it became increasingly difficult under the
+stress of boarding-school existence. Indeed, it was only the knowledge
+that this summer term would end the miserable time and that Alan was
+catching up to Michael's class which supported the two friends through
+their exile. Michael was savagely jealous when he saw Alan leaving the
+School at five o'clock arm in arm with another boy. He used to sulk for
+a week afterwards, avoiding Alan in the 'quarter' and ostentatiously
+burying himself in a group of boarders. And if Alan would affectionately
+catch him up when he was alone, Michael would turn on him and with
+bitter taunts suggest that Alan's condescension was unnecessary. In
+School itself Michael was bored by his sojourn both in the Middle Fourth
+and in the Upper Fourth B. The Cicero and the Thucydides were vilely
+dull; all the dullest books of the AEneid were carefully chosen, while
+Mr. Marjoribanks and Mr. Gale were both very dull teachers. At the end
+of the summer examinations, Michael found himself at the bottom of the
+Upper Fourth B in Classics, in Drawing and in English. However, the
+knowledge that next term would now inevitably find him and Alan in the
+same class, meeting again as equals, as day-boys gloriously free,
+sustained him through a thunderous interview with Dr. Brownjohn. He
+emerged from the Doctor's study in a confusion of abusive epithets to
+find Alan loyally waiting for him by the great plaster cast of the
+Laocoon.
+
+"Damn old Brownjohn," growled Michael. "I think he's the damnedest old
+beast that ever lived. I do hate him."
+
+"Oh, bother him," cried Alan, dancing with excitement. "Look here, I
+say, at this telegram. It's just arrived. The porter was frightfully
+sick at having to give me a telegram. He is a sidy swine. What _do_ you
+think? My uncle is going to marry Miss Carthew?"
+
+"Get out," scoffed Michael, whose brain, overwhelmed by the pealing
+thunders of his late interview, refused to register any more shocks.
+
+"No, really. Read this."
+
+Michael took the piece of paper and read the news. But he was still
+under the influence of a bad year, and instead of dancing with Alan to
+the tune of his excitement, grumbled:
+
+"Well, why didn't Miss Carthew send a telegram to me? I think she might
+have. I believe this is all bally rot."
+
+Alan's face changed, changed indeed to an expression of such absolute
+disappointment that Michael was touched and, forgetting all that he had
+endured, thrust his arm into Alan's arm and murmured:
+
+"By Jove, old Alan, it is rather decent, isn't it?"
+
+When Michael reached the House, he found a letter from Miss Carthew,
+which consoled him for that bad year and made him still more penitent
+for his late ungraciousness towards Alan.
+
+     COBBLE PLACE,
+
+     _My dear old Michael_, _July 27_.
+
+     _You will be tremendously surprized to hear that I am going to
+     marry Captain Ross. I fancy I can hear you say 'What rot, I don't
+     believe it!' But I am, and of course you can understand how
+     gloriously happy I feel, for you know how much you liked him. Poor
+     old boy, I'm afraid you've had a horrid time all this year and I
+     wish I hadn't been so stupid as to get ill, but never mind, it's
+     over now and Captain Ross and I are coming up to London to fetch
+     you and Alan down here to spend the whole of the holidays and make
+     the wedding a great success. May, Joan and Nancy and my mother all
+     send their very best love and Nancy says she's looking forward to
+     your new ties (I don't know what obscure jest of hers this is) and
+     also to hear of your engagement (silly girl!). I shall see you on
+     Wednesday and you're going to have splendid holidays, I can promise
+     you. Your mother writes to say that she is coming back to live at
+     home in September, so there'll be no more boarding-school for you.
+     Stella wrote to me from Germany and I hear from Frau Weingardt that
+     everybody prophesies a triumphant career for her, so don't snub her
+     when she comes back for her holidays in the autumn. Just be as nice
+     as you can, and you can be very nice if you like. Will you? Now,
+     dear old boy, my best love till we meet on Wednesday._
+
+     _Your loving_
+
+     _Maud Carthew._
+
+Then indeed Michael felt that life was the finest thing conceivable, and
+in a burst of affectionate duty wrote a long letter to Stella, giving
+with every detail an account of how Wheeler's beat Marlowe's at cricket,
+including the running-out of that beast Buckley by Michael amidst the
+plaudits of his House. Next morning Alan told him that his mother was
+frightfully keen for Michael to stay with them at Richmond, until his
+Uncle Ken and Miss Carthew arrived; and so Michael by special leave from
+Mr. Wheeler left the House a day or two before the others and had the
+exquisite pleasure of travelling up with Alan by the District Railway to
+Hammersmith Broadway for a few mornings, and of walking arm in arm with
+Alan through the School gates. Mrs. Merivale was as pretty as ever,
+almost as pretty as his own beautiful mother, and Mr. Merivale
+entertained Michael and Alan with his conjuring tricks and his
+phonograph and his ridiculous puns. Even when they reached the gate in a
+summer shower and ran past the sweet-smelling rose trees in the garden,
+Mr. Merivale shouted from the front door 'Hallo, here come the
+Weterans,' but when he had been severely punched for so disgraceful a
+joke, he was flatly impenitent and made half a dozen more puns
+immediately afterwards. In a day or two Miss Carthew and Captain Ross
+arrived, and after they had spent long mysterious days shopping in town,
+Michael and Alan and Miss Carthew and Captain Ross travelled down to
+Hampshire--the jolliest railway party that was ever known.
+
+Nothing at Basingstead Minor seemed to have changed in five years, from
+the dun pony to the phloxes in the garden, from the fantail pigeons to
+the gardener who fed the pigs. Michael spent all the first few hours in
+rapid renewals of friendship with scenery and animals, dragging Alan at
+his heels and even suggesting about ten minutes before the gong would
+sound for dinner that they should bunk round and borrow the key of the
+tower on the hill. He and Alan slept up in the roof in a delightful
+impromptu of a room with uneven bare floor and sloping ceiling and above
+their beds a trap-door into an apple loft. There were at least half a
+dozen windows with every possible aspect to the neat high road and the
+stable-yard and the sun-dyed garden and the tall hills beyond. August
+was a blaze of blue and green and gold that year, but everybody at
+Cobble Place was busy getting ready for the wedding and Michael and Alan
+had the countryside to themselves. Their chief enterprize was the
+exploration of the sources of the stream in a canoe and a fixed
+endeavour to reach Basingstead Major by water. Early in the morning they
+would set out, well equipped with scarlet cushions and butterfly-nets
+and poison-bottles and sandwiches and stone bottles of ginger beer and
+various illustrated papers and Duke's Cameo cigarettes. Michael now paid
+fivepence for ten instead of a penny for five cigarettes: he also had a
+pipe of elegantly tenuous shape, which was knocked out so often that it
+looked quite old, although it was scarcely coloured at all by tobacco
+smoke. Nowadays he did not bother to chew highly scented sweets after
+smoking, because Captain Ross smoked so much that all the blame of
+suspicious odours could be laid on him.
+
+Those were halcyon days on that swift Hampshire river. Michael and Alan
+would have to paddle hard all the morning scarcely making any progress
+against the stream. Every opportunity to moor the canoe was taken
+advantage of; and the number of Marsh Fritillaries that were sacrificed
+to justify a landing in rich water-meadows was enormous.
+
+"Never mind," Michael used to say, "they'll do for swaps."
+
+Through the dazzling weather the kingfishers with wings of blue fire
+would travel up and down the stream. The harvest was at its height and
+in unseen meadows sounded the throb of the reaper and binder, while
+close at hand above the splash and gurgle of the rhythmic paddles could
+be heard the munching of cattle. To left and right of the urgent boat
+darted the silver companies of dace, and deep in brown embayed pools
+swam the fat nebulous forms of chub. Sometimes the stream, narrowing
+where a large tree-trunk had fallen, gushed by their prow and called for
+every muscle to stand out, for every inch to be fought, for every blade
+of grass to be clutched before the canoe won a way through. Sometimes
+the stream widened to purling rapids and scarcely would even a canoe
+float upon the diamonded rivulets and tumbling pebbles and silting
+silver sand, so that Michael and Alan would have to disembark and drag
+the boat to deeper water. Quickly the morning went by, long before the
+source of the stream was found, long before even the village of
+Basingstead Major was reached. Some fathomless millpool would hold
+Michael and Alan with its hollow waterfall and overarching trees and
+gigantic pike. Here grew, dipping down to the water, sprays of
+dewberries, and here, remote even from twittering warblers and the
+distant harvest cries, Michael and Alan drowsed away the afternoon. They
+scarcely spoke, for they were too well contented with the languorous
+weather. Sometimes one of them would clothe a dream with a boy's slang,
+and that was all. Then, when the harvesters had long gone home and when
+the last cow was stalled, and when the rabbits were scampering by the
+edge of the sloping woodlands, Michael and Alan would unmoor their canoe
+and glide homeward with the stream. Through the deepening silence their
+boat would swing soundlessly past the purple loosestrife and the creamy
+meadowsweet, past the yellow loosestrife and scented rushes and the
+misted blue banks of cranesbill, past the figwort and the little yellow
+waterlilies, while always before their advance the voles plumped into
+the water one by one and in hawthorn bushes the wings of roosting birds
+fluttered. Around them on every side crept the mist in whose silver
+muteness they landed to gather white mushrooms. Home they would come
+drenched with dew, and arm in arm they would steal up the dusky garden
+to the rose-red lamps and twinkling golden candlelight of Cobble Place.
+
+In the actual week before the wedding Michael and Alan were kept far too
+busy to explore streams. They ran from one end of Basingstead Minor to
+the other and back about a dozen times a day. They left instructions
+with various old ladies in the village at whose cottages guests were
+staying. They carried complicated floral messages from Mrs. Carthew to
+the Vicar and equally complicated floral replies from the Vicar to Mrs.
+Carthew. They were allowed to drive the aged dun pony to meet Mr. and
+Mrs. Merivale on the day before the wedding and had great jokes with Mr.
+Merivale because he would say that it was an underdone pony and because
+he would not believe that dun was spelt d-u-n. As for the wedding-day
+itself, it was for Michael and Alan one long message interrupted only by
+an argument with the cook with regard to the amount of rice they had a
+right to take.
+
+Michael felt very shy at the reception and managed to avoid calling Miss
+Carthew Mrs. Ross; although Alan distinctly addressed her once with
+great boldness as Aunt Maud, for which he was violently punched in the
+ribs by Michael, as with stifled laughter they both rushed headlong from
+the room. However, they came back to hear old Major Carthew proposing
+the bride and bridegroom's health and plunged themselves into a corner
+with handkerchiefs stuffed into their mouths to listen to Captain Ross
+stammer an embarrassed reply. They were both much relieved when Mr.
+Merivale by a series of the most atrocious puns allowed their laughter
+to flow forth without restraint. All the guests went back to London
+later in the afternoon and Michael and Alan were left to the supervision
+of Nancy, who had promised to take them out for a day's shooting. They
+had a wonderful day over the flickering September stubble. Michael shot
+a lark by mistake and Alan wounded a land-rail; Nancy, however, redeemed
+the party's credit by bagging three brace of fat French partridges
+which, when eaten, tasted like pigeons, because the boys could not bear
+to wait for them to be hung even for two hours.
+
+Michael had a conversation with Mrs. Carthew one afternoon, while they
+paced slowly and regularly the gay path beside the sunny red wall of the
+garden.
+
+"Well, how do you like school now?" she asked. "Dear me, I must say
+you're greatly improved," she went on. "Really, when you came here five
+years ago, you were much too delicate-looking."
+
+Michael kicked the gravel and tried to turn the trend of the
+conversation by admiring the plums on the wall, but Mrs. Carthew went
+on.
+
+"Now you really look quite a boy. You and Alan both slouch abominably,
+and I cannot think why boys always walk on one side of their boots. I
+must say I do not like delicate boys. My own boy was always such a boy."
+Mrs. Carthew sighed and Michael looked very solemn.
+
+"Well, do you like school?" she asked.
+
+"I like holidays better," answered Michael.
+
+"I'm delighted to hear it," Mrs. Carthew said decidedly.
+
+"I thought last year was beastly," said Michael. "You see I was a
+boarder and that's rot, if you were a day-boy ever, at least I think so.
+Alan and me are in the same form next term. We're going to have a most
+frightful spree. We're going to do everything together. I expect school
+won't be half bad then."
+
+"Your mother's going to be at home, isn't she?" Mrs. Carthew enquired.
+
+"Yes. Rather," said Michael. "It will be awfully rum. She's always away,
+you know. I wonder why."
+
+"I expect she likes travelling about," said Mrs. Carthew.
+
+"Yes, I expect she does," Michael agreed. "But don't you think it's very
+rum that I haven't got any uncles or aunts or any relations? I do. I
+never meet people who say they knew my father like Alan does and like
+Miss--like Mrs. Ross does. Once I went with my mater to see an awfully
+decent chap called Lord Saxby and my name's Saxby. Do you think he's a
+relation? I asked the mater, but she said something about not asking
+silly questions."
+
+"Humph!" said Mrs, Carthew, as she adjusted her spectacles to examine an
+espalier of favourite peaches. "I think you'll have to be very good to
+your mother," she continued after a minute's silence.
+
+"Oh, rather," assented Michael vaguely.
+
+"You must always remember that you have a particular responsibility, as
+you will be alone with her for a long time, and, no doubt, she has given
+up a great deal of what she most enjoys in order to stay with you. So
+don't think only of yourself."
+
+"Oh, rather not," said Michael.
+
+In his heart he felt while Mrs. Carthew was speaking a sense of remote
+anxiety. He could not understand why, as soon as he asked any direct
+questions, mystery enveloped his world. He had grown used to this in
+Miss Carthew's case, but Mrs. Carthew was just as unapproachable. He
+began to wonder if there really were some mystery about himself. He knew
+the habit among grown-up people of wrapping everything in a veil of
+uncertainty, but in his case it was so universally adopted that he began
+to be suspicious and determined to question his mother relentlessly, to
+lay conversational traps for her and thereby gain bit by bit the details
+of his situation. He was older now and had already heard such rumours of
+the real life of the world that a chimera of unpleasant possibilities
+was rapidly forming. Left alone, he began to speculate perpetually about
+himself, to brood over anxious guesses. Perhaps his father was in
+prison and not dead at all. Perhaps his father was in a lunatic asylum.
+Perhaps he himself had been a foundling laid on the doorstep long ago,
+belonging neither to his mother nor to anyone else. He racked his brain
+for light from the past to be shed upon his present perplexity, but he
+could recall no flaw in the care with which his ignorance had been
+cherished.
+
+When Michael reached Carlington Road on a fine September afternoon and
+saw the window-boxes of crimson and white petunias and the sunlight
+streaming down upon the red-brick houses, he was glad to be home again
+in familiar Sixty-four. Inside it had all been re-papered and
+re-painted. Every room was much more beautiful and his mother was glad
+to see him. She took him round all the new rooms and hugged him close
+and was her slim and lovely self again. Actually, among many surprizes,
+Michael was to have the old gloomy morning-room for himself and his
+friends. It looked altogether different now in the chequered sunlight of
+the plane tree. The walls had been papered with scenes from cow-boy
+life. There were new cupboards and shelves full of new books and an
+asbestos gas fire. There were some jolly chairs and a small desk which
+almost invited one to compose Iambics.
+
+"Can I really have chaps to tea every Saturday?" Michael asked,
+stupefied with pleasure.
+
+"Whenever you like, dearest boy."
+
+"By Jove, how horribly decent," said Michael.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IV: _Boyhood's Glory_
+
+
+When at the beginning of term a melancholy senior boy, meeting Michael
+in one of the corridors during the actual excitement of the move, asked
+him what form he was going into and heard he was on the road to
+Caryll's, this boy sighed, and exclaimed:
+
+"Lucky young devil."
+
+"Why?" asked Michael, pushing his way through the diversely flowing
+streams of boys who carried household gods to new class-rooms.
+
+"Why, haven't you ever heard old Caryll is the greatest topper that ever
+walked?"
+
+"I've heard he's rather a decent sort."
+
+"Chaps have said to me--chaps who've left, I mean," explained the
+lantern-jawed adviser, "that the year with Caryll is the best year of
+all your life."
+
+Michael looked incredulous.
+
+"You won't think so," prophesied Lantern-jaws gloomily. "Of course you
+won't." Then with a sigh, that was audible above the shuffling feet
+along the corridors, he turned to enter a mathematical class-room where
+Michael caught a glimpse of trigonometrical mysteries upon a blackboard,
+as he himself hurried by with his armful of books towards Caryll's
+class-room. He hoped Alan had bagged two desks next to each other in the
+back row; but unfortunately this scheme was upset by Mr. Caryll's
+proposal that the Upper Fourth A should for the present sit in
+alphabetical order. There was only one unit between Michael and Alan, a
+persevering and freckled Jew called Levy, whose life was made a burden
+to him in consequence of his interposition.
+
+Mr. Caryll was an old clergyman reputed in school traditions to be
+verging on ninety. Michael scarcely thought he could be so old, when he
+saw him walking to school with rapid little steps and a back as straight
+and soldierly as General Mace's. Mr. Caryll had many idiosyncrasies,
+amongst others a rasping cough which punctuated all his sentences and a
+curious habit of combining three pairs of spectacles according to his
+distance from the object in view. Nobody ever discovered the exact range
+of these spectacles; but, to reckon broadly, three pairs at once were
+necessary for an exercise on the desk before him and for the antics of
+the back row of desks only one. Mr. Caryll was so deaf, that the loudest
+turmoil in the back row reached him in the form of a whisper that made
+him intensely suspicious of cribbing; but, as he could never remember
+where any boy was sitting, by the time he had put on or taken off one of
+his pairs of glasses, the noise had opportunity to subside and the
+authors were able to compose their countenances for the sharp scrutiny
+which followed. Mr. Caryll always expected every pupil to cheat and
+invented various stratagems to prevent this vice. In a temper he was
+apparently the most cynical of men, but as his temper never lasted long
+enough for him to focus his vision upon the suspected person, he was in
+practice the blandest and most amiable of old gentlemen. He could never
+resist even the most obvious joke, and his form pandered shamelessly to
+this fondness of his, so that, when he made a pun, they would rock with
+laughter, stamp their feet on the floor and bang the lids of their desks
+to express their appreciation. This hullabaloo, which reached Mr. Caryll
+in the guise of a mild titter, affording him the utmost satisfaction,
+could be heard even in distant class-rooms, and sometimes serious
+mathematical masters in the throes of algebra would send polite
+messages to beg Mr. Caryll kindly to keep his class more quiet.
+
+Michael and Alan often enjoyed themselves boundlessly in Mr. Caryll's
+form. Sometimes they would deliberately misconstrue Cicero to beget a
+joke, as when Michael translated 'abjectique homines' by 'cast-off men'
+to afford Mr. Caryll the chance of saying, "Tut-tut. The great booby's
+thinking of his cast-off clothing." Michael and Alan used to ask for
+leave to light the gas on foggy afternoons, and with an imitation of Mr.
+Caryll's rasping cough they would manage to extinguish one by one a
+whole box of matches to the immense entertainment of the Upper Fourth A.
+They dug pens into the diligent Levy: they stuck the lid of his desk
+with a row of thin gelatine lozenges in order that, when after a
+struggle he managed to open it, the lid should fly up and hit him a blow
+on the chin. They loosed blackbeetles in the middle of Greek Testament
+and pretended to be very much afraid while Mr. Caryll stamped upon them
+one by one, deriding their cowardice. They threw paper darts and paper
+pellets with unerring aim: they put drawing-pins in the seat of a fat
+and industrious German called Wertheim: they filled up all the ink-pots
+in the form with blotting-paper and crossed every single nib. They
+played xylophonic tunes with penholders on the desk's edge and carved
+their initials inside: they wrote their names in ink and made the
+inscription permanent by rubbing it over with blotting-paper. They were
+seized with sudden and unaccountable fits of bleeding from the nose to
+gain a short exeat to stand in the fresh air by the Fives Courts. They
+built up ramparts of dictionaries in the forefront of their desks to
+play noughts and crosses without detection: they soaked with ink all the
+chalk for the blackboard and divested Levy of his boots which they
+passed round the form during 'rep': they made elaborate jointed rods
+with foolscap to prod otherwise unassailable boys at the other end of
+the room and when, during the argument which followed the mutual
+correction by desk-neighbours of Mr. Caryll's weekly examination paper,
+they observed an earnest group of questioners gathered round the
+master's dais, they would charge into them from behind so violently that
+the front row, generally consisting of the more eager and laborious
+boys, was precipitated against Mr. Caryll's chair to the confusion of
+labour and eagerness. Retribution followed very seldom in the shape of
+impots; and even they were soon done by means of an elaborate
+arrangement by which six pens lashed together did six times the work of
+one. Sometimes Michael or Alan would be invited to move their desks out
+close to Mr. Caryll's dais of authority for a week's disgrace; but even
+this punishment included as compensation a position facing the class and
+therefore the opportunity to play the buffoon for its benefit. Sometimes
+Michael or Alan would be ejected with vituperation from the class-room
+to spend an hour in the corridor without. Unfortunately they were never
+ejected together, and anyway it was an uneasy experience on account of
+Dr. Brownjohn's habit of swinging round a corner and demanding a reason
+for the discovery of a loiterer in the corridor. The first time he
+appeared, it was always possible by assuming an air of intentness and by
+walking towards him very quickly to convey the impression of one upon an
+urgent errand; but when Dr. Brownjohn loomed on his return journey, it
+was necessary to evade his savage glance by creeping round the great
+cast of the Antinous that fronted the corridor. On one of these
+occasions Michael in his nervousness shook the statue and an insecurely
+dependent fig-leaf fell with a crash on to the floor. Michael nearly
+flung himself over the well of the main staircase in horror, but deaf
+Dr. Brownjohn swung past into a gloom beyond, and presently Michael was
+relieved by the grinning face of a compatriot beckoning permission to
+re-enter the class-room. Safely inside, the fall of the fig-leaf was
+made out by Michael to be an act of deliberate daring on his part, and
+when at one o'clock the form rushed out to verify the boast, his
+position was tremendously enhanced. The news flew round the school, and
+several senior boys were observed in conversation with Michael, so that
+he was able to swagger considerably. Also he turned up his trousers a
+full two inches higher and parted his hair on the right-hand side, a
+mode which had long attracted his ambition.
+
+Now, indeed, were Michael and Alan in the zenith of boyhood's glory. No
+longer did they creep diffidently down the corridors; no longer did they
+dread to run the gauntlet of a Modern class lined up on either side to
+await the form-master's appearance. If some louts in the Modern Fourth
+dared to push them from side to side, as they went by, Michael and Alan
+would begin to fight and would shout, 'You stinking Modern beasts!
+Classics to the rescue!' To their rescue would pour the heroes of the
+Upper Fourth A. Down went the Modern textbooks of Chemistry and Physics,
+and ignominiously were they hacked along the corridor. Doubled up by a
+swinging blow from a bag stood the leader of the Moderns, grunting and
+gasping in his windless agony. Back to the serenity of Virgilian airs
+went the Upper Fourth A, with Michael and Alan arm in arm amid their
+escort, and most dejectedly did the Modern cads gather up their
+scientific textbooks; but during the 'quarter' great was the battle
+waged on the 'gravel'--that haunt of thumb-biting, acrimonious and
+uneasy factions. Michael and Alan were not yet troubled with the fevers
+of adolescence. They were cool and clear and joyous as the mountain
+torrent: for them life was a crystal of laughter, many-faceted to
+adventure. Theirs was now that sexless interlude before the Eton collar
+gave way to the 'stick up' and before the Eton jacket, trim and jaunty,
+was discarded for an ill-fitting suit that imitated the dull garb of a
+man. No longer were Michael and Alan grubby and inky: no longer did they
+fill their pockets with an agglomeration of messes: no longer did their
+hair sprout in bistre sparseness, for now Michael and Alan were vain of
+the golden lights and chestnut shadows, not because girls mattered, but
+because like Narcissus they perceived themselves in the mirror of
+popular admiration. Now they affected very light trousers and very broad
+collars and shoes and unwrinkling socks and cuffs that gleamed very
+white. They looked back with detestation upon the excesses of costume
+induced by the quadruple intrigue, and they congratulated themselves
+that no one of importance had beheld their lapse.
+
+Michael and Alan were lords of Little Side football and in their
+treatment of the underlings stretched the prerogatives of greatness to
+the limit. They swaggered on to the field of play, where in combination
+on the left wing they brought off feats of astonishing swiftness and
+agility. Michael used to watch Alan seeming very fair in his black vest
+and poised eagerly for the ball to swing out from the half-back. Alan
+would take the spinning pass and bound forward into the stink-stained
+Modern juniors or embryo subalterns of Army C. The clumsiest of them
+would receive Alan's delicate hand full in his face and, as with
+revengeful mutterings the enemy bore down upon him, Alan would pass the
+ball to Michael, who with all his speed would gallop along the
+touch-line and score a try in the corner. Members of Big Side marked
+Michael and Alan as the two most promising three-quarters for Middle
+Side next year, and when the bell sounded at twenty minutes to three,
+the members of Big Side would walk with Michael and Alan towards the
+changing room and encourage them by flattery and genial ragging. In the
+lavatory, Michael and Alan would souse with water all the kids in reach,
+and the kids would be duly grateful for so much acknowledgment of their
+existence from these stripling gods. In the changing room they would
+pleasantly fling the disordered clothes of trespassers near their sacred
+places on to the floor or kick the caps of Second-Form boys to the dusty
+tops of lockers, and then just as the clock was hard on three, they
+would saunter up the School steps and along the corridor to their
+class-room, where they would yawn their way through Cicero's prosy
+defence of Milo or his fourth denunciation of Catiline.
+
+At home Michael much enjoyed his mother's company, although he was now
+in the cold dawn of affection for anything save Alan. He no longer was
+shocked by his mother's solicitude or demonstrativeness, fearful of
+offending against the rigid standards of the private school or the
+uncertain position of a new boy at a public school. He yielded
+gracefully to his mother's pleasure in his company out of a mixture of
+politeness and condescension; but he always felt that when he gave up
+for an hour the joys of the world for the cloister of domesticity, he
+was conferring a favour. At this period nothing troubled him at all save
+his position in the School and the necessity to spend every available
+minute with Alan. The uncertainty of his father's position which had
+from time to time troubled him was allayed by the zest of existence, and
+he never bothered to question his mother at all pertinaciously. In every
+way he was making a pleasant pause in his life to enjoy the new emotion
+of self-confidence, his distinction in football, his popularity with
+contemporaries and seniors and his passion for the absolute
+identification of Alan's behaviour with his and his own with Alan's. At
+home every circumstance fostered this attitude. Alone with his mother,
+Michael was singularly free to do as he liked, and he could always
+produce from the past precedents which she was unable to controvert for
+any whim he wished to establish as a custom. In any case, Mrs. Fane
+seemed to enjoy spoiling him, and Michael was no longer averse from her
+praise of his good looks and from the pleasure she expressed in the
+company of Alan and himself at a concert or matinee. Another reason for
+Michael's nonchalant happiness was his normality. Nowadays he looked at
+himself in the old wardrobe that once had power to terrify him with
+nocturnal creakings, and no longer did he deplore his thin arms and
+legs, no longer did he mark the diffidence of the sensitive small boy.
+Now he could at last congratulate himself upon his ability to hold his
+own with any of his equals whether with tongue or fist. Now, too, when
+he went to bed, he went to bed as serenely as a kitten, curling himself
+up to dream of sport with mice. Sometimes Alan on Friday night would
+accompany him to spend the week-end at Carlington Road, and when he did
+so, the neighbourhood was not allowed to be oblivious of the event. In
+the autumnal dusk Michael and he would practise drop-kicks and high
+punts in the middle of the street, until the ball had landed twice in
+two minutes on the same balcony to the great annoyance of the 'skivvy,'
+who was with debonair assurance invited to bung it down for a mere
+lordly 'thank you' from the offenders. Sometimes the ball would early in
+the afternoon strike a sun-flamed window, and with exquisite laughter
+Michael and Alan would retreat to Number 64, until the alarmed lady of
+the house was quietly within her own doors again. Another pleasant
+diversion with a football was to take drop-kicks from close quarters at
+the backs of errand-boys, especially on wet days when the ball left a
+spheroid of mud where it struck the body.
+
+"Yah, you think yourselves--funny," the errand-boy would growl.
+
+"We do. Oh, rather," Michael and Alan would reply and with smiling
+indifference defeat their target still more unutterably.
+
+When dusk turned to night, Michael and Alan would wonder what to do and,
+after making themselves unbearable in the kitchen, they would sally out
+into the back-garden and execute some devilry at the expense of
+neighbours. They would walk along the boundary walks of the succeedant
+oblongs of garden that ran the whole length of the road; and it was a
+poor evening's sport which produced no fun anywhere. Sometimes they
+would detect, white in the darkness, a fox-terrier, whereat they would
+miaow and rustle the poplar trees and reduce the dog to a state of
+hysterical yapping which would be echoed in various keys by every dog
+within earshot. Sometimes they would observe a lighted kitchen with an
+unsuspicious cook hard at work upon the dinner, meditating perhaps upon
+a jelly or flavouring anxiously the soup. Then if the window were open
+Michael and Alan would take pot-shots at the dish with blobs of mould or
+creep down into the basement, if the window were shut, and groan and
+howl to the cook's pallid dismay and to the great detriment of her
+family's dinner. In other gardens they would fling explosive
+'slap-bangs' against the wall of the house or fire a gunpowder train or
+throw gravel up to a lighted bath-room window. There was always some
+amusement to be gained at a neighbour's expense between six and seven
+o'clock, at which latter hour they would creep demurely home and dress
+for dinner, the only stipulation Mrs. Fane made with Michael in exchange
+for leave to ask Alan to stay with him.
+
+At dinner in the orange glow of the dining-room, Michael and Alan would
+be completely charming and very conversational, as they told Mrs. Fane
+how they rotted old Caryll or ragged young Levy or scored two tries that
+afternoon. Mrs. Fane would seem to be much interested and make the most
+amusing mistakes and keep her son and her guest in an ecstatic
+risibility. After dinner they would sit for a while in the perfumed
+drawing-room, making themselves agreeable and useful by fetching Mrs.
+Fane's novel or blotting-pad or correspondence, or by pulling up an
+arm-chair or by extricating a footstool and drawing close the curtains.
+Then Michael and Alan would be inclined to fidget, until Michael
+announced it was time to go and swat. Mrs. Fane would smile exquisitely
+and say how glad she was they did not avoid their home work and remind
+them to come and say good night at ten o'clock sharp. Encouraged by Mrs.
+Fane's gracious dismissal, Michael and Alan would plunge into the
+basement and gain the sanctity of Michael's own room. They would
+elaborately lay the table for work, spreading out foolscap and notebooks
+and Cicero Pro Milone and Cicero In Catilinam and Thucydides IV and the
+green-backed Ion of Euripides. They would make exhaustive researches
+into the amount of work set to be shown up on Monday morning, and with a
+sigh they would seat themselves to begin. First of all the Greek
+Testament would be postponed until Sunday as a more appropriate day, and
+then Michael would feel an overpowering desire to smoke one cigarette
+before they began. This cigarette had to be smoked close to the open
+window, so that the smoke could be puffed outside into the raw autumnal
+air, while Alan kept 'cave,' rushing to the door to listen at the
+slightest rumour of disturbance. When the cigarette was finished they
+would contemplate for a long time the work in front of them, and then
+Michael would say he thought it rather stupid to swat on Friday night
+with all Saturday and Sunday before them, and who did Alan think was the
+better Half-back--Rawson or Wilding? This question led to a long
+argument before Rawson was adjudged to be the better of the two. Then
+Alan would bet Michael he could not write down from memory the
+Nottinghamshire cricket team, and Michael would express his firm
+conviction that Alan could not possibly name the winners of the Oxford
+and Cambridge quarter-mile for the last three years. Finally they would
+both recur to the problem ever present, the best way to obtain two
+bicycles and, what was more important, the firm they would ultimately
+honour with their patronage. The respective merits of the Humber, the
+Rover, the Premier, the Quadrant, the Swift and the Sunbeam created a
+battleground for various opinions, and as for the tyres, it seemed
+impossible to decide between Palmers, Clinchers and Dunlops. In the
+middle of the discussion the clock in the passage would strike ten, at
+which Michael and Alan would yawn and dawdle their way upstairs. Perhaps
+the bicycle problem had a wearing effect, for Mrs. Fane would remark on
+their jaded appearance and hope they were not working too hard. Michael
+and Alan would look particularly conscious of their virtue and admit
+they had had a very tiring week, what with football and Cicero and
+Quadratic Equations; and so after affectionate good nights they would
+saunter up to bed. Upstairs, they would lean out of the bedroom window
+and watch the golden trains go by, and ponder the changing emeralds and
+rubies of the signal-box farther along the line: then after trying to
+soak a shadowy tomcat down below with water from the toilet-jug Michael
+and Alan would undress.
+
+In the darkness Michael and Alan would lie side by side secure in a
+companionship of dreams. They murmured now their truly intimate
+thoughts: they spoke of their hopes and ambitions, of the Army with its
+glories of rank and adventure, of the Woods and Forests of India, of
+treasure on coral islands and fortunes in the canyons of the West. They
+spoke of the School Fifteen and of Alan's probable captaincy of it one
+day: they discussed the Upper Sixth with its legend of profound
+erudition: they wondered if it would be worth while for Michael to swat
+and be Captain of the School. They talked again of bicycles and decided
+to make an united effort to secure them this ensuing Christmas by
+compounding for one great gift any claims they possessed on birthday
+presents later in the year. They talked of love, and of the fools they
+had been to waste their enthusiasm on Dora and Winnie. They made up
+their minds to forswear the love of women with all its humiliations and
+disappointments and futilities. Through life each would be to the other
+enough. Girls would be for ever an intrusion between such deathless and
+endeared friends as they were. Michael pointed out how awkward it would
+be if he and Alan both loved the same girl and showed how it would ruin
+their twin lives and wreck their joint endeavour; while Alan agreed it
+would be mad to risk a separation for such froth of feminine
+attractiveness. The two of them vowed in the darkness to stick always
+together, so that whatever fate life held for either it should hold for
+both. They swore fidelity to their friendship in the silence and
+intimacy of the night; and when, rosy in the morning, they stood up
+straightly in the pale London sunlight, they did not regret the vows of
+the night, nor did they blush for their devotion, since the world
+conjured a long vista of them both arm in arm eternally, and in the
+immediate present all the adventurous charm of a Saturday's whole
+holiday.
+
+If there was a First Fifteen match on the School ground, Michael and
+Alan honoured it with their attendance and liked nothing so well as to
+elbow their way through a mob of juniors in order to nod familiarly to a
+few members of the Fifteen. The School team that year was not so
+successful as its two predecessors, and Michael and Alan were often
+compelled to voice their disdain to the intense disgust of the juniors
+huddled about them. Sometimes they would hear an irreverent murmur of
+'Hark at sidey Fane and sidey Merivale,' which would necessitate the
+punching of a number of heads to restore the disciplinary respect they
+demanded. On days when the School team was absent at Dulford or Tonbury
+or Haileybridge, Michael and Alan would scornfully glance at the Second
+Fifteen's desolate encounter with some other Second Fifteen, and vote
+that such second-rate football was bally rot. On such occasions the
+School ground used to seem too large and empty for cheerfulness, and the
+two friends would saunter round West Kensington on the chance of an
+adventure, ending up the afternoon by laying out money on sweets or on
+the fireworks now displayed in anticipation of the Fifth of November.
+Saturday evening would be spent in annoying the neighbours with squibs
+and Chinese crackers and jumping crackers and tourbillons and maroons
+and Roman candles and Bengal lights, while after dinner the elaborate
+preparations for home work would again be made with the same inadequate
+result.
+
+On Sunday Michael and Alan used to brush their top-hats and button their
+gloves and tie their ties very carefully and, armed with sticks of
+sobriety and distinction, swagger to whatever church was fashionable
+among their friends. During the service they would wink to acquaintances
+and nudge each other and sing very loudly and clearly their favourite
+hymns, while through the dull hymns they would criticize their friends'
+female relations. So the week would fulfil its pleasant course until
+nine o'clock on Monday morning, when Michael and Alan would run all the
+way to school and in a fever of industry get through their home work
+with the united assistance of the rest of the Upper Fourth A, as one by
+one the diligent members arrived in Hall for a few minutes' gossip
+before Prayers. During Prayers, Michael and Alan would try to forecast
+by marking off the full stops what paragraph of Cicero they would each
+be called upon to construe; finally, when old Caryll named Merivale to
+take up the oration's thread, Michael would hold the crib on his knees
+and over Levy's laborious back whisper in the voice of a ghoul the
+meaning.
+
+At Christmas, after interminable discussion and innumerable catalogues,
+the bicycles were bought, and in the Lent term with its lengthening
+twilights Michael and Alan devoted all their attention to bicycling,
+except in wet weather, when they played Fives, bagging the covered
+courts from small boys who had waited days for the chance of playing in
+them. Michael, during the Lent term, often rode back with Alan after
+School to spend the week-end at Richmond, and few delights were so rare
+as that of scorching over Barnes Common and down the Mortlake Road with
+its gardens all a-blow with spring flowers and, on the other bank of the
+river over Kew, the great spring skies keeping pace with their whirring
+wheels.
+
+Yet best of all was the summer term, that glorious azure summer term of
+fourteen and a half, which fled by in a radiancy. Michael and Alan were
+still in the Upper Fourth A under Mr. Caryll: they still fooled away the
+hours of school, relying upon the charm of their joint personality to
+allay the extreme penalty of being sent up to the Headmaster for
+incorrigible knavery. They were Captain and Vice-Captain of the
+Classical Upper Fourth Second Eleven, preferring the glory of leadership
+to an ambiguous position in the tail of the First Eleven. Michael and
+Alan were in their element during that sunburnt hour of cricket before
+afternoon school. They wore white felt hats, and Michael in one of his
+now rare flights of imagination thought that Alan in his looked like
+Perseus in a Flaxman drawing. Many turned to look at the two friends, as
+enlaced they wandered across the 'gravel' on their way to change out of
+flannels, Michael nut-brown and Alan rose-bloomed like a peach.
+
+At five o'clock they would eat a rowdy tea in the School Tuckshop to the
+accompaniment of flying pellets of bun, after which they would change
+again for amber hours of cricket, until the sun made the shadow of the
+stumps as long as telegraph poles, and the great golden clock face in
+the School buildings gleamed a late hour. They would part from each
+other with regret to ride off in opposite directions. Michael would
+linger on his journey home through the mellow streets of Kensington,
+writing with his bicycle wheels lazy parabolas and curves in the dust of
+each quiet road. Twilight was not far off, the murmurous twilight of a
+London evening with its tranced lovers and winking stars and
+street-lamps and window-panes. More and more slowly Michael would glide
+along, loath to desert the dreaming populations of dusk. He would turn
+down unfrequented corners and sail by unfamiliar terraces, aware of
+nothing but the languors of effortless motion. Time, passing by in a
+sensuous oblivion, made Michael as much a part of the nightfall as the
+midges that spun incessantly about his progress. Then round a corner
+some night-breeze would blow freshly in his face: he would suddenly
+realize it was growing late and, pressing hard the pedals of his
+bicycle, he would dart home, swift as a bird that crosses against the
+dying glow of the sunset.
+
+Michael's mother was always glad to see him and always glad when he sat
+with her on the balcony outside the drawing-room. If he had wanted to
+cross-examine her he would have found an easy witness, so tranquil and
+so benignant that year was every night of June in London. But Michael
+had for the time put aside all speculation and drugged his imagination
+with animal exercise, allowing himself no time to think of anything but
+the present. He was dimly aware of trouble close at hand, when the
+terminal examinations should betray his idleness; but it was impossible
+to worry over what was now sheerly inevitable. This summer term was
+perfect, and why should one consider ultimate time? Even Stella's
+holiday from Germany had been postponed, as if there were a veritable
+conspiracy by circumstance to wave away the least element of
+disturbance. Next Saturday he and Alan were going to spend the day in
+Richmond Park; and when it came in its course what a day it was. The
+boys set out directly after breakfast and walked through the pungent
+bracken, chasing the deer and the dragonflies as if there were nothing
+to distinguish them. Down streamed the sun from the blue July heavens:
+but Michael and Alan clad in white went careless of the heat. They
+walked over the grass uphill and ran down through the cool dells of oak
+trees, down towards the glassy ponds to play 'ducks and drakes' in the
+flickering weather. They stood by the intersecting carriage-roads and
+mocked the perspiring travellers in their black garments. They cared for
+nothing but being alive in Richmond Park on a summer Saturday of London.
+At last, near a shadowy woodland where the grasses grew very tall,
+Michael and Alan, smothering the air with pollen, flung themselves down
+into the fragrancy and, while the bees droned about them, slept in the
+sun. Later in the afternoon the two friends sat on the Terrace among the
+old ladies and the old gentlemen, and the nurserymaids and the
+children's hoops. Down below, the Thames sparkled in a deep green
+prospect of England. An hour went by; the old ladies and the old
+gentlemen and the nurserymaids and the hoops faded away one by one under
+the darkling trees. Down below, the Thames threaded with shining curves
+a vast and elusive valley of azure. The Thames died away to a sheen of
+dusky silver: the azure deepened almost to indigo: lights flitted into
+ken one by one: there travelled up from the river a sound of singing,
+and somewhere in the houses behind a piano began to tinkle. Michael
+suddenly became aware that the end of the summer term was in sight. He
+shivered in the dewfall and put his arm round Alan's neck affectionately
+and intimately: only profound convention kept him from kissing his
+friend and by not doing so he felt vaguely that something was absent
+from this perfection of dusk. Something in Michael at that moment
+demanded emotional expression, and from afternoon school of yesterday
+recurred to his mind a note to some lines in the Sixth AEneid of Virgil.
+He remembered the lines, having by some accident learned his repetition
+for that day:
+
+    _Huc omnis turba ad ripas effusa ruebat,_
+    _Matres atque viri defunctaque corpora vita_
+    _Magnanimum heroum, pueri innuptoeque puelloe,_
+    _Impositique rogis juvenes ante ora parentum;_
+    _Quam multa in silvis auctumni frigore primo_
+    _Lapsa cadunt folia, aut ad terram gurgite ab alto_
+    _Quam multoe glomerantur aves ubi frigidus annus_
+    _Trans pontum fugat et terris immittit apricis._
+
+Compare, said the commentator, Milton, Paradise Lost, Book I.
+
+    _Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks_
+    _In Vallombrosa._
+
+As Michael mentally repeated the thunderous English line, a surge of
+melancholy caught him up to overwhelm his thoughts. In some way those
+words expressed what he was feeling at this moment, so that he could
+gain relief from the poignancy of his joy here in the darkness close to
+Alan with the unfathomable valley of the Thames beneath, by saying over
+and over again:
+
+    _Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks_
+    _In Vallombrosa._
+
+"Damn, damn, damn, damn," cried Alan suddenly. "Exams on Monday! Damn,
+damn, damn, damn."
+
+"I must go home and swat to-night," said Michael.
+
+"So must I," sighed Alan.
+
+"Walk with me to the station," Michael asked.
+
+"Oh, rather," replied Alan.
+
+Soon Michael was jolting back to Kensington in a stuffy carriage of hot
+Richmond merrymakers, while all the time he sat in the corner, saying
+over and over again:
+
+    _Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks_
+    _In Vallombrosa._
+
+All Saturday night and all Sunday Michael worked breathlessly for those
+accursed examinations: but at the end of them he and Alan were bracketed
+equal, very near the tail of the Upper Fourth A. Dr. Brownjohn sent for
+each of them in turn, and each of them found the interview very trying.
+
+"What do you mean by it?" roared the Headmaster to Michael. "What do you
+mean by it, you young blackguard? Um? Look at this list. Um? It's a
+contemptible position for a Scholar. Down here with a lump of rabbit's
+brains, you abominable little loafer. Um? If you aren't in the first
+five boys of the Lower Fifth next term, I'll kick you off the
+Foundation. What good are you to the School? Um? None at all."
+
+As Dr. Brownjohn bellowed forth this statement, his mouth opened so wide
+that Michael instinctively shrank back as if from a crater in eruption.
+
+"You don't come here to swagger about," growled the Headmaster. "You
+come here to be a credit to your school. You pestilent young jackanapes,
+do you suppose I haven't noticed your idleness? Um? I notice everything.
+Get out of my sight and take your hands out of your pockets, you
+insolent little lubber. Um?"
+
+Michael left the Headmaster's room with an expression of tragic injury:
+in the corridor was a group of juniors.
+
+"What the devil are you kids hanging about here for?" Michael demanded.
+
+"All right, sidey Fane," they burbled. Michael dashed into the group and
+grabbed a handful of caps which he tossed into the dusty complications
+of the Laocoon. To their lamentations he responded by thrusting his
+hands deep down into his pockets and whistling 'Little Dolly Daydreams,
+pride of Idaho.' The summer term would be over in a few days, and
+Michael was sorry to say good-bye to Alan, who was going to Norway with
+his father and mother and would therefore not be available for the whole
+of the holidays. Indeed, he was leaving two days before School actually
+broke up. Michael was wretched without Alan and brooded over the
+miseries of life that so soon transcended the joys. On the last day of
+term, he was seized with an impulse to say good-bye to Mr. Caryll, an
+impulse which he could not understand and was inclined to deplore.
+However, it was too strong for his conventions, and he loitered behind
+in the confusion of merry departures.
+
+"Good-bye, sir," he said shyly.
+
+Mr. Caryll took off two pairs of spectacles and examined Michael through
+the remaining pair, rasping out the familiar cough as he did so.
+
+"Now, you great booby, what do you want?" he asked.
+
+"Good-bye, sir," Michael said, more loudly.
+
+"Oh, good-bye," said Mr. Caryll. "You've been a very idle
+boy"--cough--cough--"and I"--cough--cough--"I don't think I ever knew
+such an idle boy before."
+
+"I've had a ripping time in your class, sir," said Michael.
+
+"What do you mean?"--cough--cough--"are you trying to be impudent?"
+exclaimed Mr. Caryll, hastily putting on a second pair of spectacles to
+cope with the situation.
+
+"No, sir. I've enjoyed being in your class. I'm sorry I was so low down
+in the list. Good-bye, sir."
+
+Mr. Caryll seemed to realize at last that Michael was being sincerely
+complimentary, so he took off all the pairs of spectacles and beamed at
+him with an expression of the most profound benignity.
+
+"Oh, well"--cough--cough--"we can't all be top"--cough--cough--"but it's
+a pity you should be so very low down"--cough--cough--"you're a Scholar
+too, which makes it much worse. Never mind. Good boy at
+heart"--cough--cough--"better luck in your next form"--cough--cough.
+"Hope you'll enjoy yourself on your holidays."
+
+"Good-bye, sir. Thanks awfully," said Michael. He turned away from the
+well-loved class-room of old Caryll that still echoed with the laughter
+of the Upper Fourth A.
+
+"And don't work too hard"--cough--cough, was Mr. Caryll's last joke.
+
+In the corridor Michael caught up the lantern-jawed boy who had
+prophesied this year's pleasure at the beginning of last autumn.
+
+"Just been saying good-bye to old Christmas," Michael volunteered.
+
+"He's a topper," said Lantern-jaws. "The best old boy that ever lived. I
+wish I was going to be in his form again next term."
+
+"So do I," said Michael. "We had a clinking good time. So long. Hope
+you'll have decent holidays."
+
+"So long," said the lantern-jawed boy lugubriously, dropping most of his
+mathematical books. "Same to you."
+
+When Michael was at home, he took a new volume of Henty into the garden
+and began to read. Suddenly he found he was bored by Henty. This
+knowledge shocked him for the moment. Then he went indoors and put For
+Name and Fame, or Through Afghan Passes back on the shelf. He surveyed
+the row of Henty's books gleaming with olivine edges, and presently he
+procured brown paper and with Cook's assistance wrapped up the dozen odd
+volumes. At the top he placed a slip of paper on which was written
+'Presented to the Boys' Library by C. M. S. Fane.' Michael was now in a
+perplexity for literary recreation, until he remembered Don Quixote.
+Soon he was deep in that huge volume, out of the dull world of London
+among the gorges and chasms and waterfalls of Castile. Boyhood's zenith
+had been attained: Michael's imagination was primed for strange
+emotions.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter V: _Incense_
+
+
+Stella came back from Germany less foreign-looking than Michael
+expected, and he could take a certain amount of pleasure in her company
+at Bournemouth, For a time they were well matched, as they walked with
+their mother under the pines. Once, as they passed a bunch of old ladies
+on a seat, Stella said to Michael:
+
+"Did you hear what those people said?"
+
+Michael had not heard, so Stella whispered:
+
+"They said 'What good-looking children!' Shall we turn back and walk by
+them again?"
+
+"Whatever for?" Michael demanded.
+
+"Oh, I don't know," said Stella, flapping the big violet bows in her
+chestnut hair. "Only I like to hear people talking about me. I think
+it's interesting. I always try to hear what they say when I'm playing."
+
+"Mother," Michael appealed, "don't you think Stella ought not to be so
+horribly conceited? I do."
+
+"Darling Stella," said Mrs. Fane, "I'm afraid people spoil her. It isn't
+her fault."
+
+"It must be her fault," argued Michael.
+
+Michael remembered Miss Carthew's admonition not to snub Stella, but he
+could not help feeling that Miss Carthew herself would have disapproved
+of this open vanity. He wished that Miss Carthew were not now Mrs. Ross
+and far away in Edinburgh. He felt almost a responsibility with regard
+to Stella, a highly moral sensation of knowing better the world and its
+pitfalls than she could. He feared for the effect of its lure upon
+Stella and her vanity, and was very anxious his sister should always
+comport herself with credit to her only brother. In his mother's
+attitude Michael seemed to discern a dangerous inclination not to
+trouble about Stella's habit of thought. He resolved, when he and Stella
+were alone together, to address his young sister seriously. Stella's
+nonchalance alarmed him more and more deeply as he began to look back at
+his own life and to survey his wasted years. Michael felt he must
+convince Stella that earnestness was her only chance.
+
+"You're growing very fast, Michael," said his mother one morning.
+"Really I think you're getting too big for Etons."
+
+Michael critically examined himself in his mother's toilet-glass and had
+to admit that his sleeves looked short and that his braces showed too
+easily under his waistcoat. The fact that he could no longer survey his
+reflection calmly and that he dreaded to see Stella admire herself
+showed him something was wrong.
+
+"Perhaps I'd better get a new suit," he suggested.
+
+In his blue serge suit, wearing what the shops called a Polo or
+Shakespeare collar, Michael felt more at ease, although the sleeves were
+now as much too long as lately his old sleeves were too short. The
+gravity of this new suit confirmed his impression that age was stealing
+upon him and made him the more inclined to lecture Stella. This desire
+of his seemed to irritate his mother, who would protest:
+
+"Michael, do leave poor Stella alone. I can't think why you've suddenly
+altered. One would think you'd got the weight of the world on your
+shoulders."
+
+"Like Atlas," commented Michael gloomily.
+
+"I don't know who it's like," said Mrs. Fane. "But it's very
+disagreeable for everybody round you."
+
+"Michael always thinks he knows about everything," Stella put in
+spitefully.
+
+"Oh, shut up!" growled Michael.
+
+He was beginning to feel that his mother admired Stella more than
+himself, and the old jealousy of her returned. He was often reproved for
+being untidy and, although he was no longer inky and grubby, he did
+actually find that his hair refused to grow neatly and that he was
+growing clumsy both in manners and appearance. Stella always remained
+cool and exasperatingly debonair under his rebukes, whereas he felt
+himself growing hot and awkward. The old self-consciousness had returned
+and with it two warts on his finger and an intermittent spot on his
+chin. Also a down was visible on his face that somehow blunted his
+profile and made him more prone than ever to deprecate the habit of
+admiring oneself in a looking-glass. He felt impelled to untie Stella's
+violet bows whenever he caught her posing before the mirror, and as the
+holidays advanced he and she grew less and less well matched. The old
+worrying speculation about his father returned together with a wish that
+his mother would not dress in such gay colours. Michael admired her
+slimness and tallness, but he wished that men would not turn round and
+stare at her as she passed them. He used to stare back at the men with a
+set frowning face and try to impress them with his distaste for their
+manners; but day by day he grew more miserable about his mother, and
+would often seek to dissuade her from what he considered a too
+conspicuous hat or vivid ribbon. She used to laugh and tell him that he
+was a regular old 'provincial.' The opportunity for perfect confidence
+between Michael and his mother seemed to have slipped by, and he found
+it impossible now to make her talk about his father. To be sure, she no
+longer tried to wave aside his enquiries; but she did worse by answering
+'yes' or 'no' to his questions according to her mood, never seeming to
+care whether she contradicted a previous statement or not.
+
+Once, Michael asked straight out whether his father was in prison and he
+was relieved when his mother rippled with laughter and told him he was a
+stupid boy. At the same time, since he had been positively assured his
+father was dead, Michael felt that laughter, however convincing it were,
+scarcely became a widow.
+
+"I cannot think what has happened to you, Michael. You were perfectly
+charming all last term and never seemed to have a moment on your hands.
+Now you hang about the house on these lovely fine days and mope and
+grumble. I do wish you could enjoy yourself as you used to."
+
+"Well, I've got no friends down here," Michael declared. "What is there
+to do? I'm sick of the band, and the niggers are rotten, and Stella
+always wants to hang about on the pier so that people can stare at her.
+I wish she'd go back to her glorious Germany where everything is so
+wonderful."
+
+"Why don't you read? You used to love reading," suggested Mrs. Fane.
+
+"Oh, read!" exclaimed Michael. "There's nothing to read. I hate Henty.
+Always the same!"
+
+"Well, I don't know anything about Henty, but there's Scott and Dickens
+and----"
+
+"I've read all them, mother," Michael interrupted petulantly.
+
+"Well, why don't you ask Mrs. Rewins if you can borrow a book from her,
+or I'll ask her, as you don't like going downstairs."
+
+Mrs. Rewins brought up an armful of books which Michael examined
+dismally one by one. However, after several gilded volumes of sermons
+and sentimental Sunday-school prizes, he came across a tattered Newgate
+Calendar and Roderick Random, both of which satisfied somewhat his new
+craving for excitement. When he had finished these books, Mrs. Rewins
+invited him to explore the cupboard in her warm kitchen, and here
+Michael found Peregrine Pickle, Tom Jones, a volume of Bentley's
+Miscellany containing the serial of Jack Sheppard by Harrison Ainsworth,
+and What Every Woman of Forty-five ought to Know. The last work upset
+him very much because he found it unintelligible in parts, and where it
+was intelligible extremely alarming. An instinct of shamefulness made
+him conceal this book in a drawer, but he became very anxious to find
+out exactly how old his mother was. She, however, was more elusive on
+this point than he had ever known her, and each elaborate trap failed,
+even the innocent production of the table for ascertaining anybody's age
+in a blue sixpenny Encyclopaedia: still, the Encyclopaedia was not without
+its entertainment, and the table of diseases at the end was very
+instructive. Among the books which Michael had mined down in Mrs.
+Rewins' kitchen was The Ingoldsby Legends illustrated by Cruikshank.
+These he found very enthralling, for though he was already acquainted
+with The Jackdaw of Rheims, he now discovered many other poems still
+more amusing, in many of which he came across with pleasure quotations
+that he remembered to have heard used with much effect by Mr. Neech in
+the Shell. The macabre and ghostly lays did not affect him so much as
+the legends of the saints. These he read earnestly as he read Don
+Quixote, discerning less of laughter than of Gothic adventure in their
+fantastic pages, while his brain was fired by the heraldic pomps and
+ecclesiastical glories.
+
+About this time he happened to pay a visit to Christchurch Priory and by
+the vaulted airs of that sanctuary he was greatly thrilled. The
+gargoyles and brasses and effigies of dead knights called to him
+mysteriously, but the inappropriate juxtaposition of an early Victorian
+tomb shocked him with a sense of sacrilege. He could not bear to
+contemplate the nautical trousers of the boy commemorated. Yet,
+simultaneously with his outraged decorum, he was attracted to this
+tomb, as if he detected in that ingenuous boy posited among sad cherubs
+some kinship with himself.
+
+In bed that night Michael read The Ingoldsby Legends in a fever of
+enjoyment, while the shadows waved about the ceiling and walls of the
+seaside room in the vexed candlelight. As yet the details of the poems
+did not gain their full effect, because many of the words and references
+were not understood. He felt that knowledge was necessary before he
+could properly enjoy the colour of these tales. Michael had always been
+inclined to crystallize in one strong figure of imagination his vague
+impressions. Two years ago he had identified Mr. Neech with old prints,
+with Tom Brown's Schooldays and with shelves of calf-bound books. Now in
+retrospect he, without being able to explain his reason to himself,
+identified Mr. Neech with that statue of the trousered boy in
+Christchurch Priory, and not merely Mr. Neech but even The Ingoldsby
+Legends as well. He felt that they were both all wrong in the sanctified
+glooms of the Middle Ages, and yet he rejoiced to behold them there, as
+if somehow they were a pledge of historic continuity. Without the
+existence of the trousered boy Michael would scarcely have believed in
+the reality of those stone ladies and carved knights. The candlelight
+fluttered and jigged in the seaside room, while Mr. Neech, The Ingoldsby
+Legends and the oratories of Christchurch became more and more
+hopelessly confused. Michael's excited brain was formulating visions of
+immense cathedrals beneath whose arches pattered continually the
+populations of old prints: the tower of St. Mary's College, Oxford,
+rose, slim and lovely, against the storm-wrack of a Dore sky: Don
+Quixote tilted with knights-at-arms risen from the dead. Michael himself
+was swept along in cavalcades towards the clouds with Ivanhoe, Richard
+Coeur de Lion, Roderick Random and half a dozen woodcut murderers
+from the Newgate Calendar. Then, just as the candlelight was gasping and
+shimmering blue in the bowl of the candlestick, he fell asleep.
+
+In the sunshine of the next day Michael almost wondered whether like
+someone in The Ingoldsby Legends he had ridden with witches on a
+broomstick. All the cool security of boyhood had left him; he was in a
+turmoil of desire for an astounding experience. He almost asked himself
+what he wanted so dearly; and, as he pondered, out of the past in a
+vision came the picture of himself staring at the boy who walked beside
+the incense with a silver boat. What did the Lay of St. Alois say?
+
+    _This with his chasuble, this with his rosary,_
+    _This with his incense-pot holding his nose awry._
+
+Michael felt a craving to go somewhere and smell that powerful odour
+again. He remembered how the boy had put out his tongue and he envied
+him such familiarity with pomps and glories.
+
+"Are there any High Churches in Bournemouth?" he asked Mrs. Rewins.
+"Very high. Incense and all that, you know."
+
+Mrs. Rewins informed him there was one church so high that some said it
+was practically 'Roming Catholic.'
+
+"Where is it?" asked Michael, choking with excitement. Yet he had never
+before wanted to go to church. In the days of Nurse he had hated it. In
+the days of Miss Carthew he had only found it endurable if his friends
+were present. He had loathed the rustle of many women dressed in their
+best clothes. He had hated the throaty voices of smooth-faced clergymen.
+He had despised the sleek choir-boys smelling of yellow soap. Religion
+had been compounded of Collects, Greek Testament, Offertory Bags,
+varnish, qualms for the safety of one's top-hat, the pleasure of an
+extra large hassock, ambition to be grown up and bend over instead of
+kneeling down, the podgy feel of a Prayer Book, and a profound
+disapproval that only Eton and Winchester among public schools were
+mentioned in its diaphanous fumbling pages. Now religion should be an
+adventure. The feeling that he was embarking upon the unknown made
+Michael particularly reticent, and he was afraid to tell his mother that
+on Sunday morning he proposed to attend the service at St.
+Bartholomew's, lest she might suggest coming also. He did not want to be
+irritated by Stella's affectations and conceit, nor did he wish to
+notice various women turning round to study his mother's hat. In the end
+Michael did not go on Sunday to the church of his intention, because at
+the last moment he could not brace himself to mumble an excuse.
+
+Late on the afternoon of the following day Michael walked through the
+gustiness of a swift-closing summer toward St. Bartholomew's, where it
+stood facing a stretch of sandy heather and twisted pine trees on the
+outskirts of Bournemouth. The sky was stained infrequently with the red
+of a lifeless sunset and, as Michael watched the desolation of summer's
+retreat, he listened sadly to the sibilant heather lisping against the
+flutes of the pines, while from time to time the wind drummed against
+the buttresses and boomed against the bulk of the church. Michael drew
+near the west door whose hinges and nails stood out unnaturally distinct
+in the last light of the sun. Abruptly on the blowy eve the church-bell
+began to ring, and from various roads Michael saw people approaching,
+their heads bent against the gale. At length he made up his mind to
+follow one of the groups through the churchyard and presently, while the
+gate rattled behind him in the wind, he reached the warm glooms within.
+As he took his seat and perceived the altar loaded with flowers,
+dazzling with lighted candles, he wondered why this should be so on a
+Monday night in August. The air was pungent with the smell of wax and
+the stale perfume of incense on stone. The congregation was scattered
+about in small groups and units, and the vaulted silence was continually
+broken by coughs and sighs and hollow footsteps. From the tower the bell
+rang in slow monotone, while the wind whistled and moaned and flapped
+and boomed as if, thought Michael, all the devils in hell were trying to
+break into the holy building. The windows were now scarcely luminous
+with the wan shadow of daylight and would indeed have been opaque as
+coal had the inside of the church been better lighted. But the few
+wavering gas-jets in the nave made all seem dark save where the chancel,
+empty and candle-lit, shone and sparkled in a radiancy. Something in
+Michael's attitude must have made a young man sitting behind lean over
+and ask if he wanted a Prayer Book. Michael turned quickly to see a lean
+and eager face.
+
+"Yes, please. I left mine at home," he answered.
+
+"Well, come and sit by me," said the young man.
+
+Michael changed his place and the young man talked in a low whisper,
+while the bell rang its monotone upon the gusts which swept howling
+round the church.
+
+"Solemn Evensong isn't until seven o'clock. It's our patronal festival,
+St. Bartholomew's Day--you know. We had a good Mass this morning. Every
+year we get more people. Do you live in Bournemouth?"
+
+"No," whispered Michael. "I'm just here for the holidays."
+
+"What a pity," said the stranger. "We do so want servers--you
+know--decent-looking servers. Our boys are so clumsy. It's not
+altogether their fault--the cassocks--you know--they're only in two
+sizes. They trip up. I'm the Ceremonarius, and I can tell you I have my
+work cut out. Of course I ought to have been helping to-night. But I
+wasn't sure I could get away from the Bank in time. I hope
+Wilson--that's our second thurifer--won't go wrong in the Magnificat. He
+usually does."
+
+The bell stopped: there was a momentary hush for the battling wind to
+moan louder than ever: then the organ began to play and from the
+sacristy came the sound of a chanted Amen. Choristers appeared followed
+by two or three of the clergy, and when these had taken their places a
+second procession appeared, with boys in scarlet and lace and a tinkling
+censer and a priest in a robe of blood-red velvet patterned with dull
+gold.
+
+"That's the new cope," whispered the stranger. "Fine work, isn't it?"
+
+"Awfully decent," Michael whispered back.
+
+"All I hope is the acolytes will remember to put out the candles
+immediately after the Third Collect. It's so important," said the
+stranger.
+
+"I expect they will," whispered Michael encouragingly.
+
+Then the Office began, and Michael, waiting for a spiritual experience,
+communed that night with the saints of God, as during the Magnificat his
+soul rose to divine glories on the fumes of the aspiring incense. There
+was a quality in the voices of the boys which expressed for him more
+beautifully than the full Sunday choir could have done, the pathos of
+human praise and the purity of his own surrender to Almighty God. The
+splendours of the Magnificat died away to a silence and one of the
+clergy stepped from his place to read the Second Lesson. As he came down
+the chancel steps Michael's new friend whispered:
+
+"The censing of the altar was all right. It's really a good thing
+sometimes to be a spectator--you know--one sees more."
+
+Michael nodded a vague assent. Already the voice of the lector was
+vibrating through the church.
+
+     _In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn towards the first
+     day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the
+     sepulchre._
+
+Michael thought to himself how he had come to St. Bartholomew's when
+Sunday was over. That was strange.
+
+     _His countenance was like lightning and his raiment white as snow:
+     and for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men._
+
+"I wish that boy Wiggins wouldn't fidget with his zuchetto," Michael's
+friend observed.
+
+     _And behold, he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see
+     him: lo, I have told you._
+
+Michael felt an impulse to sob, as he mentally offered the best of
+himself to the worship of Christ, for the words of the lesson were
+striking on his soul like bells.
+
+     _And when they saw him, they worshipped him: but some doubted._
+
+"Now you see the other boy has started fidgeting with _his_," complained
+the young man.
+
+     _And, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world._
+     _Amen._
+
+As the lector's retreating footsteps died away into the choir the words
+were burned on Michael's heart, and for the first time he sang the Nunc
+Dimittis with a sense of the privilege of personally addressing Almighty
+God. When the Creed was chanted Michael uttered his belief passionately,
+and while the Third Collect was being read between the exalted candles
+of the acolytes he wondered why never before had the words struck him
+with all their power against the fears and fevers of the night.
+
+     _Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord; and by thy great
+     mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night, for the
+     love of thy only Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ._ _Amen._
+
+The acolytes lowered their candles to extinguish them: then they
+darkened the altar while the hymn was being sung, and Michael's friend
+gave a sigh of relief.
+
+"Perfectly all right," he whispered.
+
+Michael himself was sorry to see the gradual extinction of the
+altar-lights; he had concentrated upon that radiance his new desire of
+adoration and a momentary chill fell upon him, as if the fiends without
+were gaining strength and fury. All dread and doubt was allayed when,
+after the murmured Grace of Our Lord, the congregation and the choir and
+the officiant knelt in a silent prayer. The wind still shrieked and
+thundered: the gas-jets waved uneasily above the huddled forms of the
+worshippers: but over all that incense-clouded gloom lay a spirit of
+tranquillity. Michael said the Our Father to himself and allowed his
+whole being to expand in a warmth of surrender. The purification of
+sincere prayer, voiced more by his attitude of mind than by any spoken
+word, made him infinitely at peace with life.
+
+When the choir and clergy had filed out and the sacristan like an old
+rook came limping down the aisle to usher the congregation forth into
+the dark wind of Bartlemy-tide, Michael's friend said:
+
+"Wait just a minute. I want to speak to Father Moneypenny for a moment,
+and then we can walk back together."
+
+Michael nodded, and presently his friend came back from the sacristy
+with Father Moneypenny in cassock and biretta, looking like the
+photographs of clergymen that Michael remembered in Nurse's album long
+ago.
+
+"So you enjoyed the Evensong?" enquired the priest. "Capital! You must
+come to Mass next Sunday. There will be a procession. By the way, Prout,
+perhaps your young friend would help us. We shall want extra
+torch-boys."
+
+Mr. Prout agreed, and Michael, although he wondered what his mother
+would say, was greatly excited by the idea. They were standing now by
+the door of the church and as it opened a gust of wind burst in and
+whistled round the interior. Father Moneypenny shivered.
+
+"What a night. The end of summer, I'm afraid."
+
+He closed the door, and Michael and Mr. Prout forced their way through
+the gale over the wet gravel of the churchyard. The pine trees and the
+heather made a melancholy concert, and they were glad to reach the blown
+lamplight of the streets.
+
+"Will you come round to my place?" Mr. Prout asked.
+
+"Well, I ought to go back. My mater will be anxious," said Michael.
+
+Mr. Prout thereupon invited him to come round to-morrow afternoon.
+
+"I shall be back from the Bank about five. Good night. You've got my
+card? Bernard Prout, Esdraelon, Saxton Road. Good night. Pleased to have
+met you."
+
+Mrs. Fane was surprized to hear of Michael's visit to St. Bartholomew's.
+
+"You're getting so secretive, dearest boy. I'd no idea you were becoming
+interested in religion."
+
+"Well, it is interesting," said Michael.
+
+"Of course. I know it must be. So many people think of nothing else. And
+do you really want to march in the procession?"
+
+"Yes, but don't you and Stella come," Michael said.
+
+"Oh, I must, Michael. I'd love to see you in all those pretty clothes."
+
+"Well, I _can_ go round and see this chap Prout, can't I?" Michael
+asked.
+
+"I suppose so," Mrs. Fane replied. "Of course, I don't know anything
+about him. Is he a gentleman?"
+
+"Of course he's a gentleman," affirmed Michael warmly. "Besides I don't
+see it matters a bit whether he's a gentleman or not."
+
+"No, of course it doesn't really, as it all has to do with religion,"
+Mrs. Fane agreed. "Nothing is so mixed as religious society."
+
+Saxton Road possessed no characteristic to distinguish it from many
+similar roads in Bournemouth. A few hydrangeas debated in sheltered
+corners whether they should be pink or blue, and the number of each
+house was subordinate to its title. The gate of Esdraelon clicked behind
+Michael's entrance just as the gate of Homeview or Ardagh or Glenside
+would have clicked. By the bay-window of the ground floor was planted a
+young passion-flower whose nursery label lisped against the brick-work,
+and whose tendrils were flattened beneath wads of nail-pierced flannel.
+Michael was directed upstairs to Mr. Prout's sitting-room on the first
+floor, where the owner was arranging the tea-cups.
+
+"I'm so glad you were able to come," he said.
+
+Michael looked round the room with interest, and while the tea-cake
+slowly cooled Mr. Prout discussed with enthusiasm his possessions.
+
+"That's St. Bernardine of Sienna," he explained, pointing to a coloured
+statuette. "My patron, you know. Curious I should have been born on his
+day and be christened Bernard. I thought of changing my name to
+Bernardine, but it's so difficult at a Bank. Of course, I have a cult
+for St. Bernard too, but I never really can forgive him for opposing the
+Immaculate Conception. Father Moneypenny and I have great arguments on
+that point. I'm afraid he's a _little_ bit wobbly. But absolutely sound
+on the Assumption. Oh, absolutely, I'm glad to say. In fact, I don't
+mind telling you that next year we intend to keep it as a Double of the
+First Class with Octave _which_, of course, it _is_. This rosary is made
+of olive-wood from the Garden of Gethsemane and I'm very anxious to get
+it blessed by the Pope. Some friends of mine are going to Rome next
+Easter with a Polytechnic tour, so I _may_ be able to manage it. But
+it's difficult. The Cardinals--you know," said Mr. Prout vaguely.
+"They're inclined to be bitter against English Catholics. Of course,
+Vaughan made the mistake of his life in getting the Pope to pronounce
+against English Orders. I know a Roman priest told me he considered it a
+fatal move. However--you're waiting for your tea?"
+
+Michael ate Mr. Prout's bread-and-butter and drank his tea, while the
+host hopped from trinket to trinket.
+
+"This is a sacred amulet which belonged to one of the Macdonalds who
+fought at Prestonpans. I suppose you're a Jacobite? Of course, I belong
+to all the Legitimist Societies--the White Rose, the White Cockade, the
+White Carnation. Everyone. I wish I were a Scotchman, although my
+grandmother was a Miss Macmillan, so I've got Scotch blood. You _are_ a
+Jacobite, aren't you?"
+
+"Rather," said Michael as enthusiastically as his full mouth would allow
+him to declare.
+
+"Of course, it's the only logical political attitude for an English
+Catholic to adopt," said Mr. Prout. "All this Erastianism--you know.
+Terrible. What's the Privy Council got to do with Vestments? Still the
+Episcopal appointments haven't been so bad lately. That's Lord
+Salisbury. Of course, we've had trouble with our Bishop. Oh, yes. He
+simply declines to listen to reason on the subject of Reservation for
+the Sick. Personally I advised Father Moneypenny not to pay any
+attention to him. I said the Guild of St. Wilfrid--that's our servers'
+guild, you know--was absolutely in favour of defiance, open defiance.
+But one of the churchwardens got round him. There's your Established
+Church. Money's what churchwardens think of--simply money. And has
+religion got anything to do with money? Nothing. 'Blessed are the poor.'
+You can't go against that, as I told Major Wilton--that's our people's
+warden--in the sacristy. He's a client of ours at the Bank, or I should
+have said a jolly sight more. I should have told him that in my opinion
+his attitude was simony--rank simony, and let it go at that. But I
+couldn't very well, and, of course, it doesn't look well for the
+Ceremonarius and the churchwarden to be bickering after Mass. By the
+way, will you help us next Sunday?"
+
+"I'd like to," said Michael, "but I don't know anything about it."
+
+"There'll be a rehearsal," said Mr. Prout. "And it's perfectly simple.
+You elevate your torch first of all at the Sanctus and then at the
+Consecration. And now, if you've finished your tea, I'll show you my
+oratory. Of course, you'll understand that I'm only in rooms here, but
+the landlady is a very pleasant woman. She let me plant that
+passion-flower in the garden. Perhaps you noticed it? The same with this
+oratory. It _was_ a housemaid's cupboard, but it was very
+inconvenient--and there isn't a housemaid as a matter of fact--so I
+secured it. Come along."
+
+Mr. Prout led the way on to the landing, at the end of which were two
+doors.
+
+"We can't both kneel down, unless the door's open," said Mr. Prout. "But
+when I'm alone, I can _just_ shut myself in."
+
+He opened the oratory door as he spoke, and Michael was impressed by the
+appearance of it. The small window had been covered with a rice-paper
+design of Jesse's Rod.
+
+"It's a bit 'Protty,'" whispered Mr. Prout. "But I thought it was better
+than plain squares of blue and red."
+
+"Much better," Michael agreed.
+
+A ledge nailed beneath the window supported two brass candlesticks and a
+crucifix. The reredos was an Arundel print of the Last Supper and on
+corner brackets on either side were statues of the Immaculate Conception
+and Our Lady of Victories. A miniature thurible hung on a nail and on
+another nail was a holy-water stoup which Michael at first thought was
+intended for soap. In front of the altar was a prie-dieu stacked with
+books of devotion. There were also blessed palms, very dusty, and a
+small sanctuary lamp suspended from the ceiling. Referring to this, Mr.
+Prout explained that really it came from the Turkish Exhibition at
+Earl's Court, but that he thought it would do as he had carefully
+exorcized it according to the use of Sarum.
+
+"Shall we say Vespers?" suggested Mr. Prout. "You know--the Small Office
+of the Blessed Virgin. It won't take long. We can say Compline _too_, if
+you like."
+
+"Just as you like," said Michael.
+
+"You're sure you don't mind the door being left open? Because, you see,
+we can't both get in otherwise. In fact, I have to kneel sideways when
+I'm alone."
+
+"Won't your landlady think it rather rum?" Michael asked.
+
+"Good gracious, no. Why, when we have Vespers of St. Charles the Martyr,
+I have fellows kneeling all the way down the stairs, you know--members
+of the White Rose League. Bournemouth and South of England Branch."
+
+Michael was handed a thin sky-blue book labelled _Office of the B.V.M._
+
+"Latin or English?" queried Mr. Prout.
+
+"Whichever you like," said Michael.
+
+"Well, Latin, if you don't mind. I'm anxious to learn Latin, and I find
+this is good practice."
+
+"It doesn't look very good Latin," said Michael doubtfully.
+
+"Doesn't it?" said Mr. Prout. "It ought to. It's the right version."
+
+"I expect this is Hellenistic--I mean Romanistic--Latin," said Michael,
+who was proud of his momentary superiority in knowledge. "Greek Test is
+Hellenistic Greek."
+
+"Do you know Greek?" asked Mr. Prout.
+
+"A little."
+
+Mr. Prout sighed.
+
+When the Office was concluded, Michael promised he would attend a
+rehearsal of next Sunday's ceremony and, if he felt at ease, the Solemn
+High Mass itself. Mr. Prout, before Michael went away, lent him a book
+called Ritual Reason Why, and advised him to buy The Catholic Religion
+at One Shilling, and meanwhile to practise direct Invocation of the
+Saints.
+
+At home Michael applied himself with ardour to the mastery of his
+religion. He wrestled with the liturgical colours; he tried to grasp the
+difference between Transubstantiation, Consubstantiation and the Real
+Presence; and he congratulated himself upon being under the immediate
+patronage of an Archangel. Also with Charles as his first name he felt
+he could fairly claim the protection of St. Charles the Martyr, though
+later on Mr. Prout suggested St. Charles Borromeo as a less ordinary
+patron. However, there was more than ritualism in Michael's new
+attitude, more than the passion to collect new rites and liturgies and
+ornaments as once he had collected the portraits of famous cricketers or
+silkworms or silver-paper. To be sure, it soon came to seem to him a
+terribly important matter whether according to the Roman sequence red
+were worn at Whitsuntide or whether according to Old English use white
+were the liturgical colour. Soon he would experience a shock of dismay
+on hearing that some reputed Catholic had taken the Ablutions at the
+wrong moment, just as once he had been irritated by ignorant people
+confusing Mr. W. W. Read of Surrey with Read (M.) of the same county.
+Beyond all this Michael sincerely tried to correct his morals and
+manners in the light of aspiration and faith. He experienced a revolt
+against impurity of any kind and was simultaneously seized with a
+determination to suffer Stella's conceit gladly. He really felt a
+deep-seated avarice for being good. He may not have distinguished
+between morality due to emotion and morality wrung out of intellectual
+assent: but he did know that the Magnificat's incense took him to a
+higher elation than Dora's curly head upon his shoulder, or even than
+Alan's bewitching company. Under the influence of faith, Michael found
+himself bursting with an affection for his mother such as he had not
+felt for a long time. Indeed Michael was in a state of love. He loved
+the candles on the altar, he loved his mother's beauty, he loved Stella,
+he loved the people on the beach and the August mornings and the zest
+for acquiring and devouring information upon every detail connected with
+the Catholic religion; and out of his love he gratified Mr. Prout by
+consenting to bear a torch at the Solemn High Mass on the Sunday within
+the octave of St. Bartholomew, Apostle and Martyr and Patron of St.
+Bartholomew's Church, Bournemouth.
+
+Michael's first High Mass was an emotional experience deeper even than
+that windy Evensong. The church was full of people. The altar was
+brilliant with flowers and lights. The sacristy was crowded with boys in
+scarlet cassocks and slippers and zuchettos, quarrelling about their
+cottas and arguing about their heights. Everybody had a favourite banner
+which he wanted to escort and, to complicate matters still further,
+everybody had a favourite companion by whose side he wished to walk.
+
+The procession was marshalled before the altar: the organ boomed through
+the church: the first thurifer started off, swinging his censer towards
+the clouded roof. After him went the cross of ebony and silver, while
+one by one at regular intervals between detachments of the choir the
+banners of the saints floated into action. Michael escorted the blue
+velvet banner of Our Lady, triumphant, crowned, a crescent moon beneath
+her feet and round about her stars and Cherubim. The procession was long
+enough to fill two aisles at once, and as Michael turned up the south
+aisle on the return to the chancel, he saw the pomp of the procession's
+rear--the second thurifer, Mr. Prout in a cotta bordered by lace two
+feet deep, the golden crucifix aloft, the acolytes with their golden
+candlesticks, the blood-red dalmatic and tunicle of the deacon and
+sub-deacon, and solemnly last of all the blood-red cope of the
+celebrant. Michael took no pleasure in being observed by the
+congregation; he was simply elated by the privilege of being able to
+express his desire to serve God, and during the Mass, when the Sanctus
+bell chimed forth, he raised his torch naturally to the paean of the
+salutation. The service was long: the music was elaborate: it was
+back-breaking work to kneel on the chancel steps without support; but
+Michael welcomed the pain with pleasure. During the Elevation of the
+Host, as he bowed his head before the wonder of bread and wine made God,
+his brain reeled in an ecstasy of sublime worship. There was a silence
+save for the censer tinkling steadily and the low whispered words of the
+priest and the click of the broken wafer. The candles burned with a
+supernatural intensity: the boys who lately quarrelled over precedence
+were hushed as angels: the stillness became fearful; the cold steps
+burned into Michael's knees and the incense choked him. At last after an
+age of adoration, the plangent appeal of the Agnus Dei came with a
+melody that seemed the music of the sobbing world from which all tears
+had departed in a clarity of harmonious sound.
+
+Before Michael left Bournemouth, Mr. Prout promised to come and see him
+in London, and Mr. Moneypenny said he would write to a priest who would
+be glad to prepare him for Confirmation. When Michael reached school
+again, he felt shy at meeting Alan who would talk about nothing but
+football and was dismayed to find Michael indifferent to the delights of
+playing three-quarter on Middle Side. Michael deplored Alan's failure to
+advance intellectually beyond mere football and the two of them
+temporarily lost touch with each other's ambitions. Michael now read
+nothing but ecclesiastical books and was greatly insulted by Mr. Viner's
+elementary questions. Mr. Viner was the priest to whom Mr. Moneypenny
+had written about Michael. He had invited him to tea and together they
+had settled that Michael should be confirmed early in the spring.
+Michael borrowed half a dozen books from Mr. Viner and returned home to
+make an attempt to convert the cook and the housemaid to the Catholic
+faith as a preliminary to converting his mother and Alan. In the end he
+did actually convert a boy in the Lower Fifth who for his strange
+beliefs suffered severely at the hands of his father, a Plymouth
+Brother. Michael wished that Stella had not gone back to Germany, for he
+felt that in her he would have had a splendid object on whom to practise
+his power of controversy. At Mr. Viner's house Michael met another
+Jacobean called Chator in whom he found a fellow-enthusiast. Chator knew
+of two other Jacobeans interested in Church matters, Martindale and
+Rigg, and the four of them founded a society called De Rebus
+Ecclesiasticis which met every Friday evening in Michael's room to
+discuss the Catholic Church in all her aspects. The discussions were
+often heated because Michael had violently Ultra-montane leanings,
+Chator was narrowly Sarum, Martindale tried to preserve a happy mean and
+Rigg always agreed with the last speaker. The Society De Rebus
+Ecclesiasticis was splendidly quixotic and gloriously unrelated to the
+dead present. To the quartette of members Archbishop Laud was a far more
+more vital proposition than Archbishop Temple, the society of cavaliers
+was more vividly realized than the Fabian Society. As was to be expected
+from Michael's preoccupation with the past, he became very anxious again
+about his parentage. He longed to hear that in some way he was connected
+with Jacobite heroes and the romantic Stuarts. Mrs. Fane was no longer
+able to put him off with contradictions and vagueness: Michael demanded
+his family tree. The hymn 'Faith of our Fathers' ringing through a
+Notting Dale mission-hall moved him to demand his birthright of family
+history.
+
+"Well, I'll tell you, Michael," said his mother at last. "Your father
+ought to have been the Earl of Saxby--only--something went wrong--some
+certificate or something."
+
+"An Earl?" cried Michael, staggered by the splendid news. "But--but,
+mother, we met Lord Saxby. Who was that?"
+
+"He's a relation. Only, please don't tell people about this, because
+they wouldn't understand. It's all very muddled and difficult."
+
+"My father ought to have been Lord Saxby? Why wasn't he? Mother, was he
+illegitimate?"
+
+"Michael, how can you talk like that? Of course not."
+
+Michael blushed because his mother blushed.
+
+"I'm sorry, mother, I thought he might have been. People are. You read
+about them often enough."
+
+Michael decided that as he must not tell Chator, Martindale and Rigg the
+truth, he would, at any rate, join himself on to the House of Saxby
+collaterally. To his disappointment, he discovered that the only
+reference in history to an Earl of Saxby made out that particular one to
+be a most pestilent Roundhead. So Michael gave up being the Legitimist
+Earl of Saxby, and settled instead to be descended through the
+indiscretion of an early king from the Stuarts. Michael grew more and
+more ecclesiastical as time went on. He joined several Jacobite
+societies, and accompanied Mr. Prout on the latter's London visit to a
+reception at Clifford's Inn Hall in honour of the Legitimist Emperor of
+Byzantium. Michael was very much impressed by kissing the hand of an
+Emperor, and even more deeply impressed by the Scottish piper who
+marched up and down during the light refreshment at one shilling a head
+afterwards. Mr. Prout, accompanied by Michael, Chator, Martindale and
+Rigg, spent the Sunday of his stay in town by attending early Mass in
+Kensington, High Mass in Holborn, Benediction in Shoreditch and Evensong
+in Paddington. He also joined several more guilds, confraternities and
+societies and presented Michael with one hair from the five hairs he
+possessed of a lock of Prince Charlie's hair (authentic) before he
+returned to Bournemouth. This single hair was a great responsibility to
+Michael, until he placed it in a silver locket to wear round his neck.
+During that year occurred what the papers called a Crisis in the Church,
+and Michael and his three friends took in every week The Church Times,
+The Church Review, The English Churchman, Church Bells, The Record and
+The Rock in order to play their part in the crisis. They attended
+Protestant meetings to boo and hiss from the gallery or to applaud
+violently gentlemen on their side who rose to ask the lecturer what they
+supposed to be irrefutable questions. In the spring Michael made his
+first Confession and was confirmed. The first Confession had more effect
+on his imagination than the Confirmation, which in retrospect seemed
+chiefly a sensation of disappointment that the Bishop in view of the
+crisis in the Church refused to wear the mitre temptingly laid out for
+him by Mr. Viner. The Confession, however, was a true test of Michael's
+depth. Mr. Viner was by no means a priest who only thought of candles
+and lace. He was a gaunt and humorous man, ready to drag out from his
+penitents their very souls.
+
+Michael found that first Confession an immense strain upon his
+truthfulness and pluck, and he made up his mind never to commit another
+mortal sin, so deeply did he blush in the agony of revelation. Venial
+faults viewed in the aggregate became appalling, and the real sins, as
+one by one Michael compelled himself to admit them, stabbed his
+self-consciousness with daggers of shame. Michael had a sense of
+completeness which prevented him from making a bad Confession, from
+gliding over his sins and telling half-truths, and having embarked upon
+the duties of his religion he was not going to avoid them. The
+Confession seemed to last for ever. Beforehand, Michael had supposed
+there would be only one commandment whose detailed sins would make his
+heart beat with the difficulty of confessing them; but when he knelt in
+the empty church before the severe priest, every breach of the other
+commandments assumed a demoniac importance. Michael thought that never
+before could Father Viner have listened to such a narration of human
+depravity from a boy of fifteen, or even from a man full grown. He half
+expected to see the priest rise in the middle and leave his chair in
+disgust. Michael felt beads of sweat trickling from his forehead: the
+strain grew more terrible: the crucifix before him gave him no help: the
+book he held fell from his fingers. Then he heard the words of
+absolution, tranquil as evening bells. The inessentials of his
+passionate religion faded away in the strength and beauty of God's
+acceptation of his penitence. Outside in the April sunlight Michael
+could have danced his exultation, before he ran home winged with the
+ecstasy of a light heart.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VI: _Pax_
+
+
+The Lower Fifth only knew Michael during the Autumn term. After
+Christmas he moved up to the Middle Fifth, and, leaving behind him. many
+friends, including Alan, he found himself in an industrious society
+concentrated upon obtaining the Oxford and Cambridge Higher Certificate
+for proficiency in Greek, Latin, Mathematics and either Divinity, French
+or History. Removed from the temptations of a merry company, Michael
+worked very hard indeed and kept his brain fit by argument instead of
+football. The prevailing attitude of himself and his contemporaries
+towards the present was one of profound pessimism. The scholarship of
+St. James' was deteriorating; there was a dearth of great English poets;
+novelists were not so good as once they were in the days of Dickens; the
+new boys were obviously inferior to their prototypes in the past; the
+weather was growing worse year by year; the country was plunging into an
+abyss. In school Michael prophesied more loudly than any of his fellow
+Jeremiahs, and less and less did it seem worth while in these
+Certificate-stifled days to seek for romance or poetry or heroism or
+adventure. Yet as soon as the precincts of discipline and study were
+left behind, Michael could extract from life full draughts of all these
+virtues.
+
+Without neglecting the Oxford and Cambridge Higher Certificate he
+devoured voraciously every scrap of information about Catholicism which
+it was possible to acquire. Books were bought in tawdry
+repositories--Catholic Belief, The Credentials of the Catholic Church,
+The Garden of the Soul, The Glories of Mary by S. Alphonso Liguori,
+Alban Butler's Lives of the Saints, The Clifton Tracts, and on his own
+side of the eternal controversy, Lee's Validity of English Orders, The
+Alcuin Club Transactions with many other volumes. Most of all he liked
+to pore upon the Tourist's Church Guide, which showed with asterisks and
+paragraph marks and sections and daggers what churches throughout the
+United Kingdom possessed the five points of Incense, Lights, Vestments,
+Mixed Chalice and Eastward Position. He found it absorbing to compare
+the progress of ritual through the years.
+
+Michael, as once he had known the ranks of the British Army from
+Lance-corporal to Field Marshal, could tell the hierarchy from Sexton to
+Pope. He knew too, as once he knew the history and uniform of Dragoons,
+Hussars and Lancers, the history and uniform of the religious
+orders--Benedictines, Cistercians, Franciscans, Dominicans (how he loved
+the last in their black and white habit, _Domini canes_, watchdogs of
+the Lord), Carmelites, Praemonstratensians, Augustinians, Servites,
+Gilbertines, Carthusians, Redemptorists, Capuchins, Passionists,
+Jesuits, Oblates of St. Charles Borromeo and the Congregation of St.
+Philip Neri. Michael outvied Mr. Prout in ecclesiastical possessions,
+and his bedroom was nearly as full as the repository from which it was
+stocked. There were images of St. Michael (his own patron), St. Hugh of
+Lincoln (patron of schoolboys) and St. James of Compostella (patron of
+the school), together with Our Lady of Seven Dolours, Our Lady Star of
+the Sea and Our Lady of Lourdes, Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, Our Lady
+of Victories; there were eikons, scapulars, crucifixes, candlesticks,
+the Holy Child of Prague, rosaries, and indeed every variety of sacred
+bric-a-brac. Michael slept in an oriental atmosphere, because he had
+formed the habit of burning during his prayers cone-shaped pastilles in
+a saucer. The tenuous spiral of perfumed smoke carried up his emotional
+apostrophes through the prosaic ceiling of the old night-nursery past
+the stars, beyond the Thrones and Dominations and Seraphim to God.
+Michael's contest with the sins of youth had become much more thrilling
+since he had accepted the existence of a personal fiend, and in an
+ecstasy of temptation he would lie in bed and defy the Devil, calling
+upon his patron the Archangel to descend from heaven and battle with the
+powers of evil in that airy arena above the coal-wharf beyond the
+railway lines. But the Father of Lies had many tricks with which to
+circumvent Michael; he would conjure up sensuous images before his
+antagonist; succubi materialized as pretty housemaids, feminine devils
+put on tights and openwork stockings to encounter him from the pages of
+pink weekly papers, and sometimes Satan himself would sit at the foot of
+his bed in the darkness and tell him tales of how other boys enjoyed
+themselves, arguing that it was a pity to waste his opportunities and
+filling his thoughts with dissolute memories. Michael would leap from
+his bed and pray before his crucifix, and through the darkness angels
+and saints would rally to his aid, until Satan slunk off with his tail
+between his legs, personally humiliated.
+
+At school the fever of the examination made Michael desperate with the
+best intentions. He almost learned the translations of Thucydides and
+Sophocles, of Horace and Cicero. He knew by heart a meanly written Roman
+History, and no passage in Corneille could hold an invincible word.
+Cricket was never played that summer by the Middle Fifth; it was more
+useful to wander in corners of the field, murmuring continually the
+tables of the Kings of Judah from Maclear's sad-hued abstract of Holy
+Scripture. In the end Michael passed in Greek and Latin, in French and
+Divinity and Roman History, even in Algebra and Euclid, but the
+arithmetical problems of a Stockbroker, a Paper-hanger and a Housewife
+made all the rest of his knowledge of no account, and Michael failed to
+see beside his name in the school list that printed bubble which would
+refer him to the tribe of those who had satisfied the examiners for the
+Oxford and Cambridge Higher Certificate. This failure depressed Michael,
+not because he felt implicated in any disgrace, but because he wished
+very earnestly that he had not wasted so many hours of fine weather in
+work. He made up his mind that the mistake should never be repeated, and
+for the rest of his time at St. James' he resisted all set books. If
+Demosthenes was held necessary, Michael would read Plato, and when
+Cicero was set, Michael would feel bound to read Livy.
+
+Michael looked back on the year with dissatisfaction, and wondered if
+school was going to become more and more boring each new term for nine
+more terms. The prospect was unendurably grey, and Michael felt that
+life was not worth living. He talked over with Mr. Viner the flatness of
+existence on the evening after the result of the examination was known.
+
+"I swotted like anything," said Michael gloomily. "And what's the good?
+I'm sick of everything."
+
+The priest's eyes twinkled, as he plunged deeper into his wicker
+arm-chair and puffed clouds of smoke towards the comfortable shelves of
+books.
+
+"You want a holiday," he remarked.
+
+"A holiday?" echoed Michael fretfully. "What's the good of a holiday
+with my mater at some beastly seaside place?"
+
+"Oh, come," said the priest, smiling. "You'll be able to probe the
+orthodoxy of the neighbouring clergy."
+
+"Oh, no really, it's nothing to laugh at, Mr. Viner. You've no idea how
+beastly it is to dawdle about in a crowd of people, and then at the end
+go back to another term of school. I'm sick of everything. Will you lend
+me Lee's Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Terms?" added Michael in a voice
+that contained no accent of hope.
+
+"I'll lend you anything you like, my dear boy," said the priest, "on one
+condition."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"Why, that you'll admit life holds a few grains of consolation."
+
+"But it doesn't," Michael declared.
+
+"Wait a bit, I haven't finished. I was going to say--when I tell you
+that we are going to keep the Assumption this August."
+
+Michael's eyes glittered for a moment with triumph.
+
+"By Jove, how decent." Then they grew dull again. "And I shan't be here.
+The rotten thing is, too, that my mater wants to go abroad. Only she
+says she couldn't leave me alone. But of course she could really."
+
+"Why not stay with a friend--the voluble Chator, for instance, or
+Martindale, that Solomon of schoolboys, or Rigg who in Medicean days
+would have been already a cardinal, so admirably does he incline to all
+parties?"
+
+"I can't ask myself," said Michael. "Their people would think it rum.
+Besides, Chator's governor has gout, and I wouldn't care to be six weeks
+with the other two. Oh, I do hate not being grown up."
+
+"What about your friend Alan Merivale? I thought him a very charming
+youth and refreshingly unpietistic."
+
+"He doesn't know the difference between a chasuble and a black gown,"
+said Michael.
+
+"Which seems to me not to matter very much ultimately," put in Mr.
+Viner.
+
+"No, of course it doesn't. But if one is keen on something and somebody
+else isn't, it isn't much fun," Michael explained. "Besides, he can't
+make me out nowadays."
+
+"Surely the incomprehensible is one of the chief charms of faith and
+friendship."
+
+"And anyway he's going abroad to Switzerland--and I couldn't possibly
+fish for an invitation. It is rotten. Everything's always the same."
+
+"Except in the Church of England. There you have an almost blatant
+variety," suggested the priest.
+
+"You never will be serious when I want you to be," grumbled Michael.
+
+"Oh, yes I will, and to prove it," said Mr. Viner, "I'm going to make a
+suggestion of unparagoned earnestness."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Now just let me diagnose your mental condition. You are sick of
+everything--Thucydides, cabbage, cricket, school, schoolfellows,
+certificates and life."
+
+"Well, you needn't rag me about it," Michael interrupted.
+
+"In the Middle Ages gentlemen in your psychical perplexity betook
+themselves either to the Crusades or entered a monastery. Now, why
+shouldn't you for these summer holidays betake yourself to a monastery?
+I will write to the Lord Abbot, to your lady mother, and if you consent,
+to the voluble Chator's lady mother, humbly pointing out and ever
+praying, etc., etc."
+
+"You're not ragging?" asked Michael suspiciously. "Besides, what sort of
+a monastery?"
+
+"Oh, an Anglican monastery; but at the same time Benedictines of the
+most unimpeachable severity. In short, why shouldn't you and Mark Chator
+go to Clere Abbas on the Berkshire Downs?"
+
+"Are they strict?" enquired Michael. "You know, saying the proper
+offices and all that, not the Day Hours of the English Church--that
+rotten Anglican thing."
+
+"Strict!" cried Mr. Viner. "Why, they're so strict that St. Benedict
+himself, were he to abide again on earth, would seriously consider a
+revision of his rules as interpreted by Dom Cuthbert Manners, O.S.B.,
+the Lord Abbot of Clere."
+
+"It would be awfully ripping to go there," said Michael
+enthusiastically.
+
+"Well then," said Mr. Viner, "it shall be arranged. Meanwhile confer
+with the voluble and sacerdotal Chator on the subject."
+
+The disappointment of the ungranted certificate, the ineffable tedium of
+endless school, seaside lodgings and all the weighty ills of Michael's
+oppressed soul vanished on that wine-gold July noon when Michael and
+Chator stood untrammelled by anything more than bicycles and luggage
+upon the platform of the little station that dreamed its trains away at
+the foot of the Downs.
+
+"By Jove, we're just like pilgrims," said Michael, as his gaze followed
+the aspiring white road which rippled upward to green summits quivering
+in the haze of summer. The two boys left their luggage to be fetched
+later by the Abbey marketing-cart, mounted their bicycles, waved a
+good-bye to the friendly porter beaming among the red roses of the
+little station and pressed energetically their obstinate pedals. After
+about half a mile's ascent they jumped from their machines and walked
+slowly upwards until the station and clustering hamlet lay breathless
+below them like a vision drowned deep in a crystal lake. As they went
+higher a breeze sighed in the sun-parched grasses, and the lines and
+curves of the road intoxicated them with naked beauty.
+
+"I like harebells almost best of any flowers," said Michael. "Do you?"
+
+"They're awfully like bells," observed Chator.
+
+"I wouldn't care if they weren't," said Michael. "It's only in London I
+want things to be like other things."
+
+Chator looked puzzled.
+
+"I can't exactly explain what I mean," Michael went on.
+
+"But they make me want to cry just because they aren't like anything.
+You won't understand what I mean if I explain ever so much. Nobody
+could. But when I see flowers on a lovely road like this, I get sort of
+frightened whether God won't grow tired of bothering about human beings.
+Because really, you know, Chator, there doesn't seem much good in our
+being on the earth at all."
+
+"I think that's a heresy," pronounced Chator. "I don't know which one,
+but I'll ask Dom Cuthbert."
+
+"I don't care if it is heresy. I believe it. Besides, religion must be
+finding out things for yourself that have been found out already."
+
+"Finding out for yourself," echoed Chator with a look of alarm. "I say,
+you're an absolute Protestant."
+
+"Oh, no I'm not," contradicted Michael. "I'm a Catholic."
+
+"But you set yourself up above the Church."
+
+"When did I?" demanded Michael.
+
+"Just now."
+
+"Because I said that harebells were ripping flowers?"
+
+"You said a lot more than that," objected Chator.
+
+"What did I say?" Michael parried.
+
+"Well, I can't exactly remember what you said."
+
+"Then what's the use of saying I'm a Protestant?" cried Michael in
+triumph. "I think I'll play footer again next term," he added
+inconsequently.
+
+"I jolly well would," Chator agreed. "You ought to have played last
+football term."
+
+"Except that I like thinking," said Michael. "Which is rotten in the
+middle of a game. It's jolly decent going to the monastery, isn't it? I
+could keep walking on this road for ever without getting tired."
+
+"We can ride again now," said Chator.
+
+"Well, don't scorch, because we'll miss all the decent flowers if you
+do," said Michael.
+
+Then silently for awhile they breasted the slighter incline of the
+summit.
+
+"Only six weeks of these ripping holidays," Michael sighed. "And then
+damned old school again."
+
+"Hark!" shouted Chator suddenly. "I hear the Angelus."
+
+Both boys dismounted and listened. Somewhere, indeed, a bell was
+chiming, but a bell of such quality that the sound of it through the
+summer was like a cuckoo's song in its unrelation to place. Michael and
+Chator murmured their salute of the Incarnation, and perhaps for the
+first time Michael half realized the mysterious condescension of God.
+Here, high up on these downs, the Word became imaginable, a silence of
+wind and sunlight.
+
+"I say, Chator," Michael began.
+
+"What?"
+
+"Would you mind helping me mark this place where we are?"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Look here, you won't think I'm pretending? but I believe I was
+converted at that moment."
+
+Chator's well-known look of alarm that always followed one of Michael's
+doctrinal or liturgical announcements was more profound than it had ever
+been before.
+
+"Converted?" he gasped. "What to?"
+
+"Oh, not _to_ anything," said Michael. "Only different from what I was
+just now, and I want to mark the place."
+
+"Do you mean--put up a cross or something?"
+
+"No, not a cross. Because, when I was converted, I felt a sudden feeling
+of being frightfully alive. I'd rather put a stone and plant harebells
+round it. We can dig with our spanners. I like stones. They're so
+frightfully old, and I'd like to think, if I was ever a long way from
+here, of my stone and the harebells looking at it--every year new
+harebells and the same old stone."
+
+"Do you know what I think you are?" enquired Chator solemnly. "I think
+you're a mystic."
+
+"I never can understand what a mystic was," said Michael.
+
+"Nobody can," said Chator encouragingly. "But lots of them were made
+saints all the same. I don't think you ever will be, because you do put
+forward the most awfully dangerous doctrines. I do think you ought to be
+careful about that. I do really."
+
+Chator was spluttering under the embarrassment of his own eloquence, and
+Michael, delicately amused, looked at him with a quizzical smile. Chator
+was older than Michael, and by reason of the apoplectic earnestness of
+his appearance and manner, and the natural goodness of him so sincerely,
+if awkwardly expressed, he had a certain influence which Michael
+admitted to himself, however much in the public eye he might affect to
+patronize Chator from his own intellectual eminence. Along the road of
+speculation, however, Michael would not allow Chator's right to curb
+him, and he took a wilful pleasure in galloping ahead over the wildest,
+loftiest paths. To shock old Chator was Michael's delight; and he never
+failed to do so.
+
+"You see," Chator spluttered, "it's not so much what you say now; nobody
+would pay any attention to you, and I know you don't mean half what you
+say; but later on you'll begin to believe in all these heretical ideas
+of your own. You'll end up by being an Agnostic. Oh, yes you will," he
+raged with torrential prophecies, as Michael leaned over the seat of his
+bicycle laughing consumedly. "You'll go on and on wondering this and
+that and improving the doctrines of the Church until you improve them
+right away."
+
+"You are a funny old ass. You really are," gurgled Michael. "And what's
+so funny to me is that just when I had a moment of really believing you
+dash in with your warnings and nearly spoil it all. By Jove, did you
+see that Pale Clouded Yellow?" he shouted suddenly. "By Jove, I haven't
+seen one in England for an awful long time. I think I'll begin
+collecting butterflies again."
+
+Disputes of doctrine were flung to the wind that sang in their ears as
+they mounted their bicycles and coasted swiftly from the bare green
+summits of the downs into a deep lane overshadowed by oak-trees. Soon
+they came to the Abbey gates, or rather to the place where the Abbey
+gates would one day rise in Gothic commemoration of the slow
+subscriptions of the faithful. At present the entrance was only marked
+by a stony road disappearing abruptly at the behest of a painted
+finger-post into verdurous solitudes. After wheeling their bicycles for
+about a quarter of a winding mile, the two boys came to a large open
+space in the wood and beheld Clere Abbey, a long low wooden building set
+as piously near to the overgrown foundations of old Clere Abbey as was
+possible.
+
+"What a rotten shame," cried Michael, "that they can't build a decent
+Abbey. Never mind, I think it's going to be rather good sport here."
+
+They walked up to the door that seemed too massive for the flimsy pile
+to which it gave entrance, and pealed the large bell that hung by the
+side. Michael was pleased to observe a grille through which peered the
+eyes of the monastic porter, inquisitive of the wayfarers. Then a bolt
+shot back, the door opened, and Michael and Chator entered the religious
+house.
+
+"I'm Brother Ambrose," said the porter, a stubby man with a flat
+pock-marked face whose ugliness was redeemed by an expression of
+wonderful innocence. "Dom Cuthbert is expecting you in the Abbot's
+Parlour."
+
+Michael and Chator followed Brother Ambrose through a pleasant
+book-lined hall into the paternal haunt where the Lord Abbot of Clere
+sat writing at a roll-top desk. He rose to greet the boys, who with
+reverence perceived him to be a tall dark angular man with glowing eyes
+that seemed very deeply set on either side of his great hooked nose. He
+could scarcely have been over thirty-five years of age, but he moved
+with a languid awkwardness that made him seem older. His voice was very
+remote and melodious as he welcomed them. Michael looked anxiously at
+Chator to see if he followed any precise ritual of salutation, but Dom
+Cuthbert solved the problem by shaking hands at once and motioning them
+to wicker chairs beside the empty hearth.
+
+"Pleasant ride?" enquired Dom Cuthbert.
+
+"Awfully decent," said Michael. "We heard the Angelus a long way off."
+
+"A lovely bell," murmured Dom Cuthbert. "Tubular. It was given to us by
+the Duke of Birmingham. Come along, I'll show you the Abbey, if you're
+not too tired."
+
+"Rather not," Michael and Chator declared.
+
+The Abbot led the way into the book-lined hall.
+
+"This is the library. You can read here as much as you like. The
+brethren sit here at recreation-time. This is the refectory," he went
+on, with distant chimings in his tone.
+
+The two boys gazed respectfully at the bare trestle table and the raised
+reading-desk and the picture of St. Benedict.
+
+"Of course we haven't much room yet," Dom Cuthbert continued. "In fact
+we have very little. People are very suspicious of monkery."
+
+He smiled tolerantly, and his voice faded almost out of the refectory,
+as if it would soothe the harsh criticism of the world, hence infinitely
+remote.
+
+"But one day"--from worldly adventure his voice came back renewed with
+hope--"one day, when we have some money, we shall build a real Abbey."
+
+"This is awfully ripping though, isn't it?" observed Michael with
+sympathetic encouragement.
+
+"I dare say the founder of the Order was never so well housed," agreed
+the Abbot.
+
+Dom Cuthbert led them to the guest-chamber, from which opened three
+diminutive bedrooms.
+
+"Your cells," the monk said. "But of course you'll feed in here," he
+added, indicating the small bare room in which they stood with so wide a
+sweep of his ample sleeve that the matchboarded ceiling soared into vast
+Gothic twilights and the walls were of stone. Michael was vaguely
+reminded of Mr. Prout and his inadequate oratory.
+
+"The guest-brother is Dom Gilbert," continued the Abbot. "Come and see
+the cloisters."
+
+They passed from the guest-room behind the main building and saw that
+another building formed there the second side of a quadrangle. The other
+two sides were still open to the hazel coppice that here encroached upon
+the Abbey. However, there was traceable the foundations of new buildings
+to complete the quadrangle, and a mass of crimson hollyhocks were
+shining with rubied chalices in the quiet sunlight. For all its
+incompleteness, this was a strangely beautiful corner of the green
+world.
+
+"Are these the cloisters?" Michael asked.
+
+"One day, one day," replied Dom Cuthbert. "A little rough at present,
+but before I die I'm sure there will be a mighty edifice in this wood to
+the glory of God and His saints."
+
+"I'd like it best that way," said Michael. "Not all at once."
+
+He felt an imaginative companionship with the aspirations of the Abbot.
+
+"Now we'll visit the Chapel," said Dom Cuthbert. "We built the Chapel
+with our own hands of mud and stone and laths. You'll like the Chapel.
+Sometimes I feel quite sorry to think of leaving it for the great Abbey
+Church we shall one day build with the hands of workmen."
+
+The Chapel was reached by a short cloister of primitive construction,
+and it was the simplest purest place of worship that Michael had ever
+seen. It seemed to have gathered beneath its small roof the whole of
+peace. On one side the hazel bushes grew so close that the windows
+opened on to the mysterious green heart of life. Two curtains worked
+with golden blazonries divided the quire from the congregation.
+
+"This is where you'll sit," said Dom Cuthbert, pointing to two
+kneeling-chairs on either side of the opening into the quire. "Perhaps
+you'll say a prayer now for the Order. The prayers of children travel
+very swiftly to God."
+
+Dom Cuthbert passed to the Abbot's stall to kneel, while Michael and
+Chator knelt on the chairs. When they had prayed for awhile, the Abbot
+took them into the sacristy and showed them the vestments and the sacred
+vessels of the altar, and from the sacristy door they passed into a
+straight woodland way.
+
+"The Abbot's walk," said Dom Cuthbert, with a beautiful smile. "The
+brethren cut this wonderful path during their hours of recreation. I
+cannot envy any cloisters with this to walk in. How soft is the moss
+beneath our feet, and in Spring how loudly the birds sing here. The
+leaves come very early, too, and linger very late. It is a wonderful
+path. Now I must go and work. I have a lot of letters to write. Explore
+the woods and the downs and enjoy yourselves. You'll find the rules that
+the guests must observe pinned to the wall of the guest-room. Enjoy
+yourselves and be content."
+
+The tall figure of the monk with its languid awkwardness of gait
+disappeared from the Abbot's walk, and the two boys, arm-in-arm,
+wandered off in the opposite direction.
+
+"Everything was absolutely correct," burbled Chator. "Oh, yes,
+absolutely. Not at all Anglican. Perfectly correct. I'm glad. I'm really
+very glad. I was a bit afraid at first it might be Anglican. But it's
+not--oh, no, not at all."
+
+In the guest-chamber they read the rules for guests, and discovered to
+their mortification that they were not expected to be present at Matins
+and Lauds.
+
+"I was looking forward to getting up at two o'clock," said Michael.
+"Perhaps Dom Cuthbert will let us sometimes. It's really much easier to
+get up at two o'clock than five. Mass is at half-past five, and we must
+go to that."
+
+Dom Gilbert, the guest-brother, came in with plates of bread and cheese
+while the boys were reading the rules, and they questioned him about
+going to Matins. He laughed and said they would have as much church as
+they wished without being quite such strict Benedictines as that.
+Michael was not sure whether he liked Dom Gilbert--he was such a very
+practical monk.
+
+"If you go to Mass and Vespers and Compline every day," said Dom
+Gilbert, "you'll do very well. And please be punctual for your meals."
+
+Michael and Chator looked injured.
+
+"Breakfast after Mass. Bread and cheese at twelve. Cup of tea at five,
+if you're in. Supper at eight."
+
+Dom Gilbert left them abruptly to eat their bread and cheese alone.
+
+"He's rather a surly chap," grumbled Michael. "He doesn't seem to me the
+right one to have chosen for guest-brother at all. I had a lot I wanted
+to ask him. For one thing I don't know where the lav. is. I think he's a
+rotten guest-brother."
+
+The afternoon passed in a walk along the wide ridge of the downs through
+the amber of this fine summer day. Several hares were seen and a
+kestrel, while Chator disposed very volubly of the claims of several
+Anglican clergymen to Catholicism. After tea in the hour of recreation
+they met the other monks, Dom Gregory the organist, Brother George and
+Brother William. It was not a very large monastery.
+
+Chator found the Vespers somewhat trying to his curiosity, because owing
+to the interposition of the curtain he was unable to criticize the
+behaviour of the monks in quire. This made him very fidgety, and rather
+destroyed Michael's sense of peace. However, Chator restrained his
+ritualistic ardour very well at Compline, which in the dimness of the
+starlit night was a magical experience, as one by one with raised cowls
+the monks entered in black procession and silence absolute. Michael,
+where he knelt in the ante-chapel, was profoundly moved by the intimate
+responses and the severe Compline hymn. He liked, too, the swift
+departure to bed without chattering good-nights to spoil the solemnity
+of the last Office. Even Chator kept all conversation for the morning,
+and Michael felt he had never lain down upon a couch so truly
+sanctified, nor ever risen from one so pure as when Dom Gilbert knocked
+with a hammer on the door and, standing dark against the milk-white
+dawn, murmured 'Pax vobiscum.'
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VII: _Cloven Hoofmarks_
+
+
+In the first fortnight of their stay at Clere Abbas Michael and Chator
+lived like vagabond hermits rejoicing in the freedom of fine weather.
+Mostly they went for long walks over the downs and through the woodlands
+of the southern slope. To the monks at recreation time they would
+recount their adventures with gamekeepers and contumacious farmers,
+their discoveries of flowers and birds and butterflies, their
+entertainment at remote cottage homes and the hospitalities of gipsy
+camps. To be sure they would often indulge in theological discussions,
+and sometimes, when caught by the azure-footed dusk in unfamiliar lanes,
+they would chant plainsong to the confusion of whatever ghostly
+pursuers, whether Dryads or mediaeval fiends or early Victorian
+murderers, that seemed to dog their footsteps. So much nowadays did the
+unseen world mingle with the ordinary delights of youth.
+
+"Funny thing," said Michael to Chator. "When I was a kid I used to be
+frightened at night--always. Then for a long time I wasn't frightened at
+all, and now again I have a queer feeling just after sunset, a sort of
+curious dampness inside me. Do you ever have it?"
+
+"I only have it when you start me off," said Chator. "But it goes when
+we sing 'Te lucis ante terminum' or chant the Nicene Creed or anything
+holy."
+
+"Yes, it goes with me," Michael agreed dubiously. "But if I drive it
+away it comes back in the middle of the night. I have all sorts of queer
+feelings. Sometimes I feel as if there wasn't any me at all, and I'm
+surprized to see a letter come addressed to me. But when I see a letter
+I've written, I'm still more surprized. Do you have that feeling? Then
+often I feel as if all we were doing or saying at a certain moment had
+been done or said before. Then at other times I have to hold on to a
+tree or hurt myself with something just to prove I'm there. And then
+sometimes I think nothing is impossible for me. I feel absolutely great,
+as if I were Shakespeare. Do you ever have that feeling?"
+
+But Chator was either not sufficiently introspective so to resolve his
+moods, or else he was too simply set on his own naive religion for his
+personality to plunge haphazard into such spiritual currents uncharted.
+
+The pleasantest time of the monastic week was Sunday afternoon, when Dom
+Cuthbert, very lank and pontifical, would lean back in the deepest
+wicker chair of the library to listen to various Thoughts culled by the
+brethren from their week's reading. The Thought he adjudged best was
+with a diamond pencil immortalized upon a window-pane, and the lucky
+discoverer derived as much satisfaction from the verdict as was
+compatible with Benedictine humility. Dom Cuthbert allowed Michael and
+Chator to share in these occasions, and he evidently enjoyed the variety
+of choice which displayed so nicely the characters of his flock.
+
+One afternoon Michael chose for his excerpt Don Quixote's exclamation,
+"How these enchanters hate me, Sancho," with Sancho's reply, "O dismal
+and ill-minded enchanters."
+
+The brethren laughed very loudly at this, for though they were English
+monks, and might have been considered eccentric by the Saxon world,
+their minds really ran on lines of sophisticated piety over
+platitudinous sleepers of thought. Michael blushed defiantly, and looked
+at Dom Cuthbert for comprehension.
+
+"Hark at the idealist's complaint of disillusionment by the Prince of
+Darkness," said Dom Cuthbert, smiling.
+
+"It's not a complaint," Michael contradicted. "It's just a remark.
+That's why I chose it. Besides, it gives me a satisfied feeling. Words
+often make me feel hungry."
+
+The monks interrupted him with more laughter, and Michael, furiously
+self-conscious, left the library and went to sit alone in the stillest
+part of the hazel coppice.
+
+But when he came back in the silent minutes before Vespers he read his
+sentence on the window-pane, and blinked half tearfully at the westering
+sun. He never had another Thought enshrined, because he was for ever
+after this trying to find sentences that would annoy Dom Gilbert, whom
+he suspected of leading the laughter. Visitors began to come to the
+Abbey now--and the two boys were much interested in the people who
+flitted past almost from day to day. Among them was Mr. Prout who kept
+up a duet of volubility with Chator from morning to night for nearly a
+week, at the end of which he returned to his Bournemouth bank. These
+discussions amused Michael most when he was able to break the rhythm of
+the battledores by knocking down whatever liturgical or theological
+shuttlecock was being used. He would put forward the most outrageous
+heresy as his own firm conviction, and scandalize and even alarm poor
+Mr. Prout, who did not at all relish dogmatic follow-my-leader and
+prayed for Michael's reckless soul almost as fervidly as for the
+confusion of the timid and malignant who annually objected to the
+forthcoming feast of the Assumption at St. Bartholomew's. Mr. Prout,
+however, was only one of a series of ritualistic young men who prattled
+continually of vestments and ceremonies and ornaments, until Michael
+began to resent their gossip and withdraw from their society into the
+woods, there to dream, staring up at the green and blue arch above him,
+of the past here in wind-stirred solitude so much the more real.
+Michael was a Catholic because Catholicism assured him of continuity and
+shrouded him with a sensuous austerity, but in these hours of revolt he
+found himself wishing for the old days with Alan. He was fond enough of
+Chator, but to Chator everything was so easy, and when one day a letter
+arrived to call him back to his family earlier than he expected, Michael
+was glad. The waning summer was stimulating his imagination with warm
+noons and gusty twilights; Chator's gossip broke the spell.
+
+Michael went for solitary walks on the downs, where he loved to lie in
+hollows and watch the grasses fantastically large against the sky, and
+the bulky clouds with their slow bewitching motion. He never went to
+visit sentimentally the spot where stone and harebell commemorated his
+brief experience of faith's profundity, for he dreaded lest indifference
+should rob him of a perfect conception. He knew very well even already
+the dangerous chill familiarity of repetition. Those cloud-enchanted
+days of late summer made him listlessly aware of fleeting impulses, and
+simultaneously dignified with incommunicable richness the passivity and
+even emptiness of his condition. On the wide spaces of the downs he
+wandered luxuriously irresolute; his mind, when for a moment it goaded
+itself into an effort of concentration, faltered immediately, so that
+dead chivalries, gleaming down below in the rainy dusk of the valleys,
+suffered in the very instant of perception a transmutation into lamplit
+streets; and the wind's dull August booming made embattled drums and
+fanfares romantic no more than music heard in London on the way home
+from school. Everything came to seem impossible and intangible; Michael
+could not conceive that he ever was or ever would be in a class-room
+again, and almost immediately afterwards he would wonder whether he ever
+had been or ever would be anywhere else. He began to imagine himself
+grown up, but this was a nightmare thought, because he would either
+realize himself decrepit with his own young mind or outwardly the same
+as he was now with a mind hideously distorted by knowledge and sin. He
+could never achieve a consistent realization that would give him
+definite ambitions. He longed to make up his mind to aim at some
+profession, and the more he longed the more hopeless did it seem to try
+to fit any existing profession with the depressing idea of himself grown
+up. Then he would relax his whole being and let himself be once more
+bewitched into passivity by clouds and waving grasses.
+
+Upon this mental state of Michael intruded one day a visitor to the
+Abbey. A young man with spectacles and a pear-shaped face, who wore grey
+flannel shirts that depressed Michael unendurably, made a determined
+effort to gain his confidence. The more shy that Michael became, the
+more earnestly did this young man press him with intimate questions
+about his physical well-being. For Michael it was a strange and odiously
+embarrassing experience. The young man, whose name was Garrod, spoke of
+his home in Hornsey and invited Michael to stay with him. Michael
+shuddered at the idea of staying in a strange suburb: strange suburbs
+had always seemed to him desolate, abominable and insecure. He always
+visualized a draughty and ill-lighted railway platform, a rickety and
+gloomy omnibus, countless Nonconformist chapels and infrequent
+policemen. Garrod spoke of his work on Sundays at a church that was
+daily gaining adherents, of a dissolute elder brother and an Agnostic
+father. Michael could have cried aloud his unwillingness to visit
+Garrod. But the young man was persistent; the young man was sure that
+Michael, from ignorance, was leading an unhealthy life. Garrod spoke of
+ignorance with ferocity: he trampled on it with polytechnical knowledge,
+and pelted it with all sorts of little books that afflicted Michael with
+nausea. Michael loathed Garrod, and resented his persistent
+instructions, his offers to solve lingering physical perplexities. For
+Michael Garrod defiled the country by his cockney complacency, his
+attacks upon public schools, his unpleasant interrogations. Michael
+longed for Alan that together they might rag this worm who wriggled so
+obscenely into the secret places of a boy's mind.
+
+"Science is all the go nowadays," said Garrod. "And Science is what we
+want. Science and Religion. Some think they don't go together. Don't
+they? I think they do then."
+
+"I hate science," said Michael. "Except for doctors, of course--I
+suppose they've got to have it," he added grudgingly. "At St. James' the
+Modern fellows are nearly always bounders."
+
+"But don't you want to know what your body's made of?" demanded Garrod.
+
+"I don't want to be told. I know quite enough for myself."
+
+"Well, would you like to read----"
+
+"No, I don't want to read anything," interrupted Michael.
+
+"But have you read----"
+
+"The only books I like," expostulated Michael, "are the books I find for
+myself."
+
+"But you aren't properly educated."
+
+"I'm at a public school," said Michael proudly.
+
+"Yes, and public schools have got to go very soon."
+
+"Who says so?" demanded Michael fiercely.
+
+"We say so. The people."
+
+"The people?" echoed Michael. "What people? Why, if public schools were
+done away with we shouldn't have any gentlemen."
+
+"You're getting off of the point," said Garrod. "You don't understand
+what I'm driving at. You're a fellow I took a fancy to right off, as you
+might say. I don't want to see you ruin your health, for the want of
+the right word at the right moment. Oh, yes, I know."
+
+"Look here," said Michael bluntly, "I don't want to be rude, but I don't
+want to talk about this any more. It makes me feel beastly."
+
+"False modesty is the worst thing we've got to fight against," declared
+Garrod.
+
+So the argument continued, while all the time the zealous young man
+would fling darts of information that however much Michael was unwilling
+to receive them generally stuck fast. Michael was relieved when Garrod
+passed on his way, and he vowed to himself never to run the risk of
+meeting him again.
+
+The visit of Garrod opened for Michael a door to uneasy speculation. At
+his private school he had known the hostility of 'cads,' and later on he
+had been aware of the existence of 'bounders'; the cads were always
+easily defeated by force of arms, but this sudden attack upon his
+intimacy by a bounder was disquieting and difficult to deal with. He
+resented Garrod's iconoclasm, resented it furiously in retrospect,
+wishing that he had parried more icily his impudent thrusts; and he
+could almost have rejoiced in Garrod's reappearance that with disdain he
+might have wounded the fellow incurably. Yet he had a feeling that
+Garrod might have turned out proof against the worst weapons he knew how
+to use, and the memory of the 'blighter's' self-confidence was
+demoralizing to Michael's conception of superiority. The vision of a
+world populated by hostile Garrods rose up, and some of the simplicity
+of life vanished irredeemably, so that Michael took refuge in dreams of
+his own fashioning, where in a feudal world the dreamer rode at the head
+of mankind. Lying awake in the intense blackness of his cell, Michael
+troubled himself once more with his identity, wishing that he knew more
+about himself and his father, wishing that his mother were not growing
+more remote every day, wondering whether Stella over in Germany was
+encountering Garrods and praying hard with a sense of impotency in the
+darkness. He tried to make up his mind to consult Dom Cuthbert, but the
+lank, awkward monk, fond though he was of him, seemed unapproachable by
+daylight, and the idea of consulting him, still more of confessing to
+him, never crystallized.
+
+These were still days bedewed with the approach of Autumn; milkwhite at
+morn and at noon breathless with a silver intensity that yearned upwards
+against an azure too ethereal, they floated sadly into night with humid,
+intangible draperies of mist. These were days that forbade Michael to
+walk afield, and that with haunting, autumnal birdsong held him in a
+trance. He would find himself at the day's end conscious of nothing but
+a remembrance of new stubble trodden mechanically with languors
+attendant, and it was only by a great effort that he brought himself to
+converse with the monks working among the harvest or for the Nativity of
+the Blessed Virgin to pick heavy white chrysanthemums from the stony
+garden of the Abbey.
+
+Michael was the only guest staying in the Abbey on the vigil, and he sat
+almost in the entrance of the quire between the drawn curtains, not very
+much unlike the devout figure of some youthful donor in an old Italian
+picture, sombre against the blazing Vespers beyond. Michael was always
+hoping for a direct manifestation from above to reward the effort of
+faith, although he continually reproved himself for this desire and
+flouted his weakness. He used to gaze into the candles until they
+actually did seem to burn with angelic eyes that made his heart leap in
+expectation of the sign awaited; but soon fancy would betray him, and
+they would become candles again merely flickering.
+
+On this September dusk there were crimson shadows of sunset deepening to
+purple in the corners of the chapel; the candles were very bright; the
+brethren in the stalls sang with austere fervour; the figure of Dom
+Cuthbert veiled from awkwardness by the heavy white cope moved before
+the altar during the censing of the Magnificat with a majesty that
+filled the small quire; the thurible tinkled its perfumed harmonies; and
+above the contentment of the ensuing hush blackbirds were heard in the
+garden or seen slipping to and fro like shadows across the windows.
+
+Michael at this moment realized that there was a seventh monk in the
+quire, and wondered vaguely how he had failed to notice this new-comer
+before. Immediately after being made aware of his presence he caught the
+stranger's eye, and blushed so deeply that to cover his confusion he
+turned over the pages of a psalter. Curiosity made him look up again,
+but the new monk was devoutly wrapped in contemplation, nor did Michael
+catch his eye again during the Office. At supper he enquired about the
+new-comer of Dom Gilbert, who reproved him for inquisitiveness, but told
+him he was called Brother Aloysius. Again at Compline Michael caught his
+glance, and for a long time that night in the darkness he saw the eyes
+of Brother Aloysius gleaming very blue.
+
+On the next day Michael, wandering by the edge of the hazel coppice,
+came upon Brother Aloysius with deep-stained mouth and hands gathering
+blackberries.
+
+"Who are you?" asked the monk. "You gave me a very funny look at
+Vespers."
+
+Michael thought this was an extremely unusual way for a monk, even a new
+monk, to speak, and hesitated a moment before he explained who he was.
+
+"I suppose you can help me pick blackberries. I suppose that isn't
+against the rules."
+
+"I often help the brothers," said Michael simply. "But I don't much care
+for picking blackberries. Still, I don't mind helping you."
+
+Michael had an impulse to leave Brother Aloysius, but his
+self-consciousness prevented him from acting on it, and he kept the
+picker company in silence while the blackberries dropped lusciously into
+the basket.
+
+"Feel my hand," said Brother Aloysius suddenly. "It's as hot as hell."
+
+This time Michael stared in frank astonishment.
+
+"Well, you needn't look so frightened," said the monk. "You don't look
+so very good yourself."
+
+"Well, of course I'm not good," said Michael. "Only I think it's funny
+for a monk to swear. You don't mind my saying so, do you?"
+
+"I don't mind. I don't mind anything," said Brother Aloysius.
+
+Tension succeeded this statement, a tension that Michael longed to
+break; but he could do no more than continue to pick the blackberries.
+
+"I suppose you wonder why I'm a monk?" demanded Brother Aloysius.
+
+Michael looked at his questioner's pale face, at the uncomfortable eyes
+gleaming blue, at the full stained mouth and the long feverish hands
+dyed with purple juice.
+
+"Why are you?" he asked.
+
+"Well, I thought I'd try if anything could make me feel good, and then
+you looked at me in Chapel and set me off again."
+
+"I set you off?" stammered Michael.
+
+"Yes, you with your big girl's eyes, just like a girl I used to live
+with. Oh, you needn't look so proper. I expect you've often thought
+about girls. I did at your age. Three months with girls, three months
+with priests. Girls and priests--that's my life. When I was tired of
+women, I became religious, and when I was tired of Church, I took to
+women. It was a priest told me to come here to see if this would cure
+me, and now, damn you, you come into Chapel and stare and set me
+thinking of the Seven Sisters Road on that wet night I saw her last.
+That's where she lives, and you look exactly like her. God! you're the
+image of her. You might almost be her ghost incarnate."
+
+Brother Aloysius caught hold of Michael's arm and spoke through clenched
+teeth. In Michael's struggle to free himself the basket of blackberries
+was upset, and they trod the spilt fruit into the grass. Michael broke
+away finally and gasped angrily:
+
+"Look here, I'm not going to stay here. You're mad."
+
+He ran from the monk into the depths of the wood, not stopping until he
+reached a silent glade. Here on the moss he sat panting, horrified. Yet
+when he came to compose the sentences in which he should tell Dom
+Cuthbert of his experience with the new monk, he found himself wishing
+that he had stayed to hear more. He actually enjoyed in retrospect the
+humiliation of the man, and his heart beat with the excitement of
+hearing more. Slowly he turned to seek again Brother Aloysius.
+
+"You may as well tell me some more, now you've begun," said Michael.
+
+For three or four days Michael was always in the company of Brother
+Aloysius, plying him with questions that sounded abominable to himself,
+when he remembered with what indignation he had rejected Garrod's offer
+of knowledge. Brother Aloysius spared no blushes, whether of fiery shame
+or furtive desire, and piece by piece Michael learned the fabric of
+vice. He was informed coldly of facts whose existence he had hitherto
+put down to his own most solitary and most intimate imaginations. Every
+vague evil that came wickedly before sleep was now made real with
+concrete examples; the vilest ideas, that hitherto he had considered
+peculiar to himself and perhaps a few more sadly tempted dreamers
+tossing through the vulnerable hours of the night, were commonplace to
+Brother Aloysius, whose soul was twisted, whose mind was debased to
+such an extent that he could boast of his delight in making the very
+priest writhe and wince in the Confessional.
+
+Conversations with Brother Aloysius were sufficiently thrilling
+journeys, and Michael was always ready to follow his footsteps as one
+might follow a noctambulatory cat. The Seven Sisters Road was the scene
+of most of his adventures, if adventures they could be called, these
+dissolute pilgrimages. Michael came to know this street as one comes to
+know the street of a familiar dream. He walked along it in lavender
+sunrises watching the crenellated horizon of housetops; he sauntered
+through it slowly on dripping midnights, and on foggy November
+afternoons he speculated upon the windows with their aqueous sheen of
+incandescent gas. On summer dusks he pushed his way through the fetid
+population that thronged it, smelling the odour of stale fruit exposed
+for sale, and on sad grey Sabbaths he saw the ill-corseted servant girls
+treading down the heels of their ugly boots, and plush-clad children who
+continually dropped Sunday-school books in the mud.
+
+And not only was Michael cognizant of the sordid street's exterior. He
+heard the creak of bells by blistered doors, he tripped over mats in
+narrow gloomy passages and felt his way up stale rickety stairs. Michael
+knew many rooms in this street of dreams: but they were all much alike
+with their muslin and patchouli, their aspidistras and yellowing
+photographs. The ribbed pianos tintinnabulated harshly with songs cut
+from the squalid sheets of Sunday papers: in unseen basements children
+whined, while on the mantelpiece garish vases rattled to the vibration
+of traffic.
+
+Michael was also aware of the emotional crises that occur in the Seven
+Sisters Road, from the muttered curses of the old street-walkers with
+their crape bonnets cocked awry and their draggled musty skirts to
+Brother Aloysius himself shaken with excess of sin in colloquy with a
+ghostly voice upon a late winter dawn.
+
+"A ghost?" he echoed incredulously.
+
+"It's true. I heard a voice telling me to go back. And when I went back,
+there she was sitting in the arm-chair with the antimacassar round her
+shoulders because it was cold, and the carving-knife across her knees,
+waiting up to do for the fellow that was keeping her. I reckon it was
+God sent me back to save her."
+
+Even Michael in his vicious mood could not tolerate this hysterical
+blasphemy, and he scoffed at the supernatural explanation. But Brother
+Aloysius did not care whether he was believed or not. He himself was
+sufficient audience to himself, ready to applaud and condemn with equal
+exaggeration of feeling.
+
+After a week of self-revelation Brother Aloysius suddenly had spiritual
+qualms about his behaviour, and announced to Michael that he must go to
+Confession and free himself from the oppressive responsibility of his
+sin. Michael did not like the thought of Dom Cuthbert being aware of the
+way in which his last days at the monastery had been spent, and hoped
+that Brother Aloysius would confess in as general a manner as possible.
+Yet even so he feared that the perspicacious Abbot would guess the
+partner of his penitent, and, notwithstanding the sacred impersonality
+of the Confessional, regard Michael with an involuntary disgust.
+However, the confession, with all its attendant pangs of self-reproach,
+passed over, and Michael was unable to detect the slightest alteration
+in Dom Cuthbert's attitude towards him. But he avoided Brother Aloysius
+so carefully during the remainder of his stay, that it was impossible to
+test the Abbot's knowledge as directly as he could have wished.
+
+The night before Michael was to leave the monastery, a great gale blew
+from the south-west and kept him wide awake hour after hour until the
+bell for Matins. He felt that on this his last night it would be in
+order for him to attend the Office. So he dressed quickly and hurried
+through the wind-swept corridor into the Chapel. Here, in a severity of
+long droning psalms, he tried to purge his mind of all it had acquired
+from the shamelessness of Brother Aloysius. He was so far successful
+that he could look Dom Cuthbert fearlessly in the face when he bade him
+good-bye next day, and as he coasted over the downs through the calm
+September sunlight, he to himself seemed like the country washed by the
+serene radiance of the tempest's aftermath.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII: _Mirrors_
+
+
+Michael somehow felt shy when he heard his mother's voice telling him to
+come into her room. He had run upstairs and knocked excitedly at her
+door before the shyness overwhelmed him, but it was too late not to
+enter, and he sat down to give her the account of his holidays. Rather
+dull it seemed, and robbed of all vitality by the barrier which both his
+mother and he hastened to erect between themselves.
+
+"Well, dear, did you enjoy yourself at this Monastery?"
+
+"Oh, rather."
+
+"Is the--what do you call him?--the head monk a nice man?"
+
+"Oh, yes, awfully decent."
+
+"And your friend Chator, did he enjoy himself?"
+
+"Oh, rather. Only he had to go before me. Did you enjoy yourself abroad,
+mother?"
+
+"Very much, dear, thank you. We had lovely weather all the time."
+
+"We had awfully ripping weather too."
+
+"Have you got everything ready for school in the morning?"
+
+"There's nothing much to get. I suppose I'll go into Cray's--the Upper
+Fifth. Do you want me now, mother?"
+
+"No, dear, I have one or two letters to write."
+
+"I think I'll go round and see if Chator's home yet. You don't mind?"
+
+"Don't be late for dinner."
+
+"Oh, no, rather not."
+
+Going downstairs from his mother's room, Michael had half an impulse to
+turn back and confide in her the real account of his holidays. But on
+reflection he protested to himself that his mother looked upon him as
+immaculate, and he felt unwilling to disturb by such a revolutionary
+step the approved tranquillities of maternal ignorance.
+
+Mr. Cray, his new form-master, was a man of distinct personality, and
+possessed a considerable amount of educative ability; but unfortunately
+for Michael the zest of classics had withered in his heart after his
+disappointment over the Oxford and Cambridge Certificate. Therefore Mr.
+Cray with his bright archaeology and chatty scholarship bored Michael
+more profoundly than any of his masters so far had bored him. Mr. Cray
+resented this attitude very bitterly, being used to keenness in his
+form, and Michael's dreary indolence, which often came nearer to
+insolence, irritated him. As for the plodding, inky sycophants who
+fawned upon Mr. Cray's informativeness, Michael regarded them with
+horror and contempt. He sat surrounded by the butts and bugbears of his
+school-life. All the boys whose existence he had deplored seemed to have
+clambered arduously into the Upper Fifth just to enrage him with the
+sight of their industrious propinquity. There they sat with their
+scraggy wrists protruding from shrinking coat-sleeves, with ambitious
+noses glued to their books, with pens and pencils neatly disposed for
+demonstrative annotation, and nearly all of them conscious of having
+figured in the school-list with the printed bubble of the Oxford and
+Cambridge Higher Certificate beside their names. Contemplating them in
+the mass, Michael scarcely knew how he would endure another dusty year
+of school.
+
+"And now we come to the question of the Homeric gate--the Homeric gate,
+Fane, when you can condescend to our level," said Mr. Cray severely.
+
+"I'm listening, sir," said Michael wearily.
+
+"Of course the earliest type of gate was without hinges--without hinges,
+Fane! Very much like your attention, Fane!"
+
+Several sycophants giggled at this, and Michael, gazing very earnestly
+at Mr. Cray's benign but somewhat dirty bald head, took a bloody revenge
+upon those in reach of his javelin of quadruple penholders.
+
+"For Monday," said Mr. Cray, when he had done with listening to the
+intelligent advice of his favourite pupils on the subject of gates
+ancient and modern, "for Monday the essay will be on Patriotism."
+
+Michael groaned audibly.
+
+"Isn't there an alternative subject, sir?" he gloomily enquired.
+
+"Does Fane dislike abstractions?" said Mr. Cray. "Curious! Well, if Fane
+wishes for an alternative subject, of course Fane must be obeyed. The
+alternative subject will be An Examination into the Fundamental
+Doctrines of Hegelian Idealism. Does that suit Fane?"
+
+"Very well indeed," said Michael, who had never heard of Hegel until
+that moment, but vowed to himself that somehow between this muggy Friday
+afternoon and next Monday morning he would conquer the fellow's
+opinions. As a matter of fact, the essay proved perfectly easy with the
+assistance of The Popular Encyclopedia, though Mr. Cray called it a
+piece of impudence and looked almost baleful when Michael showed it up.
+
+From this atmosphere of complacent effort Michael withdrew one afternoon
+to consult Father Viner about his future. Underneath the desire for
+practical advice was a desire to talk about himself, and Michael was
+disappointed on arriving at Father Viner's rooms to hear that he was
+out. However, learning that there was a prospect of his speedy return,
+he came in at the landlady's suggestion to amuse himself with a book
+while he waited.
+
+Wandering round the big bay-windowed room with its odour of tobacco and
+books, and casting a careless glance at Father Viner's desk, Michael
+caught sight of his own name in the middle of a neatly written letter on
+the top of a pile of others. He could not resist taking a longer glance
+to see the address and verify the allusion to himself, and with this
+longer glance curiosity conquered so completely the prejudice against
+prying into other people's correspondence that Michael, breathing
+nervously under the dread of interruption, took up the letter and read
+it right through. It was in his present mood of anxiety about himself
+very absorbing.
+
+     CLERE ABBEY,
+
+     _Michael Mass._
+
+     PAX [Maltese cross symbol]
+
+     _Dear Brother,_
+
+     _I have been intending to write to you about young Michael Fane
+     ever since he left us, and your letter of enquiry has had the
+     effect of bringing me up to the point._
+
+     _I hardly know what to tell you._ _He's a curious youth, very
+     lovable, and with enough brains to make one wish that he might have
+     a vocation for the priesthood._ _At the same time I noticed while
+     he was with us, especially after the admirable Chator departed, an
+     overwhelming languor which I very much deplored._
+
+     _He spent much of his time with a very bad hat indeed, whom I have
+     just sent away from Clere. If you ever come across Mr. Henry Meats,
+     be careful of him. Arbuthnot of St. Aidan's, Holloway, sent him to
+     me. You know Arbuthnot's expansive (and for his friends expensive)
+     Christianity. This last effort of his was a snorter, a soft, nasty,
+     hysterical, little blob of vice. I ought to have seen through the
+     fellow before I did. Heaven knows I get enough of the tag-rag of
+     the Movement trying to be taken on at Clere. I suppose the monastic
+     life will always make an imperishable appeal to the worst, and,
+     thank God, some of the best. I mention this fellow to you because
+     I'm afraid he and Michael may meet again, and I don't at all like
+     the idea of their acquaintanceship progressing, especially as it
+     was unluckily begun beneath a religious roof. So keep an eye on Mr.
+     Henry Meats. He's really bad._
+
+     _Another fellow I don't recommend for Michael is Percy Garrod. Not
+     that I think there is much danger in that direction, for I fancy
+     Michael was very cold with him. Percy is a decent, honest,
+     hard-working, common ass, with a deep respect for the Pope and the
+     Polytechnic. He's a trifle zealous, however, with bastard
+     information about physical science, and not at all the person I
+     should choose to lecture Michael on the complications of
+     adolescence._
+
+     _We are getting on fairly well at Clere, but it's hard work trying
+     to make this country believe there is the slightest necessity for
+     the contemplative life. I hope all goes well with you and your
+     work._
+
+     _Yours affectionately in Xt.,_
+
+     _Cuthbert Manners, O.S.B._
+
+     _Poor Michael. His will be a difficult position one day. I feel on
+     re-reading this letter that I've told you nothing you don't already
+     know. But he's one of those elusive boys who have lived within
+     themselves too much and too long._
+
+Michael put this letter back where he had found it, and wondered how
+much of the contents would be discussed by Father Viner. He was glad
+that Brother Aloysius had vanished, because Brother Aloysius had become
+like a bad dream with which he was unwilling in the future to renew
+acquaintance. On his own character Dom Cuthbert had not succeeded in
+throwing very much light--at any rate not in this letter. Father Viner
+came in to interrupt Michael's meditations, and began at once to discuss
+the letter.
+
+"The Lord Abbot of Clere thinks you're a dreamer," he began abruptly.
+
+"Does he, Mr. Viner?" echoed Michael, who somehow could never bring
+himself to the point of addressing the priest as 'Father.' Shyness
+always overcame his will.
+
+"What do you dream about, young Joseph?"
+
+"Oh, I only think about a good many things, and wonder what I'm going to
+be and all that," Michael replied. "I don't want to go into the Indian
+Civil Service or anything with exams. I'm sick of exams. What I most
+want to do is to get away from school. I'm sick of school, and the
+fellows in the Upper Fifth are a greasy crowd of swats always sucking up
+to Cray."
+
+"And who is the gentleman with the crustacean name that attracts these
+barnacles?"
+
+"Cray? Oh, he's my form-master, and tries to be funny."
+
+"So do I, Michael," confessed Mr. Viner.
+
+"Oh, well, that's different. I'm not bound to listen to you, if I don't
+want to. But I have to listen to Cray for eighteen hours every week, and
+he hates me because I won't take notes for his beastly essays. I think
+I'll ask my mater if I can't leave school after this term."
+
+"And then what would you do?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know. I could settle when I'd left."
+
+"What about Oxford?"
+
+"Well, I could go to Oxford later on."
+
+"I don't think you could quite so easily as you think. Anyway, you'd
+much better go to Oxford straight from school."
+
+"Eight more terms before I leave. Phew!" Michael groaned. "It's such a
+terrible waste of time, and I know Oxford's ripping."
+
+"Perhaps something will come along to interest you. And always, dear
+boy, don't forget you have your religion."
+
+"Yes, I know," said Michael. "But at the Abbey I met some people who
+were supposed to be religious, and they were pretty good rotters."
+
+The priest looked at him and seemed inclined to let Michael elaborate
+this topic, but almost immediately he dismissed it with a commonplace.
+
+"Oh, well," Michael sighed, "I suppose something will happen soon to
+buck me up. I hope so. Perhaps the Kensitites will start making rows in
+churches again," he went on hopefully. "Will you lend me the Apocryphal
+Gospels? We're going to have a discussion about them at the De Rebus
+Ecclesiasticis."
+
+"Oh, the society hasn't broken up?" enquired Mr. Viner.
+
+"Rather not. Only everybody's changed rather. Chator's become
+frightfully Roman. He was Sarum last term, and he thinks I'm frightfully
+heretical, only of course I say a lot I don't mean just to rag him. I
+say, by the way, who wrote 'In a Garden'?"
+
+"It sounds a very general title," commented Mr. Viner, with a smile.
+
+"Well, it's some poem or other."
+
+"Swinburne wrote a poem in the Second Series of Poems and Ballads called
+'A Forsaken Garden.' Is that what you mean?"
+
+"Perhaps. Is it a famous poem?"
+
+"Yes, I should say it was distinctly."
+
+"Well, that must be it. Cray tried to be funny about it to-day in form,
+and said to me, 'Good heavens, haven't you read "In a Garden"?' And I
+said I'd never heard of it. And then he said in his funny way to the
+class, 'I suppose you've all read it.' And none of them had, which made
+him look rather an ass. So he said we'd better read it by next week."
+
+"I can lend you my Swinburne. Only take care of it," said Mr. Viner.
+"It's a wonderful poem."
+
+    _In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland,_
+      _At the sea-down's edge between windward and lee,_
+    _Walled round with rocks as an inland island,_
+      _The ghost of a garden fronts the sea._
+
+"I say," exclaimed Michael eagerly, "I never knew Swinburne was a really
+great poet. And fancy, he's alive now."
+
+"Alive, and living at Putney," said Mr. Viner.
+
+"And yet he wrote what you've just said!"
+
+"He wrote that, and many other things too. He wrote:
+
+    _Before the beginning of years_
+      _There came to the making of man_
+    _Time, with a gift of tears;_
+      _Grief, with a glass that ran;_
+    _Pleasure, with pain for leaven,_
+      _Summer, with flowers that fell;_
+    _Remembrance fallen from heaven,_
+      _And madness risen from hell."_
+
+"Good Lord!" sighed Michael. "And he's in Putney at this very moment."
+
+Michael went home clasping close the black volume, and in his room that
+night, while the gas jet flamed excitably in defiance of rule, he read
+almost right through the Second Series of Poems and Ballads. It was
+midnight when he turned down the gas and sank feverishly into bed. For a
+long while he was saying to himself isolated lines: _'The wet skies
+harden, the gates are barred on the summer side.' 'The rose-red acacia
+that mocks the rose.' 'Sleep, and if life was bitter to thee, brother.'
+'For whom all winds are quiet as the sun, all waters as the shore.'_
+
+In school on Monday morning Mr. Cray, to Michael's regret, did not
+allude to the command that his class should read 'In a Garden.' Michael
+was desperately anxious at once to tell him how much he had loved the
+poem and to remind him of the real title, 'A Forsaken Garden.' At last
+he could bear it no longer and went up flushed with enthusiasm to Mr.
+Cray's desk, nominally to enquire into an alleged mistake in his Latin
+Prose, but actually to inform Mr. Cray of his delight in Swinburne. When
+the grammatical blunder had been discussed, Michael said with as much
+nonchalance as he could assume:
+
+"I read that poem, sir. I think it's ripping."
+
+"What poem?" repeated Mr. Cray vaguely. "Oh, yes, 'Enoch Arden.'"
+
+"'Enoch Arden,'" stammered Michael. "I thought you said 'In a Garden.' I
+read 'A Forsaken Garden' by Swinburne."
+
+Mr. Cray put on his most patronizing manner.
+
+"My poor Fane, have you never heard of Enoch Arden? Perhaps you've never
+even heard of Tennyson?"
+
+"But Swinburne's good, isn't he, sir?"
+
+"Swinburne is very well," said Mr. Cray. "Oh, yes, Swinburne will do, if
+you like rose-jam. But I don't recommend Swinburne for you, Fane."
+
+Then Mr. Cray addressed his class:
+
+"Did you all read 'Enoch Arden'?"
+
+"Yes, sir," twittered the Upper Fifth.
+
+"Fane, however, with that independence of judgment which distinguishes
+his Latin Prose from, let us say, the prose of Cicero, preferred to read
+'A Forsaken Garden' by one Swinburne."
+
+The Upper Fifth giggled dutifully.
+
+"Perhaps Fane will recite to us his discovery," said Mr. Cray,
+scratching his scurfy head with the gnawed end of a penholder.
+
+Michael blushed resentfully, and walked back to his desk.
+
+"No?" said Mr. Cray with an affectation of great surprise.
+
+Then he and the Upper Fifth, contented with their superiority, began to
+chew and rend some tough Greek particles which ultimately became
+digestible enough to be assimilated by the Upper Fifth; while Mr. Cray
+himself purred over his cubs, looking not very unlike a mangy old
+lioness.
+
+"Eight more terms," groaned Michael to himself.
+
+Mr. Cray was not so blind to his pupils' need for mild intellectual
+excitement, however much he might scorn the easy emotions of Swinburne.
+He really grew lyrical over Homeric difficulties, and even spoke
+enthusiastically of Mr. Mackail's translation of the Georgics; but
+always he managed to conceal the nobility of his theme beneath a mass of
+what he called 'minor points.' He would create his own rubbish heap and
+invite the Upper Fifth to scratch in it for pearls. One day a question
+arose as to the exact meaning of [Greek: oulochutai] in Homer.
+Michael would have been perfectly content to believe that it meant
+'whole barleycorns,' until Mr. Cray suggested that it might be
+equivalent to the Latin 'mola,' meaning 'grain coarsely ground.' An
+exhausting discussion followed, illustrated by examples from every sort
+of writer, all of which had to be taken down in notes in anticipation of
+a still more exhausting essay on the subject.
+
+"The meal may be trite," said Mr. Cray, "but not the subject," he added,
+chuckling. "However, I have only touched the fringe of it: you will find
+the arguments fully set forth in Buttmann's Lexilogus. Who possesses
+that invaluable work?"
+
+Nobody in the Upper Fifth possessed it, but all anxiously made a note of
+it, in order to acquire it over the counter of the Book Room
+downstairs.
+
+"No use," said Mr. Cray. "Buttmann's Lexilogus is now out of print."
+
+Michael pricked up at this. The phrase leant a curious flavour of
+Romance to the dull book.
+
+"No doubt, however, you will be able to obtain it second-hand," added
+Mr. Cray.
+
+The notion of tracking down Buttmann's Lexilogus possessed the Upper
+Fifth. Eagerly after school the diligent ones discussed ways and means.
+Parties were formed, almost one might say expeditions, to rescue the
+valuable work from oblivion. Michael stood contemptuously aside from the
+buzz of self-conscious effort round him, although he had made up his own
+mind to be one of the first to obtain the book. Levy, however, secured
+the first copy for fourpence in Farringdon Street, earning for his
+sharpness much praise. Another boy bought one for three shillings and
+sixpence in Paddington, the price one would expect to pay, if not a
+Levy; and there were rumours of a copy in Kensington High Street. To
+Michael the mart of London from earliest youth had been Hammersmith
+Broadway, and thither he hurried, hopeful of discovering Buttmann's
+dingy Lexilogus, for the purchase of which he had thoughtfully begged a
+sovereign from his mother. Michael did not greatly covet Buttmann, but
+he was sure that the surplus from three shillings and sixpence, possibly
+even from fourpence, would be very welcome.
+
+He found at last in a turning off Hammersmith Broadway a wonderful
+bookshop, whose rooms upon rooms leading into one another were all lined
+and loaded with every kind of book. The proprietor soon found a copy of
+Buttmann, which he sold to Michael for half a crown, leaving him with
+fifteen shillings for himself, since he decided that it would be as well
+to return his mother at least half a crown from her sovereign. The
+purchase completed, Michael began to wander round the shop, taking down
+a book here, a book there, dipping into them from the top of a ladder,
+sniffing them, clapping their covers together to drive away the dust,
+and altogether thoroughly enjoying himself, while the daylight slowly
+faded and street-lamps came winking into ken outside. At last, just as
+the shop-boy was putting up the shutters, Michael discovered a volume
+bound in half-morocco of a crude gay blue, that proved on inspection to
+contain the complete poetical works of Algernon Charles Swinburne, for
+the sum of seventeen shillings and sixpence.
+
+What was now left of his golden sovereign that should have bought so
+much beside Buttmann's brown and musty Lexilogus?
+
+Michael approached the proprietor with the volume in his hand.
+
+"How much?" he asked, with a queer choking sensation, a throbbing
+excitement, for he had never before even imagined the expenditure of
+seventeen shillings and sixpence on one book.
+
+"What's this?" said the proprietor, putting on his spectacles. "Oh, yes,
+Swinburne--pirated American edition. Seventeen shillings and sixpence."
+
+"Couldn't you take less?" asked Michael, with a vague hope that he might
+rescue a shilling for his mother, if not for cigarettes.
+
+"Take less?" repeated the bookseller. "Good gracious, young man, do you
+know what you'd have to pay for Swinburne's stuff separate? Something
+like seven or eight pounds, and then they'd be all in different volumes.
+Whereas here you've got--lemme see--Atalanta in Calydon, Chastelard,
+Poems and Ballads, Songs before Sunrise, Bothwell, Tristram of Lyonesse,
+Songs of Two Nations, and heaven knows what not. I call seventeen
+shillings and sixpence very cheap for what you might almost call a man's
+life-work. Shall I wrap it up?"
+
+"Yes, please," said Michael, gasping with the effect of the plunge.
+
+But when that night he read
+
+    _Swallow, my sister, O fair swift swallow,_
+
+he forgot all about the cost.
+
+The more of Swinburne that Michael read, the more impatient he grew of
+school. The boredom of Mr. Cray's class became stupendous; and Michael,
+searching for some way to avoid it, decided to give up Classics and
+apply for admission to the History Sixth, which was a small association
+of boys who had drifted into this appendix for the purpose of defeating
+the ordinary rules of promotion. For instance, when the Captain of the
+School Eleven had not attained the privileged Sixth, he was often
+allowed to enter the History Sixth, in order that he might achieve the
+intellectual dignity which consorted with his athletic prowess.
+
+Michael had for some time envied the leisure of the History Sixth, with
+its general air of slackness and its form-master, Mr. Kirkham, who, on
+account of holding many administrative positions important to the
+athletic life of the school, was so often absent from his class-room. He
+now racked his brains for an excuse to achieve the idle bliss of these
+charmed few. Finally he persuaded his mother to write to the Headmaster
+and apply for his admission, on the grounds of the greater utility of
+History in his future profession.
+
+"But what are you going to be, Michael?" asked his mother.
+
+"I don't know, but you can say I'm going to be a barrister or
+something."
+
+"Is History better for a barrister?"
+
+"I don't know, but you can easily say you think it is."
+
+In the end his mother wrote to Dr. Brownjohn, and one grey November
+afternoon the Headmaster sailed into the class-room of the Upper Fifth,
+extricated Michael with a roar, and marched with him up and down the
+dusky corridor in a ferocious discussion of the proposal.
+
+"Why do you want to give up your Classics?" bellowed Dr. Brownjohn.
+
+In the echoing corridor Michael's voice sounded painfully weak against
+his monitor's.
+
+"I don't want to give them up, sir. Only I would like to learn History
+as well," he explained.
+
+"What's the good of History?" roared the Doctor.
+
+"I thought I'd like to learn it," said Michael.
+
+"You shouldn't think, you infamous young sluggard."
+
+"And I could go on reading Classics, sir, I could really."
+
+"Bah!" shouted Dr. Brownjohn. "Impudent nonsense, you young sloth. Why
+didn't you get your Certificate?"
+
+"I failed in Arithmetic, sir."
+
+"You'll fail in your whole life, boy," prophesied Dr. Brownjohn in
+bull-deep accents of reproach. "Aren't you ashamed of yourself?"
+
+"No, sir," said Michael. "I don't think I am, because I worked jolly
+hard."
+
+"Worked, you abominable little loafer? You've never worked in your life.
+You could be the finest scholar in the school, and you're merely a
+coruscation of slatternly, slipshod paste. Bah! What do you expect to do
+when you leave school? Um?"
+
+"I want to go to Oxford."
+
+"Then get the Balliol Scholarship."
+
+"I don't want to be at Balliol," said Michael.
+
+"Then get the major scholarship at Trinity, Cambridge."
+
+"I don't intend to go to Cambridge," said Michael.
+
+"Good heavens, boy," roared Dr. Brownjohn, "are you trying to arrange
+your own career?"
+
+"No, sir," said Michael. "But I want to go to St. Mary's, Oxford."
+
+"Then get a scholarship at St. Mary's."
+
+"But I don't want to be a Scholar of any college. I want to go up as a
+Commoner."
+
+The veins on Dr. Brownjohn's forehead swelled with wrath, astonishment
+and dismay.
+
+"Get out of my sight," he thundered. "Get back into your class-room.
+I've done with you; I take no more interest in you. You're here to earn
+glory for your school, you're here to gain a scholarship, not to air
+your own opinions. Get out of my sight, you young scoundrel. How dare
+you argue with me? You shan't go into the History Sixth! You shall stew
+in your own obstinate juice in the Upper Fifth until I choose to move
+you out of it. Do you hear? Go back into your class-room. I'll write to
+your mother. She's an idiotic woman, and you're a slovenly, idle,
+good-for-nothing cub."
+
+Overwhelmed with failure and very sensitive to the inquisitive glances
+of his classmates, Michael sat down in his own desk again as
+unobtrusively as he could.
+
+Michael's peace of mind was not increased by the consciousness of Mr.
+Cray's knowledge of his appeal to withdraw from the Upper Fifth, and he
+became exposed to a large amount of sarcasm in allusion to his expressed
+inclination towards history. He was continually referred to as an
+authority on Constitutions; he was invited to bring forward comparisons
+from more modern times to help the elucidation of the Syracusan
+expedition or the Delian Confederacy.
+
+All that Michael gained from Mr. Cray was a passion for second-hand
+books--the latest and most fervid of all his collecting hobbies.
+
+One wintry evening in Elson's Bookshop at Hammersmith he was enjoying
+himself on the top of a ladder, when he became aware of an interested
+gaze directed at himself over the dull-gilt edges of a large and
+expensive work on Greek sculpture. The face that so regarded him was at
+once fascinating and repulsive. The glittering blue eyes full of
+laughter were immediately attractive, but something in the pointed ears
+and curled-back lips, something in the peculiarly white fingers faintly
+pencilled about the knuckles with fine black hairs, and after a moment
+something cruel in the bright blue eyes themselves restrained him from
+an answering smile.
+
+"What is the book, Hyacinthus?" asked the stranger, and his voice was so
+winning and so melodious in the shadowy bookshop that Michael
+immediately fell into the easiest of conversations.
+
+"Fond of books?" asked the stranger. "Oh, by the way, my name is Wilmot,
+Arthur Wilmot."
+
+Something in Wilmot's manner made Michael suppose that he ought to be
+familiar with the name, and he tried to recall it.
+
+"What's your name?" the stranger went on.
+
+Michael told his name, and also his school, and before very long a good
+deal about himself.
+
+"I live near you," said Mr. Wilmot. "We'll walk along presently. I'd
+like you to dine with me one night soon. When?"
+
+"Oh, any time," said Michael, trying to speak as if invitations to
+dinner occurred to him three or four times a day.
+
+"Here's my card," said the stranger. "You'd better show it to your
+mother--so that she'll know it's all right. I'm a writer, you know."
+
+"Oh, yes," Michael vaguely agreed.
+
+"I don't suppose you've seen any of my stuff. I don't publish much.
+Sometimes I read my poems to Interior people."
+
+Michael looked puzzled.
+
+"Interior is my name for the people who understand. So few do. I should
+say you'd be sympathetic. You look sympathetic. You remind me of those
+exquisite boys who in scarlet hose run delicately with beakers of wine
+or stand in groups about the corners of old Florentine pictures."
+
+Michael tried to look severe, and yet, after the Upper Fifth, even so
+direct and embarrassing a compliment was slightly pleasant.
+
+"Shall we go along? To-night the Hammersmith Road is full of mystery.
+But, first, shall I not buy you a book--some exquisite book full of
+strange perfumes and passionate courtly gestures? And so you are at
+school? How wonderful to be at school! How Sicilian! Strange youth, you
+should have been sung by Theocritus, or, better, been crowned with
+myrtle by some wonderful unknown Greek, some perfect blossom of the
+Anthology."
+
+Michael laughed rather foolishly. There seemed nothing else to do.
+
+"Won't you smoke? These Chian cigarettes in their diaphanous paper of
+mildest mauve would suit your oddly remote, your curiously shy glance.
+You had better not smoke so near to the savage confines of St. James'
+School? How ascetic! How stringent! What book shall I buy for you, O
+greatly to be envied dreamer of Sicilian dreams? Shall I buy you
+Mademoiselle de Maupin, so that all her rococo soul may dance with
+gilded limbs across your vision? Or shall I buy you A Rebours, and teach
+you to live? And yet I think neither would suit you perfectly. So here
+is a volume of Pater--Imaginary Portraits. You will like to read of
+Denys l'Auxerrois. One day I myself will write an imaginary portrait of
+you, wherein your secret, sidelong smile will reveal to the world the
+whole art of youth."
+
+"But really--thanks very much," stammered Michael, who was beginning to
+suspect the stranger of madness--"it's awfully kind of you, but, really,
+I think I'd rather not."
+
+"Do not be proud," said Mr. Wilmot. "Pride is for the pure in heart, and
+you are surely not pure in heart. Or are you? Are you indeed like one of
+those wonderful white statues of antiquity, unaware of the soul with all
+its maladies?"
+
+In the end, so urgent was Mr. Wilmot, Michael accepted the volume of
+Pater, and walked with the stranger through the foggy night. Somehow the
+conversation was so destructive of all experience that, as Michael and
+his new friend went by the school-gates and perceived beyond the vast
+bulk of St. James' looming, Michael felt himself a stranger to it all,
+as if he never again would with a crowd of companions surge out from
+afternoon school. The stranger came as far as the corner of Carlington
+Road with Michael.
+
+"I will write to your mother and ask her to let you dine with me one
+night next week. You interest me so much."
+
+Mr. Wilmot waved a pontifical good-bye and vanished in the direction of
+Kensington.
+
+At home Michael told his mother of the adventure. She looked a little
+doubtful at his account of Mr. Wilmot.
+
+"Oh, he's all right, really, Mother. Only, you know, a little peculiar.
+But then he's a poet."
+
+Next day came a letter from Mr. Wilmot.
+
+     205 EDWARDES SQUARE, W.
+
+     _November._
+
+     _Dear Mrs. Fane,_
+
+     _I must apologize for inviting your son to dinner so
+     unceremoniously. But he made a great appeal to me, sitting on the
+     top of a ladder in Elson's Bookshop. I have a library, in which he
+     may enjoy himself whenever he likes. Meanwhile, may he come to
+     dinner with me on Friday next? Mr. Johnstone, the Member for West
+     Kensington, is coming with his nephew who may be dull without
+     Michael. Michael tells me he thinks of becoming an ecclesiastical
+     lawyer. In that case Johnstone will be particularly useful, and can
+     give him some hints. He's a personal friend of old Dr. Brownjohn.
+     With many apologies for my 'impertinence,'_
+
+     _Yours very truly,_
+
+     _Arthur Wilmot._
+
+"This is a perfectly sensible letter," said Mrs. Fane.
+
+"Perhaps I thought he was funnier than he really was. Does he say
+anything else except about me sitting on the top of a ladder?"
+
+Somehow Michael was disappointed to hear that this was all.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IX: _The Yellow Age_
+
+
+Dinner with Mr. Arthur Wilmot occupied most of Michael's thoughts for a
+week. He was mainly concerned about his costume, and he was strenuously
+importunate for a tail-coat. Mrs. Fane, however, was sure that a
+dinner-jacket would better become his youthfulness. Then arose the
+question of stick-up collars. Michael pointed out that very soon he
+would be sixteen, and that here was a fine opportunity to leave behind
+the Polo or Shakespeare collar.
+
+"You're growing up so quickly, dearest boy," sighed his mother.
+
+Michael was anxious to have one of the new double collars.
+
+"But don't they look rather _outre_?" protested Mrs. Fane.
+
+"Well, Abercrombie, the Secretary of the Fifteen, wears one," observed
+Michael.
+
+"Have your own way, dear," said Mrs. Fane gently.
+
+Two or three days before the dinner-party Michael braved everything and
+wore one of the new double collars to school. Its extravagant advent
+among the discreet neckwear of the Upper Fifth caused a sensation. Mr.
+Cray himself looked curiously once or twice at Michael, who assumed in
+consequence a particularly nonchalant air, and lounged over his desk
+even more than usual.
+
+"Are you going on the stage, Fane?" enquired Mr. Cray finally,
+exasperated by Michael's indolent construing.
+
+"Not that I know of," said Michael.
+
+"I wasn't sure whether that collar was part of your get-up as an
+eccentric comedian."
+
+The Upper Fifth released its well-worn laugh, and Michael scowled at his
+master.
+
+However, he endured the sarcasm of the first two days and still wore the
+new collars, vowing to himself that presently he would make fresh
+attacks upon the convention of school attire, since apparently he was
+able thereby to irritate old Cray.
+
+After all, the dinner-party was not so exciting as he had hoped from the
+sample of his new friend's conversation. To be sure he was able to smoke
+as much as he liked, and drink as much champagne as he knew how without
+warning headshakes; but Mr. Johnstone, the Member for West Kensington,
+was a moon-faced bore, and his nephew turned out to be a lank nonentity
+on the despised Modern side. Mr. Johnstone talked a good deal about the
+Catholic movement, which somehow during the last few weeks was ceasing
+to interest Michael so much as formerly. Michael himself ascribed this
+apostasy to his perusal, ladder-high, of Zola's novel Lourdes with its
+damaging assaults upon Christian credulity. The Member of Parliament
+seemed to Michael, after his psychical adventures of the past few
+months, curiously dull and antique, and he evidently considered Michael
+affected. However, he encouraged the idea of ecclesiastical law, and
+promised to talk to Dr. Brownjohn about Michael's release from the
+thraldom of Classics. As for the nephew, he seemed to be able to do
+nothing but stretch the muscles of his chicken-like neck and ask
+continually whether Michael was going to join the Field Club that some
+obscure Modern Lower Master was in travail with at the moment. He also
+invited Michael to join a bicycling club that apparently met at Surbiton
+every other Saturday afternoon. Mr. Wilmot contented himself with
+silence and the care of his guests' entertainment.
+
+Finally the Member for West Kensington with his crudely jointed nephew
+departed into the fog, and Mr. Wilmot, with an exaggerated sigh, shut
+the front door.
+
+"I must be going too," said Michael grudgingly.
+
+"My dear boy, the evening has scarcely begun," objected Mr. Wilmot.
+"Come upstairs to my library, and tell me all about your opinions, and
+whether you do not think that everything is an affectation."
+
+They went up together.
+
+"Every year I redecorate this room," Mr. Wilmot explained. "Last year it
+was apple-green set out with cherry-red. Now I am become a mysterious
+peacock-blue, for lately I have felt terribly old. How well this
+uncertain tint suits your fresh languor."
+
+Michael admired the dusky blue chamber with the plain mirrors of
+tarnished gilt, the gleaming books and exotic engravings, and the
+heterogeneous finery faintly effeminate. He buried himself in a deep
+embroidered chair, with an ebony box of cigarettes at his feet, while
+Mr. Wilmot, after a myriad mincing preliminaries, sought out various
+highly coloured bottles of liqueurs.
+
+"This is a jolly ripping room," sighed Michael.
+
+"It represents a year's moods," said Mr. Wilmot.
+
+"And then will you change it?" asked Michael.
+
+"Perhaps. The most subtly painted serpent casts ultimately its slough.
+Creme-de-Menthe?"
+
+"Yes, please," said Michael, who would have accepted anything in his
+present receptive condition.
+
+"And what do you think of life?" enquired Mr. Wilmot, taking his place
+on a divan opposite Michael. "Do you mind if I smoke my Jicky-scented
+hookah?" he added.
+
+"Not at all," said Michael. "These cigarettes are jolly ripping. I think
+life at school is frightfully dull--except, of course, when one goes
+out. Only I don't often."
+
+"Dull?" repeated Mr. Wilmot. "Listen to the amazing cruelty of youth,
+that finds even his adventurous Sicilian existence dull."
+
+"Well, it is," said Michael. "I think I used to like it, but nowadays
+everything gets fearfully stale almost at once."
+
+"Already your life has been lived?" queried Mr. Wilmot very anxiously.
+
+"Well, not exactly," Michael replied, with a quick glance towards his
+host to make sure he was not joking. "I expect that when I leave school
+I shall get interested again. Only just lately I've given up everything.
+First I was keen on Footer, and then I got keen on Ragging, and then I
+got keen on Work even (this was confessed apologetically), and just
+lately I've been keen on the Church--only now I find that's pretty
+stale."
+
+"The Church!" echoed Mr. Wilmot. "How wonderful! The dim Gothic glooms,
+the sombre hues of stained glass, the incense-wreathed acolytes, the
+muttering priests, the bedizened banners and altars and images. Ah,
+elusive and particoloured vision that once was mine!"
+
+"Then I got keen on Swinburne," said Michael.
+
+"You advance along the well-worn path of the Interior and Elect," said
+Mr. Wilmot.
+
+"I'm still keen on Swinburne, but he makes me feel hopeless. Sad and
+hopeless," said Michael.
+
+"Under the weight of sin?" asked Mr. Wilmot.
+
+"Not exactly--because he seems to have done everything and----"
+
+"You'd like to?"
+
+"Yes, I would," said Michael. "Only one can't live like a Roman Emperor
+at a public school. What I hate is the way everybody thinks you ought to
+be interested in things that aren't really interesting at all. What
+people can't understand about me is that I _could_ be keener than
+anybody about things schoolmasters and that kind don't think right or
+at any rate important. I don't mean to say I want to be dissipated,
+but----"
+
+"Dissipated?" echoed Mr. Wilmot, raising his eyebrows.
+
+"Well, you know what I mean," blushed Michael.
+
+"Dissipation is a condition of extreme old age. I might be dissipated,
+not you," said Mr. Wilmot. "Why not say wanton? How much more beautiful,
+how much more intense a word."
+
+"But wanton sounds so beastly affected," said Michael. "As if it was
+taken out of the Bible. And you aren't so very old. Not more than
+thirty."
+
+"I think what you're trying to say is that, under your present mode of
+life, you find self-expression impossible. Let me diagnose your
+symptoms."
+
+Michael leaned forward eagerly at this proposal. Nothing was so
+entertaining to his egoism just now as diagnosis. Moreover, Mr. Wilmot
+seemed inclined to take him more seriously than Mr. Viner, or, indeed,
+any of his spiritual directors so far. Mr. Wilmot prepared himself for
+the lecture by lighting a very long cigarette wrapped in brittle
+fawn-coloured paper, whose spirals of smoke Michael followed upward to
+their ultimate evanescence, as if indeed they typified with their
+tenuous plumes and convolutions the intricate discourse that begot them.
+
+"In a sense, my dear boy, your charm has waned--the faerie charm, that
+is, which wraps in heedless silver armour the perfect boyhood of man.
+You are at present a queer sort of mythical animal whom we for want of a
+better term call 'adolescent.' Intercourse with anything but your own
+self shocks both you and the world with a sense of extravagance, as if a
+centaur pursued a nymph or fought with a hero. The soul--or what we call
+the soul--is struggling in the bondage of your unformed body. Lately you
+had no soul, you were ethereal and cold, yet withal in some remote way
+passionate, like your own boy's voice. Now the silly sun is melting the
+snow, and what was a little while since crystalline clear virginity is
+beginning to trickle down towards a headlong course, carrying with it
+the soiled accumulation of the years to float insignificantly into the
+wide river of manhood. But I am really being almost intolerably
+allegorical--or is it metaphorical?"
+
+"Still, I think I understand what you mean," Michael said encouragingly.
+
+"Thrown back upon your own resources, it is not surprizing that you
+attempt to allay your own sense of your own incongruity by seeking for
+its analogy in the decorative excitements of religion or poetry. Love
+would supply the solution, but you are still too immature for love. And
+if you do fall in love, you will sigh for some ample and unattainable
+matron rather than the slim, shy girl that would better become your
+pastoral graces. At present you lack all sense of proportion. You are
+only aware of your awkwardness. Your corners have not yet been, as they
+say, knocked off. You are still somewhat proud of their Gothic
+angularity. You feel at home in the tropic dawns of Swinburne's poetry,
+in the ceremonious exaggerations of Mass, because neither of these
+conditions of thought and behaviour allow you to become depressed over
+your oddity, to see yourself crawling with bedraggled wings from the
+cocoon of mechanical education. The licentious ingenuity of Martial,
+Petronius and Apuleius with their nightmare comedies and obscene
+phantasmagoria, Lucian, that _boulevardier_ of Olympic glades, all these
+could allow you to feel yourself more at home than does Virgil with his
+peaceful hexameters or the cold relentless narrations of Thucydides."
+
+"Yes, that's all very well," objected Michael. "But other chaps seem to
+get on all right without being bored by ordinary things."
+
+"Already spurning the gifts of Apollo, contemptuous of Artemis, ignorant
+of Bacchus and Aphrodite, you are bent low before Pallas Athene. Foolish
+child, do not pray for wisdom in this overwise thin-faced time of ours.
+Rather demand of the gods folly, and drive ever furiously your
+temperament like a chariot before you."
+
+"I met an odd sort of chap the other day," Michael said thoughtfully. "A
+monk he was, as a matter of fact--who told me a skit of things--you
+know--about a bad life. It's funny, though I hate ugly things and common
+things, he gave me a feeling that I'd like to go right away from
+everything and live in one of those horrible streets that you pass in an
+omnibus when the main road is up. Perhaps you don't understand what I
+mean?"
+
+Mr. Wilmot's eyes glittered through the haze of smoke.
+
+"Why shouldn't I understand? Squalor is the Parthenope of the true
+Romantic. You'll find it in all the poets you love best--if not in their
+poetry, certainly in their lives. Even romantic critics are not without
+temptation. One day you shall read of Hazlitt and Sainte-Beuve. And now,
+dear boy, here is my library which holds as many secrets as the
+Spintrian books of Elephantis, long ago lost and purified by the sea. I
+am what the wise world would call about to corrupt your mind, and yet I
+believe that for one who like you must some day make trial of the
+uttermost corruption, I am prescribing more wisely than Chiron, that
+pig-headed or rather horse-bodied old prototype of all schoolmasters,
+who sent his hero pupils one after another into the world, proof against
+nothing but a few spear-thrusts. I offer you better than fencing-bouts
+and wrestling-matches. I offer you a good library. Read every day and
+all night, and when you are a man full grown, you will smile at the
+excesses of your contemporaries, at their divorces and disgraces. You
+will stand aloof like a second Aurelius, coining austere aphorisms and
+mocking the weakness of your unlearned fellows. Why are priests
+generally so inept in the confessional? Because they learn their
+knowledge of life from, a frowsy volume of Moral Theology that in the
+most utterly barbarous Latin emits an abstract of humanity's
+immeasurable vice. In the same way most young men encounter wickedness
+in some sudden shock of depravity from which they retire blushing and
+mumbling, 'Who'd have thought it!' ' Who'd have thought it!' they cry,
+and are immediately empanelled on a jury.
+
+"Not so you, O more subtle youth, with the large deep eyes and secret
+sidelong smile.
+
+"There on my shelves are all the ages. I have spoken to you of
+Petronius, of Lucian and Apuleius. There is Suetonius, with his
+incredibly improper tales that show how beastliness takes root and
+flowers from the deposited muck of a gossip's mind. There is Tacitus,
+ever willing to sacrifice decency to antithesis, and Ausonius, whose
+ribald verses are like monkish recreation; yet he had withal a pretty
+currency of honest silver Latin, Christian though he was. You must read
+your Latin authors well, for, since you must be decadent, it is better
+to decay from a good source. And neglect not the Middle Ages. You will
+glide most easily into them from the witches and robbers of Apuleius.
+You will read Boccaccio, whose tales are intaglios carved with
+exquisitely licentious and Lilliputian scenes. Neither forget Villon,
+whose light ladies seem ever to move elusively in close-cut gowns of
+cloth-of-gold and incredibly tall steeple-hats. But even with Villon the
+world becomes complicated, and you will soon reach the temperamental
+entanglements of the nineteenth century, for you may avoid the coarse,
+the beery and besotted obviousness of the Georgian age.
+
+"But I like the eighteenth century almost best of all," protested
+Michael.
+
+"Then cure yourself of that most lamentable and most demode taste, or I
+shall presently believe that you read a page or two of Boswell's Life of
+Johnson every morning, while the water is running into your bath. You
+can never be a true decadent, treading delicately over the garnered
+perfection of the world's art, if you really admire and enjoy the
+eighteenth century."
+
+Michael, however, looked very doubtful over his demanded apostasy.
+
+"But, never mind," Mr. Wilmot went on. "When you have read Barbey
+d'Aurevilly and Baudelaire, Mallarme, Verlaine, Catulle Mendes and
+Verhaeren, when the Parnassians and Symbolists have illuminated you, and
+you become an Interior person, when Aubrey Beardsley and Felicien Rops
+have printed their fierce debauchery upon your imagination, then you
+will be glad you have forsaken the eighteenth century. How crude is the
+actual number eighteen, how far from the passionate mystery of seventeen
+or the tired wisdom of nineteen! O wonderful nineteenth century, in
+whose grey humid dusk you and I are lucky enough to live!"
+
+"But what about the twentieth century?" asked Michael.
+
+Mr. Wilmot started.
+
+"Listen, and I will tell you my intention. Two more years have yet to
+run before that garish and hideous date, prophetic of all that is bright
+and new and abominably raw. But I shall have fled, how I know not; haply
+mandragora will lure my weary mind to rest. I think I should like to die
+as La Gioconda was painted, listening to flute-players in a curtained
+alcove; or you, Michael, shall read to me some diabolic and funereal
+song of Baudelaire, so that I may fearfully pass away."
+
+Michael, sitting in the dim room of peacock-blue made tremendously
+nocturnal by the heavy smoke of all the cigarettes, did not much care
+for the turn the conversation of Mr. Wilmot had taken. It had been
+interesting enough, while the discussion applied directly to himself;
+but all this vague effusion of learning meant very little to him. At the
+same time, there was an undeniable eccentricity in a member of the Upper
+Fifth sitting thus in fantastic communion with a figure completely
+outside the imagination of Mr. Cray or any of his inky groundlings.
+Michael began to feel a contemptuous pity for his fellows now buried in
+bedclothes, hot and heavy with Ciceronian sentences and pious
+preparation. He began to believe that if he wished to keep pace with
+this new friendship, he must acquire something of Mr. Wilmot's
+heightened air. And however mad he might seem, there stood the books,
+and there stood the cigarettes for Michael's pleasure. It was all very
+exciting, and it would not have been possible to say that before he met
+Wilmot.
+
+The friendship progressed through the rest of the autumn-term, and
+Michael drifted farther away from the normal life of the school than
+even his incursion into Catholicism had taken him. That phase of his
+development had penetrated deeper than any other, and from time to time
+Michael knew bitter repentances and made grim resolutions. From time to
+time letters would arrive from Dom Cuthbert asking him down to Clere
+Abbey; Mr. Viner, too, would question him narrowly about his new set of
+friends, and Michael's replies never seemed perfectly satisfactory to
+the shrewd priest.
+
+It was by his costume more than by anything else that Michael expressed
+at first his sense of emancipation. He took to coming to school in vivid
+bow-ties that raised Mr. Cray's most sarcastic comments.
+
+"The sooner you go to the History Sixth, Fane, and take that loathsome
+ribbon with you, the better for us all. Where did you get it? Out of the
+housemaid's trunk, one would say, by its appearance."
+
+"It happens to be a tie," said Michael with insolence in his tone.
+
+"Oh, it happens to be a tie, does it? Well, it also happens to be an
+excellent rule of St. James' School that all boys, however clever, wear
+dark suits and black ties. There also happens to be an excellent cure
+for pretentious and flamboyant youths who disregard this rule. There
+happens to be a play by one Euripides called the Alcestis. I suggest you
+write me out the first two hundred lines of it."
+
+Michael's next encounter was with Mr. Viner, on the occasion of his
+producing in the priest's pipe-seasoned sitting-room a handkerchief
+inordinately perfumed with an Eastern scent lately discovered by Wilmot.
+
+"Good heavens, Michael, what Piccadilly breezes are you wafting into my
+respectable and sacerdotal apartment?"
+
+"I rather like scent," explained Michael lamely.
+
+"Well, I don't, so, for goodness' sake don't bring any more of it in
+here. Pah! Phew! It's worse than a Lenten address at a fashionable
+church. Really, you know, these people you're in with now are not at all
+good for you, Michael."
+
+"They're more interesting than any of the chaps at school."
+
+"Are they? There used to be a saying in my undergraduate days, 'Distrust
+a freshman that's always seen with third-year men.' No doubt the
+inference is often unjust, but still the proverb remains."
+
+"Ah, but these people aren't at school with me," Michael observed.
+
+"No, I wish they were. They might be licked into better shape, if they
+were," retorted the priest.
+
+"I think you're awfully down on Wilmot just because I didn't meet him in
+some churchy set. If it comes to that, I met some much bigger rotters
+than him at Clere."
+
+"My dear Michael," argued Father Viner, "the last place I should have
+been surprized to see Master Wilmot would be in a churchy set. Don't
+forget that if religion is a saving grace, religiosity is a
+constitutional weakness. Can't you understand that a priest like myself
+who has taken the average course, public-school, 'varsity, and
+theological college, meets a thundering lot of Wilmots by the way? My
+dear fellow, many of my best friends, many of the priests you've met in
+my rooms, were once upon a time every bit as decadent as the lilified
+Wilmot. They took it like scarlet fever or chicken-pox, and feel all the
+more secure now for having had it. Decadence, as our friend knows it, is
+only a new-fangled name for green-sickness. It's a healthy enough mental
+condition for the young, but it's confoundedly dangerous for the
+grown-up. The first pretty girl that looks his way cures it in a boy, if
+he's a normal decent boy. I shouldn't offer any objection to your
+behaviour, if you were being decadent with Mark Chator or Martindale or
+Rigg. Good heavens, the senior curate at the best East-end Mission, when
+he was at Oxford, used to walk down the High leading a lobster on a
+silver chain, and even that wasn't original, for he stole the poor
+little fantastic idea from some precious French poet. But that senior
+curate is a very fine fellow to-day. No, no, this fellow Wilmot and all
+his set are very bad company for you, and I do not like your being
+decadent with these half-baked fancy-cakes."
+
+Michael, however, would not admit that Mr. Viner was right, and
+frequented the dangerous peacock-blue room in Edwardes Square more than
+ever. He took Chator there amongst others, and was immensely gratified
+to be solemnly warned at the end of the visit that he was playing with
+Hell-fire. This seemed to him an interesting and original pastime, and
+he hinted to solemn, simple, spluttering old Chator of more truly
+Satanic mysteries.
+
+After Christmas Michael had his way and was moved into the History
+Sixth, mainly owing to the intervention of the Member for West
+Kensington. The History Sixth was presided over by Mr. Kirkham, whose
+nominal aim in life was the amelioration of Jacobean athletics. From the
+fact that he wore an M.C.C. ribbon round his straw hat, and an Oxford
+University Authentic tie, it is probable that the legend of his former
+skill at cricket was justified. In reality he was much more interested
+in Liberalism than anything else, and persistently read Blue Books,
+under-lining the dramatic moments of Royal Commissions and chewing his
+moustache through pages of dialogue hostile to his opinions. A rumour
+sped round the school that he had been invited to stand for Parliament,
+a rumour which Michael, on the strength of dining with the Member for
+West Kensington, flatly contradicted.
+
+The History Sixth class-room was a pleasant place, the only class-room
+in the school that ever saw the sun. Its windows looked out on the great
+green expanse of the school ground, where during the deserted hours of
+work the solitary roller moved sedately and ancient women weeded the
+pitches.
+
+There were only seven boys in the History Sixth. There was Strang, the
+Captain of the Eleven, who lounged through the dull Lent term and
+seemed, as he spread his bulk over the small desk, like a half-finished
+statue to which still adhered a fragment of uncarved stone. There was
+Terry, the Vice-Captain of the Fifteen and most dapper half-back that
+ever cursed forwards. He spent his time trying to persuade Strang to
+take an interest in Noughts and Crosses. There was beak-nosed Thomson
+who had gained an Exhibition at Selwyn College, Cambridge, and dark-eyed
+Mallock, whose father wrote columnar letters to The Times. Burnaby, who
+shocked Michael very much by prophesying that a certain H. G. Wells, now
+writing about Martian invasions, was the coming man, and Railton, a
+weedy and disconsolate recluse, made up with Michael himself the
+class-list.
+
+There was an atmosphere of rest about the History Sixth, a leisured
+dignity that contrasted very delightfully with the spectacled industry
+of the Upper Fifth. To begin with, Mr, Kirkham was always ten minutes
+after every other master in entering his class-room. This habit allowed
+the members of his form to stroll gracefully along the corridors and
+watch one by one the cavernous doors of other class-rooms absorb their
+victims. Michael would often go out of his way to pass Mr. Cray's room,
+in order to see with a luxurious sense of relief the intellectual
+convicts of the Upper Fifth hurrying to their prison. Many other
+conventions of school-life were slackened in the History Sixth. A slight
+eccentricity of attire was not considered unbecoming in what was, at any
+rate in its own opinion, a faintly literary society. The room was always
+open between morning and afternoon school, and it was not an uncommon
+sight to see members of the form reading novels in tip-tilted chairs.
+Most of the home work was set a week in advance, which did away with the
+unpleasant necessity of speculating on the 'construe' or hurriedly
+cribbing with a hastily peppered variety of mistakes the composition of
+one's neighbour. Much of the work was simple reading, and as for the
+essays, by a legal fiction they were always written during the three
+hours devoted to Mathematics. Tradition forbade any member of the
+History Sixth to take Mathematics seriously, and Mr. Gaskell, the
+overworked Mathematical master, was not inclined to break this
+tradition. He used to write out a problem or two on the blackboard for
+the sake of appearances, and then settle down to the correction of his
+more serious pupils' work, while the History Sixth devoted themselves to
+their more serious work. One of the great social earthquakes that
+occasionally devastate all precedent occurred when Mr. Gaskell was away
+with influenza, and his substitute, an earnest young novice, tried to
+make Strang and Terry do a Quadratic Equation.
+
+"But, sir, we never do Mathematics."
+
+"Well, what are you here for?" asked the novice. "What am _I_ here for?"
+
+"We don't know," replied the History Sixth in unison; and the vendetta
+that followed the complaint of their behaviour to Mr. Kirkham made the
+novice's mastership a burden to him during Mr. Gaskell's illness.
+Enraged conservatism called for reprisals, until Mr. Kirkham pointed out
+with a felicity acquired from long perusal of Parliamentary humour, "You
+are Jacobeans, not Jacobins," and with this mild joke quenched the feud.
+
+The effect of his transference to the History Sixth made Michael more
+decadent than ever, for the atmosphere of his new class encouraged him
+along the orchidaceous path pointed out by Arthur Wilmot. He was not now
+decadent from any feeling of opposition to established things, but he
+was decadent from conviction of the inherent rightness of such a state.
+At first the phase had manifested itself in outward signs, a little
+absurdly; now his actual point of view was veering into accord with the
+externals.
+
+Sunday was a day at Edwardes Square from which Michael returned almost
+phosphorescent with decay. Sunday was the day on which Mr. Wilmot
+gathered from all over London specimens of corruption that fascinated
+Michael with their exotic and elaborate behaviour. Nothing seemed worth
+while in such an assembly except a novel affectation. Everything was a
+pose. It was a pose to be effeminate in speech and gesture; it was a
+pose to drink absinthe; it was a pose to worship the devil; it was a
+pose to buy attenuated volumes of verse at an unnatural price, for the
+sake of owning a sonnet that was left out in the ordinary edition; it
+was a pose to admire pictures that to Michael at first were more like
+wall-papers than pictures; it was really a pose to live at all.
+Conversation at these delicate entertainments was like the conversations
+overheard in the anterooms of private asylums. Everyone was very willowy
+in his movements, whether he were smoking or drinking or looking for a
+box of matches. Michael attempted to be willowy at school once, but gave
+it up on being asked if he had fleas.
+
+One of the main charms at first of these Sunday afternoon gatherings was
+the way in which, one after another, every one of the guests would take
+Michael aside and explain how different he (the guest) was from all the
+rest of humanity. Michael was flattered, and used to become very intense
+and look very soul-searching, and interject sympathetic exclamations
+until he discovered that the confidant usually proceeded to another
+corner of the room to entrust someone else with his innermost heart. He
+became cynical after a while, especially when he found that the
+principal points of difference from the rest of the world were identical
+in every one of the numerous guests who sought his counsel and his
+sympathy.
+
+However, he never became cynical enough to distrust the whole school of
+thought and admit that Father Viner's contempt was justifiable. If ever
+he had any doubts, he was consoled by assuring himself that at any rate
+these new friends were very artistic, and how important it was to be
+artistic no one could realize who was not at school.
+
+Under the pressure of his insistent temperament, Michael found his
+collection of statuettes and ecclesiastical bric-a-brac very depressing.
+As a youth of the Florentine Renaissance he could not congratulate
+himself upon his room, which was much too much unlike either a Carpaccio
+interior or an Aubrey Beardsley bedroom. Between these two his ambition
+wavered.
+
+One by one the statuettes were moved to the top of a wardrobe where for
+a while they huddled, a dusty and devoted crowd, until one by one they
+met martyrdom at the hands of the housemaid. In their place appeared
+Della Robbia reliefs and terra-cotta statuettes of this or that famous
+Greek youth. The muscular and tearful pictures of Guido Reni, the bland
+insipidities of Bouguereau soon followed the statuettes, meeting a
+comparable martyrdom by being hung in the servants' bedroom. The walls
+of Michael's room were papered with a brown paper, which was intended to
+be very artistic, but was really merely sad. It was lightened, however,
+by various daring pictures in black and red that after only a very short
+regard really did take shape as scenes of Montmartre. There were
+landscapes of the Sussex downs, with a slight atmosphere of Japan and
+landscapes of Japan that were not at all like Japan, but none the less
+beautiful for that. The books of devotion were banished to the company
+of superannuated Latin and Greek textbooks on the lower shelf of a
+cupboard in the morning-room, whose upper shelf was stacked with tinned
+fruits. Incense was still burnt, not as once to induce prayers to
+ascend, but to stupefy Michael with scent and warmth into an imitation
+of a drug-taker's listless paradise. This condition was accentuated by
+erecting over the head of his bed a canopy of faded green satin, which
+gave him acute aesthetic pleasure, until one night it collapsed upon him
+in the middle of the night. Every piece of upholstery in the room was
+covered with art linens that with the marching years had ousted the art
+muslins of Michael's childhood. He also covered with squares of the same
+material the gas brackets, pushing them back against the wall and
+relying for light upon candles only. Notwithstanding Wilmot's talk about
+literature, the influence of Wilmot's friends was too strong, and
+Michael could not resist the deckle-edges of negligible poets. As these
+were expensive, Michael's library lacked scope, and he himself,
+reflecting his pastime, came to believe in the bitterness and sweetness
+and bitter-sweetness of the plaintive sinners who printed so elegantly
+on such permanent paper the versification of their irregularity.
+
+Irregularity was now being subjected to Michael's process of idealistic
+alchemy, and since his conception of irregularity was essentially
+romantic, and since he shrank from sentiment, he was able to save
+himself, when presently all this decoration fell to pieces, and revealed
+naked unpleasantness. Nothing in his present phase had yet moved him so
+actually as his brief encounter with Brother Aloysius. That glimpse of a
+fearful and vital underworld had been to him romantic without trappings;
+it was a glimpse into an underworld to which one day he might descend,
+since it asked no sighing for the vanished joys of the past, for the
+rose-gardens of Rome. He began to play with the idea of departing
+suddenly from his present life and entering the spectral reality of the
+Seven Sisters Road, treading whatever raffish raddled pavement knew the
+hollow steps of a city's prowlers. Going home on Sunday nights from the
+perfumed house in Edwardes Square and passing quickly and apprehensively
+figures that materialized in a circle of lamplight, he would contrast
+their existence with what remained in his senses of stale
+cigarette-smoke and self-conscious airs and attitudes. Yet the very
+picture he conjured of the possibility that haunted him made him the
+more anxious to substitute for the stark descent to hell the Sicilian or
+Satanic affectations of the luxurious mimes who postured against a
+background of art. Much of the talk at Edwardes Square concerned itself
+with the pastoral side of school-life, and Michael found himself being
+cross-questioned by elderly faun-like men who had a conception of an
+English public-school that was more Oriental than correct. Michael
+vainly tried to dispel these illusions, which made him resentful and for
+the moment crudely normal. He felt towards them much as he felt towards
+Garrod's attempt to cure his ignorance at Clere. These were excellent
+fellows from whom to accept a cigarette or sometimes even an invitation
+to lunch at a Soho restaurant, but when they presumed upon his
+condescension and dared to include in their tainted outlook himself as a
+personal factor, Michael shrivelled with a virginal disdain.
+
+Unreasonably to the others, Michael did not object very much to Wilmot's
+oracular addresses on the delights of youth. He felt that so much of
+Wilmot was in the mere word, and he admired so frankly his embroideries
+of any subject, and above all he liked Wilmot so much personally, that
+he listened to him, and was even so far influenced by him as to try to
+read into the commonplace of a summer term all that Wilmot would
+suggest.
+
+"O fortunate shepherd, to whom will you pipe to-morrow, or what slim and
+agile companion will you crown for his prowess? O lucky youth, able to
+drowse in the tempered sunlight that the elm-trees give, while your
+friend splendidly cool in his white flannels bats and bowls for your
+delight!"
+
+"But I haven't got any particular friend that I can watch," objected
+Michael.
+
+"One day you will terribly regret the privileges of your pastoral life."
+
+"Do you really think I am not getting all I can out of school?" demanded
+Michael.
+
+"I'm sure you're not," said Wilmot.
+
+Michael began to trouble himself over Wilmot's warning, and also he
+began to look back with sentimental regret to what had really been his
+happiest time, his friendship with Alan. Pride kept him from approaching
+Alan with nothing to offer for nearly two years' indifference. There had
+been no quarrel. They had merely gradually drifted apart, yet it was
+with a deep pang of remorse that one day he realized in passing the
+dusty Upper Fifth that Alan was now wrestling with that imprisonment.
+Michael racked his brains to think of some way by which he and Alan
+might come together in their old amity, their perfect fellowship. He
+sought some way that would make it natural and inevitable, but no way
+presented itself. He could, so deep was his sudden regret, have stifled
+his own pride and deliberately invited Alan to be friends; he would even
+have risked a repulse; but with the renewal of his longing for the
+friendship came a renewal of the old sympathy and utter comprehension of
+Alan's most secret moods, and Michael realized that his old friend would
+be too shy to accept this strange, inexplicable revival, unless it were
+renewed, as it was begun, by careless, artless intercourse.
+
+The immediate result of this looking back to an earlier period was to
+arouse in Michael an interest in boys younger than himself, and through
+his idealism to endow them with a conscious joy of life which he fell to
+envying. He had a desire to warn them of the enchantment under whose
+benign and dulcet influence they lived, to warn them that soon the
+lovely spell would be broken, and bid them make the most of their
+stripling time. Continually he was seeing boys in the lower forms whose
+friendship blooming like two flowers on a spray shed a fragrance so
+poignant that tears came springing to his eyes. He began to imagine
+himself very old, to feel that by some unkind gift of temperament he had
+nothing left to live for. It chanced that summer term the History Sixth
+learned for repetition the Odes of Keats, and in the Ode on a Grecian
+Urn Michael found the expression of his mood:
+
+    _Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave_
+      _Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;_
+        _Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,_
+    _Though winning near the goal--yet, do not grieve;_
+      _She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,_
+        _For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!_
+
+These lines were learnt in June, and for Michael they enshrined
+immortally his yearning. Never had the fugitive summer glided so fast,
+since never before had he sat in contemplation of its flight. Until this
+moment he had been one with the season's joy like a bird or a sunbeam,
+but now for the first time he had the opportunity of regarding the empty
+field during the hours of school, and of populating it with the merry
+ghosts of the year with Caryll. All through schooltime the
+mowing-machine hummed its low harmony of perishable minutes and wasted
+sunlight. The green field was scattered with the wickets of games in
+progress that stood luminously in golden trios, so brightly did the
+sunny weather enhance their wood. The scoring-board of the principal
+match stared like a stopped clock with the record of the last breathless
+run, and as if to mock the stillness from a distant corner came a sound
+of batting, where at the nets the two professionals practised idly. A
+bluebottle buzzed upon the window-pane; pigeons flapped from pinnacle to
+pinnacle of the chapel; sparrows cheeped on a persistent note; pens
+scratched paper; Mr. Kirkham turned a Blue Book's page at regular
+intervals.
+
+    _Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed_
+      _Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;_
+    _And, happy melodist, unwearied_
+      _For ever piping songs for ever new._
+
+Thus for him would the tranced scene for ever survive.
+
+The History Sixth were for the purposes of cricket linked to the
+Classical Lower Sixth, but Michael did not play that term. Instead, a
+strayed reveller, he would move from game to game of the Junior School,
+hearing the shrill encouragement and pondering the rose-red agility of a
+Classical lower form, in triumph over minor Moderns. Michael was
+continually trying to perceive successors to himself and Alan, and he
+would often enter into shy colloquy with the juniors, who were awed by
+his solemn smile, and shuffled uneasily from leg to leg.
+
+Two boys whom Michael finally determined should stand as types of Alan
+and him gradually emerged from the white throng of Lower School cricket.
+One of them was indeed very like Alan, and had the same freckled smile.
+With this pair Michael became intimate, as one becomes intimate with two
+puppies. He would pet and scold them, encourage them to be successful in
+their sport, and rebuke them for failure. They perhaps found him
+entertaining, and were certainly proud to be seen in conversation with
+him, for though Michael himself was not an athletic hero, he was the
+companion of heroes, and round him clung the shining mirage of their
+immortality.
+
+Then one day, unknown to Michael, these two boys became involved in a
+scandal; the inquisition of a great public school pinned them down
+desperately struggling, miserably afraid; the rumour of their expulsion
+went callously round the gossiping ranks of their fellows. Michael was
+informed of their disgrace by dark-eyed Mallock whose father wrote
+columnar letters to The Times. Michael said bitter things to the
+complacent Mallock and offered with serious want of dignity for a member
+of the leisurely and cultivated History Sixth, to punch Mallock's damned
+head.
+
+Mallock said sneeringly that he supposed Michael sympathized with the
+little beasts. Michael replied that he merely sympathized with them
+because he was profoundly sure that it was a pack of lies.
+
+"You'd better go and tell the Old Man that, because they say he's going
+to expel them to-day."
+
+Michael turned pale with fury.
+
+"I damned well will go, and when I come back I'll ram you upside down in
+the Tuck Shop butter-tub."
+
+Mallock flushed under the ignominy of this threat, and muttered his
+conviction that Michael was talking through his hat. Just then Mr.
+Kirkham entered the class-room, and Michael immediately went up to him
+and asked if he might go and speak to the Headmaster.
+
+Mr. Kirkham stared with amazement, and his voice, which always seemed to
+hesitate whether it should come out through his mouth or his nose, on
+this occasion never came out at all, but stayed in the roof of Mr.
+Kirkham's mouth.
+
+"Can I, sir?" Michael repeated.
+
+"I suppose you can," said Mr. Kirkham.
+
+The class followed Michael's exit with wide eyes; even the phlegmatic
+Strang was so deeply moved that he sat upright in his chair and tapped
+his head to indicate midsummer madness.
+
+Outside in the echoing corridor, where the plaster casts looked coldly
+down, Michael wrestled with his leaping heart, forcing it into
+tranquillity so that he could grapple with the situation he had created
+for himself. By the Laocoon he paused. Immediately beyond was the sombre
+doorway of the Head's room. As he paused on the threshold two ridiculous
+thoughts came to him--that Lessing's Laocoon was one of the set books
+for the English Literature prize, and that he would rather be struggling
+in the coils of that huge stone snake than standing thus invertebrate
+before this portentous door.
+
+Then Michael tapped. There was no answer but a dull buzz of voices.
+Again Michael tapped and, beating down his heart, turned the handle that
+seemed as he held it to swell to pumpkin size in his grasp. Slowly he
+pushed the door before him, expecting to hear a bellowed summons to
+appear, and wondering whether he could escape unknown to his class-room
+if his nerve failed him even now. Then he heard the sound of tears, and
+indignation drove him onwards, drove him so urgently that actually he
+slammed the great door behind him, and made the intent company aware of
+his presence.
+
+"What do _you_ want?" shouted Dr. Brownjohn. "Can't you see I'm busy?"
+
+"I want to speak to you, sir." The words actually seemed to come from
+his mouth winged with flames, such a volcano was Michael now.
+
+"I'm busy. Go outside and wait," roared the Headmaster.
+
+Michael paused to regard the scene--the two boys sobbing with painful
+regular intake of breath, oblivious of him; the witnesses, a sheepish
+crew; the school-porter waiting for his prey; old Mr. Caryll coughing
+nervously and apparently on the verge of tears himself; the odious Paul
+Pry of a Secretary nibbling his pen; and in the background other masters
+waiting with favourable or damning testimony.
+
+The drama of gloating authority shook Michael to the very foundation of
+his being, and he came rapidly into the middle of the room, came right
+up to the Headmaster, until he felt engulfed in the black silk gown, and
+at last said slowly and with simple conviction:
+
+"I think you're all making a mistake."
+
+When he had spoken Michael could have kicked himself for not shouting
+furiously the torrid denunciations which had come surging up for
+utterance. Then he immediately began to talk again, to his own great
+surprize, calmly and very reasonably.
+
+"I know these kids--these two boys, I mean--quite well. It's impossible
+for any of this to be true. I've seen them a lot this term--practically
+every day. Really, sir, you'll make a terrible mistake if you expel
+them. They're awfully decent little chaps. They are really, sir. Of
+course they're too frightened now to say anything for themselves. It's
+not fair for everybody to be set at them like this."
+
+Michael looked despairingly at the masters assembled.
+
+"And these other boys who've been brought in to tell what they know.
+Why, they're frightened too. They'd say anything. Why don't you, why
+don't you----"
+
+Michael looked round in despair, stammered, broke down, and then to his
+own eternal chagrin burst into tears. He moved hastily over to the
+window, striving to pull himself together, seeing through an
+overpowering blur the great green field in the garish sunlight. Yet his
+tears, shameful to him, may have turned the scale, for one by one the
+masters came forward with eager testimony of good; and with every word
+of praise the tears rushed faster and faster to Michael's eyes. Then he
+heard old Caryll's rasping cough and broken benignant sentences, which
+with all their memories lulled his emotion to quietude again.
+
+"Hope you'll bring it in non probatum, Headmaster"--cough--cough--"good
+boys both "--cough--cough--"sure it's a mistake--Fane's a good boy
+too--idle young rascal--but a good heart"--cough--cough--"had him under
+me for a year--know him well----"
+
+Dr. Brownjohn, with a most voluminous wave, dismissed the matter.
+Everyone, even the Paul Pry of a Secretary, went out of the room, and as
+the door closed Michael heard Mr. Caryll addressing the victims.
+
+"Now then, don't cry any more, you young boobies."
+
+Michael's thoughts followed them upstairs to the jolly class-room, and
+he almost smiled at the imagination of Mr. Caryll's entrance and the
+multitudinous jokes that would demonstrate his relief at his pupils'
+rescue. Michael recovered from his dream to find the Headmaster speaking
+to him in his most rumbling bass.
+
+"I don't know why I allowed you to interfere in this disgraceful affair,
+boy. Um?"
+
+"No, sir," Michael agreed.
+
+"But since you are here, I will take the opportunity of warning you that
+the company you keep is very vile."
+
+Michael looked apprehensive.
+
+"If you think nothing is known of your habits out of school, you are
+much mistaken. I will not have any boy at my school frequenting the
+house of that deboshed nincompoop Wilmot."
+
+Dr. Brownjohn's voice was now so deep that it vibrated in the pit of
+Michael's stomach like the diapason of the school organ.
+
+"Give up that detestable association of mental impostors and be a boy
+again. You have disappointed me during the whole of your career; but
+you're a winning boy. Um? Go back to your work."
+
+Michael left the august room with resolves swaying in his brain,
+wondering what he could do to repay the Old Man. It was too late to take
+a very high place in the summer examinations. Yet somehow, so passionate
+was his gratitude, he managed to come out third.
+
+Michael never told his mother about his adventure, but in the reaction
+against Wilmot and all that partook of decadence, and in his pleasure at
+having done something, however clumsily, he felt a great wish to include
+his mother in his emotion of universal love.
+
+"Where are we going these holidays?" he asked.
+
+"I thought perhaps you'd like to stay at your monastery again," said
+Mrs. Fane. "I was thinking of going abroad."
+
+Michael's face fell, and his mother was solicitously penitent.
+
+"My dearest boy, I never dreamed you would want to be with me. You've
+always gone out on Sundays."
+
+"I know, I'm sorry, I won't again," Michael assured her.
+
+"And I've made my arrangements now. I wish I'd known. But why shouldn't
+you go and see Stella? It seems a pity that you and she should grow up
+so much apart."
+
+"Well, I will, if you like," said Michael.
+
+"Dearest boy, what has happened to you? You are so agreeable," exclaimed
+Mrs. Fane.
+
+In the end it was arranged that Michael should accompany Mr. Viner on
+his holiday in France, and afterwards stay with Stella with a family at
+Compiegne for the rest of the time. Michael went to see his mother off
+at Charing Cross before he joined Mr. Viner.
+
+"Darling Michael," she murmured as the train began to move slowly
+forward. "You're looking so well and happy--just like you were two years
+ago. Just like----"
+
+The rest of the comparison was lost in the noise of the speeding train.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter X: _Stella_
+
+
+Michael spent a charming fortnight with Father Viner in Amiens, Chartres
+and Rouen. The early Masses to which they went along the cool, empty
+streets of the morning, and the shadowy, candle-lit Benedictions from
+which they came home through the deepening dusk gave to Michael at least
+a profound hope, if not the astonishing faith of his first religious
+experience. Sitting with the priest at the open window of their inn,
+while down below the footsteps of the wayfarers were pattering like
+leaves, Michael recaptured some of that emotion of universal love which
+with sacramental force had filled his heart during the wonder of
+transition from boyhood to adolescence. He did not wish to know more
+about these people than could be told by the sound of their progress so
+light, so casual, so essentially becoming to the sapphirine small world
+in which they hurried to and fro. The passion of hope overwhelmed
+Michael's imagination with a beauty that was perfectly expressed by the
+unseen busy populations of a city's waning twilight. Love, birth, death,
+greed, ambition, all humanity's stress of thought and effort, were
+merged in a murmurous contentment of footfalls and faint-heard voices.
+Michael supposed that somehow to God the universe must sound much as
+this tall street of Rouen sounded now to him at his inn window, and he
+realized for the first time how God must love the world. Later, the
+twilight and voices and footfalls would fade together into night, and
+through long star-scattered silences Michael would brood with a rapture
+that became more than hope, if less than faith with restless, fiery
+heart. Then clocks would strike sonorously; the golden window-panes
+would waver and expire; Mr. Viner would tap his pipe upon the sill; and
+Michael and he would follow their own great shadows up into bedrooms
+noisy in the night-wind and prophetic of sleep's immense freedom, until
+with the slanting beams of dawn Michael would wake and at Mass time seek
+to enchain with prayers indomitable dreams.
+
+The gravity of Michael's demeanour suited the grey town in which he
+sojourned, and though Mr. Viner used to teaze him about his saintly
+exterior, the priest seemed to enjoy his company.
+
+"But don't look so solemn when you meet your sister, or she'll think
+you're sighing for a niche in Chartres Cathedral, which for a young lady
+emancipated from Germany would be a most distressing thought."
+
+"I'm enjoying myself," said Michael earnestly.
+
+"My dear old chap, I'm not questioning that for a moment, and personally
+I find your attitude consorts very admirably with the mood in which
+these northern towns of France always throw me," said Mr. Viner.
+
+The fortnight came to an end, and to commemorate this chastening
+interlude of a confidence and a calm whose impermanence Michael half
+dreaded, half desired, he bought a pair of old candlesticks for the
+Notting Dale Mission. Michael derived a tremendous consolation from this
+purchase, for he felt that, even if in the future he should be powerless
+to revive this healing time, its austere hours would be immortalized,
+mirrored somehow in the candlesticks' bases as durably as if engraved
+upon a Grecian urn. There was in this impulse nothing more sentimental
+than in his erection last year of the small cairn to celebrate a
+fleeting moment of faith on the Berkshire downs.
+
+Stella was already settled in the bosom of the French family when
+Michael reached Compiegne, and as he drove towards the Pension he began
+for the first time to wonder what his sister would be like after these
+two years. He was inclined to suppose that she would be a problem, and
+he already felt qualms about the behaviour of her projected suddenly
+like this from Germany into an atmosphere of romance. For Michael,
+France always stood out as typically romantic to his fancy. Spain and
+Italy were not within his realization as yet, and Germany he conceived
+of as a series of towns filled with the noise of piano-scales and hoarse
+gutturals. He hoped that Stella was not even now plunged into a girlish
+love-affair with one of the idle young Frenchmen who haunted so
+amorously the sunshine of this gay land. He even began to rehearse, as
+his carriage jolted along the cobbled embankment of the Oise, a
+particularly scathing scene in which he coldly denounced the importunate
+lover, while Stella stood abashed by fraternal indignation. Then he
+reflected that after all Stella was only fifteen and, as he remembered
+her, too much wrapped up in a zest for public appreciation to be very
+susceptible of private admiration. Moreover, he knew that most of her
+time was occupied by piano-practice. An emotion of pride in his
+accomplished sister displaced the pessimism of his first thoughts. He
+took pleasure in the imagination of her swaying the whole Pension by her
+miraculous execution, and he began to build up the picture of his
+entrance upon the last crashing chords of a sonata, when after the
+applause had ceased he would modestly step forward as the brother of
+this paragon.
+
+The carriage was now bowling comfortably along a wide tree-shaded avenue
+bordered on either side by stretches of greenery which were dappled with
+children and nursemaids and sedate little girls with bobbing pigtails.
+Michael wondered if Stella was making a discreet promenade with the
+ladies of the family, half hoped she was, that he might reach the
+Pension before her and gracefully welcome her, as she, somewhat
+flustered by being late for his arrival, hurried up the front-door
+steps. Then, just as he was wondering whether there would or would not
+be front-door steps to the Pension, the cab drew up by a house with a
+green verandah and front-garden geranium-dyed to right and left of a
+vivid gravel path. Michael perceived, with a certain disapproval, that
+the verandah sheltered various ladies in wicker chairs. He disliked the
+notion of carrying up his bag in the range of their cool criticism, nor
+did he relish the conversation that would have to be embarked upon with
+the neat maid already hurrying to meet him. But most contrary to his
+preconceived idea of arrival was the affectionate ambush laid for him by
+Stella just when he was trying to remember whether 'chambre' were
+masculine or feminine. Yet, even as he felt Stella's dewy lips on his,
+and her slim fingers round his neck, he reproached himself for his silly
+shyness, although he could only say:
+
+"Hullo, look out for my collar."
+
+Stella laughed ripplingly.
+
+"Oh, Michael," she cried, "I'm most frightfully glad to see you, you
+darling old Michael."
+
+Michael looked much alarmed at the amazing facility of her affectionate
+greeting, and vaguely thought how much easier existence must be to a
+girl who never seemed to be hampered by any feeling of what people
+within earshot would think of her. Yet almost immediately Stella herself
+relapsed into shyness at the prospect of introducing Michael to the
+family, and it was only the perfectly accomplished courtesy of Madame
+Regnier which saved Michael from summarily making up his mind that these
+holidays were going to be a most ghastly failure.
+
+The business of unpacking composed his feelings slightly, and a tap at
+his door, followed by Stella's silvery demand to come in, gave him a
+thrill of companionship. He suddenly realized, too, that he and his
+sister had corresponded frequently during their absence, and that this
+queer shyness at meeting her in person was really absurd. Stella,
+wandering round the room with his ties on her arm, gave Michael real
+pleasure, and she for her part seemed highly delighted at the privilege
+of superintending his unpacking.
+
+He noted with a sentimental fondness that she still hummed, and he was
+very much impressed by the flowers which she had arranged in the cool
+corners of the pleasant room. On her appearance, too, as she hung over
+the rail of his bed chatting to him gaily, he congratulated himself. He
+liked the big apple-green bows in her chestnut hair; he liked her slim
+white hands and large eyes; and he wondered if her smile were like his,
+and hoped it was, since it was certainly very subtle and attractive.
+
+"What sort of people hang out in this place?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, nice people," Stella assured him. "Madame Regnier is a darling, and
+she loves my playing, and Monsieur is fearfully nice, with a grey beard.
+We always play billiards in the evening, and drink cassis. It's lovely.
+There are three darling old ladies, widows I think. They sit and listen
+to me playing, and when I've finished pay me all sorts of compliments,
+which sound so pretty in French. One of them said I was 'ravissante.'"
+
+"Are there any kids?" asked Michael.
+
+Stella said there were no kids, and Michael sighed his relief.
+
+"Do you practise much?"
+
+"Oh, no, I'm having a holiday, I only practise three hours a day."
+
+"How much?" asked Michael. "Good Lord, do you call that a holiday?"
+
+"Why, you silly old thing, of course it is," rippled Stella.
+
+Presently it was time for dejeuner, and they sat down to eat in a room,
+of shaded sunlight, watching the green jalousies that glowed like
+beryls, and listening to a canary's song. Michael was introduced to
+Madame Graves, Madame Lamarque and Madame Charpentier, the three old
+widows who lived at the Pension, and who all looked strangely alike,
+with their faces and hands of aged ivory and their ruffles and
+wristbands starched to the semblance of fretted white coral. They ate
+mincingly in contrast to M. Regnier who, guarded by a very large napkin,
+pitchforked his food into his mouth with noisy recklessness. Later in
+the mellow August afternoon Michael and he walked solemnly round the
+town together, and Michael wondered if he had ever before raised his hat
+so many times.
+
+After dinner, when the coffee and cassis had been drunk, Madame Regnier
+invited Stella to play to them. Dusk was falling in the florid French
+drawing-room, but so rich was the approach of darkness that no lamps
+brooded with rosy orbs, and only a lighted candle on either side of
+Stella stabbed the gloom in which the listeners leaned quietly back
+against the tropic tapestries of their chairs, without trying to occupy
+themselves with books or crochet-work.
+
+Michael sat by the scented window, watching the stars twinkle, it almost
+seemed, in tune with the vibrant melodies that Stella rang out. In the
+bewitching candlelight the keyboard trembled and shimmered like water to
+a low wind. Deep in the shadow the three old ladies sat in a waxen
+ecstasy, so still that Michael wondered whether they were alive. He did
+not know whose tunes they were that Stella played; he did not know what
+dreams they wove for the old ladies, whether of spangled opera-house or
+ball; he did not care, being content to watch the lissome hands that
+from time to time went dancing away on either side from the curve of
+Stella's straight back, whether to play with raindrops in the treble or
+marshal thunders from the bass. The candlelight sprayed her flowing
+chestnut hair with a golden mist that might have been an aureole over
+which the apple-green bows floated unsubstantial like amazing moths.
+
+Michael continually tried to shape his ideas to the inspiration of the
+music, but every image that rose battling for expression lost itself in
+a peerless stupefaction.
+
+Then suddenly Stella stopped playing, and the enchantment was dispelled
+by murmurous praise and entering lamplight. Stella, slim as a fountain,
+stood upright in the centre of the drawing-room and, like a fountain,
+swayed now this way, now that, to catch the compliments so dear to her.
+Michael wished the three old ladies would not appeal to him to endorse
+their so perfectly phrased enthusiasm, and grew very conscious of the
+gradual decline of 'oui' into 'wee' as he supported their laudation. He
+was glad when M. Regnier proposed a game of billiards, and glad to see
+that Stella could romp, romp so heartily indeed that once or twice he
+had to check a whispered rebuke.
+
+But later on when he said good night to her outside his bedroom, he had
+an impulse to hug her close for the unimaginable artistry of this little
+sister.
+
+Michael and Stella went out next day to explore the forest of Compiegne.
+They wandered away from the geometrical forest roads into high glades
+and noble chases; they speculated upon the whereabouts of the wild-boars
+that were hunted often, and therefore really did exist; they lay deep in
+the bracken utterly remote in the ardent emerald light, utterly quiet
+save for the thrum of insects rising and falling. In this intimate
+seclusion Michael found it easy enough to talk to Stella. Somehow her
+face, magnified by the proportions of the surrounding vegetation,
+scarcely seemed to belong to her, and Michael had a sensation of a fairy
+fellowship, as he felt himself being absorbed into her wide and
+strangely magical eyes. Seen like this they were as overwhelmingly
+beautiful as two flowers, holding mysteries of colour and form that
+could never be revealed save thus in an abandonment of contemplation.
+
+"Why do you stare at me, Michael?" she asked.
+
+"Because I think it's funny to realize that you and I are as nearly as
+it's possible to be the same person, and yet we're as different from
+each other as we are from the rest of people. I wonder, if you didn't
+know I was your brother, and I didn't know you were my sister, if we
+should have a sort of--what's the word?--intuition about it? For
+instance, you can play the piano, and I can't even understand the
+feeling of being able to play the piano. I wish we knew our father. It
+must be interesting to have a father and a mother, and see what part of
+one comes from each."
+
+"I always think father and mother weren't married," said Stella.
+
+Michael blushed hotly, taken utterly aback.
+
+"I say, my dear girl, don't say things like that. That's a frightful
+thing to say."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Why? Why, because people would be horrified to hear a little girl
+talking like that," Michael explained.
+
+"Oh, I thought you meant they'd be shocked to think of people not being
+married."
+
+"I say, really, you know, Stella, you ought to be careful. I wouldn't
+have thought you even knew that people sometimes--very seldom, though,
+mind--don't get married."
+
+"You funny old boy," rippled Stella. "You must think I'm a sort of doll
+just wound up to play the piano. If I didn't know that much after going
+to Germany, why--oh, Michael, I do think you're funny."
+
+"I was afraid these beastly foreigners would spoil you," muttered
+Michael.
+
+"It's not the foreigners. It's myself."
+
+"Stella!"
+
+"Well, I'm fifteen and a half."
+
+"I thought girls were innocent," said Michael with disillusion in his
+tone.
+
+"Girls grow older quicker than boys."
+
+"But I mean always innocent," persisted Michael. "I don't mean all
+girls, of course. But--well--a girl like you."
+
+"Very innocent girls are usually very stupid girls," Stella asserted.
+
+Michael made a resolution to watch his sister's behaviour when she came
+back to London next year to make her first public appearance at a
+concert. For the moment, feeling overmatched, he changed the trend of
+his reproof.
+
+"Well, even if you do talk about people not being married, I think it's
+rotten to talk about mother like that."
+
+"You stupid old thing, as if I should do it with anyone but you, and I
+only talked about her to you because you look so sort of cosy and
+confidential in these ferns."
+
+"They're not ferns--they're bracken. If I thought such a thing was
+possible," declared Michael, "I believe I'd go mad. I don't think I
+could ever again speak to anybody I knew."
+
+"Why not, if they didn't know?"
+
+"How like a girl! Stella, you make me feel uncomfortable, you do
+really."
+
+Stella stretched her full length in the luxurious greenery.
+
+"Well, mother never seems unhappy."
+
+"Exactly," said Michael eagerly. "Therefore, what you think can't
+possibly be true. If it were, she'd always look miserable."
+
+"Well, then who _was_ our father?"
+
+"Don't ask me," said Michael gloomily. "I believe he's in prison--or
+perhaps he's in an asylum, or deformed."
+
+Stella shuddered.
+
+"Michael, what a perfectly horrible idea. Deformed!"
+
+"Well, wouldn't you sooner he were deformed than that you were--than
+that--than the other idea?" Michael stammered.
+
+"No, I wouldn't," Stella cried. "I'd much, much, much rather that mother
+was never married."
+
+Michael tried to drag his mind towards the comprehension of this
+unnatural sentiment, but the longer he regarded it the worse it seemed,
+and with intense irony he observed to Stella:
+
+"I suppose you'll be telling me next that you're in love."
+
+"I'm not in love just at the moment," said Stella blandly.
+
+"Do you mean to say you have been in love?"
+
+"A good deal," she admitted.
+
+Michael leaped to his feet, and looked down on her recumbent in the
+bracken.
+
+"But only in a stupid schoolgirly way?" he gasped.
+
+"Yes, I suppose it was," Stella paused. "But it was fearfully thrilling
+all the same--especially in duets."
+
+"Duets?"
+
+"I used to read ahead, and watch where our hands would come together,
+and then the notes used to get quite slippery with excitement."
+
+"Look here," Michael demanded, drawing himself up, "are you trying to be
+funny?"
+
+"No," Stella declared, rising to confront Michael. "He was one of my
+masters. He was only about thirty, and he was killed in Switzerland by
+an avalanche."
+
+Michael was staggered by the confession of this shocking and precocious
+child, as one after another his chimeras rose up to leer at him
+triumphantly.
+
+"And did he make love to you? Did he try to kiss you?" Michael choked
+out.
+
+"Oh, no," said Stella. "That would have spoilt it all."
+
+Michael sighed under a faint lightening of his load, and Stella came up
+to him engagingly to slip her arm into his.
+
+"Don't be angry with me, Michael, because I have wanted so dreadfully to
+be great friends with you and tell you all my secrets. I want to tell
+you what I think about when I'm playing; and, Michael, you oughtn't to
+be angry with me, because you were simply just made to be told secrets.
+That's why I played so well last night. I was telling you a secret all
+the time."
+
+"Do you know what it is, Stella?" said Michael, with a certain awe in
+his voice. "I believe our father is in an asylum, and I believe you and
+I are both mad--not raving mad, of course--but slightly mad."
+
+"All geniuses are," said Stella earnestly.
+
+"But we aren't geniuses."
+
+"I am," murmured Stella in a strangely quiet little voice that sounded
+in Michael's ears like the song of a furtive melodious bird.
+
+"Are you?" he whispered, half frightened by this assertion, delivered
+under huge overarching trees in the burning silence of the forest. "Who
+told you so?"
+
+"I told myself so. And when I tell myself something very solemnly, I
+can't be anything but myself, and I must be speaking the truth."
+
+"But even if you're a genius--and I suppose you might be--I'm not a
+genius. I'm clever, but I'm not a genius."
+
+"No, but you're the nearest person to being me, and if you're not a
+genius, I think you can understand. Oh, Michael," Stella cried, clasping
+his arm to her heart, "you do understand, because you never laughed
+when I told you I was a genius. I've told lots of girl-friends, and
+they laugh and say I'm conceited."
+
+"Well, you are," said Michael, feeling bound not to lose the opportunity
+of impressing Stella with disapproval as well as comprehension.
+
+"I know I am. But I must be to go on being myself. Oh, you darling
+brother, you do understand me. I've longed for someone to understand me.
+Mother's only proud of me."
+
+"I'm not at all proud of you," said Michael crushingly.
+
+"I don't want you to be. If you were proud of me, you'd think I belonged
+to you, and I don't ever want to belong to anybody."
+
+"I shouldn't think you ever would," said Michael encouragingly, as they
+paced the sensuous mossy path in a rapture of avowals. "I should think
+you'd frighten anybody except me. But why do you fall in love, then?"
+
+"Oh, because I want to make people die with despair."
+
+"Great Scott, you are an unearthly kid."
+
+"Oh, I'm glad I'm unearthly," said Stella. "I'd like to be a sort of
+Undine. I think I am. I don't think I've got a soul, because when I play
+I go rushing out into the darkness to look for my soul, and the better I
+play the nearer I get."
+
+Michael stopped beneath an oak-tree and surveyed this extraordinary
+sister of his.
+
+"Well, I always thought I was a mystic, but, good Lord, you're fifty
+times as much of a mystic as I am," he exclaimed with depressed
+conviction.
+
+Suddenly Stella gave a loud scream.
+
+"What on earth are you yelling at?" said Michael.
+
+"Oh, Michael, look--a most enormous animal. Oh, look, oh, let me get up
+a tree. Oh, help me up. Push me up this tree."
+
+"It's a wild-boar," declared Michael in a tone of astonished interest.
+
+Stella screamed louder than ever and clung to Michael, sobbing. The
+boar, however, went on its way, routing among the herbage.
+
+"Well, you may be a genius," said Michael, "but you're an awful little
+funk."
+
+"But I was frightened."
+
+"Wild-boars aren't dangerous except when they're being hunted," Michael
+asserted positively.
+
+Stella soon became calm under the influence of her brother's equanimity.
+Arm-in-arm they sauntered back towards Compiegne, and so for a month of
+serene weather they sauntered every day, and every day Michael pondered
+more and more deeply the mystery of woman. He was sorry to say good-bye
+to Stella when she went back to Germany, and longed for the breathless
+hour of her first concert, wishful that all his life he might stand
+between her and the world, the blundering wild-boar of a world.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XI: _Action and Reaction_
+
+
+Almost before the confusion of a new term had subsided, Michael put his
+name down to play football again, and it was something in the nature of
+an occasion when in the first sweltering Middle-side game he scored six
+tries. Already his contemporaries had forgotten that he was once a fleet
+and promising three-quarter, so that his resurrection was regarded as an
+authentic apparition, startling in its unexpectedness. Michael was the
+only person not much surprized when he was invited by Abercrombie to
+play as substitute for one of the Seniors absent from a Big-side trial.
+Yet even Michael was surprized when in the opening match between
+Classics and Moderns he read his name on the notice-board as sixteenth
+man; and when, through the continued illness of the first choice, he
+actually found himself walking on to the field between the black lines
+of spectators, he was greatly content. Yet the finest thrill of all came
+when in the line-out he found himself on the left wing with Alan, with
+Alan not very unlike the old Alan even now in the coveted Tyrian vest of
+the Classical First Fifteen.
+
+Into that game Michael poured all he felt of savage detestation for
+everything that the Modern side stood for. Not an opponent was collared
+that did not in his falling agony take on the likeness of Percy Garrod;
+not a Modern half-back was hurled into touch who was not in Michael's
+imagination insolent with damnably destructive theories of life. It was
+exhilarating, it was superb, it was ineffable, the joy of seeing Alan
+hand off a Modern bounder and swing the ball out low to him crouching
+vigilant upon the left. It was intoxicating, it was divine to catch the
+ball, and with zigzag leap and plunge to tear wildly on towards the
+Modern goal, to hear the Classical lower boys shriek their high-voiced
+thrilling exhortations, to hear the maledictions of the enemy
+ricochetting from a force of speed that spun its own stability. Back
+went the ball to Alan, shouting with flushed face on his right, just as
+one of the Modern three-quarters, with iron grip round Michael's
+faltering knees, fetched him crashing down.
+
+"Good pass," cried the delighted Classical boys, and "Well run, sir,
+well run, sir!" they roared as Alan whizzed the ball along to the
+dapper, the elusive, the incomparable Terry. "Go in, yourself," they
+prayed, as Terry like a chamois bounded straight at the despairing
+full-back, then with a gasp that triumphed over the vibrant hush,
+checked himself, and in one peerless spring breasted the shoulders of
+the back to come thudding down upon the turf with a glorious try.
+
+Now the game swayed desperately, and with Alan ever beside him Michael
+lived through every heroic fight of man. They were at Thermopylae,
+stemming the Persian charges with hack and thrust and sweeping cut; they
+were at Platea with Aristides and Pausanias, vowing death rather than
+subjugation; the body of Terry beneath a weight of Modern forwards,
+crying, "Let me up, you stinkers!" was fought for as long ago beneath
+the walls of Troy the battle raged about the body of Patroclus. And when
+the game was over, when the Moderns had been defeated for the first time
+in four resentful years of scientific domination, when the Classical
+Fifteen proudly strode from the field, immortal in muddied Tyrian, it
+was easy enough to walk across the gravel arm-in-arm with Alan and,
+while still the noise of the contest and the cries of the onlookers
+echoed in their ears, it was easy to span the icy floes of two drifting
+years in one moment of careless, artless intercourse.
+
+"You'll get your Second Fifteen colours," said Alan confidently.
+
+"Not this year," Michael thought.
+
+"You'll get your Third Fifteen cap for a snip."
+
+"Yes, I ought to get that," Michael agreed.
+
+"Well, that's damned good, considering you haven't played for two
+years," Alan vowed.
+
+And as he spoke Michael wondered if Alan had ever wished for his company
+in the many stressful games from which he had been absent.
+
+Michael now became one of that group of happy immortals in the
+entrance-hall, whose attitudes of noble ease graced the hot-water pipes
+below the 'board' on which the news of the school fluctuated daily. This
+society, to which nothing gave admission but a profound sense of one's
+own right to enter it, varied from time to time only in details. As a
+whole composition it was immutable, as permanent, as decorative and as
+appropriate as the frieze of the Parthenon. From twenty minutes past
+nine until twenty-seven minutes past nine, from twenty-five minutes past
+eleven until twenty-eight minutes past eleven, from ten minutes to three
+until two minutes to three the heroes of the school met in a large
+familiarity whose Olympian laughter awed the fearful small boy that
+flitted uneasily past and chilled the slouching senior that rashly
+paused to examine the notices in assertion of an unearned right. Even
+masters entering through the swinging doors seemed glad to pass beyond
+the range of the heroes' patronizing contemplation.
+
+Michael found a pedestal here, and soon idealized the heedless stupidity
+of these immortals into a Lacedemonian rigour which seemed to him very
+fine. He accepted their unimaginative standards, their coarseness, their
+brutality as virtues, and in them he saw the consummation of all that
+England should cherish. He successfully destroyed a legend that he was
+clever, and though at first he found it difficult to combat the
+suspicion of aesthetic proclivities and religious eccentricity, even of
+poetic ambitions which overshadowed his first welcome, he was at last
+able to get these condoned as a blemish upon an otherwise diverting
+personality with a tongue nimble enough to make heroes guffaw. Moreover,
+he was a friend of Alan, who with his slim disdain and perfectly stoic
+bearing was irreproachable, and since Michael frankly admired his new
+friends, and since he imparted just enough fantasy to their stolid
+fellowship to lend it a faint distinction, he was very soon allowed to
+preserve a flavour of oddity, and became in time arbiter of whatever
+elegance they could claim. Michael on his side was most anxious to
+conform to every prejudice of the Olympians, esteeming their stolidity
+far above his own natural demeanour, envious too of their profoundly
+ordinary point of view and their commonplace expression of it.
+
+Upon this assembly descended the news of war with the Transvaal, and for
+three months at least Michael shared in the febrile elation and
+arrogance and complacent outlook of the average Englishman. The
+Olympians recalled from early schooldays the forms of heroes who were
+even now gazetted to regiments on their way to the front, and who but a
+little while ago had lounged against these very hot-water pipes.
+Sandhurst and Woolwich candidates lamented their ill-luck in being born
+too young, and consoled themselves with proclaiming that after all the
+war was so easy that scarcely were they missing anything at all. Then
+came the first low rumble of defeat, the first tremulous breath of
+doubt.
+
+Word went round that meetings were being held to stop the war, and
+wrathfully the heroes mounted a London Road Car omnibus, snatched the
+Union Jack from its socket, and surged into Hammersmith Town Hall to
+yell and hoot at the farouche Irishmen and dirty Socialists who were
+mouthing their hatred of the war and exulting in the unlucky capture of
+two regiments. The School Cadet Corps could not accept the mass of
+recruits that demanded to be enrolled. Drums were bought by
+subscription, and in the armoury down under the School tattoo and
+rataplan voiced the martial spirit of St. James'.
+
+One day Alan brought back the news that his Uncle Kenneth was ordered to
+the front, that he would sail from Southampton in a few days. Leave was
+granted Alan to go and say good-bye, and in the patriotic fervour that
+now burned even in the hearts of schoolmasters, Michael was accorded
+leave to accompany him.
+
+They travelled down to Southampton on a wet, windy November day, proud
+to think as they sat opposite one another in the gloomy railway-carriage
+that in some way since this summons they were both more intimately
+connected with the war.
+
+In a dreary Southampton hotel they met Mrs. Ross, and Michael thought
+that she was very beautiful and very brave waiting in the chilly
+fly-blown dining-room of the hotel. Three years of marriage scarcely
+seemed to have altered his dear Miss Carthew; yet there was a dignity, a
+carven stillness that Michael had never associated with the figure of
+his governess, or perhaps it was that now he was older, more capable of
+appreciating the noble lines of this woman.
+
+It gave Michael a sentimental pang to watch Mrs. Ross presiding over
+their lunch as she had in the past presided over so many lunches. They
+spoke hardly at all of Captain Ross's departure, but they talked of
+Nancy, and how well she was doing as secretary to Lord Perham, of Mrs.
+Carthew, still among the roses and plums of Cobble Place, and of a
+hundred jolly bygone events. Mrs. Ross was greatly interested to hear of
+Stella, and greatly amused by Michael's arrangement of her future.
+
+Then Captain Ross came in, and after a few jokes, which fell very flat
+in the bleak dining-room--perhaps because the two boys were in awe of
+this soldier going away to the wars, or perhaps because they knew that
+there was indeed nothing to joke about--said:
+
+"The regiment comes in by the 2.45. We shall embark at once. What's the
+time now?"
+
+Everyone, even the mournful waiter, stared up at the wall. It was two
+o'clock.
+
+"Half an hour before I need go down to the station," said Captain Ross,
+and then he began to whistle very quietly. The wind was getting more
+boisterous, and the rain rattled on the windows as if, without, a
+menacing hand flung gravel for a signal.
+
+"Can you two boys amuse yourselves for a little while?" asked Captain
+Ross.
+
+"Oh, rather," said Michael and Alan.
+
+"I've just one or two things I wanted to say to you, dear," said Captain
+Ross, turning to his wife. They left the dining-room together. Michael
+and Alan sat silently at the table, crumbling bread and making patterns
+in the salt-cellar. They could hear the gaunt clock ticking away on the
+stained wall above them. From time to time far-off bugles sounded above
+the tossing wind. So they sat for twenty solemn minutes. Then the
+husband and wife came back. The bill was paid; the door of the hotel
+swung back; the porter said 'Good luck, sir,' very solemnly, and in a
+minute they were walking down the street towards the railway-station
+through the wind and rain.
+
+"I'll see you on the dock in a moment," said Captain Ross. "You'd better
+take a cab down and wait under cover."
+
+Thence onwards for an hour or more all was noise, excitement and bustle
+in contrast to the brooding, ominous calm of the dingy hotel. Regiments
+were marching down to the docks; bands were playing; there were drums
+and bugles, shouts of command, clatter of horses, the occasional rumble
+of a gun-carriage, enquiries, the sobbing of children and women, oaths,
+the hooting of sirens, a steam-engine's whistle, and at last, above
+everything else, was heard the wail of approaching pipes.
+
+Nearer and nearer swirled the maddening, gladdening, heart-rending tune
+they played; the Kintail Highlanders were coming; they swung into view;
+they halted, company after company of them; there were shouts of command
+very close; suddenly Michael found his hand clenched and saw Captain
+Ross's grey eyes smiling good-bye; Alan's sleeve seemed to have a loose
+thread that wanted biting off; the sirens of the great transport
+trumpeted angrily and, resounding through the sinking hearts of those
+who were not going, robbed them of whatever pluck was left. Everywhere
+in view sister, mother, and wife were held for a moment by those they
+loved. The last man was aboard; the gangway was hauled up; the screw
+pounded the water; the ship began to glide away from the dock with slow,
+sickening inevitableness. Upon the air danced handkerchiefs, feeble
+fluttering envoys of the passionate farewells they flung to the wind.
+Spellbound, intolerably powerless, the watchers on shore waved and
+waved; smaller grew the faces leaning over the rail; smaller and
+smaller, until at last they were unrecognizable to those left behind;
+and now the handkerchiefs were waved in a new fever of energy as if with
+the fading of the faces there had fallen upon the assembly a fresh
+communal grief, a grief that, no longer regarding personal heartbreaks,
+frantically pursued the great graceful ship herself whose prow was
+straining for the open sea. Still, though now scarcely even were human
+forms discernible upon the decks, the handkerchiefs jigged on for
+horribly mechanic gestures, as if those who waved them were become
+automatons through sorrow.
+
+Glad of the musty peace of a railway-carriage after the tears and
+confusion of the docks, Michael and Alan and Mrs. Ross spoke very little
+on the journey back to London.
+
+"Aren't you going to stay the night with us at Richmond?" Alan asked.
+
+"No, I must get down to Cobble Place. My large son has already gone
+there with his nurse."
+
+"Your son?" exclaimed Michael. "Oh, of course, I forgot."
+
+So Alan and he put Mrs. Ross into her train and rode back together on an
+omnibus, proud citizens of an Empire whose inspiration they had lately
+beheld in action.
+
+Next morning the Olympians on their frieze were considerably impressed
+by Michael's account of the stirring scene at Southampton.
+
+"Oh, the war will be over almost at once. We're not taking any risks.
+We're sending out enough men to conquer more than the Transvaal," said
+the heroes wisely.
+
+But soon there came the news of fresh defeats, and when in the middle of
+January school reassembled there were actually figures missing from the
+familiar composition itself. Actually contemporary heroes had left, had
+enlisted in the Volunteers and Yeomanry, were even now waiting for
+orders and meantime self-consciously wandering round the school-grounds
+in militant khaki. Sandhurst and Woolwich candidates passed with
+incredible ease; boys were coming to school in mourning; Old Jacobeans
+died bravely, and their deaths were recorded in the school magazine; one
+Old Jacobean gained the Victoria Cross, and everyone walked from prayers
+very proudly upon that day.
+
+Michael was still conventionally patriotic, but sometimes with the
+progress of the war a doubt would creep into his mind whether this
+increasing blazonry of a country's emotion were so fine as once he had
+thought it, whether England were losing some of her self-control under
+reverses, and, worst of all, whether in her victories she were becoming
+blatant. He remembered how he had been sickened by the accounts of
+American hysteria during the war with Spain, whose weaker cause, true to
+his earliest inclinations, he had been compelled to champion. And now
+when the tide was turning in England's favour, when every other boy came
+to school wearing a khaki tie quartered with blue or red and some of
+them even came tricked out with Union Jack waistcoats, when the wearing
+of a British general's head on a button and the hissing of Kruger's name
+at a pantomime were signs of high emotion, when many wastrels of his
+acquaintance had uniforms, and when the patriotism of their friends
+consisted of making these undignified supernumeraries drunk, Michael
+began to wonder whether war conducted by a democracy had ever been much
+more than a circus for the populace.
+
+And when one bleak morning in early spring he read in a fatal column
+that Captain Kenneth Ross had been killed in action, his smouldering
+resentment blazed out, and as he hurried to school with sickened heart
+and eyes in a mist of welling tears, he could have cursed everyone of
+the rosetted patriots for whose vainglory such a death paid the price.
+Alan, as he expected, was not at school, and Michael spent a restless,
+miserable morning. He hated the idea of discussing the news with his
+friends of the hot-water pipes, and when one by one the unimaginative,
+flaccid comments flowed easily forth upon an event that was too great
+for them even to hear, much less to speak of, Michael's rage burst
+forth:
+
+"For God's sake, you asses, don't talk so much. I'm sick of this war.
+I'm sick of reading that a lot of decent chaps have died for nothing,
+because it is for nothing, if this country is never again going to be
+able to stand defeat or victory. War isn't anything to admire in itself.
+All the good of war is what it makes of the people who fight, and what
+it makes of the people who stay at home."
+
+The Olympians roared with laughter, and congratulated Michael on his
+humorous oration.
+
+"Can't you see that I'm serious? that it is important to be gentlemen?"
+Michael shouted.
+
+"Who says we aren't gentlemen?" demanded a very vapid, but slightly
+bellicose hero.
+
+"Nobody says _you_ aren't a gentleman, you ass; at least nobody says you
+eat peas with a knife, but, my God, if you think it's decent to wear
+that damned awful button in your coat when fellows are being killed
+every day for you, for your pleasure, for your profit, for your
+existence, all I can say is I don't."
+
+Michael felt that the climax of this speech was somewhat weak, and he
+relapsed into silence, biting his nails with the unexpressed rage of
+limp words.
+
+"You might as well say that the School oughtn't to cheer at a football
+match," said Abercrombie the Captain.
+
+"I would say so, if I thought that all the cheerers never expected and
+never even intended to play themselves. That's why professional football
+is so rotten."
+
+"You were damned glad to get your Third Fifteen cap," Abercrombie
+pointed out gruffly.
+
+The laugh that followed this rebuke from the mightiest of the immortals
+goaded Michael into much more than he had intended to say when he began
+his unlucky tirade.
+
+"Oh, was I?" he sneered. "That's just where you're quite wrong, because,
+as a matter of fact, I don't intend to play football any more, if School
+Footer is simply to be a show for a lot of wasters. I'm not going to
+exert myself like an acrobat in a circus, if it all means nothing."
+
+The heroes regarded Michael with surprize and distaste; they shrank from
+him coldly as if his unreasonable outburst in some way involved their
+honour. They laughed uncomfortably, each one hiding himself behind
+another's shoulders, as if they mocked a madman. The bell for school
+rang, and the heroes left him. Michael, still enraged, went back to his
+class-room. Then he wondered if Alan would hate him for having made his
+uncle's death an occasion for this breach of a school's code of manners.
+He supposed sadly that Alan would not understand any more than the
+others what he felt. He cursed himself for having let these ordinary,
+obvious, fat-headed fools impose upon his imagination, as to lead him to
+consider them worthy of his respect. He had wasted three months in this
+society; he had thought he was happy and had congratulated himself upon
+at last finding school endurable. School was a prison, such as it always
+had been. He was seventeen and a schoolboy. It was ignominious. At one
+o'clock he waited for nobody, but walked quickly home to lunch, still
+fuming with the loss of his self-control and, as he looked back on the
+scene, of his dignity.
+
+His mother came down to lunch with signs of a morning's tears, and
+Michael looked at her in astonishment. He had not supposed that she
+would be much affected by the death of Captain Ross, and he enquired if
+she had been writing to Mrs. Ross.
+
+"No, dear," said Mrs. Fane. "Why should I have written to Mrs. Ross this
+morning?"
+
+"Didn't you see in the paper?" Michael asked.
+
+"See what?"
+
+"That Captain Ross was killed in action."
+
+"Oh, no," gasped his mother, white and shuddering. "Oh, Michael, how
+horrible, and on the same day."
+
+"The same day as what?"
+
+Mrs. Fane looked at her son for a moment very intently, as if she were
+minded to tell him something. Then the parlour-maid came into the room,
+and she seemed to change her mind, and finally said in perfectly
+controlled accents:
+
+"The same day as the announcement is made that--that your old friend
+Lord Saxby has raised a troop of horse--Saxby's horse. He is going to
+Africa almost at once."
+
+"Another gentleman going to be killed for the sake of these rowdy swine
+at home!" said Michael savagely.
+
+"Michael! What do you mean? Don't you admire a man for--for trying to do
+something for his country?"
+
+"It depends on the country," Michael answered, "If you think it's worth
+while doing anything for what England is now, I don't. I wouldn't raise
+a finger, if London were to be invaded to-morrow."
+
+"I don't understand you, dearest boy. You're talking rather like a
+Radical, and rather like old Conservative gentlemen I remember as a
+girl. It's such a strange mixture. I don't think you quite understand
+what you're saying."
+
+"I understand perfectly what I'm saving," Michael contradicted.
+
+"Well, then I don't think you ought to talk like that. I don't think
+it's kind or considerate to me and, after you've just heard about
+Captain Ross's death, I think it's irreverent. And I thought you
+attached so much importance to reverence," Mrs. Fane added in a
+complaining tone.
+
+Michael was vexed by his mother's failure to understand his point of
+view, and became harder and more perverse every minute.
+
+"Lord Saxby would be shocked to hear you talking like this, shocked and
+horrified," she went on.
+
+"I'm very sorry for hurting Lord Saxby's feelings," said Michael with
+elaborate sarcasm. "But really I don't see that it matters much to him
+what I think."
+
+"He wants to see you before he sails," said Mrs, Fane.
+
+"To see me? Why?" gasped Michael. "Why on earth should he want to see
+me?"
+
+"Well, he's--he's in a way the head of our family."
+
+"He's not taken much interest in me up to the present. It's rather odd
+he should want to see me now when he's going away."
+
+"Michael, don't be so bitter and horrid. Lord Saxby's so kind, and
+he--and he--might never come back."
+
+"Dearest mother," said Michael, "I think you're a little unreasonable.
+Why should I go and meet a man now, and perhaps grow to like him--and
+then say good-bye to him, perhaps for ever?"
+
+"Michael, do not talk like that. You are selfish and brutal. You've
+grown up to be perfectly heartless, although you can be charming. I
+think you'd better not see Lord Saxby. He'd be ashamed of you."
+
+Michael rose in irritation.
+
+"My dear mother, what on earth business is it of Lord Saxby's how I
+behave? I don't understand what you mean by being ashamed of me. I have
+lived all these years, and I've seen Lord Saxby once. He sent me some
+Siamese stamps and some soldiers. I dare say he's a splendid chap. I
+know I liked him terrifically, when I was a kid, and if he's killed I
+shall be sorry--I shall be more than sorry--I shall be angry, furious
+that for the sake of these insufferable rowdies another decent chap is
+going to risk his life."
+
+Mrs. Fane put out her hand to stop Michael's flowing tirade, but he paid
+no attention, talking away less to her than to himself. Indeed, long
+before he had finished, she made no pretence of listening, but merely
+sat crying quietly.
+
+"I've been thinking a good deal lately about this war," Michael
+declared. "I'm beginning to doubt whether it's a just war, whether we
+didn't simply set out on it for brag and money. I'm not sure that I want
+to see the Boers conquered. They're a small independent nation, and they
+have old-fashioned ideas and they're narrow-minded Bible-worshippers,
+but there's something noble about them, something much nobler than there
+is in these rotten adventurers who go out to fight them. Of course, I
+don't mean by that people like Captain Ross or Lord Saxby. They're
+gentlemen. They go either because it's their duty or because they think
+it's their duty. And they're the ones that get killed. You don't hear of
+these swaggerers in khaki being killed. I haven't heard yet of many of
+them even going to the front at all. Oh, mother, I am fed up with the
+rotten core of everything that looks so fine on the outside."
+
+Mrs. Fane was now crying loud enough to make Michael stop in sudden
+embarrassment.
+
+"I say, mother, don't cry. I expect I've been talking nonsense," he
+softly told her.
+
+"I don't know where you get these views. I was always so proud of you. I
+thought you were charming and mysterious, and you're simply vulgar!"
+
+"Vulgar?" echoed Michael in dismay.
+
+Mrs. Fane nodded vehemently.
+
+"Oh, well, if I'm vulgar, I'll go."
+
+Michael hurried to the door.
+
+"Where are you going?" asked his mother in alarm.
+
+"Oh, Lord, only to school. That's what makes a scene like this so funny.
+After I've worked myself up and made you angry----"
+
+"Not angry, dear. Only grieved," interrupted his mother.
+
+"You were more than grieved when you said I was vulgar. At least I hope
+you were. But, after it's all over, I go trotting off like a good
+little boy to school--to school--to school. Oh, mother, what is the good
+of expecting me to believe in the finest fellows in the world being
+killed, while I'm still at school? What's the good of making me more
+wretched, more discontented, more alive to my own futile existence by
+asking me now, when he's going away, to make friends with Lord Saxby?
+Oh, darling mother, can't you realize that I'm no longer a little boy
+who wants to clap his hands at the sight of a red coat? Let me kiss you,
+mother, I'm sorry I was vulgar, but I've minded so dreadfully about
+Captain Ross, and it's all for nothing."
+
+Mrs. Fane let herself be petted by her son, but she did not again ask
+Michael to see Lord Saxby before he went away to the war.
+
+Alan was still absent at afternoon school, and Michael, disdaining his
+place in the heroic group, passed quickly into the class-room and read
+in Alison of Salamanca and Albuera and of the storming of Badajoz,
+wondering what had happened to his country since those famous dates. He
+supposed that then was the nation's zenith, for from what he could make
+out of the Crimean War, that had been as little creditable to England as
+this miserable business of the present.
+
+In the afternoon Michael thought he would walk over to Notting Dale and
+see Mr. Viner--perhaps he would understand some of his indignation--and
+this evening when all was quiet he must write to Mrs. Ross. On his way
+down the Kensington Road he met Wilmot, whom he had not seen since the
+summer, for luckily about the time of the row Wilmot had been going
+abroad and was only lately back. He recognized Wilmot's fanciful walk
+from a distance, and nearly crossed over to the opposite pavement to
+avoid meeting him; but on second thoughts decided he would like to hear
+a fresh opinion of the war.
+
+"Why, here's a delightful meeting," said Wilmot, "I have been wondering
+why you didn't come round to see me. You got my cards?"
+
+"Oh, yes, rather," said Michael.
+
+"I have been in Greece and Italy. I wish you had been with me. I thought
+of you, as I sat in the ruined rose-gardens of Paestum. You've no idea
+how well those columns of honey-coloured Travertine would become you,
+Michael. But I'm so glad to see that you have not yet clothed yourself
+in khaki. This toy war is so utterly absurd. I feel as if I were living
+in a Christmas bazaar. How dreadfully these puttees and haversacks
+debase even the most beautiful figures. What is a haversack? It sounds
+so Lenten, so eloquent of mortification. I have discovered some charming
+Cyprian cigarettes. Do come and let me watch you enjoy them. How young
+you look, and yet how old!"
+
+"I'm feeling very fit," said Michael loftily.
+
+"How abruptly informative you are! What has happened to you?"
+
+"I'm thinking about this war."
+
+"Good gracious," cried Wilmot in mincing amazement. "What an odd
+subject. Soon you will be telling me that by moonlight you brood upon
+the Albert Memorial. But perhaps your mind is full of trophies. Perhaps
+you are picturing to yourself in Piccadilly a second column of Trajan
+displacing the amorous and acrobatic Cupid who now presides over the
+painted throng. Come with me some evening to the Long Bar at the
+Criterion, and while the Maori-like barmaids titter in their
+_devergondage_, we will select the victorious site and picture to
+ourselves the Boer commanders chained like hairy Scythians to the
+chariot of whatever absurd general chooses to accept the triumph awarded
+to him by our legislative _bourgeoisie_."
+
+"I think I must be getting on," said Michael.
+
+"How urgent! You speak like Phaeton or Icarus, and pray remember the
+calamities that befell them. But seriously, when are you coming to see
+me?"
+
+"Oh, I'm rather busy," said Michael briefly.
+
+Wilmot looked at him curiously with his glittering eyes for a moment.
+Then he spoke again:
+
+"Farewell, Narcissus. Have you learnt that I was but a shallow pool in
+which to watch your reflection? Did I flatter you too much or not
+enough? Who shall say? But you know I'm always your friend, and when
+this love-affair is done, I shall always be interested to hear the
+legend of it told movingly when and where you will, but perhaps best of
+all in October when the full moon lies like a huge apricot upon the
+chimneys of the town. Farewell, Narcissus. Does she display your graces
+very clearly?"
+
+"I'm not in love with anybody, if that's what you mean," said Michael.
+
+"No? But you are on the margin of a strange pool, and soon you will be
+peeping over the bulrushes to stare at yourself again."
+
+Then Mr. Wilmot, making his pontifical and undulatory adieu, passed on.
+
+"Silly ass!" said Michael to himself. "And he always thinks he knows
+everything."
+
+Michael turned out of the noisy main road into the sylvan urbanity of
+Holland Walk. A haze of tender diaphanous green clung to the boles of
+the smirched elms, softening the sooty decay that made their antiquity
+so grotesque and so dishonourable. Michael sat down for a while on a
+bench, inhaling the immemorial perfume of a London spring and listening
+to the loud courtship of the blackbirds in the ragged shrubberies that
+lined the railings of Holland Park. He was not made any the more content
+with himself by this effluence of revivified effort that impregnated
+the air around him. He was out of harmony with every impulse of the
+season, and felt just as tightly fettered now as long ago he used to
+feel on waits by this same line of blackened trees with Nurse to quell
+his lightest step towards freedom. Where was Nurse now? The pungent
+odour of privet blown along a dying wind of March was quick with old
+memories of forbidden hiding-places, and he looked up, half expectant of
+her mummified shape peering after his straying steps round the gnarled
+and blackened trunk of the nearest elm. Michael rose quickly and went on
+his way towards Notting Dale. This Holland Walk had always been a
+haunted spot, not at all a place to hearten one, especially where at the
+top it converged to a silent passage between wooden palings whose
+twinkling interstices and exudations of green slime had always been
+queerly sinister. Even now Michael was glad when he could hear again the
+noise of traffic in the Bayswater Road. As he walked on towards Mr.
+Viner's house he gave rein to fanciful moralizings upon these two great
+roads on either side of the Park that ran a parallel course, but never
+met. How foreign it all seemed on this side with unfamiliar green
+omnibuses instead of red, with never even a well-known beggar or
+pavement-artist. The very sky had an alien look, seeming vaster somehow
+than the circumscribed clouds of Kensington. Perhaps after all the
+people of this intolerably surprizing city were not so much to be blamed
+for their behaviour during a period of war. They had nothing to hold
+them together, to teach them to endure and enjoy, to suffer and rejoice
+in company. These great main roads sweeping West and East with
+multitudinous chimney-pots between were symbolic of the whole muddle of
+existence.
+
+"But what do I want?" Michael asked himself so loudly that an errand-boy
+stayed his whistling and stared after him until he turned the corner.
+
+"I don't know," he muttered in the face of a fussy little woman, who
+jumped aside to let him pass.
+
+Soon he was deep in one of Mr. Viner's arm-chairs and, without waiting
+even to produce one of the attenuated pipes he still affected, exclaimed
+with desolating conviction:
+
+"I'm absolutely sick of everything!"
+
+"What, again?" said the priest, smiling.
+
+"It's this war."
+
+"You're not thinking of enlisting in the Imperial Yeomanry?"
+
+"Oh, no, but a friend of mine--Alan Merivale's uncle--has been killed.
+It seems all wrong."
+
+"My dear old chap," said Mr. Viner earnestly, "I'm sorry for you."
+
+"Oh, it isn't me you've got to pity," Michael cried. "I'd be glad of his
+death. It's the finest death a fellow can have. But there's nothing fine
+about it, when one sees these gibbering blockheads shouting and yelling
+about nothing. I don't know what's the matter with England."
+
+"Is England any worse than the rest of the world?" asked Mr. Viner.
+
+"All this wearing of buttons and khaki ties!" Michael groaned.
+
+"But that's the only way the man in the street can show his devotion.
+You don't object to ritualism, do you? You cross yourself and bow down.
+The church has colours and lights and incense. Do all these dishonour
+Our Lord's death?"
+
+"That's different," said Michael. "And anyway I don't know that the
+comparison is much good to me now. I think I've lost my faith. I am
+sorry to shock you, Mr. Viner."
+
+"You don't shock me at all, my dear boy."
+
+"Don't I?" said Michael in slightly disappointed tones.
+
+"You forget that a priest is more difficult to shock than anyone on
+earth."
+
+"I like the way you take yourself as a typical priest. Very few of them
+are like you."
+
+"Come, that's rather a stupid remark, I think," said Mr. Viner coldly.
+
+"Is it? I'm sorry. It doesn't seem to worry you very much that I've lost
+my faith," Michael went on in an aggrieved voice.
+
+"No, because I don't think you have. I've got a high enough opinion of
+you to believe that if you really had lost your faith, you wouldn't
+plunge comfortably down into one of my arm-chairs and give me the
+information in the same sort of tone you'd tell me you'd forgotten to
+bring back a book I'd lent you."
+
+"I know you always find it very difficult to take me seriously," Michael
+grumbled. "I suppose that's the right method with people like me."
+
+"I thought you'd come up to talk about the South African War. If I'd
+known the war was so near home, I shouldn't have been so frivolous,"
+said the priest. His eyes were so merry in the leaping firelight that
+Michael was compelled against his will to smile.
+
+"Of course, you make me laugh at the time and I forget how serious I
+meant to be when I arrived, and it's not until I'm at home again that I
+realize I'm no nearer to what I wanted to say than when I came up,"
+protested Michael.
+
+"I'm not the unsympathetic boor you'd make me out," Mr. Viner said.
+
+"Oh, I perfectly understand that all this heart-searching becomes a
+nuisance. But honestly, Mr. Viner, I think I've done nothing long
+enough."
+
+"Then you do want to enlist?" said the priest quickly.
+
+"Why must 'doing' mean only one thing nowadays? Surely South Africa
+hasn't got a monopoly of whatever's being done," Michael argued. "No, I
+don't want to enlist," he went on. "And I don't want to go into a
+monastery, and I'm not sure that I really even want to go to church
+again."
+
+"Give up going for a bit," advised the priest.
+
+Michael jumped up from the chair and walked over to the bay-window,
+through which came a discordant sound of children playing in the street
+outside.
+
+"It's impossible to be serious with you. I suppose you're fed up with
+people like me," Michael complained. "I know I'm moody and irritating,
+but I've got a lot to grumble about. I don't seem to have any natural
+inclination for any profession. I'm not a musical genius like my young
+sister. That's pretty galling, you know, really. After all, girls can
+get along better than boys without any special gifts, and she simply
+shines compared with me. I have no father. I've no idea who I was, where
+I came from, what I'm going to be. I keep on trying to be optimistic and
+think everything is good and beautiful, and then almost at once it turns
+out bad and ugly."
+
+"Has your religion really turned out bad and ugly?" asked the priest
+gently.
+
+"Not right through, but here and there, yes."
+
+"The religion itself or the people who profess it?" Mr. Viner persisted.
+
+"Doesn't it amount to the same thing ultimately?" Michael parried. "But
+leave out religion for the moment, and consider this war. The only
+justification for such a war is the moral effect it has on the nations
+engaged. Now, I ask you, do you sincerely believe there has been a trace
+of any purifying influence since we started waving Union Jacks last
+September? It's no good; we simply have not got it in us to stand defeat
+or victory. At any rate, if the Boers win, it will mean the preservation
+of something. Whereas if we win, we shall just destroy everything."
+
+"Michael, what do you think is the important thing for this country at
+this moment?" Mr. Viner asked.
+
+"Well, I suppose I still think it is that the people--the great mass of
+the nation, that is--should be happier and better. No, I don't think
+that's it at all. I think the important thing is that the people should
+be able to use the power that's coming to them in bigger lumps every
+day. I'd like to think it wasn't, I'd like to believe that democracy
+always will be as it always has been--a self-made failure. But against
+my own will I can't help believing that this time democracy is going to
+carry everything before it. And this war is going to hurry it on. Of
+course it is. The masses will learn their power. They'll learn that
+generals can make fools of themselves, that officers can be done
+without, that professional soldiers can be cowards, but that simply by
+paying we can still win. And where's the money coming from? Why, from
+the class that tried to be clever and bluff the people out of their
+power by staging this war. Well, do you mean to tell me that it's good
+for a democracy, this sudden realization of their omnipotence? Look
+here, you think I'm an excitable young fool, but I tell you I've been
+pitching my ideals at a blank wall like so many empty bottles and----"
+
+"Were they empty?" asked Mr. Viner. "Are you sure they were empty? May
+they not have been cruses of ointment the more precious for being
+broken?"
+
+"Well, I wish I could keep one for myself," Michael said.
+
+"My dear boy, you'll never be able to do that. You'll always be too
+prodigal of your ideals. I should have no qualms about your future,
+whatever you did meanwhile. And, do you know, I don't think I have many
+qualms about this England of ours, however badly she behaves sometimes.
+I'm glad you recognize that the people are coming into their own. I wish
+that _you_ were glad, but you will be one day. The Catholic religion
+must be a popular religion. The Sabbath was made for man, you know.
+Catholicism is God's method of throwing bottles at a blank wall--but not
+empty bottles, Michael. On the whole, I would sooner that now you were a
+reactionary than a Dantonist. Your present attitude of mind at any rate
+gives you the opportunity of going forward, instead of going back; there
+will be plenty of ideals to take the places of those you destroy,
+however priceless. And the tragedy of age is not having any more bottles
+to throw."
+
+During these words that came soothingly from Mr. Viner's firm lips
+Michael had settled himself down again in the arm-chair and lighted his
+pipe.
+
+"Come, now," said the priest, "you and I have muddled through our
+discussion long enough, let's gossip for a change. What's Mark Chator
+doing?"
+
+"I haven't seen much of him this term. He's still going to take orders.
+I find old Chator's eternal simplicity and goodness rather wearing.
+Life's pretty easy for him. I wish I could get as much out of it as
+easily," Michael answered.
+
+"Well, I can't make any comment on that last remark of yours without
+plunging into platitudes that would make you terribly contemptuous of my
+struggles to avoid them. But don't despise the Chators of this world."
+
+"Oh, I don't. I envy them. Well, I must go. Thanks awfully for putting
+up with me again."
+
+Michael picked up his cap and hurried home. When he reached Carlington
+Road, he was inclined to tell his mother that, if she liked, he would
+go and visit Lord Saxby before he sailed; but when it came to the point
+he felt too shy to reopen the subject, and decided to let the proposal
+drop.
+
+He was surprized to find that it was much easier to write to Mrs. Ross
+about her husband than he thought it would be. Whether this long and
+stormy day (he could scarcely believe that he had only read the news
+about Captain Ross that morning) had purged him of all complexities of
+emotion, he did not know; but certainly the letter was easy enough.
+
+     64 CARLINGTON ROAD.
+
+     _My dear Mrs. Ross,_
+
+     _I can't tell you the sadness of to-day. I've thought about you
+     most tremendously, and I think you must be gloriously proud of him.
+     I felt angry at first, but now I feel all right. You've always been
+     so stunning to me, and I've never thanked you. I do want to see you
+     soon. I shall never forget saying good-bye to Captain Ross. Mother
+     asked me to go and say good-bye to Lord Saxby. I don't suppose you
+     ever met him. He's a sort of cousin of ours. But I did not want to
+     spoil the memory of that day at Southampton. I haven't seen poor
+     old Alan yet. He'll be in despair. I'm longing to see him
+     to-morrow. This is a rotten letter, but I can't write down what I
+     feel. I wish Stella had known Captain Ross. She would have been
+     able to express her feelings._
+
+     _With all my love,_
+
+     _Your affectionate_
+
+     _Michael._
+
+In bed that night Michael thought what a beast he had made of himself
+that day, and flung the blankets feverishly away from his burnt-out
+self. Figures of well-loved people kept trooping through the darkness,
+and he longed to converse with them, inspired by the limitless
+eloquence of the night-time. All that he would say to Mr. Viner, to Mrs.
+Ross, to Alan, even to good old Chator, splashed the dark with fiery
+sentences. He longed to be with Stella in a cool woodland. He almost got
+up to go down and pour his soul out upon his mother's breast; but the
+fever of fatigue mocked his impulse and he fell tossing into sleep.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XII: _Alan_
+
+
+Michael left the house early next day that he might make sure of seeing
+Alan for a moment before Prayers. A snowy aggregation of cumulus
+sustained the empyrean upon the volume of its mighty curve and swell.
+The road before him stretched shining in a radiant drench of azure
+puddles. It was a full-bosomed morning of immense peace.
+
+Michael rather dreaded to see Alan appear in oppressive black, and felt
+that anything like a costume would embarrass their meeting. But just
+before the second bell he came quickly up the steps dressed in his
+ordinary clothes, and Michael in the surging corridor gripped his arm
+for a moment, saying he would wait for him in the 'quarter.'
+
+"Is your mater fearfully cut up?" he asked when they had met and were
+strolling together along the 'gravel.'
+
+"I think she was," said Alan. "She's going up to Cobble Place this
+morning to see Aunt Maud."
+
+"I wrote to her last night," said Michael.
+
+"I spent nearly all yesterday in writing to her," said Alan. "I couldn't
+think of anything to say. Could you?"
+
+"No, I couldn't think of very much," Michael agreed. "It seemed so
+unnecessary."
+
+"I know," Alan said. "I'd really rather have come to school."
+
+"I wish you had. I made an awful fool of myself in the morning. I got in
+a wax with Abercrombie and the chaps, and said I'd never play football
+again."
+
+"Whatever for?"
+
+"Oh, because I didn't think they appreciated what it meant for a chap
+like your Uncle Kenneth to be killed."
+
+"Do you mean they said something rotten?" asked Alan, flushing.
+
+"I don't think you would have thought it rotten. In fact, I think the
+whole row was my fault. But they seemed to take everything for granted.
+That's what made me so wild."
+
+"Look here, we can't start a conversation like this just before school.
+Are you going home to dinner?" Alan asked.
+
+"No, I'll have dinner down in the Tuck," said Michael, "and we can go
+for a walk afterwards, if you like. It's the first really decent day
+we've had this year."
+
+So after a lunch of buns, cheese-cakes, fruit pastilles, and vanilla
+biscuits, eaten in the noisy half-light of the Tuckshop, accompanied by
+the usual storm of pellets, Michael and Alan set out to grapple with the
+situation Michael had by his own hasty behaviour created.
+
+"The chaps seem rather sick with you," observed Alan, as they strolled
+arm-in-arm across the school-ground not yet populous with games.
+
+"Well, they are such a set of sheep," Michael urged in justification of
+himself.
+
+"I thought you rather liked them."
+
+"I did at first. I do still in a way. I do when nothing matters; but
+that horrible line in the paper did matter most awfully, and I couldn't
+stick their bleating. You see, you're different. You just say nothing.
+That's all right. But these fools tried to say something and couldn't. I
+always did hate people who _tried_ very obviously. That's why I like
+you. You're so casual and you always seem to fit."
+
+"I don't talk, because I know if I opened my mouth I should make an ass
+of myself," said Alan.
+
+"There you are, that's what I say. That's why it's possible to talk to
+you. You see I'm a bit mad."
+
+"Shut up, you ass," commanded Alan, smiling.
+
+"Oh, not very mad. And I'm not complaining. But I _am_ a little bit mad.
+I always have been."
+
+"Why? You haven't got a clot on your brain, have you?"
+
+"Oh, Great Scott, no! It's purely mental, my madness."
+
+"Well, I think you're talking tosh," said Alan firmly. "If you go on
+thinking you're mad, you will be mad, and then you'll be sorry. So shut
+up trying to horrify me, because if you really were mad I should bar
+you," he added coolly.
+
+"All right," said Michael, a little subdued, as he always was, by Alan's
+tranquil snubs. "All right. I'm not mad, but I'm excitable."
+
+"Well, you shouldn't be," said Alan.
+
+"I can't help my character, can I?" Michael demanded.
+
+"You're not a girl," Alan pointed out.
+
+"Men have very strong emotions often," Michael argued.
+
+"They may have them, but they don't show them. Just lately you've been
+holding forth about the rotten way in which everybody gets hysterical
+over this war. And now you're getting hysterical over yourself, which is
+much worse."
+
+"Damn you, Alan, if I didn't like you so much I shouldn't listen to
+you," said Michael, fiercely pausing.
+
+"Well, if I didn't like you, I shouldn't talk," answered Alan simply.
+
+As they walked on again in silence for a while, Michael continually
+tried to get a perspective view of his friend, puzzling over his
+self-assurance, which was never offensive, and wondering how a person
+so much less clever than himself could possibly make him feel so humble.
+Alan was good-looking and well-dressed; he was essentially debonair; he
+was certainly in appearance the most attractive boy in the school. It
+always gave Michael the most acute thrill of admiration to see Alan
+swinging himself along so lithe and so graceful. It made him want to go
+up and pat Alan's shoulder and say, "You fine and lovely creature, go on
+walking for ever." But mere good looks were not enough to explain the
+influence which Alan wielded, an influence which had steadily increased
+during the period of their greatest devotion to each other, and had
+never really ceased during the period of their comparative estrangement.
+Yet, if Michael looked back on their joint behaviour, it had always been
+he who apparently led and Alan who followed.
+
+"Do you know, old chap," said Michael suddenly, "you're a great
+responsibility to me."
+
+"Thanks very much and all that," Alan answered, with a mocking bow.
+
+"Have you ever imagined yourself the owner of some frightfully famous
+statue?" Michael went on earnestly.
+
+"Why, have you?" Alan countered, with his familiar look of embarrassed
+persiflage.
+
+Michael, however, kept tight hold of the thread that was guiding him
+through the labyrinth that led to the arcana of Alan's disposition.
+
+"You've the same sort of responsibility," he asserted. "I always feel
+that if I were the owner of the Venus of Milo, though I could move her
+about all over the place and set her up wherever I liked, I should be
+responsible to her in some way. I should feel she was looking at me, and
+if I put her in a wrong position, I should feel ashamed of myself and
+half afraid of the statue."
+
+"Are you trying to prove you're mad?" Alan enquired.
+
+"Do be serious," Michael begged, "and tell me if you think you
+understand what I mean. Alan, you used to discuss everything with me
+when we were kids, why won't you discuss yourself now?"
+
+Alan looked up at the sky for a moment, blinking in the sun, perhaps to
+hide the tremor of feeling that touched for one instant the corners of
+his mouth. Then he said:
+
+"Do you remember years ago, when we were at Eastbourne and you met Uncle
+Kenneth for the first time, he told me at dinner not to be a showman?
+I've always remembered that remark of his, and I think it applies to one
+showing off oneself as much as to showing off other people. I think
+that's why I'm different from you."
+
+Michael glanced up at this.
+
+"You can be damned rude when you like," he murmured.
+
+"Well, you asked me."
+
+"So I'm a showman?" said Michael.
+
+"Oh, for Heaven's sake don't begin to worry over it. It doesn't make any
+odds to me what you are. I don't think it ever would," he added simply,
+and in this avowal was all that Michael craved for. Under a sudden chill
+presentiment that before long he would test this friend of his to the
+last red throb of his proud heart, Michael took comfort from this
+declaration and asked no more for comprehension or sympathy. Those were
+shifting sands of feeling compared with this rock-hewn permanence of
+Alan. He remembered the stones upon the Berkshire downs, the stolid,
+unperceiving, eternal stones. Comparable to them alone stood Alan.
+
+They had turned out of the gates of the school-ground by now, and were
+strolling heedless of direction through the streets of West Kensington
+that to Michael seemed all at once strangely alluring with their
+display of a sedate and cosy life. He could not recall that he had ever
+before been so sensitive to the atmosphere of sunlit security which was
+radiated by these windows with their visions of rosy babies bobbing and
+laughing, of demure and saucy maids, of polished bird-cages and pots of
+daffodils. The white steps were in tune with the billowy clouds, and the
+scarlet pillar-box at the corner had a friendly, human smile. It was a
+doll's-house world, whose dainty offer of intimate citizenship refreshed
+Michael's imagination like a child's picture-book.
+
+He began to reflect that the opinions of Abercrombie and his friends
+round the hot-water pipes were wrought out in such surroundings as
+these, and he arrived gradually at a sort of compassion for them,
+picturing the lives of small effort that would inevitably be their
+portion. He perceived that they would bear the burden of existence in
+the future, struggling to preserve their gentility against the envy of
+the class beneath them and the contempt of those above. These gay little
+houses, half of whose charm lay in their similarity, were as near as
+they would ever come to any paradise of being. Michael had experienced
+many spasms of love for his fellow-men, and now in one of these
+outbursts he suddenly realized himself in sympathy with mediocrity.
+
+"Rather jolly round here," said Alan. "I suppose a tremendous lot of
+chaps from the school live about here. Funny thing, if you come to think
+of it. Practically everybody at St. James' slides into a little house
+like this. A few go into the Army; a few go to the 'Varsity. But this is
+really the School."
+
+Alan indicated an empty perambulator standing outside one of the houses.
+"Funny thing if the kid that's waiting for should be Captain of the
+School in another eighteen years. I wouldn't be surprized."
+
+Alan had just expressed so much of what Michael himself was thinking
+that he felt entitled to put the direct question which a moment ago he
+had been shy of asking.
+
+"Do you feel as if you belonged to all this?"
+
+"No," said Alan very coolly.
+
+"Nor do I," Michael echoed.
+
+"And that's why it was rotten of you to give yourself away to
+Abercrombie and the other chaps," Alan went on severely.
+
+"Yes, I think it was," Michael agreed.
+
+Then they retraced their steps unconsciously, wandering along silently
+in the sunlight towards the school. Michael did not want to converse
+because he was too much elated by this walk, and the satisfying way in
+which Alan had lived up to his ideal of him. He began to weave a fine
+romance of himself and Alan going through life together in a lofty
+self-sufficiency from which they would condescend to every aspect of
+humanity. He was not sure whether Alan would condescend so far and so
+widely as himself, and he was not sure whether he wanted him to, whether
+it would not always be a relief to be aware of Alan as a cold supernal
+sanctuary from the vulgar struggles in which he foresaw his own frequent
+immersion. Meanwhile he must make it easy for Alan by apologizing to
+Abercrombie and the rest for his ridiculous passion of yesterday. He did
+not wish to imperil Alan's superb aloofness by involving him in the
+acrimonious and undignified defence of a friend. There should be no more
+outbreaks. So much Michael vowed to his loyalty. However, the apology
+must be made quickly--if possible, this afternoon before school--and as
+they entered the school-ground again, Michael looked up at the clock,
+and said:
+
+"Do you mind if I bunk on? I've something I must do before the bell
+goes."
+
+Alan shook his head.
+
+To Abercrombie and the other immortals Michael came up quickly and
+breathlessly.
+
+"I say, you chaps, I'm sorry I made such an ass of myself yesterday; I
+felt chippy over that friend of mine being killed."
+
+"That's all right, old bangabout," said Abercrombie cordially, and the
+chorus guffawed their forgiveness. They did more. They called him
+'Bangs' thereafter, commemorating, as schoolboys use, with an
+affectionate nickname their esteem.
+
+The next day a letter came for Michael from Mrs. Ross, and impressed
+with all the clarity of writing much of what he had dimly reached out
+for in his friendship with Alan. He read the letter first hurriedly on
+his way to school in the morning; but he read it a second and third time
+along those serene and intimate streets where he and Alan had walked the
+day before.
+
+     COBBLE PLACE,
+
+     _March, 1900_.
+
+     _My dearest Michael,_
+
+     _You and Alan are the only people to whom I can bear to write
+     to-day. I am grieving most for my young son, because he will have
+     to grow up without his father's splendid example always before him.
+     I won't write of my own sorrow. I could not._
+
+     _My husband, as you know, was very devoted to you and Alan, and he
+     had been quite worried (and so had I) that you and he seemed to
+     have grown away from one another. It was a moment of true delight
+     to him, when he read a long letter from dear old Alan describing
+     his gladness at playing football again with you. Alan expresses
+     himself much less eloquently than you do, but he is as deeply fond
+     of you as I know you are of him. His letters are full of you and
+     your cleverness and popularity; and I pray that all your lives you
+     will pull together for the good. Kenneth used always to admire you
+     both so much for your ability to 'cope with a situation.' He was
+     shot, as you know, leading his men (who adored him) into action.
+     Ah, how I wish he could lead his own little son into action. You
+     and Alan will have that responsibility now._
+
+     _It is sweet of you to thank me for being so 'stunning' to you. It
+     wasn't very difficult. But you know how high my hopes have always
+     been and always will be for you, and I know that you will never
+     disappoint me. There may come times which with your restless,
+     sensitive temperament you will find very hard to bear. Always
+     remember that you have a friend in me. I have suffered very much,
+     and suffering makes the heart yearn to comfort others. Be very
+     chivalrous always, and remember that of all your ideals your mother
+     should be the highest. I hope that you'll be able to come and stay
+     with us soon after Easter. God bless you, dear boy, and thank you
+     very much for your expression of the sorrow I know you share with
+     me._
+
+     _Your loving_
+
+     _Maud Ross._
+
+     _I wonder if you remember how you used to love Don Quixote as a
+     child. Will you always be a Don Quixote, however much people may
+     laugh? It really means just being a gentleman._
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIII: _Sentiment_
+
+
+Back once more upon his pedestal in the frieze, Michael devoted himself
+to enjoying, while still they were important to his life, the
+conversation and opinions of the immortals. He gave up worrying about
+the war and yielded himself entirely either to the blandishments of his
+seniority in the school or of dreams about himself at Oxford, now within
+sight of attainment. Four more terms of school would set him free, and
+he had ambitions to get into the Fifteen in his last year. He would then
+be able to look back with satisfaction to the accomplishment of
+something. He actually threw himself into the rowdiest vanguard of
+Mafeking's celebrators, and accepted the occasion as an excuse to make a
+noise without being compelled to make the noise alone. These Bacchanalia
+of patriotism were very amusing, and perhaps it was a good thing for the
+populace to be merry; moreover, since he now had Alan to idealize, he
+could afford to let his high thoughts of England's duty and England's
+honour become a little less stringent.
+
+He spent much time with Alan in discussing Oxford and in building up a
+most elaborate and logical scheme of their life at the University. He
+was anxious that Alan should leave the classical Lower Sixth, into which
+he had climbed somewhat hardly, and come to join him in the leisure of
+the History Sixth. He spoke of Strang whose Captaincy of Cricket shed
+such lustre on the form, of Terry whose Captaincy of Football next year
+would shed an equal lustre. But Alan, having found the journey to the
+Lower Sixth so arduous, was disinclined to be cheated of the
+intellectual eminence of the Upper Sixth which had been his Valhalla so
+long.
+
+Michael and Alan had been looking forward to a visit to Cobble Place
+during the Easter holidays; but Mrs. Fane was much upset by the idea of
+being left alone, and Michael had to decline the invitation, which was a
+great disappointment. In the end he and his mother went to Bournemouth,
+staying rather grandly at one of the large hotels, and Michael was able
+to look up some old friends, including Father Moneypenny of St.
+Bartholomew's, Mrs. Rewins, their landlady of three years back, and Mr.
+Prout.
+
+The passion-flower at Esdraelon had grown considerably, but that was the
+only thing which showed any signs of expansion, unless Mr. Prout's
+engagement to be married could be accepted as evidence of expansion.
+Michael thought it had a contrary effect, and whether from that cause or
+from his own increased age he found poor Prout sadly dull. It was
+depressing to hear that unpleasantness was expected at the Easter vestry
+that year; Michael could not recall any year in which that had not been
+the case. It was depressing to learn that the People's Churchwarden was
+still opposed to the Assumption. It was most depressing of all to be
+informed that Prout saw no prospect of being married for at least five
+years. Michael, having failed with Prout, tried to recapture the emotion
+of his first religious experience at St. Bartholomew's. But the church
+that had once seemed so inspiring now struck him as dingily and poorly
+designed, without any of the mystery which once had made it beautiful.
+He wondered if everything that formerly had appealed to his imagination
+were going to turn out dross, and he made an expedition to Christchurch
+Priory to test this idea. Here he was relieved to find himself able to
+recapture the perfect thrill of his first visit, and he spent a rich
+day wandering between the grey church and the watery meadows near by,
+about whose plashy levels the green rushes were springing up in the
+fleecy April weather.
+
+Michael concluded that all impermanent emotions of beauty proved that it
+was merely the emotion which had created an illusion of beauty, and he
+was glad to have discovered for himself a touchstone for his aesthetic
+judgments in the future. He would have liked to see Alan in the
+cloistral glooms of the Priory, and thought how he would have enhanced
+with his own eternity of classic shape the knights and ladies praying
+there. Michael sympathized with the trousered boy whom Flaxman, contrary
+to every canon, might almost be said to have perpetrated. He felt
+slightly muddled between classic and romantic art, and could not make up
+his mind whether Flaxman's attempt or the mediaeval sculptor's
+achievement were worthier of admiration. He tried to apply his own test,
+and came to the conclusion that Flaxman was really all wrong. He decided
+that he only liked the trousered boy because the figure gave him
+sentimental pleasure, and he was sure that true classical art was not
+sentimental. Finally he got himself in a complete muddle, sitting among
+these hollow chantries and pondering art's evaluations; so he left the
+Priory behind him, and went dreamily through the water-meadows under the
+spell of a simple beauty that needed no analysis. Oxford would be like
+this, he thought; a place of bells and singing streams and towers
+against the horizon.
+
+He waited by a stile, watching the sky of which sunset had made a
+tranced archipelago set in a tideless sea. The purple islands stood out
+more and more distinct against the sheeted gold that lapped their
+indentations; then in a few moments the gold went out to primrose, the
+purple isles were grey as mice, and by an imperceptible breath of time
+became merged in a luminous green that held the young moon led
+downwards through the west by one great sulphur star.
+
+This speculation of the sky made Michael late for dinner, and gave his
+mother an opportunity to complain of his daylong desertion of her.
+
+"I rather wish we hadn't come to Bournemouth," said Michael. "I think
+it's a bad place for us to choose to come together. I remember last time
+we stayed here you were always criticizing me."
+
+"I suppose Bournemouth must have a bad effect on you, dearest boy," said
+Mrs. Fane in her most gentle, most discouraging voice.
+
+Michael laughed a little bitterly.
+
+"You're wonderful at always being able to put me in the wrong," he said.
+
+"You're sometimes not very polite, are you, nowadays? But I dare say
+you'll grow out of this curious manner you've lately adopted towards
+me."
+
+"Was I rude?" asked Michael, quickly penitent.
+
+"I think you were rather rude, dear," said Mrs. Fane. "Of course, I
+don't want you never to have an opinion of your own, and I quite realize
+that school has a disastrous effect on manners, but you didn't apologize
+very gracefully for being late for dinner, did you, dear?"
+
+"I'm sorry. I won't ever be again," said Michael shortly.
+
+Mrs. Fane sighed, and the meal progressed in silence. Michael, however,
+could never bear to sulk, and he braced himself to be pleasant.
+
+"You ought to come over to Christchurch, mother. Shall we drive over one
+day?"
+
+"Well, I'm not very fond of looking at churches," said Mrs. Fane. "But
+if you want to go, let us. I always like you to do everything you want."
+
+Michael sighed at the ingenuity of his mother's method, and changed the
+subject to their fellow-guests.
+
+"That's rather a pretty girl, don't you think?"
+
+"Where, dear?" asked Mrs. Fane, putting up her lorgnette and staring
+hard at the wife of a clergyman sitting across the room from their
+table.
+
+"No, no, mother," said Michael, beaming with pleasure at the delightful
+vagueness of his mother which only distressed him when it shrouded his
+own sensations. "The next table--the girl in pink."
+
+"Yes, decidedly," said Mrs. Fane. "But dreadfully common. I can't think
+why those sort of people come to nice hotels. I suppose they read about
+them in railway guides."
+
+"I don't think she's very common," said Michael.
+
+"Well, dear, you're not quite at the best age for judging, are you?"
+
+"Hang it, mother, I'm seventeen."
+
+"It's terrible to think of," said Mrs. Fane. "And only such a little
+while ago you were the dearest baby boy. Then Stella must be sixteen,"
+she went on. "I think it's time she came back from the Continent."
+
+"What about her first concert?"
+
+"Oh, I must think a lot before I settle when that is to be."
+
+"But Stella is counting on it being very soon."
+
+"Dear children, you're both rather impetuous," said Mrs. Fane,
+deprecating with the softness of her implied rebuke the quality, and in
+Michael at any rate for the moment quenching all ardour.
+
+"I wonder if it's wise to let a girl be a professional musician," she
+continued. "Dear me, children are a great responsibility, especially
+when one is alone."
+
+Here was an opportunity for Michael to revive the subject of his father,
+but he had now lost the cruel frankness of childhood and shrank from the
+directness of the personal encounter such a topic would involve. He was
+seized with one of his fits of shy sensitiveness, and he became suddenly
+so deeply embarrassed that he could scarcely even bring himself to
+address his mother as 'you.' He felt that he must go away by himself
+until he had shaken off this uncomfortable sensation. He actually felt a
+kind of immodesty in saying 'you' to his mother, as if in saying so much
+he was trespassing on the forbidden confines of her individuality. It
+would not endure for more than an hour or so, this fear of approach,
+this hyperaesthesia of contact and communication. Yet not for anything
+could he kiss her good night and, mumbling a few bearish excuses, he
+vanished as soon as dinner was over, vowing that he would cure himself
+of this mood by walking through the pine trees and blowy darkness of the
+cliffs.
+
+As he passed through the hotel lounge, he saw the good-looking girl,
+whom his mother had stigmatized as common, waiting there wrapped up in a
+feathery cloak. He decided that he would sit down and observe her until
+the sister came down. He wished he knew this girl, since it would be
+pleasant after dinner to stroll out either upon the pier or to listen to
+the music in the Winter Garden in such attractive company. Michael
+fancied that the girl, as she walked slowly up and down the lounge, was
+conscious of his glances, and he felt an adventurous excitement at his
+heart. It would be a daring and delightful novelty to speak to her. Then
+the sister came down, and the two girls went out through the swinging
+doors of the hotel, leaving Michael depressed and lonely. Was it a trick
+of the lamplight, or did he really perceive her head turn outside to
+regard him for a moment?
+
+During his walk along the cliffs Michael played with this idea. By the
+time he went to bed his mind was full of this girl, and it was certainly
+thrilling to come down to breakfast next morning and see what blouse she
+was wearing. Mrs. Fane always had breakfast in her room, so Michael was
+free to watch this new interest over the cricket matches in The
+Sportsman. He grew almost jealous of the plates and forks and cups which
+existed so intimately upon her table, and he derived a sentimental
+pleasure from the thought that nothing was more likely than that
+to-morrow there would be an exchange of cups between his table and hers.
+He conceived the idea of chipping a piece out of his own cup and
+watching every morning on which table it would be laid, until it reached
+her.
+
+At lunch Michael, as nonchalantly as he could speak, asked his mother
+whether she did not think the pretty girl dressed rather well.
+
+"Very provincial," Mrs. Fane judged.
+
+"But prettily, I think," persisted Michael. "And she wears a different
+dress every day."
+
+"Do you want to know her?" asked Mrs. Fane.
+
+"Oh, mother, of course not," said Michael, blushing hotly.
+
+"I dare say they're very pleasant people," Mrs. Fane remarked. "I'll
+speak to them after lunch, and tell them how anxious you are to make
+their acquaintance."
+
+"I say, mother," Michael protested. "Oh, no, don't, mother. I really
+don't want to know them."
+
+Mrs. Fane smiled at him, and told him not to be a foolish boy. After
+lunch, in her own gracious and distinguished manner which Michael always
+admired, Mrs. Fane spoke to the two sisters and presently beckoned to
+Michael who crossed the room, feeling rather as if he were going in to
+bat first for his side.
+
+"I don't think I know your name," said Mrs. Fane to the elder sister.
+
+"McDonnell--Norah McDonnell, and this is my sister Kathleen."
+
+"Scotch?" asked Mrs. Fane vaguely and pleasantly.
+
+"No, Irish," contradicted the younger sister. "At least by extraction.
+McDonnell is an Irish name. But we live in Burton-on-Trent. Father and
+mother are coming down later on."
+
+She spoke with the jerky speech of the Midlands, and Michael rather
+wished she did not come from Burton-on-Trent, not on his own account,
+but because his mother would be able to point out to him how right she
+had been about their provincialism.
+
+"Are you going anywhere this evening?" Michael managed to ask at last.
+
+"I suppose we shall go on the pier. We usually go on the pier. Eh, but
+it's rather dull in Bournemouth. I like Llandudno better. Llandudno's
+fine," said the elder Miss McDonnell with fervour.
+
+Mrs. Fane came to the rescue of an awkward conversation by asking the
+Miss McDonnells if they would take pity on her son and invite him to
+accompany them. And so it was arranged.
+
+"Happy, Michael?" asked his mother when the ladies, with many smiles,
+had withdrawn to their rooms.
+
+"Yes. I'm all right," said Michael. "Only I rather wish you hadn't asked
+them so obviously. It made me feel rather a fool."
+
+"Dearest boy, they were delighted at the idea of your company. They seem
+quite nice people too. Only, as I said, very provincial. Older, too,
+than I thought at first."
+
+Michael asked how old his mother thought they were, and she supposed
+them to be about twenty-seven and thirty. Michael was inclined to
+protest against this high estimate, but since he had spoken to the Miss
+McDonnells, he felt that after all his mother might be right.
+
+In the evening his new friends came down to dinner much enwrapped in
+feathers, and Michael thought that Kathleen looked very beautiful in the
+crimson lamplight of the dinner-table.
+
+"How smart you are, Michael, to-night!" said Mrs. Fane.
+
+"Oh, well, I thought as I'd got my dinner-jacket down here I might as
+well put it on. I say, mother, I think I'll get a tail-coat. Couldn't I
+have one made here?"
+
+"Isn't that collar rather tight?" asked Mrs. Fane anxiously. "And it
+seems dreadfully tall."
+
+"I like tall collars with evening dress," said Michael severely.
+
+"You know best, dear, but you look perfectly miserable."
+
+"It's only because my chin is a bit sore after shaving."
+
+"Do you have to shave often?" enquired Mrs. Fane, tenderly horrified.
+
+"Rather often," said Michael. "About once a week now."
+
+"She has pretty hands, your lady love," said Mrs. Fane, suddenly looking
+across to the McDonnells' table.
+
+"I say, mother, for goodness' sake mind. She'll hear you," whispered
+Michael.
+
+"Oh, Michael dear, don't be so foolishly self-conscious."
+
+After dinner Michael retired to his room, and came down again smoking a
+cigarette.
+
+Mrs. Fane made a little _moue_ of surprise.
+
+"I say, mother, don't keep on calling attention to everything I do. You
+know I've smoked for ages."
+
+"Yes, but not so very publicly, dear boy."
+
+"Well, you don't mind, do you? I must begin some time," said Michael.
+
+"Michael, don't be cross with me. You're so deliciously amusing, and so
+much too nice for those absurd women," Mrs. Fane laughed.
+
+Just then the Miss McDonnells appeared on the staircase, and Michael
+frowned at his mother not to say any more about them.
+
+It was a fairly successful evening. The elder Miss McDonnell bored
+Michael rather with a long account of why her father had left Ireland,
+and what a blow it had been to him to open a large hotel in
+Burton-on-Trent. He was also somewhat fatigued by the catalogue of Mr.
+McDonnell's virtues, of his wit and courage and good looks and
+shrewdness.
+
+"He has a really old-fashioned sense of humour," said Miss McDonnell.
+"But then, of course, he's Irish. He's accounted quite the cleverest man
+in Burton, but then, being Irish, that's not to be wondered at."
+
+Michael wished she would not say 'wondered' as if it were 'wandered,'
+and indeed he was beginning to think that Miss McDonnell was a great
+trial, when he suddenly discovered that by letting his arm hang very
+loosely from his shoulder it was possible without the slightest hint of
+intention occasionally to touch Kathleen's hand as they walked along.
+The careful calculation that this proceeding demanded occupied his mind
+so fully that he was able to give mechanical assents to Miss McDonnell's
+praise of her father, and apparently at the same time impress her with
+his own intelligence.
+
+As the evening progressed Michael slightly increased the number of times
+he tapped Kathleen's hand with his, and after about an hour's promenade
+of the pier he was doing a steady three taps a minute. He now began to
+speculate whether Kathleen was aware of these taps, and from time to
+time he would glance round at her over his shoulder, hopeful of catching
+her eyes.
+
+"Are you admiring my sister's brooch?" asked Miss McDonnell. "Eh, I
+think it's grand. Don't you?"
+
+Kathleen giggled lightly at this, and asked her sister how she could,
+and then Michael with a boldness that on reflection made him catch his
+breath at the imagination of it, said that while he was admiring Miss
+Kathleen's brooch he was admiring her eyes still more.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Fane. How can you!" exclaimed Kathleen.
+
+"Well, he's got good taste, I'm sure," said Miss McDonnell. "But, there,
+after all, what can you expect from an Irish girl? All Irish girls have
+fine eyes."
+
+When Michael went to bed he felt that on the whole he had acquitted
+himself that first evening with considerable success, and as he fell
+asleep he dreamed triumphantly of a daring to-morrow.
+
+It was an April day, whose deeps of azure sky made the diverse foliage
+of spring burn in one ardent green. Such a day spread out before his
+windows set Michael on fire for its commemoration, and he made up his
+mind to propose a long bicycling expedition to the two Miss McDonnells.
+He wished that it were not necessary to invite the elder sister, but not
+even this April morning could embolden him so far as to ask Kathleen
+alone. Mrs. Fane smilingly approved of his proposal, but suggested that
+on such a warm day it would be wiser not to start until after lunch. So
+it was arranged, and Michael thoroughly enjoyed the consciousness of
+escorting these girls out of Bournemouth on their trim bicycles. Indeed,
+he enjoyed his position so much that he continually looked in the
+shop-windows, as they rode past, to observe the effect and was so much
+charmed by the result that he crossed in front of Miss McDonnell, and
+upset her and her bicycle in the middle of the town.
+
+"Eh, that's a nuisance," said Miss McDonnell, surveying bent handlebars
+and inner tyre swelling like a toy balloon along the rim. "That was
+quite a mishap," she added, shaking the dust from her skirt.
+
+Michael was in despair over his clumsiness, especially when Miss
+Kathleen McDonnell remarked that there went the ride she'd been looking
+forward to all day.
+
+"Well, you two go on an I'll walk back," Miss McDonnell offered.
+
+"Oh, but I can easily hire another machine," said Michael.
+
+"No. I'll go back. I've grazed my knee a bit badly."
+
+Michael was so much perturbed to hear this that without thinking he
+anxiously asked to be allowed to look, and wished that the drain by
+which he was standing would swallow him up when he realized by
+Kathleen's giggling what he had said.
+
+"It's all right," said Miss McDonnell kindly. "There's no need to worry.
+I hope you'll have a pleasant ride."
+
+"I say, it's really awfully ripping of you to be so jolly good-tempered
+about it," Michael exclaimed. "Are you sure I can't do anything?"
+
+"No, you can just put my bicycle in the shop along there, and I'll take
+the tram back. Mind and enjoy yourselves, and don't be late."
+
+The equable Miss McDonnell then left her sister and Michael to their own
+devices.
+
+They rode along in alert silence until they left Branksome behind them
+and came into hedgerows, where an insect earned Michael's cordial
+gratitude by invading his eye. He jumped off his bicycle immediately and
+called for Kathleen's aid, and as he stood in the quiet lane with the
+girl's face close to his and her hand brushing his cheeks, Michael felt
+himself to be indeed a favourite of fortune.
+
+"There it is, Mr. Fane," said Miss Kathleen McDonnell. And, though he
+tried to be sceptical for a while of the insect's discovery, he was
+bound to admit the evidence of the handkerchief.
+
+"Thanks awfully," said Michael. "And I say, I wish you wouldn't call me
+Mr. Fane. You know my Christian name."
+
+"Oh, but I'd feel shy to call you Michael," said Miss McDonnell.
+
+"Not if I called you Kathleen," Michael suggested, and felt inclined to
+shake his own hand in congratulation of his own magnificent daring.
+
+"Well, I must say one thing. You don't waste much time. I think you're a
+bit of a flirt, you know," said Kathleen.
+
+"A flirt," Michael echoed. "Oh, I say, do you really think so?"
+
+"I'm afraid I do," murmured Kathleen. "Shall we go on again?"
+
+They rode along in renewed silence for several miles, and then they
+suddenly came upon Poole Harbour lying below them, washed in the
+tremulous golden airs of the afternoon.
+
+"I say, how ripping!" cried Michael, leaping from his machine and
+flinging it away from him against a bank of vivid grass. "We must sit
+down here for a bit."
+
+"It is pretty," said Kathleen. "It's almost like a picture."
+
+"I'm glad you're fond of beautiful things," said Michael earnestly.
+
+"Well, one can't help it, can one?" sighed Kathleen.
+
+"Some people can," said Michael darkly. "There's rather a good place to
+sit over there," he added, pointing to a broken gate that marked the
+entrance to an oak wood, and he faintly touched the sleeve of Kathleen's
+blouse to guide her towards the chosen spot.
+
+Then they sat leaning against the gate, she idly plucking sun-faded
+primroses, he brooding upon the nearness of her hand. In such universal
+placidity it could not be wrong to hold that hand wasting itself amid
+small energies. Without looking into her eyes, without turning his gaze
+from the great tranquil water before him, Michael took her hand in his
+so lightly that save for the pulsing of his heart he scarcely knew he
+held it. So he sat breathless, enduring pins and needles, tolerating
+the uncertain pilgrimage of ants rather than move an inch and break the
+yielding spell which made her his.
+
+"Are you holding my hand?" she asked, after they had sat a long while
+pensively.
+
+"I suppose I am," said Michael. Then he turned and with full-blooded
+cheeks and swimming eyes met unabashed Kathleen's demure and faintly
+mocking glance.
+
+"Do you think you ought to?" she enquired.
+
+"I haven't thought anything about that," said Michael. "I simply thought
+I wanted to."
+
+"You're rather old for your age," she went on, with an inflection of
+teazing surprize in her soft voice. "How old are you?"
+
+"Seventeen," said Michael simply.
+
+"Goodness!" cried Kathleen, withdrawing her hand suddenly. "And I wonder
+how old you think I am?"
+
+"I suppose you're about twenty-five."
+
+Kathleen got up and said in a brisk voice that destroyed all Michael's
+bravery, "Come, let's be getting back. Norah will be thinking I'm lost."
+
+Just when they were nearing the outskirts of Branksome, Kathleen
+dismounted suddenly and said:
+
+"I suppose you'll be surprized when I tell you I'm engaged to be
+married?"
+
+"Are you?" faltered Michael; and the road swam before him.
+
+"At least I'm only engaged secretly, because my fiance is poor. He's
+coming down soon. I'd like you to meet him."
+
+"I should like to meet him very much," said Michael politely.
+
+"You won't tell anybody what I've told you?"
+
+"Good Lord, no. Perhaps I might be of some use," said Michael. "You
+know, in arranging meetings."
+
+"Eh, you're a nice boy," exclaimed Kathleen suddenly.
+
+And Michael was not perfectly sure whether he thought himself a hero or
+a martyr.
+
+Mrs. Fane was very much diverted by Michael's account of Miss
+McDonnell's accident, and teazed him gaily about Kathleen. Michael would
+assume an expression of mystery, as if indeed he had been entrusted with
+the dark secrets of a young woman's mind; but the more mysterious he
+looked the more his mother laughed. In his own heart he cultivated
+assiduously his devotion, and regretted most poignantly that each new
+blouse and each chosen evening-dress was not for him. He used to watch
+Kathleen at dinner, and depress himself with the imagination of her
+spirit roaming out over the broad Midlands to meet her lover. He never
+made the effort to conjure up the lover, but preferred to picture him
+and Kathleen gathering like vague shapes upon the immeasurable
+territories of the soul.
+
+Then one morning Kathleen took him aside after breakfast to question his
+steadfastness.
+
+"Were you in earnest about what you said?" she asked.
+
+"Of course I was," Michael affirmed.
+
+"He's come down. He's staying in rooms. Why don't you ask me to go out
+for a bicycle ride?"
+
+"Well, will you?" Michael dutifully invited.
+
+"I'm so excited," said Kathleen, fluttering off to tell her sister of
+this engagement to go riding with Michael.
+
+In about half an hour they stood outside the small red-brick house which
+cabined the bold spirit of Michael's depressed fancies.
+
+"You'll come in and say 'how do you do'?" suggested Kathleen.
+
+"I suppose I'd better," Michael agreed.
+
+They entered together the little efflorescent parlour of the house.
+
+"This is my fiance--Mr. Walter Trimble," Kathleen proudly announced.
+
+"Pleased to meet you," said Mr. Trimble. "Kath tells me you're on to do
+us a good turn."
+
+Michael looked at Mr. Trimble, resolutely anxious to find in him the
+creator of Kathleen's noble destiny. He saw a thick-set young man in a
+splendidly fitting, but ill-cut blue serge suit; he saw a dark moustache
+of silky luxuriance growing amid regular features; in fact, he saw
+someone that might have stepped from one of the grandiose frames of that
+efflorescent little room. But he was Kathleen's choice, and Michael
+refused to let himself feel at all disappointed.
+
+"I think it's bad luck not to be able to marry, if one wants to," said
+Michael deeply.
+
+"You're right," Mr. Trimble agreed. "That's why I want Kath here to
+marry me first and tell her dad afterwards."
+
+"I only wish I dared," sighed Kathleen. "Well, if we're going to have
+our walk, we'd better be getting along. Will I meet you by the side-gate
+into the Winter Garden at a quarter to one?"
+
+"Right-o," said Michael.
+
+"I wonder if you'd lend Mr. Trimble your bicycle?"
+
+"Of course," said Michael.
+
+"Because we could get out of the town a bit," suggested Kathleen. "And
+that's always pleasanter."
+
+Michael spent a dull morning in wandering about Bournemouth, while
+Kathleen and her Trimble probably rode along the same road he and she
+had gone a few days back. He tried to console himself with thoughts of
+self-sacrifice, and he took a morbid delight in the imagination of the
+pleasure he had made possible for others. But undeniably his own morning
+was dreary, and not even could Swinburne's canorous Triumph of Time do
+much more than echo somewhat sadly through the resonant emptiness of
+his self-constructed prison, whose windows opened on to a sentimental if
+circumscribed view of unattainable sweetness.
+
+Michael sat on a bench in a sophisticated pine-grove and, having lighted
+a cigarette, put out the match with his sighing exhalation of _'O love,
+my love, and no love for me.'_ It was wonderful to Michael how perfectly
+Swinburne expressed his despair. _'O love, my love, had you loved but
+me.'_ And why had she not loved him? Why did she prefer Trimble? Did
+Trimble ever read Swinburne? Could Trimble sit like this smoking calmly
+a cigarette and breathing out deathless lines of love's despair? Michael
+began to feel a little sorry for Kathleen, almost as sorry for her as he
+felt for himself. Soon the Easter holidays would be over, and he would
+go back to school. He began to wonder whether he would wear the marks of
+suffering on his countenance, and whether his friends would eye him
+curiously, asking themselves in whispers what man this was that came
+among them with so sad and noble an expression of resignation. As
+Michael thought of Trimble and Kathleen meeting in Burton-on-Trent and
+daily growing nearer to each other in love, he became certain that his
+grief would indeed be manifest. He pictured himself sitting in the
+sunlit serene class-room of the History Sixth, a listless figure of
+despair, an object of wondering, whispering compassion. And so his life
+would lose itself in a monotone of discontent. Grey distances of time
+presented themselves to him with a terrible menace of loneliness; the
+future was worse than ever, a barren waste whose horizon would never
+darken to the silhouette of Kathleen coming towards him with open arms.
+Never would he hold her hand again; never would he touch those lips at
+all; never would he even know what dresses she wore in summer. _'O love,
+my love, and no love for me.'_
+
+When Michael met Kathleen by the side-gate of the Winter Gardens, and
+received his bicycle back from Trimble, he suddenly wondered whether
+Kathleen had told her betrothed that another had held her hand. Michael
+rather hoped she had, and that the news of it had made Trimble jealous.
+Trimble, however, seemed particularly pleased with himself, and invited
+Michael to spend the afternoon with him, which Michael promised to do,
+if his mother did not want his company.
+
+"Well, did you have a decent morning?" Michael enquired of Kathleen, as
+together they rode towards their hotel.
+
+"Oh, we had a grand time; we sat down where you and me sat the other
+day."
+
+Michael nearly mounted the pavement at this news, and looked very
+gloomy.
+
+"What's the matter?" Kathleen pursued. "You're not put out, are you?"
+
+"Oh, no, not at all," said Michael sardonically. "All the same, I think
+you might have turned off and gone another road. I sat and thought of
+you all the morning. But I don't mind really," he added, remembering
+that at any rate for Kathleen he must remain that chivalrous and
+selfless being which had been created by the loan of a bicycle. "I'm
+glad you enjoyed yourself. I always want you to be happy. All my life I
+shall want that."
+
+Michael was surprized to find how much more eloquent he was in the
+throes of disappointment than he had ever been through the prompting of
+passion. He wished that the hotel were not already in sight, for he felt
+that he could easily say much more about his renunciation, and indeed he
+made up his mind to do so at the first opportunity. In the afternoon he
+told his mother he was going to pay a visit to Father Moneypenny. He did
+not tell her about Trimble, because he feared her teazing; although he
+tried to deceive himself that the lie was due to his loyalty to
+Kathleen.
+
+"What shall we do?" asked Trimble. "Shall we toddle round to the Shades
+and have a drink?"
+
+"Just as you like," Michael said.
+
+"Well, I'm on for a drink. It's easier to talk down at the Shades than
+in here."
+
+Michael wondered why, but he accepted a cigar, and with Trimble sought
+the speech-compelling Shades.
+
+"It's like this," Trimble began, when they were seated on the worn
+leather of the corner lounge. "I took a fancy to you right off. Eh, I'm
+from the North, and I may be a bit blunt, but by gum I liked you, and
+that's how it is. Yes. I'm going to talk to you the same as I might to
+my own brother, only I haven't got one."
+
+Michael looked a little apprehensive of the sack of confidences that
+would presently be emptied over his head, and, seeking perhaps to turn
+Trimble from his intention, asked him to guess his age.
+
+"Well, I suppose you're anything from twenty-two to twenty-three."
+
+Michael choked over his lemon-and-dash before he announced grimly that
+he was seventeen.
+
+"Get out," said Trimble sceptically. "You're more than that. Seventeen?
+Eh, I wouldn't have thought it. Never mind, I said I was going to tell
+you. And by gum I will, if you say next you haven't been weaned."
+
+Michael resented the freedom of this expression and knitted his eyebrows
+in momentary distaste.
+
+"It's like this," Mr. Trimble began again, "I made up my mind to-day
+that Kath's the lass for me. Now am I right? That's what I want to ask
+you. Am I right?"
+
+"I suppose if you're in love with her and she's in love with you, yes,"
+said Michael.
+
+"Well, she is. Now you wouldn't think she was passionate, would you?
+You'd say she was a bit of ice, wouldn't you? Well, by gum, I tell you,
+lad, she's a furnace. Would you believe that?" Mr. Trimble leaned back
+triumphantly.
+
+Michael did not know what comment to make on this information, and took
+another sip of his lemon-and-dash.
+
+"Well, now what I say is--and I'm not a chap who's flung round a great
+deal with the girls--what I say is," Trimble went on, banging the marble
+table before him, "it's not fair on a lass to play around like this, and
+so I've made up my mind to marry her. Am I right? By gum, lad, I know
+I'm right."
+
+"I think you are," said Michael solemnly. "And I think you're awfully
+lucky."
+
+"Lucky?" echoed Trimble, "I'm lucky enough, if it wasn't for her domned
+old father. The lass is fine, but him--well, if I was to tell you what
+he is, you'd say I was using language. So it's like this. I want Kath to
+marry me down here. I'll get the license. I've saved up a hundred
+pounds. I'm earning two hundred a year now. Am I right?"
+
+"Perfectly right," said Michael earnestly, who, now that Trimble was
+showing himself to possess real fervour of soul, was ready to support
+him, even at the cost of his own suffering. He envied Trimble his
+freedom from the trammels of education, which for such a long while
+would prevent himself from taking such a step as marriage by license.
+Indeed, Michael scarcely thought he ever would take such a step now,
+since it was unlikely that anyone with Kathleen's attraction would lure
+him on to such a deed.
+
+Trimble's determination certainly went a long way to excuse the failings
+of his outer person in Michael's eyes, and indeed, as he pledged him a
+stirrup-cup of lemon-and-dash, Trimble and Young Lochinvar were not
+seriously distinct in Michael's imaginative anticipation of the
+exploit.
+
+So all day and every day for ten days Michael presumably spent his time
+with Kathleen, notwithstanding Mrs. Fane's tenderly malicious teazing,
+notwithstanding the elder Miss McDonnell's growing chill, and
+notwithstanding several very pointed questions from the interfering old
+spinsters and knitters in the sun of the hotel-gardens. That actually he
+spent his time alone in watching slow-handed clocks creep on towards a
+quarter to one or a quarter to five or a quarter to seven, filled
+Michael daily more full with the spiritual rewards of his sacrifice. He
+had never known before the luxury of grief, and he had no idea what a
+variety of becoming attitudes could be wrought of sadness, and not
+merely attitudes, but veritable dramas. One of the most heroically
+poignant of these was founded on the moment when Kathleen should ask him
+to be godfather to her first-born. "No, no," Michael would exclaim.
+"Don't ask me to do that. I have suffered enough." And Kathleen would
+remorsefully and silently steal from the dusky room a-flicker with sad
+firelight, leaving Michael a prey to his own noble thoughts. There was
+another drama scarcely less moving, in which the first-born died, and
+Michael, on hearing the news, took the night express to Burton in order
+to speak words of hope above the little duplicate of Trimble now for
+ever still in his cradle. Sometimes in the more expansive moments of
+Michael's celibacy Trimble and Kathleen would lose all their money, and
+Michael, again taking the night express to Burton-on-Trent, would offer
+to adopt about half a dozen duplicates of Trimble.
+
+Finally the morning of the marriage arrived, and Michael, feeling that
+this was an excellent opportunity to have the first of his dramas staged
+in reality, declined to be present. His refusal was a little less
+dramatic than he had intended, because Kathleen was too much excited by
+her own reckless behaviour to act up. While Michael waited for the
+ceremony's conclusion, he began a poem called 'Renunciation.'
+Unfortunately the marriage service was very much faster than his Muse,
+and he never got farther than half the opening line, '_If I renounce_.'
+Michael, however, ascribed his failure to a little girl who would
+persist in bouncing a tennis ball near his seat in the gardens.
+
+The wedding was only concluded just in time, because Mr. and Mrs.
+McDonnell arrived on the following day and Michael's expeditions with
+Kathleen were immediately forbidden. Possibly the equable Miss McDonnell
+had been faintly alarmed for her sister's good name. At any rate she had
+certainly been annoyed by her continuous neglect.
+
+Michael, however, had a long interview with Trimble, and managed to warn
+Kathleen that her husband was going to present himself after dinner.
+Trimble and he had thought this was more likely to suit Mr. McDonnell's
+digestion than an after-breakfast confession. Michael expressed himself
+perfectly willing to take all the blame, and privately made up his mind
+that if Mr. McDonnell tried to be 'too funny,' he would summon his
+mother to 'polish him off' with the vision of her manifest superiority.
+
+Somewhat to Michael's chagrin his share in the matter was overlooked by
+Mr. McDonnell, and the oration he had prepared to quell the long-lipped
+Irish father was never delivered. Whatever scenes of domestic strife
+occurred, occurred without Michael's assistance, and he was not a little
+dismayed to be told by Kathleen in the morning that all had passed off
+well, but that in the circumstances her father had thought they had
+better leave Bournemouth at once.
+
+"You're going?" stammered Michael.
+
+"Yes. We must be getting back. It's all been so sudden, and Walter's
+coming into the business, and eh, I'm as happy as the day is long."
+Michael watched them all depart, and after a few brave good-byes and
+three flutters from Kathleen's handkerchief turned sadly back into the
+large, unfriendly hotel. He knew the number of Kathleen's room, and in
+an access of despair that was, however, not so overwhelming as to
+preclude all self-consciousness, he wandered down the corridor and
+peeped into the late haunt of his love. The floor was littered with
+tissue paper, broken cardboard-boxes, empty toilet-bottles, and all the
+disarray of departure. Michael caught his breath at the sudden
+revelation of this abandoned room's appeal. Here was the end of
+Kathleen's maidenhood; here still lingered the allurement of her
+presence; but Trimble could never see this last virginal abode, this
+elusive shrine that Michael wished he could hire for sentimental
+meditations. Along the corridor came the sound of a dustpan. He looked
+round hastily for one souvenir of Kathleen, and perceived still moist
+from her last quick ablution a piece of soap. He seized it quickly and
+surrendered the room to the destructive personality of the housemaid.
+
+"Well, dear," asked Mrs. Fane at lunch, "did your lady love give you
+anything to commemorate your help? Darling Michael, you must have made a
+most delicious knight-errant."
+
+"Oh, no, she didn't give me anything," said Michael. "Why should she?"
+
+Then he blushed, thinking of the soap that was even now enshrined in a
+drawer and scenting his handkerchiefs and ties. He wondered if Alan
+would understand the imperishable effluence from that slim cenotaph of
+soap.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIV: _Arabesque_
+
+
+In the air of the Easter holidays that year there must have been
+something unusually amorous even for April, for when Michael came back
+to school he found that most of his friends and contemporaries had been
+wounded by love's darts. Alan, to be sure, returned unscathed, but as he
+had been resting in the comparatively cloistral seclusion of Cobble
+Place, Michael did not count his whole heart much honour to anything
+except his lack of opportunity. Everybody else had come back in
+possession of girls; some even had acquired photographs. There was talk
+of gloves and handkerchiefs, of flowers and fans, but nobody, as far as
+Michael could cautiously ascertain, had thought of soap; and he
+congratulated himself upon his relic. Also, apparently, all his friends
+in their pursuit of Eastertide nymphs had been successful, and he began
+to take credit to himself for being unlucky. His refusal (to this
+already had come Kathleen's suddenly withdrawn hand) gave him a peculiar
+interest, and those of his friends in whom he confided looked at him
+with awe, and listened respectfully to his legend of despair.
+
+Beneath the hawthorns on the golden afternoons and lingering topaz eves
+of May, Michael would wait for Alan to finish his game of cricket, and
+between lazily applauded strokes and catches he would tell the tale of
+Kathleen to his fellows:
+
+"I asked her to wait for me. Of course she was older than me. I said I
+was ready to marry her when I was twenty-one, but there was another
+chap, a decent fellow, devilish handsome, too. He was frightfully rich,
+and so she agreed to elope with him. I helped them no end. I told her
+father he simply must not attempt to interfere. But, of course, I was
+frightfully cut up--oh, absolutely knocked out. We're all of us unlucky
+in love in our family. My sister was in love with an Austrian who was
+killed by an avalanche. I don't suppose I shall ever be in love again.
+They say you never really fall in love more than once in your life. I
+feel a good deal older this term. I suppose I look ... oh, well hit
+indeed--run it out, and again, sir, and again ...!"
+
+So Michael would break off the tale of his love, until one of his
+listeners would seek to learn more of passion's frets and fevers.
+
+"But, Bangs, what about the day she eloped? What did you do?"
+
+"I wrote poetry," Michael would answer.
+
+"Great Scott, that's a bit of a swat, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes, it's a bit difficult," Michael would agree. "Only, of course, I
+only write _vers libre_. No rhymes or anything."
+
+And then an argument would arise as to whether poetry without rhymes
+could fairly be called poetry at all. This argument, or another like it,
+would last until the cricket stopped, when Michael and his fellows would
+stroll into the pavilion and examine the scoring-book or criticize the
+conduct of the game.
+
+It was a pleasant time, that summer term, and life moved on very equably
+for Michael, notwithstanding his Eastertide heartbreak. Alan caused him
+a little trouble by his indifference to anything but cricket, and one
+Sunday, when May had deepened into June, Michael took him to task for
+his attitude. Alan had asked Michael over to Richmond for the week-end,
+and the two of them had punted down the river towards Kew. They had
+moored their boat under a weeping willow about the time when the bells
+for church, begin to chime across the level water-meadows.
+
+"Alan, aren't you ever going to fall in love?" Michael began.
+
+"Why should I?" Alan countered in his usual way.
+
+"I don't know. I think it's time you did," said Michael. "You've no idea
+how much older it makes you feel. And I suppose you don't want to remain
+a kid for ever. Because, you know, old chap, you are an awful kid beside
+me."
+
+"Thanks very much," said Alan. "I believe you're exactly one month
+older, as a matter of fact."
+
+"Yes, in actual time," said Michael earnestly. "But in experience I'm
+years older than you."
+
+"That must be why you're such a rotten field," commented Alan. "After
+forty the joints get stiff."
+
+"Oh, chuck being funny," said Michael severely. "I'm in earnest. Now you
+know as well as I do that last term and the term before I was miserable.
+Well, look at me now. I'm absolutely happy."
+
+"I thought you were so frightfully depressed," said Alan, twinkling. "I
+thought you'd had an unlucky love affair. It seems to take you
+differently from the way it takes most people."
+
+"Oh, of course, I _was_ miserable," Michael explained. "But now I'm
+happy in her happiness. That's love."
+
+Alan burst out laughing, and Michael observed that if he intended to
+receive his confidences in such a flippant way, he would in future take
+care to be more secretive.
+
+"I'm showing you what a lot I care about you," Michael went on in tones
+of deepest injury, "by telling you about myself. I think it's rather
+rotten of you to laugh."
+
+"But you've told everybody," Alan pointed out.
+
+Michael took another tack, and explained to Alan that he wanted the spur
+of his companionship in everything.
+
+"It would be so ripping if we were both in love," he sighed. "Honestly,
+Alan, don't you feel I'm much more developed since last term? I say, you
+played awfully well yesterday against Dulford Second. If you go on
+improving at the rate you are now, I don't see why you shouldn't get
+your Blue at Oxford. By Jove, you know, in eighteen months we shall be
+at Oxford. Are you keen?"
+
+"Frightfully keen," said Alan. "Especially if I haven't got to be in
+love all the time."
+
+"I'm not going to argue with you any more," Michael announced. "But
+you're making a jolly big mistake. Still, of course, I do understand
+about your cricket, and I dare say love might make you a bit boss-eyed.
+Perhaps when footer begins again next term, I shall get over this
+perpetual longing I have for Kathleen. You've no idea how awful I felt
+when she said she loved Trimble. He was rather a bounder too, but of
+course I had to help them. I say, Alan, do you remember Dora and
+Winnie?"
+
+"Rather," said Alan, smiling. "We made pretty good asses of ourselves
+over them. Do you remember how fed up Nancy got?"
+
+So, very easily the conversation drifted into reminiscences of earlier
+days, until the sky was quilted with rose-tipped pearly clouds. Then
+they swung a Japanese lantern in the prow and worked up-stream towards
+Richmond clustering dark against the west, while an ivory moon shimmered
+on the dying azure of the day behind.
+
+Throughout June the image of Kathleen became gradually fainter and
+fainter with each materialization that Michael evoked. Then one evening
+before dinner he found that the maid had forgotten to put a fresh cake
+of soap in the dish. It was a question of ringing the bell or of
+callously using Kathleen's commemorative tablet. Michael went to his
+drawer and, as he slowly washed his hands, he washed from his mind the
+few insignificant outlines of Kathleen that were printed there. The
+soap was Trefle Incarnat, and somewhat cynically Michael relished the
+savour of it, and even made up his mind to buy a full fat cake when this
+one should be finished. Kathleen, however, even in the fragrant moment
+of her annihilation, had her revenge, for Michael experienced a return
+of the old restlessness and discontent that was not mitigated by Alan's
+increasing preoccupation with cricket. He did not complain of this, for
+he respected the quest of School Colours, and was proud for Alan. At the
+same time something must be done to while away these warm summer
+evenings until at Basingstead Minor, where his mother had delightfully
+agreed to take a cottage for the summer, he and Alan could revive old
+days at Cobble Place.
+
+One evening Michael went out about nine o'clock to post a letter and,
+finding the evening velvety and calm, strolled on through the enticing
+streets of twilight. The violet shadows in which the white caps and
+aprons of gossiping maids took on a moth-like immaterial beauty, the
+gliding, enraptured lovers, the scent of freshly watered flower-boxes,
+the stars winking between the chimney-pots, and all the drowsy alertness
+of a fine London dusk drew him on to turn each new corner as it arrived,
+until he saw the sky stained with dull gold from the reflection of the
+lively crater of the Earl's Court Exhibition, and heard over the vague
+intervening noises music that was sometimes clearly melodious, sometimes
+a mere confusion of spasmodic sound.
+
+Michael suddenly thought he would like to spend his evening at the
+Exhibition, and wondered to himself why he had never thought of going
+there casually like this, why always he had considered it necessary to
+devote a hot afternoon and flurried evening to its exploitation. By the
+entrance he met a fellow-Jacobean, one Drake, whose accentuated
+mannishness, however disagreeable in the proximity of the school, might
+be valuable at the Exhibition. Michael therefore accepted his boisterous
+greeting pleasantly enough, and they passed through the turnstiles
+together.
+
+"I'll introduce you to a smart girl, if you like," Drake offered, as
+they paused undecided between the attractions of two portions of the
+Exhibition. "She sells Turkish Delight by the Cave of the Four Winds.
+Very O.T., my boy," Drake went on.
+
+"Do you mean----" Michael began.
+
+"What? Rather," said Drake. "I've been home to her place."
+
+"No joking?" Michael asked.
+
+"Yes," affirmed Drake with a triumphant inhalation of sibilant breath.
+
+"Rather lucky, wasn't it?" Michael asked. "I mean to say, it was rather
+lucky to meet her."
+
+"She might take you home," suggested Drake, examining Michael
+critically.
+
+"But I mightn't like her," Michael expostulated.
+
+"Good Lord," exclaimed Drake, struck by a point of view that was
+obviously dismaying in its novelty, "you don't mean to say you'd bother
+about that, if you could?"
+
+"Well, I rather think I should," Michael admitted. "I think I'd want to
+be in love."
+
+"You are an extraordinary chap," said Drake. "Now if I were dead nuts on
+a girl, the last thing I'd think of would be that."
+
+They walked along silently, each one pondering the other's
+incomprehensibleness, until they came to the stall presided over by Miss
+Mabel Bannerman, who in Michael's opinion bore a curious resemblance to
+the Turkish Delight she sold. With the knowledge of her he had obtained
+from Drake, Michael regarded Miss Bannerman very much as he would have
+looked at an animal in the Zoological Gardens with whose habits he had
+formed a previous acquaintanceship through a book of natural history. He
+tried to perceive beyond her sachet-like hands and watery blue eyes and
+spongy hair and full-blown breast the fascination which had made her
+man's common property. Then he looked at Drake, and came to the
+conclusion that the problem was not worth the difficulty of solution.
+
+"I think I'll be getting back," said Michael awkwardly.
+
+"Why, it's not ten," gasped Drake. "Don't be an ass. Mabel gets out at
+eleven, and we can take her home. Can't we, Mabel?"
+
+"Sauce!" Mabel archly snapped.
+
+This savoury monosyllable disposed of Michael's hesitation, and, as the
+personality of Mabel cloyed him with a sudden nausea like her own
+Turkish Delight, he left her to Drake without another word and went home
+to bed.
+
+The night was hot and drew Michael from vain attempts at sleep to the
+open window where, as he sat thinking, a strange visionary survey of the
+evening, a survey that he himself could scarcely account for, was
+conjured up. He had not been aware at the time of much more than Drake
+and the Turkish Delight stall. Now he realized that he too craved for a
+Mabel, not a peony of a woman who could be flaunted like a vulgar
+button-hole, but a more shy, a more subtle creature, yet conquerable.
+Then, as Michael stared out over the housetops at the brooding pavilion
+of sky which enclosed the hectic city, he began to recall the numberless
+glances, the countless attitudes, all the sensuous phantasmagoria of the
+Exhibition's population. He remembered a slim hand, a slanting eye, lips
+translucent in a burst of light. He caught at scents that, always
+fugitive, were now utterly incommunicable; he trembled at the
+remembrance of some contact in a crowd that had been at once divinely
+intimate and unendurably remote. The illusion of all the city's sleepers
+calling to him became more and more vivid under each stifling breath of
+the night. Somewhere beneath that sable diadem of chimney-tops she lay,
+that lovely girl of his desire. He would not picture her too clearly
+lest he should destroy the charm of this amazing omnipotence of longing.
+He would be content to enfold the imagination of her, and at dawn let
+her slip from his arms like a cloud. He would sit all the night time at
+his window, aware of kisses. Was this the emotion that prompted poets to
+their verses? Michael broke his trance to search for paper and pencil,
+and wrote ecstatically.
+
+In the morning, when he read what he had written, he hastily tore it up,
+and made up his mind that the Earl's Court Exhibition would feed his
+fire more satisfactorily than bad verses. Half a guinea would buy a
+season-ticket, and July should be a pageant of sensations.
+
+Every night Michael went to Earl's Court, and here a hundred brilliant
+but evanescent flames were kindled in his heart, just as in the
+Exhibition gardens every night for three hours the fairy-lamps spangled
+the edge of the paths in threads of many-tinted lights. Michael always
+went alone, because he did not desire any but his own discoveries to
+reward his excited speculation. At first he merely enjoyed the sensation
+of the slow stream of people that continually went up and down, or
+strolled backwards and forwards, or circled round the bandstand that was
+set out like a great gaudy coronet upon the parterres of lobelias and
+geraniums and calceolarias that with nightfall came to seem brocaded
+cushions.
+
+It was a time profitable with a thousand reflections, this crowded hour
+of the promenade. There was always the mesmeric sighing of silk skirts
+and the ceaseless murmur of conversation; there was the noise of the
+band and the tapping of canes; there was, in fact, a regularity of
+sound that was as infinitely soothing as breaking waves or a
+wind-ruffled wood. There were the sudden provocative glances which
+flashed as impersonally as precious stones, and yet lanced forth a
+thrill that no faceted gem could give. There were hands whose white
+knuckles, as they rippled over Michael's hands in some momentary
+pressure of the throng, gave him a sense of being an instrument upon
+which a chord had been clearly struck. There were strands of hair that
+floated against his cheeks with a strange, but exquisitely elusive
+intimacy of communication. It was all very intoxicating and very
+sensuous; but the spell crept over him as imperceptibly as if he were
+merely yielding himself to the influence of a beautiful landscape, as if
+he were lotus-eating in a solitude created by numbers.
+
+Michael, however, was not content to dream away in a crowd these
+passionate nights of July; and after a while he set out to find
+adventures in the great bazaar of the Exhibition, wandering through the
+golden corridors and arcades with a queer sense of suppressed
+expectancy. So many fantastic trades were carried on here, that it was
+natural to endow the girls behind the counters with a more romantic life
+than that of ordinary and anaemic shop-assistants. Even Miss Mabel
+Bannerman amid her Turkish Delight came to seem less crude in such
+surroundings, and Michael once or twice had thoughts of prosecuting his
+acquaintanceship; for as yet he had not been able to bring himself to
+converse with any of the numerous girls, so much more attractive than
+Mabel, who were haunting him with their suggestion of a strange
+potentiality.
+
+Michael wandered on past the palmists who went in and out of their
+tapestried tents; past the physiognomists and phrenologists and
+graphologists; past the vendors of scents and silver; past the languid
+women who spread out their golden rugs from Samarcand; past the
+Oriental shops fuming with odorous pastilles, where lamps encrusted in
+deep-hued jewels of glass glimmered richly; past that slant-eyed
+cigarette-seller with the crimson fez crowning her dark hair.
+
+July was nearing its end; the holidays were in sight; and still Michael
+had got no farther with his ambitions; still at the last moment he would
+pass on and neglect some perfect opportunity for speech. He used to rail
+at his cowardice, and repeat to himself all his academic knowledge of
+frail womanhood. He even took the trouble to consult the Ars Amatoria,
+and was so much impressed by Ovid's prescription for behaviour at a
+circus that he determined to follow his advice. To put his theory into
+practice, Michael selected a booth where seals performed for humanity at
+sixpence a head. But all his resolutions ended in sitting mildly amused
+by the entertainment in a condition of absolute decorum.
+
+School broke up with the usual explosion of self-congratulatory rhetoric
+from which Michael, owing to his Exhibition ticket, failed to emerge
+with any calf-bound souvenir of intellectual achievement. He minded this
+less than his own pusillanimous behaviour on the brink of experience. It
+made him desperate to think that in two days he would be at Basingstead
+with his mother and Alan and Mrs. Ross, utterly remote even from the
+pretence of temptation.
+
+"Dearest Michael, you really must get your things together,"
+expostulated Mrs. Fane, when he announced his intention of going round
+to the Exhibition as usual on the night before they were to leave town.
+
+"Well, mother, I can pack when I come in, and I do want to get all I can
+out of this 'season.' You see it will be absolutely wasted for August
+and half September."
+
+"Michael," said Mrs. Fane suddenly, "you're not keeping anything from
+me?"
+
+"Good gracious, no. What makes you ask?" Michael demanded, blushing.
+
+"I was afraid that perhaps some horrid girl might have got hold of you,"
+said Mrs. Fane.
+
+"Why, would you mind very much?" asked Michael, with a curious
+hopefulness that his mother would pursue the subject, as if by so doing
+she would give him an opportunity of regarding himself and his behaviour
+objectively.
+
+"I don't know that I should mind very much," said Mrs. Fane, "if I
+thought you were quite certain not to do anything foolish." Then she
+seemed to correct the laxity of her point of view, and substituted,
+"anything that you might regret."
+
+"What could I regret?" asked Michael, seeking to drive his mother on to
+the rocks of frankness.
+
+"Surely you know what better than I can tell you. Don't you?" The note
+of interrogation caught the wind, and Mrs. Fane sailed off on the
+starboard tack.
+
+"But as long as you're not keeping anything from me," she went on, "I
+don't mind. So go out, dear child, and enjoy yourself by all means. But
+don't be very late."
+
+"I never am," said Michael quickly, and a little resentfully as he
+thought of his very decorous homecomings.
+
+"I know you're not. You're really a very dear fellow," his mother
+murmured, now safe in port.
+
+So at nine o'clock as usual Michael passed through the turnstiles and
+began his feverish progress across the Exhibition grounds, trying as he
+had never tried before to screw himself up to the pitch of the
+experience he craved.
+
+He was standing by one of the entrances to the Court of Marvels,
+struggling with his self-consciousness and egging himself on to be bold
+on this his last night, when he heard himself accosted as Mr. Michael
+Fane. He looked round and saw a man whom he instantly recognized, but
+for the moment could not name.
+
+"It is Mr. Michael Fane?" the stranger asked. "You don't remember me? I
+met you at Clere Abbey."
+
+"Brother Aloysius!" Michael exclaimed, and as he uttered the
+high-sounding religious appellation he almost laughed at the incongruity
+of it in connection with this slightly overdressed and dissolute-looking
+person he so entitled.
+
+"Well, not exactly, old chap. At least not in this get-up. Meats is my
+name."
+
+"Oh, yes," said Michael vaguely. There seemed no other comment on such a
+name, and Mr. Meats himself appeared sensitive to the implication of
+uncertainty, for he made haste to put Michael at ease by commenting on
+its oddity.
+
+"I suppose you're thinking it's a damned funny exchange for Brother
+Aloysius. But a fellow can't help his name, and that's a fact."
+
+"You've left the Abbey then?" enquired Michael.
+
+"Oh Lord, yes. Soon after you went. It was no place for me. Manners,
+O.S.B., gave me the push pretty quick. And I don't blame him. Well, what
+are you doing? Have a drink? Or have you got to meet your best girl? My,
+you've grown since I saw you last. Quite the Johnny nowadays. But I
+spotted you all right. Something about your eyes that would be very hard
+to forget."
+
+Michael thought that if it came to unforgettable eyes, the eyes of Mr.
+Meats would stand as much chance of perpetual remembrance as any, since
+their unholy light would surely set any heart beating with the
+breathless imagination of sheer wickedness.
+
+"Yes, I have got funny eyes, haven't I?" said Meats in complacent
+realization of Michael's thoughts. And as he spoke he seemed consciously
+to exercise their vile charm, so that his irises kindled slowly with
+lambent blue flames.
+
+"Come on, let's have this drink," urged Meats, and he led the way to a
+scattered group of green tables. They sat down, and Michael ordered a
+lemon-squash.
+
+"Very good drink too," commented Meats. "I think I'll have the same,
+Rosie," he said to the girl who served them.
+
+"Do you know that girl?" Michael asked.
+
+"Used to. About three years ago. She's gone oil though," said Meats
+indifferently.
+
+Michael, to hide his astonishment at the contemptuous suggestion of
+damaged goods, enquired what Meats had been doing since he left the
+Monastery.
+
+"Want to know?" asked Meats.
+
+Michael assured him that he did.
+
+"You're rather interested in me, aren't you? Well, I can tell you a few
+things and that's a fact. I don't suppose that there's anybody in London
+who could tell you more. But you might be shocked."
+
+"Oh, shut up!" scoffed Michael, blushing with indignation.
+
+Then began the shameless narration of the late Brother Aloysius, whom
+various attainments had enabled to gain an equal profit from religion
+and vice. Sometimes as Michael listened to the adventures he was
+reminded of Benvenuto Cellini or Casanova, but almost immediately the
+comparison would be shattered by a sudden sanctimonious blasphemy which
+he found nauseating. Moreover, he disliked the sly procurer that
+continually leered through the man's personality.
+
+"You seem to have done a lot of dirty work for other people," Michael
+bluntly observed at last.
+
+"My dear old chap," replied Meats, "of course I have. You see, in this
+world there are lots of people who can always square their own
+consciences, if the worst of what they want to do is done for them
+behind the scenes as it were. You never yet heard a man confess that he
+ruined a girl. Now, did you? Why, I've heard the most shocking
+out-and-outers anyone could wish to meet brag that they've done
+everything, and then turn up their eyes and thank God they've always
+respected real purity. Well, I never respected anything or anybody. And
+why should I? I never had a chance. Who was my mother? A servant. Who
+was my father? A minister, a Nonconformist minister in Wales. And what
+did the old tyke do? Why, he took the case to court and swore my mother
+was out for blackmail. So she went to prison, and he came smirking home
+behind the village band; and all the old women in the place hung out
+Union Jacks to show they believed in him. And then his wife gave a
+party."
+
+Michael looked horrified and felt horrified at this revelation of
+vileness, and yet, all the time he was listening, through some
+grotesquery of his nerves he was aware of thinking to himself the jingle
+of Little Bo-peep.
+
+"Ah, that's touched you up, hasn't it?" said Meats, eagerly leaning
+forward. "But wait a bit. What did my mother do when she came out? Went
+on the streets. Do you hear? On the streets, and mark you, she was a
+servant, a common village servant, none of your flash Empire goods. Oh,
+no, she never knew what it was like to go up the river on a Sunday
+afternoon. And she drank. Well, of course she drank. Gin was as near as
+she ever got to paradise. And where was I brought up? Not among the
+buttercups, my friend, you may lay on that. No, I was down underneath,
+underneath, underneath where a chap like you will never go because
+you're a gentleman. And so, though, of course, you're never likely to
+ruin a girl, you'll always have your fun. Why shouldn't you? Being a
+nicely brought-up young gentleman, it's your birthright."
+
+"But how on earth did you ever become a monk?" asked Michael, anxious to
+divert the conversation away from himself.
+
+"Well, it does sound a bit improbable, I must say. I was recommended
+there by a priest--a nice chap called Arbuthnot who'd believe a
+chimney-sweep was a miller. But Manners was very sharp on to me, and I
+was very sharp on to Manners. Picking blackberries and emptying slops!
+What a game! I came with a character and left without one. Probationer
+was what they called me. Silly mug was what I called myself."
+
+"You seem to know a lot of priests," said Michael.
+
+"Oh, I've been in with parsons since I was at Sunday-school. Well, don't
+look so surprized. You don't suppose my mother wanted me hanging round
+all the afternoon! Now I very soon found out that one can always get
+round a High Church slum parson, and very often a Catholic priest by
+turning over a new leaf and confessing. It gets them every time, and
+being by nature generous, it gets their pockets. That's why I gave up
+Dissenters and fashionable Vicars. Dissenters want more than they give,
+and fashionable Vicars are too clever. That's why they become
+fashionable Vicars, I suppose," said Meats pensively.
+
+"But you couldn't go on taking in even priests for ever," Michael
+objected.
+
+"Ah, now I'll tell you something. I do feel religious sometimes," Meats
+declared solemnly. "And I do really want to lead a new life. But it
+doesn't last. It's like love. Never mind, perhaps I'll be lucky enough
+to die when I'm working off a religious stretch. I give you my word,
+Fane, that often in these fits I've felt like committing suicide just to
+cheat the devil. Would you believe that?"
+
+"I don't think you're as bad as you make out," said Michael
+sententiously.
+
+"Oh, yes, I am," smiled the other. "I'm rotten bad. But I reckon the
+first man I meet in hell will be my father, and if it's possible to hurt
+anyone down there more than they're being hurt already, I'll do it. But
+look here, I shall get the hump with this blooming conversation you've
+started me off on. Come along, drink up and have another, and tell us
+something about yourself."
+
+"Oh, there's nothing to tell," Michael sighed. "My existence is pretty
+dull after yours."
+
+"I suppose it is," said Meats, as if struck by a new thought.
+"Everything has its compensations, as they say."
+
+"Frightfully dull," Michael vowed. "Why, here am I still at school! You
+know I wouldn't half mind going down underneath, as you call it, for a
+while. I believe I'd like it."
+
+"If you knew you could get up again all right," commented Meats.
+
+"Oh, of course," Michael answered. "I don't suppose AEneas would have
+cared much about going down to hell, if he hadn't been sure he could
+come up again quite safely."
+
+"Well, I don't know your friend with the Jewish name," said Meats. "But
+I'll lay he didn't come out much wiser than he went in if he knew he
+could get out all right by pressing a button and taking the first lift
+up."
+
+"Oh, well, I was only speaking figuratively," Michael explained.
+
+"So was I. The same here, and many of them, old chap," retorted Meats
+enigmatically.
+
+"Ah, you don't think I'm in earnest. You think I'm fooling," Michael
+complained.
+
+"Oh, yes, I think you'd like to take a peep without letting go of
+Nurse's apron," sneered Meats.
+
+"Well, perhaps one day you'll see me underneath," Michael almost
+threatened.
+
+"No offence, old chap," said Meats cordially. "It's no good my giving
+you an address because it won't last, but London isn't very big, and
+we'll run up against one another again, that's a cert. Now I've got to
+toddle off and meet a girl."
+
+"Have you?" asked Michael, and his enquiry was tinged with a faint
+longing that the other noticed at once.
+
+"Jealous?" enquired Meats. "Why, look at all the girls round about you.
+It's up to you not to feel lonely."
+
+"I know," said Michael fretfully. "But how the deuce can I tell whether
+they want me to talk to them?"
+
+Meats laughed shrilly.
+
+"What are you afraid of? Leading some innocent lamb astray?"
+
+Again to Michael occurred the ridiculous rhyme of Bo-peep. So insistent
+was it that he could scarcely refrain from humming it aloud.
+
+"Of course I'm not afraid of that," he protested. "But how am I to tell
+they won't think me a brute?"
+
+"What would it matter if they did?" asked Meats.
+
+"Well, I should feel a fool."
+
+"Oh, dear. You're very young, aren't you?"
+
+"It's nothing to do with being young," Michael asserted. "I simply don't
+want to be a cad."
+
+"Somebody else is to be the cad first and then it's all right, eh?"
+chuckled Meats. "But it's a shame to teaze a nice chap like you. I dare
+say Daisy'll have a friend with her."
+
+"Is Daisy the girl you're going to see?"
+
+"You've guessed my secret," said Meats. "Come on, I'll introduce you."
+
+As Michael rose to follow Meats, he felt that he was like Faust with
+Mephistopheles. But Faust had asked for his youth back again. Michael
+only demanded the courage not to waste youth while it was his to enjoy.
+He felt that his situation was essentially different from the other, and
+he hesitated no longer.
+
+The next half-hour passed in a whirl. Michael was conscious of a slim
+brunette in black and scarlet, and of a fairy-like figure by her side in
+a dress of shimmering blue; he was conscious too of a voice
+insinuating, softly metallic, and of fingers that touched his wrist as
+lightly as silk. There were whispers and laughters and sudden sweeping
+embarrassments. There was a horrible sense of publicity, of curious
+mocking eyes that watched his progress. There was an overwhelming
+knowledge of money burning in his pocket, of money hard and round and
+powerful. There were hot waves of remorse and the thought of his heart
+hammering him on to be brave. A cabman leaned over from his box like a
+gargoyle. A key clicked.
+
+Then, it seemed a century afterwards, Carlington Road stretched dim,
+austere, forbidding to Michael's ingress. A policeman's deep salutation
+sounded portentously reproachful. The bloom of dawn was on the windows.
+The flames in the street-lamps were pale as primroses. At his own house
+Michael saw the red and amber sparrows in their crude blue vegetation
+horribly garish against the lighted entrance-hall. The Salve printed
+funereally upon the mat was the utterance of blackest irony. He hastily
+turned down the gas, and the stairs caught a chill unreality from the
+creeping dawn. The balustrade stuck to his parched hands; the stairs
+creaked grotesquely to his breathless ascent. His mother stood like a
+ghost in her doorway.
+
+"Michael, how dreadfully late you are."
+
+"Am I?" said Michael. "I suppose it is rather late. I met a fellow I
+know."
+
+He spoke petulantly to conceal his agitation, and his one thought was to
+avoid kissing her before he went up to his own room.
+
+"It's all right about my packing," he murmured hastily. "In the morning
+I shall have time. I'm sorry I woke you. Good night."
+
+He had passed; and he looked back compassionately, as she faded in her
+rosy and indefinite loveliness away to her room.
+
+Then, with the patterns of foulard ties crawling like insects before his
+strained eyes, with collars coiling and uncoiling like mainsprings, with
+all his clothes in one large intolerable muddle, Michael pressed the
+cold sheets to his forehead and tried to imagine that to-morrow he would
+be in the country.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XV: Grey Eyes
+
+
+As Michael sat opposite to his mother in the railway-carriage on the
+following morning, he found it hard indeed to realize that an ocean did
+not stretch between them. He did not feel ashamed; he had no tremors for
+the straightforward regard; he had no uneasy sensation that possibly
+even now his mother was perplexing herself on account of his action. He
+simply felt that he had suffered a profound change and that his action
+of yesterday called for a readjustment of his entire standpoint. Or
+rather, he felt that having since yesterday travelled so far and lived
+so violently, he could now only meet his mother as a friend from whom
+one has been long parted and whose mental progress during many years
+must be gradually apprehended.
+
+"Why do you look at me with such a puzzled expression, Michael?" asked
+Mrs. Fane. "Is my hat crooked?"
+
+Michael assured her that nothing was the matter with her hat.
+
+"Do you want to ask me something?" persisted Mrs. Fane.
+
+Michael shook his head and smiled, wondering whether he did really wish
+to ask her a question, whether he would be relieved to know what
+attitude she would adopt towards his adventure. With so stirring a word
+did he enhance what otherwise would have seemed base. His mother
+evidently was aware of a tension in this ridiculously circumscribed
+railway-carriage. Would it be released if he were to inform her frankly
+of what had happened, or would such, an admission be an indiscretion
+from which their relationship would never recover? After all she was his
+mother, and there must positively exist in her inmost self the power of
+understanding what he had done. Some part of the impulse which had
+actuated his behaviour would surely find a root in the heart of the
+handsome woman who travelled with such becoming repose on the seat
+opposite to him. He forgot to bother about himself in this sudden new
+pleasure of observation that seemed to endow him with undreamed-of
+opportunities of distraction and, what was more important, with a stable
+sense of his own individuality. How young his mother looked! Until now
+he had taken her youth for granted, but she must be nearly forty. It was
+scarcely credible that this tall slim creature with the proud, upcurving
+mouth and lustrous grey eyes was his own mother. He thought of his
+friends' homes that were presided over by dumpy women in black silk with
+greying hair. Even Alan's mother, astonishingly pretty though she was,
+seemed in the picture he conjured of her to look faded beside his own.
+
+And while he was pondering his mother's beauty, the train reached the
+station at which they must alight for Basingstead. There was Alan in
+white flannels on the platform, there too was Mrs. Ross; and as she
+greeted his mother Michael's thoughts went back to the day he saw these
+two come together at Carlington Road, and by their gracious encounter
+drive away the shadow of Nurse.
+
+"I vote we walk," said Alan. "Mrs. Fane and Aunt Maud can drive in the
+pony-chaise, and then your luggage can all come up at once in the cart."
+
+So it was arranged, and as Michael watched his mother and Mrs. Ross
+drive off, he was strangely reminded of a picture that he had once
+dearly loved, a picture by Flaxman of Hera and Athene driving down from
+Olympus to help the Greeks. [Greek: Leukolenos Here]--that was his
+mother, and [Greek: glaukopis 'AThene]--that was Mrs. Ross. He could
+actually remember the line in the Iliad that told of the gates of
+heaven, where the Hours keep watch, opening for the goddesses'
+descent--[Greek: automatai de pulai mukon ouranoi as echon Orai]. At the
+same time for all his high quotations, Michael could not help smiling at
+the dolefully senescent dun pony being compared to the golden steeds of
+Hera or at the pleasant old porter who hastened to throw open the white
+gate of the station-drive serving as a substitute for the Hours.
+
+The country air was still sweet between the hazel hedgerows, although
+the grass was drouthy and the scabious blooms were already grey with
+dust. Nothing for Michael could have been more charged with immemorial
+perfume than this long walk at July's end. It held the very quintessence
+of holiday airs through all the marching years of boyhood. It was
+haunted by the memory of all the glad anticipations of six weeks'
+freedom that time after time had succeeded the turmoil of breaking up
+for the August holidays. The yellow amoret swinging from the tallest
+shoot of the hedge was the companion of how many summer walks. The acrid
+smell of nettles by the roadside was prophetic of how many pastoral
+days. The butterflies, brown and white and tortoiseshell, that danced
+away to right and left over the green bushes, to what winding paths did
+they not summon. And surely Alan gave a final grace to this first walk
+of the holidays. Surely he crystallized all hopes, all memories, all
+delights of the past in a perfection of present joy.
+
+Yet Michael, as he walked beside him, could only think of Alan as a
+beautiful inanimate object for whom perception did not exist. Inanimate,
+however, was scarcely the word to describe one who was so very
+definitely alive: Michael racked his invention to discover a suitable
+label for Alan, but he could not find the word. With a shock of
+misgiving he asked himself whether he had outgrown their friendship, and
+partly to test, but chiefly to allay his dread, he took Alan's arm with
+a gesture of almost fierce possession. He was relieved to find that
+Alan's touch was still primed with consolation, that companionship with
+him still soothed the turbulence of his own spirit reaching out to grasp
+what could never be expressed in words, and therefore could never be
+grasped. Michael was seized with a longing to urge Alan to grow up more
+quickly, to make haste lest he should be left behind by his adventurous
+friend. Michael remembered how he used to dread being moved up, hating
+to leave Alan in a class below him, how he had deliberately dallied to
+allow Alan to overtake him. But idleness in school-work was not the same
+as idleness in experience of life, and unless Alan would quickly grow
+up, he knew that he must soon leave him irremediably behind. It was
+distressing to reflect that Alan would be shocked by the confidence
+which he longed to impose upon him, and it was disquieting to realize
+that these last summer holidays of school, however complete with the
+quiet contentment of familiar pleasures, would for himself grow slowly
+irksome with deferred excitement.
+
+But as the green miles slowly unfolded themselves, as the dauntless
+yellow amoret still swung from a lissome stem, as Alan spoke of the
+river and the grey tower on the hill, Michael saw the fretful colours of
+the Exhibition grow dim; and when dreaming in the haze of the slumberous
+afternoon they perceived the village and heard the mysterious murmur of
+human tranquillity, Michael's heart overflowed with gratitude for the
+sight of Alan by his side. Then the church-clock that struck a timeless
+hour sounded for him one of those moments whose significance would
+resist eternally whatever lying experience should endeavour to assail
+the truth which had made of one flashing scene a revelation.
+
+Michael was ineffably refreshed by his vision of the imperishable
+substance of human friendship, and he could not but jeer at himself now
+for having a little while back put Alan into the domain of objects
+inanimate.
+
+"There's your cottage," said Alan. "It's practically next door to Cobble
+Place. Rather decent, eh?"
+
+Michael could not say how decent he thought it, nor how decent he
+thought Alan.
+
+"I vote we go up the river after tea," he suggested.
+
+"Rather," said Alan. "I expect you'll come round to tea with us. Don't
+be long unpacking."
+
+"I shan't, you bet," said Michael.
+
+Nor was he, and after a few minutes he and his mother were sitting in
+the drawing-room at Cobble Place, eating a tea that must have been very
+nearly the same as an unforgettable tea of nine years ago. Mrs. Carthew
+did not seem quite so old; nor indeed did anybody, and as for Joan and
+May Carthew, they were still girls. Yet even when he and Alan had stayed
+down here for the wedding only four years ago, Michael had always been
+conscious of everybody's age. And now he was curiously aware of
+everybody's youth. He supposed vaguely that all this change of outlook
+was due to his own remarkable precocity and rapid advance; but
+nevertheless he still ate with all the heartiness of childhood.
+
+After tea Mrs. Ross with much tact took up Michael by himself to see her
+son and, spared the necessity of comment, Michael solemnly regarded the
+fair-haired boy of two who was squeaking an india-rubber horse for his
+mother's benefit.
+
+"O you attractive son of mine," Mrs. Ross sighed in a whisper.
+
+"He's an awfully sporting kid," Michael said.
+
+Then he suddenly remembered that he had not seen Mrs. Ross since her
+husband was killed. Yet from this chintz-hung room whose casements were
+flooded with the amber of the westering sun, how far off seemed fatal
+Africa. He remembered also that to this very same gay room he had long
+ago gone with Miss Carthew after tea, that here in a ribboned bed he had
+first heard the news of her coming to live at 64 Carlington Road.
+
+"We must have a long talk together soon," said Mrs. Ross, seeming to
+divine his thoughts. "But I expect you're anxious to revive old memories
+and visit old haunts with Alan. I'm going to stay here and talk to
+Kenneth while Nurse has her tea."
+
+Michael lingered for a moment in the doorway to watch the two. Then he
+said abruptly, breathlessly:
+
+"Mrs. Ross, I think painters and sculptors are lucky fellows. I'd like
+to paint you now. I wish one could understand the way people look, when
+one's young. But I'm just beginning to realize how lucky I was when you
+came to us. And yet I used to be ashamed of having a governess. Still, I
+believe I did appreciate you, even when I was eight."
+
+Then he fled, and to cover his retreat sang out loudly for Alan all the
+way downstairs.
+
+"I say, Aunt Enid wants to talk to you," said Alan.
+
+"Aunt Enid?" Michael echoed.
+
+"Mrs. Carthew," Alan explained.
+
+"I vote we go for a walk afterwards, don't you?" Michael suggested.
+
+"Rather," said Alan. "I'll shout for you, when I think you've jawed long
+enough."
+
+Michael found Mrs. Carthew in her sun-coloured garden, cutting down the
+withering lupins whose silky seed-pods were strewn all about the paths.
+
+"Can you spare ten minutes for an old friend?" asked Mrs. Carthew.
+
+Michael thought how tremendously wise she looked, and lest he should be
+held to be staring unduly, he bent down to sweep together the
+shimmering seed-pods, while Mrs. Carthew snipped away, talking in
+sentences that matched the quick snickasnack of her weapon.
+
+"I must say you've grown up into an attractive youth. Let me see, you
+must be seventeen and a half. I suppose you think yourself a man now?
+Dear me, these lupins should have been cut back a fortnight ago. And now
+I have destroyed a hollyhock. Tut-tut, I'm getting very blind. What did
+you think of Maud's son? A healthy rosy child, and not at all amenable
+to discipline, I'm glad to say. Well, are you enjoying school?"
+
+The old lady paused with her scissors gaping, and looked shrewdly at
+Michael.
+
+"I'm getting rather fed up with it," Michael admitted. "It goes on for
+such a long time. It wasn't so bad this term, though."
+
+Then he remembered that whatever pleasures had mitigated the
+exasperation of school last term were decidedly unscholastic, and he
+blushed.
+
+"I simply loathed it for a time," he added.
+
+"Alan informs me he acquired his first eleven cap this term and will be
+in the first fifteen as Lord Treasurer or something," Mrs. Carthew went
+on. "Naturally he must enjoy this shower of honours. Alan is decidedly
+typical of the better class of unthinking young Englishman. He is
+pleasant to look at--a little colt-like perhaps, but that will soon wear
+off. My own dear boy was very like him, and Maud's dear husband was much
+the same. You, I'm afraid, think too much, Michael."
+
+"Oh, no, I don't think very much," said Michael, disclaiming philosophy,
+and greatly afraid that Mrs. Carthew was supposing him a prig.
+
+"You needn't be ashamed of thinking," she said. "After all, the amount
+you think now won't seriously disorganize the world. But you seem to me
+old for your age, much older than Alan for instance, and though your
+conversation with me at any rate is not mature, nevertheless you convey
+somehow an impression of maturity that I cannot quite account for."
+
+Michael could not understand why, when for the first time he was
+confronted with somebody who gave his precocity its due, he was unable
+to discuss it eagerly and voluminously, why he should half resent being
+considered older than Alan.
+
+"Don't look so cross with me," Mrs. Carthew commanded. "I am an old
+woman, and I have a perfect right to say what I please to you. Besides,
+you and I have had many conversations, and I take a great interest in
+you. What are you going to be?"
+
+"Well, that's what I can't find out," said Michael desperately. "I know
+what I'm not going to be, and that's all."
+
+"That's a good deal, I think," said Mrs. Carthew. "Pray tell me what
+professions you have condemned."
+
+"I'm not going into the Army. I'm not going into the Civil Service. I'm
+not going to be a doctor or a lawyer."
+
+"Or a parson?" asked Mrs. Carthew, crunching through so many lupin
+stalks at once that they fell with a rattle on to the path.
+
+"Well, I have thought about being a parson," Michael slowly granted.
+"But I don't think parsons ought to marry."
+
+"Good gracious," exclaimed Mrs. Carthew, "you're surely not engaged?"
+
+"Oh, no," said Michael; but he felt extremely flattered by the
+imputation. "Still, I might want to be."
+
+"Then you're in love," decided Mrs. Carthew. "No wonder you look so
+careworn. I suppose she's nearly thirty and has promised to wait until
+you come of age. I can picture her. If I had my stick with me I could
+draw her on the gravel. A melon stuck on a bell-glass, I'll be bound."
+
+"I'm not in love, and if I were in love," said Michael with dignity, "I
+certainly shouldn't be in love with anyone like that. But I could be in
+love at any moment, and so I don't think I shall be a parson."
+
+"You've got plenty of time," said Mrs, Carthew. "Alan says you're going
+to Oxford next year."
+
+Michael's heart leapt--next year had never before seemed so imminent.
+
+"I suppose you'll say that I'm an ignorant and foolish old woman, if I
+attempt to give you advice about Oxford; but I gave you advice once
+about school, and I'll do the same again. To begin with, I think you'll
+find having been to St. James' a handicap. I have an old friend, the
+wife of a don, who assures me that many of the boys who go up from your
+school suffer at Oxford from their selfish incubation by Dr. Brownjohn.
+They're fit for killing too soon. In fact, they have been forced."
+
+"Ah, but I saw that for myself," said Michael. "I had a row with
+Brownjohn about my future."
+
+"How delighted I am to hear that!" said Mrs. Carthew. "I think that I'll
+cut back the delphiniums also. Then you're not going in for a
+scholarship?"
+
+"No," said Michael. "I don't want to be hampered, and I think my
+mother's got plenty of money. But Alan's going to get a scholarship."
+
+"Yes, that is unfortunately necessary," said Mrs. Carthew. "Still, Alan
+is sufficiently typical of the public-school spirit--an odious
+expression yet always unavoidable--to carry off the burden. If you were
+poor, I should advise you to buy overcoats. Three smart overcoats are an
+equipment for a poor man. But I needn't dwell on social ruses in your
+case. Remember that going to Oxford is like going to school. Be normal
+and inconspicuous at first; and when you have established yourself as
+an utterly undistinguished young creature, you can career into whatever
+absurdities of thought, action or attire you will. In your first year
+establish your sanity; in your second year display your charm; and in
+your third year do whatever you like. Now there is Alan calling, and
+we'll leave the paths strewn with these cut stalks as a Memento Mori to
+the gardener. What a charming woman your mother is. She has that
+exquisite vagueness which when allied with good breeding is perfectly
+irresistible, at any rate to a practical and worldly old woman like me.
+But then I've had an immense amount of time in which to tidy up.
+Pleasant hours to you down here. It's delightful to hear about the place
+the sound of boys laughing and shouting."
+
+Michael left Mrs. Carthew, rather undecided as to what exactly she
+thought of him or Alan or anybody else. As he walked over the lawn that
+went sloping down to the stream, he experienced a revulsion from the
+interest he took in listening to what people thought about him, and he
+now began to feel an almost morbid sensitiveness to the opinion of
+others. This destroyed some of the peace which he had sought and
+cherished down here in the country. He began to wonder if that wise old
+lady had been laughing at him, whether all she said had been an implied
+criticism of his attitude towards existence. Her praise must have been
+grave irony; her endorsement of his behaviour had been disguised
+reproof. She really admired Alan, and had only been trying as gently as
+possible to make him come into line with her nephew. He himself must
+seem to her eccentric, undignified, a flamboyant sort of creature whom
+she pitied and whose errors she wished to remedy. Michael was mortified
+by his retrospect of the conversation, and felt inclined when he saw
+Alan to make an excuse and retire from his society, until his
+self-esteem had recovered from the rebuke that had lately been
+inflicted. Indeed, it called for a great effort on Michael's part to
+embark in the canoe with his paragon and sit face to face without
+betraying the wound that was damaging his own sense of personality.
+
+"You had a very long jaw with Aunt Enid," said Alan. "I thought you were
+never coming. She polished me off in about three minutes."
+
+Michael looked darkly at Alan for a moment before he asked with
+ungracious accentuation what on earth Alan and Mrs. Carthew had talked
+about.
+
+"She was rather down on me," said Alan. "I think she must have thought I
+was putting on side about getting my Eleven."
+
+Michael was greatly relieved to hear this, and his brow cleared as he
+enquired what was wrong.
+
+"Well, I can't remember her exact words," Alan went on. "But she said I
+must be careful not to grow up into a strong silent Englishman, because
+their day was done. She practically told me I was rather an ass, and
+pretended to be fearfully surprized when she heard I was going to try
+for a scholarship at Oxford. She was squashing slugs all the time she
+was talking, and I could do nothing but look a bigger fool than ever and
+count the slugs. I ventured to remark once that most people thought it
+was a good thing to be keen on games, and she said half the world was
+composed of fools which accounted for the preponderation--I mean
+preponderance--of pink on the map. She said it always looked like an
+advertizement of successful fox-hunting. And when I carefully pointed
+out that I'd never all my life had a chance to hunt, she said 'More's
+the pity,' I couldn't make out what she was driving at; so, feeling
+rather a worm, I shot off as soon as I could. What did she say to you?"
+
+"Oh, nothing much," said Michael triumphantly. "She's a rum old girl,
+but rather decent."
+
+"She's too clever for me," said Alan, shaking his head. "It's like
+batting to a pro."
+
+Then from the complexities of feminine judgment, the conversation glided
+easily like the canoe towards a discussion of the umpire's decision last
+term in giving Alan out l.b.w. to a ball that pitched at least two feet
+away from the off stump.
+
+"It was rotten," said Alan fervidly.
+
+"It was putrid," Michael agreed.
+
+To avoid the difficulty of a first night in a strange cottage, Mrs. Fane
+and Michael had supper at Cobble Place; and after a jolly evening spent
+in looking for pencils to play games that nobody could ever recollect in
+all their rich perfection of potential incidents, Michael and Mrs. Fane
+walked with leisurely paces back to Woodbine Cottage through a
+sweet-savoured moonless night.
+
+Michael enjoyed the intimate good night beneath so small a roof, and
+wished that Stella were with them. He lay awake, reading from each in
+turn of the tower of books he had erected by his bedside to fortify
+himself against sleeplessness. It was a queer enough mixture--Swinburne,
+Keats, Matthew Arnold, Robinson Crusoe, Half-hours with the Mystics, Tom
+Brown's Schooldays, Daudet's Sappho, the second volume of The Savoy, The
+Green Carnation, Holy Living and Dying; and as each time he changed his
+mind and took another volume, on the gabled ceiling the monstrous shadow
+that was himself filled him with a dreadful uncertainty. After an hour
+or so, he went to sit by the low window, leaning out and seeming to hear
+the dark world revolve in its course. Stars shook themselves clear from
+great rustling trees, and were in time enmeshed by others. The waning
+moon came up behind a rounded hill. A breeze fluttered down the dusty
+road, and was silent.
+
+Michael fell to wondering whether he could ever bring himself in tune
+with these slow progressions of nature, whether he could renounce after
+one haggard spell of experience the mazy stir of transitory emotions
+that danced always beyond this dream. An Half-hour with St. John of the
+Cross made him ask himself whether this were the dark night of the soul
+through which he was passing. But he had never travelled yet, nor was he
+travelling now. He was simply sitting quiescent, allowing himself to be
+passed. These calm and stately figures of humanity whom he admired in
+their seclusion had only reached it after long strife. Mrs. Carthew had
+lost a husband and a son, had seen her daughter leave her house as a
+governess. Joan and May had for many years sunk their hopes in tending
+their mother. Nancy was away earning money, and would be entitled to
+retire here one day. Mrs. Ross had endured himself and Stella for
+several years, had married and lost her husband, and had borne a child.
+All these had won their timeless repose and their serene uncloying ease.
+They were not fossils, but perdurable images of stone. And his mother,
+she was--he stopped his reverie. Of his mother he knew nothing. Outside
+the dust stirred in the road fretfully; a malaise was in the night air.
+Michael shivered and went back to bed, and as he turned to blow out his
+candle he saw above him huge and menacing his own shadow. A cock crowed.
+
+"Silly ass," muttered Michael, "he thinks it's already morning," and
+turning over after a dreamless sleep he found it was morning. So he rose
+and dressed himself serenely for a long sunburnt day.
+
+On his way up the road to call for Alan he met the postman, who in
+answer to his enquiries handed him a letter from South Africa stamped
+all over with mysterious official abbreviations. He took it up to his
+mother curiously.
+
+At lunch he asked her about the news from the war.
+
+"Yes, dear, I had a letter," she murmured.
+
+"From Lord Saxby, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes, dear."
+
+"Anything interesting?" Michael persisted.
+
+"Oh, no, it's only about marches and not being able to wash properly."
+
+"I thought it might be interesting," Michael speculated.
+
+"No, dear. It wouldn't interest you," said Mrs. Fane in her tone of
+gentle discouragement.
+
+"I don't want to be inquisitive," said Michael resentfully.
+
+"No, dear, I'm sure you don't," his mother softly agreed.
+
+The holidays ran their pastoral course of sun and rain, of clouds and
+winds, until the last week arrived with September in her most majestic
+mood of flawless halcyon. These were days that more than any hitherto
+enhanced for Michael the reverence he felt for the household of Cobble
+Place. These were days when Mrs. Carthew stepped wisely along her
+flowery enclosure, pondering the plums and peaches on the warm walls
+that in a transcendency of mellow sunlight almost took on the texture of
+living sunburnt flesh. These were days when Joan and May Carthew went
+down the village street with great bunches of Michaelmas daisies, of
+phloxes and Japanese anemones, or sat beneath the mulberry tree, sewing
+in the bee-drowsed air.
+
+At the foot of the hill beyond the stream was a straggling wind-frayed
+apple-orchard, fresh pasturage for lambs in spring, and now in September
+a jolly haunt for the young son of Mrs. Ross. Here one afternoon, when
+Alan was away at Basingstead Major playing the last cricket match of the
+year, Michael plunged down in the grass beside her.
+
+They sat for a while in silence, and Mrs. Ross seemed to Michael to be
+waiting for him to speak first, as if by her own attitude of mute
+expectation she could lure him on to express himself more openly than by
+direct question and shy answer. He felt the air pregnant with
+confidences, and kept urging himself on to begin the statement and
+revelation of his character, sure that whatever he desired to ask must
+be asked now while he was perhaps for the last time liable to this grave
+woman's influence, conscious of the security of goodness, envious of the
+maternity of peace. This grey-eyed woman seemed to sit above him like a
+proud eagle, careless of homage, never to be caught, never to be tamed,
+a figure for worship and inspiration. Michael wondered why all the women
+who awed him had grey eyes. Blue eyes fired his senses, striking sparks
+and kindling answering flames from his own blue eyes. Brown eyes left
+him indifferent. But grey eyes absorbed his very being, whether they
+were lustrous and violet-shaded like his mother's and Stella's, or
+whether, like Mrs. Ross's, they were soft as grey sea-water that in a
+moment could change to the iron-bound rocks they were so near.
+
+Still Michael did not speak, but watched Mrs. Ross solemnly hand back to
+the rosy child sitting beside her in the grass the fallen apples that he
+would always fling from him exuberantly, panting the while at laughter's
+highest pitch.
+
+"I wonder if I ever laughed like that," said Michael.
+
+"You were a very serious little boy, when I first knew you," Mrs. Ross
+told him.
+
+"I must have been rather depressing," Michael sighed.
+
+"No, indeed you were not, dear Michael," she answered. "You had much too
+much personality."
+
+"Have I now?" Michael asked sharply.
+
+"Yes, of course you have."
+
+"Well, what gives it to me?"
+
+"Surely personality is something that is born with one. Personality
+can't be made," said Mrs. Ross.
+
+"You don't think experience has got anything to do with it?" Michael
+pressed.
+
+"I think experience makes the setting, and according to the experience
+the personality is perfected or debased, but nothing can destroy
+personality, not even death," she murmured, far away for a moment from
+this orchard.
+
+"Which would you say had the stronger personality--Alan or I?" asked
+Michael.
+
+"I should say you had," said Mrs. Ross. "Or at any rate you have a
+personality that will affect a larger number of people, either
+favourably or unfavourably."
+
+"But Alan influences me more than I influence him," Michael argued.
+
+"That may be," Mrs. Ross admitted. "Though I think your influence over
+Alan is very strong in this way. I think Alan is always very eager to
+see you at your best, and probably as your friendship goes on he will be
+more solicitous for you than for himself. I should say that he would be
+likely to sink himself in you. I wonder if you realize what a
+passionately loyal soul he is."
+
+Michael flushed with pleasure at this appreciation of his friend, and
+his ambition went flying over to Basingstead Major to inspire Alan to
+bat his best. Then he burst forth in praise of him; he spoke of his
+changelessness, his freedom from moods, his candour and toleration and
+modesty.
+
+"But the terrible thing is," said Michael suddenly, "that I always feel
+that without noticing it I shall one day leave Alan behind."
+
+"But when you turn back, you'll find him just the same, don't forget;
+and you may be glad that he did not come with you. You may be glad that
+from his slowness you can find an indication of the road that I'm sure
+you yourself will one day try to take. Alan will travel by it all his
+life. You'll travel by it ultimately. Alan will never really appreciate
+its beauty. You will. That will be your recompense for what you suffer
+before you find it."
+
+Mrs. Ross, as if to conceal emotion, turned quickly to romp with her
+son. Then she looked at Michael:
+
+"And haven't you already once or twice left Alan behind?"
+
+Suddenly to Michael her grey eyes seemed accusing.
+
+"Yes, I suppose I have," he granted. "But isn't that the reason why my
+personality affects more people than his? You said just now that
+experience was only the setting, but I'm sure in my case it's more than
+a mere setting."
+
+And even as he spoke all his experience seemed to cloud his brow,
+knitting and lining it with perplexed wrinkles.
+
+"Mrs. Ross, you won't think me very rude if I say you always remind me
+of Pallas Athene? You always have, you know. At first it was just a
+vague outward resemblance, because you're tall and sort of cool-looking,
+and I really think your nose is rather Greek, if you don't mind my
+saying so."
+
+"Oh, Michael," Mrs. Ross smiled. "I think you're even more unalterable
+than Alan. I seem to see you as a little boy again, when you talk like
+that."
+
+Michael, however, was too keen on the scent of his comparison to be put
+off by smiles, and he went on eagerly:
+
+"Now I realize that you actually are like Athene. You're one of those
+people who seem to have sprung into the world fully armed. I can't
+imagine that you were ever young."
+
+Mrs. Ross laughed outright at this.
+
+"Wait a minute," cried Michael. "Or ever old for that matter. And you
+know all about me. No, you needn't shake your head like that. Because
+you do."
+
+Young Kenneth was so much roused by Michael's triumphant asseverations
+that he began to shout and kick in delighted tune and fling the apples
+from him with a vigour that he had never yet reached.
+
+"You know," Michael continued breathlessly, while the boy on the grass
+gurgled his endorsement of every word. "You know that I'm old for my
+age, that I've already done things that other chaps at school only
+whisper about."
+
+He stopped suddenly, for the grey eyes had become like rocks, and though
+the baby still panted ecstatically, there fell a chill.
+
+"I'm very sorry to hear it," said Mrs. Ross.
+
+"Well, why did you lead me on to confide in you?" said Michael sullenly.
+"I thought you would sympathize."
+
+"Michael, I apologize," she said, melting. "I didn't mean to hurt your
+feelings. I dare say--ah, Michael, you see how easily all my shining
+armour falls to pieces."
+
+"Another broken bottle," Michael muttered.
+
+He got up abruptly and, though there were tears in his eyes, she could
+not win him back.
+
+"Dear old boy, do tell me. Don't make the mistake of going back into
+yourself, because I failed you for a moment."
+
+Mrs. Ross held out her hand, but Michael walked away.
+
+"You don't understand," he turned to say. "You couldn't understand. And
+I don't want you to be able to understand. You mustn't think I'm
+sulking, or being rude, and really I'd rather you didn't understand.
+That boy of yours won't ever want you to understand. I don't think he'll
+ever do anything that isn't perfectly comprehensible."
+
+"Michael," said Mrs. Ross, "don't be so bitter. You'll be sorry soon."
+
+"Soon?" asked Michael fiercely. "Soon? Why soon? What's going to happen
+to make me sorry soon? Something is going to happen. I know. I feel it."
+
+He fled through the wind-frayed orchard up the hill-side. With his back
+against the tower called Grogg's Folly he looked over four counties and
+vowed he would go heedless of everything that stood between him and
+experience. He would deny himself nothing; he would prove to the hilt
+everything.
+
+"I must know," he wrung out of himself. "Everything that has happened
+must have happened for some reason. I will believe that. I can't believe
+in God, until I can believe in myself. And how can I believe in myself
+yet?"
+
+The four counties under September's munificence mocked him with their
+calm.
+
+"I know that all these people at Cobble Place are all right," he
+groaned. "I know that, just as I know Virgil is a great poet. But I
+never knew Virgil was great until I read Swinburne. Oh, I want to be
+calm and splendid and proud of myself, but I want to understand life
+while I'm alive. I want to believe in immortality, but in case I never
+can be convinced of it, I want to be convinced of something. Everything
+seems to be tumbling down nowadays. What's so absurd is that nobody can
+understand anybody else, let alone the universe. Mrs. Ross can
+understand why I like Alan, but she can't understand why I want love.
+Viner can understand why I get depressed, but he can't understand why I
+can't be cured immediately. Wilmot could understand why I wanted to read
+his rotten books, but he can't understand why the South African War
+upset me. And so on with everybody. I'm determined to understand
+everybody," Michael vowed, "even if I can't have faith," he sighed to
+the four counties.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVI: _Blue Eyes_
+
+
+Michael managed to avoid during the rest of the week any reference,
+direct or indirect, to his interrupted conversation with Mrs. Ross,
+though he fancied a reproachfulness in her manner towards him,
+especially at the moment of saying good-bye. He was not therefore much
+surprized to receive a letter from her soon after he was back in
+Carlington Road.
+
+     COBBLE PLACE,
+
+     _September 18th._
+
+     _My dear Michael,_
+
+     _I have blamed myself entirely for what happened the other day. I
+     should have been honoured by your confidence, and I cannot think
+     why a wretched old-fashioned priggishness should have shown itself
+     just when I least wished it would. I confess I was shocked for a
+     moment, and perhaps I horridly imagined more than you meant to
+     imply. If I had paused to think, I should have known that your
+     desire to confide in me was alone enough to prove that you were
+     fully conscious of the effect of anything you may have done. And
+     after all in any sin--forgive me if I'm using too strong a word
+     under a misapprehension--it is the effect which counts most
+     deeply._
+
+     _I'm inclined to think that in all you do through life, you will
+     chiefly have to think of the effect of it on other people. I
+     believe that you yourself are one of those characters that never
+     radically deteriorate. This is rather a dangerous statement to make
+     to anyone so young as you are. But I'm sure you are wise enough not
+     to use it in justification of any wrong impulse. Do always
+     remember, my dear boy, that however unscathed you feel yourself to
+     be, you must never assume that to be the case with anyone else. I
+     am really dreadfully distressed to think that by my own want of
+     sympathy on a crucial occasion I have had to try to put into a
+     letter what could only have been hammered out in a long talk. And
+     we did hammer out something the other day. Or am I too optimistic?
+     Write to me some time and reassure me a little, for I'm truly
+     worried about you, and so indignant with my stupid self. Best love
+     from us all,_
+
+     _Your affectionate_
+
+     _Maud Ross._
+
+Michael merely pondered this letter coldly. He was still under the
+influence of the disappointment, and when he answered Mrs. Ross he
+answered her without regard to any wound he might inflict.
+
+     64 CARLINGTON ROAD,
+
+     _Sunday._
+
+     _Dear Mrs. Ross,_
+
+     _Please don't bother any more about it. I ought to have known
+     better. I don't think it was such a very crucial occasion. The
+     weather is frightfully hot, and I don't feel much like playing
+     footer this term. I'm reading Dante, not in Italian, of course.
+     London is as near the Inferno as anything, I should think. It's
+     horribly hot. Excuse this short letter, but I've nothing to say._
+
+     _Yours affectionately,_
+
+     _Michael._
+
+Mrs. Ross made one more brief attempt to recapture him, but Michael put
+her off with the most superficial gossip of school-life, and she did not
+try again. He meant to play football, notwithstanding the hot weather,
+but finding that his boots were worn out, he continually put off buying
+another pair and let himself drift into October before he began. Then
+he hurt his leg, and had to stop for a while. This spoiled his faint
+chance for the First Fifteen, and in the end he gave up football
+altogether without much regret.
+
+Games were a great impediment after all, when October's thin blue skies
+and sheen of pearl-soft airs led him on to dream along the autumnal
+streets. Sometimes he would wander by himself through the groves of Hyde
+Park and Kensington Gardens, or on some secluded green chair he would
+sit reading Verlaine, while continuously about him the slow leaves of
+the great planes swooped and fluttered down ambiguously like silent
+birds.
+
+One Saturday afternoon he was sitting thus, when through the silver fog
+that on every side wrought the ultimate dissolution of the view Michael
+saw the slim figure of a girl walking among the trees. His mind was gay
+with Verlaine's delicate and fantastic songs, and this slim girl, as she
+moved wraith-like over the ground marbled with fallen leaves, seemed to
+express the cadence of the verse which had been sighing across the
+printed page.
+
+The girl with downcast glance walked on, seeming to follow her path
+softly as one might follow through embroidery a thread of silk, and as
+she drew nearer to Michael out of the fog's enchantment she lost none of
+her indefinite charm; but she seemed still exquisite and silver-dewed.
+There was no one else in sight, and now already Michael could hear the
+lisping of her steps; then a breath of air among the tree-tops more
+remote sent floating, swaying, fluttering about her a flight of leaves.
+She paused, startled by the sudden shower, and at that moment the
+down-going autumnal sun glanced wanly through the glades and lighted her
+gossamer-gold hair with kindred gleams. The girl resumed her dreaming
+progress, and Michael now frankly stared in a rapture. She was dressed
+in deepest green box-cloth, and the heavy folds that clung to that
+lissome form made her ankles behind great pompons of black silk seem
+astonishingly slender. One hand was masked by a small muff of astrakhan;
+the other curled behind to gather close her skirt. Her hair tied back
+with a black bow sprayed her tall neck with its beaten gold. She came
+along downcast until she was within a few feet of Michael; then she
+looked at him. He smiled, and her mouth when she answered him with
+answering smile was like a flower whose petals have been faintly
+stirred. Indeed, it was scarcely a smile, scarcely more than a tremor,
+but her eyes deepened suddenly, and Michael drawn into their dusky blue
+exclaimed simply:
+
+"I say, I've been watching you for a long time."
+
+"I don't think you ought to talk to me like this in Kensington Gardens.
+Why, there's not a soul in sight. And I oughtn't to let you talk."
+
+Her voice was low with a provocative indolence of tone, and while she
+spoke her lips scarcely moved, so that their shape was never for an
+instant lost, and the words seemed to escape like unwilling fugitives.
+
+"What are you reading?" she idly asked, tapping Michael's book with her
+muff.
+
+"Verlaine."
+
+"French?"
+
+He nodded, and she pouted in delicious disapproval of his learned
+choice.
+
+"Fancy reading French unless you've got to."
+
+"But I enjoy these poems," Michael declared. "As a matter of fact you're
+just like them. At least you were when I saw you first in the distance.
+Now you're more real somehow."
+
+Her gaze had wandered during his comparison and Michael, a little hurt
+by her inattention, asked if she were expecting somebody.
+
+"Oh, no. I just came out for a walk. I get a headache if I stay in all
+the afternoon. Now I must go on. Good-bye."
+
+She scattered with a light kick the little heap of leaves that during
+their conversation she had been amassing, and with a half-mocking wave
+of her muff prepared to leave him.
+
+"I say, don't tear off," Michael begged. "Where do you live?"
+
+"Oh, a long way from here," she said.
+
+"But where?"
+
+"West Kensington."
+
+"So do I," cried Michael, thinking to himself that all the gods of luck
+and love were fighting on his side this afternoon. "We'll walk home
+together."
+
+"Shall we?" murmured the girl, poised on bent toes as if she were minded
+to flee from him in a breath.
+
+"Oh, we must," vowed Michael.
+
+"But I mustn't dawdle," she protested.
+
+"Of course not," he affirmed with almost an inflexion of puritanical
+rigour.
+
+"You're leaving your book, stupid," she laughed, as he rose to take his
+place by her side.
+
+"I wouldn't have minded, because all that's in that book is in you," he
+declared. "I think I'll leave it behind for a lark."
+
+She ran back lightly and opened it to see whether his name were on the
+front page.
+
+"Michael Fane," she murmured. "What does 'ex libris' mean?" Yet even as
+she asked the question her concentration failed, and she seemed not to
+hear his answer.
+
+"You didn't really want to know, you funny girl," said Michael.
+
+"Know what?" she echoed, blinking round at him over her shoulder as they
+walked on.
+
+"The meaning of 'ex libris.'"
+
+"But I found out your name," she challenged. "And you don't know mine."
+
+"What is it?" Michael dutifully asked.
+
+"I don't think I'll tell you."
+
+"Ah, do."
+
+"Well, then, it's Lily--and I've got a sister called Doris."
+
+"How old are you?"
+
+"How old do you think?"
+
+"Seventeen?" Michael hazarded.
+
+She nodded. It was on the tip of his tongue to claim kinship on the
+score of their similar years, but discretion defeated honesty, and he
+said aloofly, gazing up at the sky:
+
+"I'm nineteen and a half."
+
+She told him more as they mingled with the crowds in Kensington High
+Street, that her mother was Mrs. Haden, who recited in public sometimes,
+that her sister Doris wanted to go on the stage, and that they lived in
+Trelawny Road.
+
+"I know Trelawny Road," Michael interjected, and in the gathering crowds
+she was perforce closer to him, so that he was fain to guide her gently
+past the glittering shops, immensely conscious of the texture of her
+dress. They emerged into wider, emptier pavements, and the wind came
+chilly down from Camden Hill, so that she held her muff against her
+cheek, framing its faint rose. Twilight drew them closer, and Michael
+wishful of an even less frequented pavement suggested they should cross
+the road by Holland Park. A moment she paused while a scarlet omnibus
+clattered past, then she ran swiftly to where the trees overhung the
+railings. It was exhilarating to follow her over the wooden road that
+answered to his footsteps like castanets, and as he caught up with her
+to fondle her bent arm. Their walk died away to a saunter, while the
+street-lamps beamed upon them with longer intervals of dark between each
+succeeding lampshine. More slowly still they moved towards West
+Kensington and parting. Her arm was twined round his like ivy, and
+their two hands came together like leaves. At last the turning she must
+take appeared on the other side of the road, and again she ran and again
+he caught her arm. But this time it was still warm with long contact and
+divinely familiar, since but for a moment had it been relinquished. The
+dim side-street enfolded them, and no dismaying passers-by startled
+their intercourse.
+
+"But soon it will be Trelawny Road," she whispered.
+
+"Then kiss me quickly," said Michael. "Lily, you must."
+
+It was in the midmost gloom between two lamps that they kissed first.
+
+"Lily, once again."
+
+"No, no," she whispered.
+
+"But you're mine," he called exultantly. "You are. You know you are."
+
+"Perhaps," she whispered, but even as his arms drew her towards him, she
+slipped from his embrace, laughed very low and sweet, bounded forward,
+waved her muff, ran swiftly to the next lamp-post, paused and blew him
+kisses, then vanished round the corner of her road.
+
+But a long time ago they had said they would meet to-morrow, and as
+Michael stood in a maze all the clocks in the world ding-donged in his
+ears the hour of their tryst.
+
+There was only one thing to do for the expression of his joy, and that
+was to run as hard as he could. So he ran, and when he saw two
+coal-holes, he would jump from one to the other, rejoicing in the ring
+of their metal covers. And all the time out of breath he kept saying,
+"I'm in love, in love, in love."
+
+Every passer-by into whose eyes he looked seemed to have the most
+beautiful expression; every poor man seemed to demand that he should
+stay awhile from his own joy to comfort him. The lamp-posts bloomed like
+tropic flowers, swaying and nodding languorously. Every house took on a
+look of the most unutterable completeness; the horses galloped like
+Arabian barbs; policemen expanded like beneficent genii; errand boys
+whistled like nightingales; all familiarity was enchanted, and
+seven-leagued boots took him forward as easily as if he travelled a
+world subdued to the effortless transitions of sleep. Carlington Road
+stretched before him bright, kindly, beckoning to his ingress. Against
+the lighted entrance-hall of Number 64 Michael saw the red and amber
+sparrows like humming-birds, ruby-throated, topaz-winged. The
+parlour-maid's cap and apron were of snow, and the banisters of
+sandalwood.
+
+Michael went to bed early that he might meet her in dreams, but still
+for a long time he sat by his window peering at the tawny moon, while at
+intervals trains went quickly past sparkling and swift as lighted fuses.
+The scent of the leaves lying in the gardens all along Carlington Road
+was vital with the airs from which she had been evoked that afternoon,
+and his only regret was that his bedroom looked out on precisely the
+opposite direction from that where now she was sleeping. Then he himself
+became envious of sleep, and undressed quickly like one who stands
+hot-footed by a lake's edge, eager for the water's cool.
+
+Michael met Lily next day by the dusky corner of a street whose gradual
+loss of outline he had watched occur through a patient hour. It was not
+that Lily was late, but that Michael was so early. Yet in his present
+mood of elation he could enjoy communion even with bricks and mortar. He
+used every guileful ruse to cheat time of his determined moment. He
+would walk along with closed eyes for ten paces and with open eyes for
+ten paces, the convention with himself, almost the wager, being that
+Lily should appear while his eyes were closed. It would have been truly
+disappointing had she swung round the corner while his eyes were open.
+But as it still lacked half an hour of her appointment, there was not
+much fear of that. Then, as really her time drew near, a tenser game was
+played, by which Lily was to appear when his left foot was advanced.
+This match between odd and even lasted until in all its straightness of
+perfect division six o'clock was inscribed upon his watch. No other hour
+could so well have suited her form.
+
+Now began the best game of all, since it was played less with himself
+than with fortune. Michael went to the next turning, and, hiding himself
+from the view of Trelawny Road, only allowed himself to peep at each
+decade. At a hundred and sixty-three he said "She's in sight," one
+hundred and sixty-four, "She's coming." The century was eliminated, too
+cumbersome for his fiery enumeration. Sixty-five, "I know she is."
+Sixty-six, sixty-seven, sixty-eight, sixty-nine! One hundred and seventy
+was said slowly with an exquisite dragging deliberation. Then Michael
+could look, and there she was with muff signalling through the azure
+mists of twilight.
+
+"I say, I told mother about you," murmured Lily. "And she said, 'Why
+didn't you ask him to come in to tea?' But of course she doesn't know
+I'm meeting you this evening. I'm supposed to be going to church."
+
+Michael's heart leaped at the thought that soon he would be able to see
+her in her own home among her own belongings, so that in future no
+conjured picture of her would be incomplete.
+
+"Rather decent of your mother," he said.
+
+"Oh, well, she's got to be very easy-going and all that, though of
+course she doesn't like us to get talked about. What shall we do now?"
+
+"Walk about, I suppose," said Michael. "Unless we get on top of a bus
+and ride somewhere? Why not ride up to Hammersmith Broadway and then
+walk along the towing-path?"
+
+They found a seat full in the frore wind's face, but yet the ride was
+all too short, and almost by the time Michael had finished securing the
+waterproof rug in which they sat incapable of movement, so tightly were
+they braced in, it was time to undo it again and dismount. While the
+church bells were ringing, they crossed Hammersmith Suspension Bridge
+ethereal in the creeping river-mist and faintly motionable like a ship
+at anchor. Then they wandered by the river that lapped the dead reeds
+and gurgled along the base of the shelving clay bank. The wind drearily
+stirred the osier-beds, and from time to time the dull tread of
+indefinite passing forms was heard upon the sodden path. Michael could
+feel the humid fog lying upon Lily's sleeve, and when he drew her cheek
+to his own it was bedewed with the falling night. But when their lips
+met, the moisture and October chill were all consumed, and like a
+burning rose she flamed upon his vision. Words to express his adoration
+tumbled around him like nightmare speech, evasive, mocking, grotesquely
+inadequate.
+
+"There are no words to say how much I love to hold you, Lily," he
+complained. "It's like holding a flower. And even in the dark I can see
+your eyes."
+
+"I can't see yours," she murmured, and therefore nestled closer, "I like
+you to kiss me," she sighed.
+
+"Oh, why do you?" Michael asked. "Why me?"
+
+"You're nice," she less than whispered.
+
+"Lily, I do love you."
+
+And Michael bit his lip at the close of "love" for the sweet pain of
+making the foolish word more powerful, more long.
+
+"What a funny husky voice," she murmured in her own deep indolent tones.
+
+"Do you like me to call you 'darling' or 'dearest' best?" he asked.
+
+"Both."
+
+"Ah, but which do you like best?"
+
+To Michael the two words were like melodies which he had lately learned
+to play. Indeed, they seemed to him his own melodies never played
+before, and he was eager for Lily to pronounce judgment.
+
+"Why do you ask questions?" she wondered.
+
+"Say 'dearest' to me," Michael begged.
+
+"No, no," she blushed against his heart.
+
+"But say which you like best," he urged. "Darling or dearest?"
+
+"Well, darling," she pouted.
+
+"You've said it," cried Michael rapturously. "Now you can say it of your
+own accord. Oh, Lily, say it when you kiss me."
+
+"But supposing I never kiss you ever again?" asked Lily, pulling away
+from his arms. "And besides we must go back."
+
+"Well, we needn't hurry."
+
+"Not if you come at once," she agreed.
+
+One more kiss, one more gliding dreaming walk, one more pause to bid the
+river farewell from the towering bridge, one more wrestle with the
+waterproof-rug, one more slow lingering and then suddenly swift escaping
+finger, one more wave of the muff, one last aerial salutation, and she
+was gone till Wednesday.
+
+Michael was left alone between the tall thin houses of Kensington, but
+beneath his feet he seemed to feel the world swing round through space;
+and all the tall thin houses, all the fluted lamp-posts, all the
+clustering chimney-pots reeled about him in the ecstasy of his aroused
+existence.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVII: Lily
+
+
+When Michael came into the dining-room after he had left Lily, his
+mother said: "Dearest boy, what have you been doing? Your eyes are
+shining like stars."
+
+Here was the opportunity to tell her about Lily, but Michael could not
+avail himself of it. These last two days seemed as yet too incomplete
+for revelation. Somehow he felt that he was creating a work of art, and
+that to tell his mother of conception or progress would be to spoil the
+perfection of his impulse. There was only one person on earth to whom he
+could confide this cataclysmic experience, and that was Alan. He and
+Alan had dreamed enough together in the past to make him unashamed to
+announce at last his foothold on reality. But supposing Alan were to
+laugh, as he had laughed over the absurdity of Kathleen? Such a
+reception of his news would ruin their friendship; and yet if their
+friendship could not endure the tale of true love, was it not already
+ruined? He must tell Alan, at whatever cost. And where should he tell
+him? Such a secret must not be lightly entrusted. Time and place must
+come harmoniously, befalling with that rare felicity which salutes the
+inevitable hours of a human life.
+
+"Mother," said Michael, "would you mind if I stayed the night over at
+Richmond?"
+
+"To-night?" Mrs. Fane echoed in astonishment.
+
+"Well, perhaps not to-night," conceded Michael unwillingly. "But
+to-morrow night?"
+
+"To-morrow night by all means," Mrs. Fane agreed.
+
+"Nothing has happened?" she asked anxiously. "You seem so flushed and
+strange."
+
+"I'm just the same as usual," Michael declared. "It's hot in this room.
+I think I'll take a short walk."
+
+"But you've been out all the afternoon," Mrs. Fane protested.
+
+"Oh, well, I've nothing to do at home."
+
+"You're not feverish?"
+
+"No, no, mother," Michael affirmed, disengaging his parched hand from
+her solicitous touch. "But you know I often feel restless."
+
+She released him, tenderly smiling; and for one moment he nearly threw
+himself down beside her, covetous of childhood's petting. But the
+impulse spent itself before he acted upon it, and soon he was wandering
+towards Trelawny Road. How empty the corner of it looked, how stark and
+melancholy soared the grey houses guarding its consecrated entrance, how
+solitary shone the lamp-posts, and how sadly echoed the footsteps of
+people going home. Yet only three hours ago they had met on this very
+flagstone that must almost have palpitated to the pressure of her shoes.
+
+Michael walked on until he stood opposite her house. There was a light
+in the bay-window by the front door; perhaps she would come out to post
+a letter. O breathless thought! Surely he heard the sound of a turning
+handle. Ah, why had he not begged her to draw aside the blind at a fixed
+time that he could be cured of his longing by the vision of her darling
+form against the pane? How bitter was the irony of her sitting behind
+that brooding window-pane, unconscious of him. Two days must crawl past
+before she would meet him again, before he would touch her hand, look
+actually into her eyes, watch every quiver and curve of her mouth.
+Places would be enriched with the sight of her, while he ached with the
+torment of love. School must drag through ten intolerable hours; he must
+chatter with people unaware of her; and she must live two days apart
+from his life, two days whose irresponsible minutes and loveless
+occupations made him burn with jealousy of time itself.
+
+Suddenly the door of Lily's house opened, and Michael felt the blood
+course through his body, flooding his heart, swaying his very soul.
+There was a voice in the glimmering hall, but not her voice. Nor was it
+her form that hurried down the steps. It was only the infinitely
+fortunate maidservant whose progress to the letter-box he watched with a
+sickening disappointment. There went one who every day could see Lily.
+Every morning she was privileged to wake her from her rose-fired sleep.
+Every night she could gossip with her outside the magical door of her
+room. Lily must sometimes descend into the kitchen, and there they must
+talk. And yet the idiotic creature was staring curiously at some
+unutterably dull policeman, and wasting moments she did not appreciate.
+Then a leaping thought came to Michael, that if she wasted enough time
+Lily might look round the front-door in search of her. But too soon for
+such an event the maidservant pattered back; the door slammed; and only
+the window-panes of dull gold brooded immutably. How long before Lily
+went up to bed? And did she sleep in a room that fronted the road?
+Michael could bear it no longer and turned away from the exasperation of
+her withheld presence; and he made up his mind that he must know every
+detail of her daily life before he again came sighing ineffectively like
+this in the night-time.
+
+Michael was vexed to find that he could not even conjure Lily to his
+side in sleep, but that even there he must be surrounded by the tiresome
+people of ordinary life. However, there was always a delicious moment,
+just before he lost complete consciousness, when the image of her
+dissolved and materialized elusively above the nebulous confines of
+semi-reality; while always at the very instant of awakening he was
+aware of her moth-winged kisses trembling upon the first liquid flash of
+daylight.
+
+In the 'quarter' Michael suggested to Alan that he should come back to
+Richmond with him, and when Alan looked a little astonished at this
+Monday night proposal, he explained that he had a lot to talk over.
+
+"I nearly came over at nine o'clock last night," Michael announced.
+
+Alan seemed to realize that it must indeed be something of importance
+and could scarcely wait for the time when they should be fast alone and
+primed for confidences.
+
+After dinner Michael proposed a walk up Richmond Hill, and without any
+appearance of strategy managed to persuade Alan to rest awhile on one of
+the seats along the Terrace. In this late autumnal time there was no
+view of the Thames gleaming beneath the sorcery of a summer night. There
+was nothing now but a vast airiness of mist damascening the blades of
+light with which the street-lamps pierced the darkness.
+
+"Pretty wet," said Alan distastefully patting the seat.
+
+"We needn't stay long, but it's rather ripping, don't you think?"
+Michael urged. "Alan, do you remember once we sat here on a night before
+exams at the end of a summer term?"
+
+"Yes, but it was a jolly sight warmer than it is now," said Alan.
+
+"I know. We were in 'whites,'" said Michael pensively. "Alan, I'm in
+love. I am really. You mustn't laugh. I was a fool over that first girl,
+but now I am in love. Alan, she's only seventeen, and she has hair the
+colour of that rather thick honey you get at chemists. Only it isn't
+thick, but as foamy as a lemon-sponge. And her mouth is truly a bow and
+her voice is gloriously deep and exciting, and her eyes are the most
+extraordinary blue--as blue as ink in a bottle when you hold it up to
+the light--and her chin is in two pieces rather like yours, and her
+ankles--well--her ankles are absolutely divine. The extraordinary luck
+is that she loves me, and I want you to meet her. I'm describing her
+very accurately like this because I don't want you to think I'm raving
+or quoting poetry. You see, you don't appreciate poetry, or I could
+describe her much better."
+
+"I do appreciate poetry," protested Alan.
+
+"Oh, I know you like Kipling and Adam Lindsay Gordon, but I mean real
+poetry. Well, I'm not going to argue about that. But, Alan, you must be
+sympathetic and believe that I really am in love. She has a sister
+called Doris. I haven't met her yet, but she's sure to be lovely, and I
+think you ought to fall in love with her. Now wouldn't that be splendid?
+Alan, you do believe I'm in love this time?"
+
+Michael paused anxiously.
+
+"I suppose you must be," said Alan slowly.
+
+"And you're glad?" asked Michael a little wistfully.
+
+"What's going to happen?" Alan wondered.
+
+"Well, of course not much can happen just now. Not much can happen while
+one is still at school," Michael went on. "But don't let's talk about
+what is going to be. Let's talk about what is now."
+
+Alan looked at him reproachfully.
+
+"You used to enjoy talking about the future."
+
+"Because it used always to be more interesting," Michael explained.
+
+Alan rose from the seat and taking Michael's arm drew him down the hill.
+
+"And will you come and meet her sister?" Michael asked.
+
+"I expect so," said Alan.
+
+"Hurrah!" cried the lover.
+
+"I suppose this means the end of football, the end of cricket, in fact
+the end of school as far as you're concerned," Alan complained. "I wish
+you'd waited a little."
+
+"I told you I was years older than you," Michael pointed out,
+involuntarily making excuses.
+
+"Only because you would encourage yourself to think so. Well, I hope
+everything will go well. I hope you won't take it into your head to
+think you've got to marry her immediately, or any rot like that."
+
+"Don't be an ass," said Michael.
+
+"Well, you're such an impulsive devil. By Jove, the fellow that first
+called you 'Bangs' was a bit of a spotter."
+
+"It was Abercrombie," Michael reminded him.
+
+"I should think that was the only clever thing he ever did in his life,"
+said Alan.
+
+"Why, I thought you considered him no end of a good man."
+
+"He was a good forward and a good deep field," Alan granted. "But that
+doesn't make him Shakespeare."
+
+Thence onwards war, or rather sport the schoolboys' substitute, ousted
+love from the conversation, and very soon solo whist with Mr. and Mrs.
+Merivale disposed of both.
+
+On Tuesday night Michael in a fever of enthusiasm for Wednesday's
+approach wrote a letter to Stella.
+
+     64 CARLINGTON ROAD,
+
+     _October_, 1900.
+
+     _My dear Stella,_
+
+     _After this you needn't grouse about my letters being dull, and you
+     can consider yourself jolly honoured because I'm writing to tell
+     you that I'm in love. Her name is Lily Haden. Only, of course,
+     please don't go shouting this all over Germany, and don't write a
+     gushing letter to mother, who doesn't know anything about it. I
+     shouldn't tell you if you were in London, and don't write back and
+     tell me that you're in love with some long-haired dancing-master or
+     one-eyed banjo-player, because I_ know _now what love is, and it's
+     nothing like what you think it is._
+
+     _Lily is fair--not just fair like a doll, but_ frightfully _fair.
+     In fact, her hair is like bubbling champagne, I met her in
+     Kensington Gardens. It was truly romantic, not a silly, giggling,
+     gone-on-a-girl sort of meeting. I hope you're getting on with your
+     music. I shall introduce Lily to you just before your first
+     concert, and then if you can't play, well, you never will. You
+     might write me a letter and say what you think of my news. Not a
+     gushing letter, of course, but as sensible as you can make it._
+
+     _Your loving brother,_
+
+     _Michael._
+
+Michael had meant to say much more to Stella, but ink and paper seemed
+to violate the secluded airs in which Lily had her being. However,
+Stella would understand by his writing at all that he was in deadly
+earnest, and she was unearthly enough to supply what was missing from
+his account.
+
+Meanwhile to-morrow was Wednesday, the mate of Saturday and certainly of
+all the days in the week his second favourite. Monday, of course, was
+vile. Tuesday was colourless. Thursday was nearly as bad as Monday.
+Friday was irksome and only a little less insipid than Tuesday. Sunday
+had many disadvantages. Saturday was without doubt the best day, and
+Wednesday was next best, for though it was not a half-holiday, as long
+ago it had been at Randell House, still it had never quite lost its
+suggestion of holiday. Wednesday--the very word said slowly had a rich
+individuality. Wednesday--how promptly it sprang to the lips for any
+occasion of festivity that did not require full-blown reckless Saturday.
+Monday was dull red. Tuesday was cream-coloured. Thursday was dingy
+purple. Friday was a harsh scarlet, but Wednesday was vivid apple-green,
+or was it a clear cool blue? One or the other.
+
+So, tantalizing himself by not allowing a single thought of Lily while
+he was undressing, Michael achieved bed very easily. Here all
+trivialities were dismissed, and like one who falls asleep when a star
+is shining through his window-pane Michael fell asleep, with Lily
+radiant above the horizon.
+
+It was rather a disappointing Wednesday, for Lily said she could not
+stay out more than a minute, since her mother was indoors and would
+wonder what she was doing. However on Saturday she would see Michael
+again, and announce to her mother that she was going to see him, so that
+on Sunday Michael could be invited to tea.
+
+"And then if mother likes you, why, you can often come in," Lily pointed
+out. "That is, if you want to."
+
+"Saturday," sighed Michael.
+
+"Well, don't spoil the few minutes we've got by being miserable."
+
+"But I can't kiss you."
+
+"Think how much nicer it will be when we can kiss," said Lily
+philosophically.
+
+"I don't believe you care a damn whether we kiss or not," said Michael.
+
+"Don't I?" murmured Lily, quickly touching his hand and as quickly
+withdrawing it to the prison of the muff.
+
+"Ah, do you, Lily?" Michael throbbed out.
+
+"Of course. Now I must go. Good-bye. Don't forget Saturday in the
+Gardens, where we met last time. Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye!" She was
+running from him backwards, forbidding with a wave his sudden step
+towards her. "No, if you dare to move, I shan't meet you on Saturday. Be
+good, be good."
+
+By her corner she paused, stood on tiptoe for one provocative instant,
+blew a kiss, laughed her elfin laugh and vanished more swift than any
+Ariel.
+
+"Damn!" cried Michael sorely, and forthwith set out to walk round West
+Kensington at five miles an hour, until his chagrin, his disappointment
+and his heartsick emptiness were conquered, or at any rate sufficiently
+humbled to make him secure against unmanly tears.
+
+When Saturday finally did arrive, Michael did not sit reading Verlaine,
+but wandered from tree-trunk to tree-trunk like Orlando in despair. Then
+Lily came at last sedately, and brought the good news that to-morrow
+Michael should come to tea at her house.
+
+"But where does your mother think we met?" he asked in perplexity.
+
+"Oh, I told her it was in Kensington Gardens," said Lily carelessly.
+
+"But doesn't she think I must be an awful bounder?"
+
+"Why, you silly, I told her you were at St. James' School."
+
+"But I never told you I was at school," exclaimed Michael, somewhat
+aghast.
+
+"I know you didn't, and you never told me that you weren't eighteen
+yet."
+
+"I am in a month or two," said Michael. "But, good Lord, who have you
+been talking to?"
+
+"Ah, that's the greatest secret in the world," laughed Lily.
+
+"Oh, no, do tell me."
+
+"Well, I know a boy called Drake who knows you."
+
+"That beast!" cried Michael.
+
+"I think he's quite a nice boy. He lives next door to us and----"
+
+Michael kicked angrily the dead leaves lying about his feet, and almost
+choked with astonished fury.
+
+"Why, my dear girl, he's absolutely barred. He's as unpopular as anybody
+I know. I hope you won't discuss me with that hulking brute. What the
+deuce right has he got to tell you anything about me?"
+
+"Because I asked him, and you needn't look so enraged, because if you
+want to know why you're coming to tea, it's because I asked Arthur----"
+
+"Who's Arthur?" growled Michael.
+
+"Arthur Drake."
+
+"Go on," said Michael icily.
+
+"I shan't go on, if you look like that."
+
+"I can't help how I look. I don't carry a glass round with me," said
+Michael. "So I suppose this worm Drake had the cheek to tell your mother
+I was all right. Drake! Wait till I see the brute on Monday morning."
+
+"Well, if you take my advice," said Lily, "you'll be nice to him,
+because he's supposed to have introduced us."
+
+"What lies! What lies!" Michael stamped.
+
+"You told me a lie about your age," Lily retorted. "And I've told mother
+a lie on your account, so you needn't be so particular. And if you think
+you're going to make me cry, you're not."
+
+She sat down on a seat and looked out at the bare woodland with sullen
+eyes.
+
+"Has Drake ever dared to make love to you?" demanded Michael.
+
+"That's my business," said Lily. "You've no right to ask me questions
+like that."
+
+Michael looked at her so adorable even now, and suddenly throwing his
+dignity to the dead leaves, he sat close beside her caressingly.
+
+"Darling Lily," he whispered, "it was my fault. I lied first. I don't
+care how much you talked about me. I don't care about anything but you.
+I'll even say Drake is a decent chap--though he really isn't even
+moderately decent. Lily, we had such a rotten Wednesday, and to-day
+ought to be perfect. Will you forgive me? Will you?"
+
+And the quarrel was over.
+
+"But you don't care anything about Drake?" Michael asked, when half an
+hour had dreamed itself away.
+
+"Of course not," she reassured him. "Arthur likes Doris better than
+me."
+
+"But he mustn't like Doris," said Michael eagerly. "At least she mustn't
+like him. Because I've got a friend--at least three million times as
+decent as Drake--who wants to be in love with Doris, or rather he will
+want to be when he sees her."
+
+"Why, you haven't seen Doris yourself yet," laughed Lily.
+
+"Oh, of course my plan may all come to nothing," Michael admitted. "But
+look here, I vote we don't bother about anybody else in the world but
+ourselves for the rest of the afternoon."
+
+Nor did they.
+
+"Shall I wear a top-hat to-morrow?" Michael asked even in the very
+poignancy of farewell. "I mean--will your mother prefer it?"
+
+"Oh, no, the people who come to tea with us on Sunday are mostly artists
+and actors," decided Lily judicially.
+
+"Do lots of people come then?" asked Michael, quickly jealous.
+
+"A good many."
+
+"I might as well have fallen in love with one of the Royal Family,"
+sighed Michael in despair.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Well, I never can see you alone," he declared.
+
+"Why, we've had the whole of this afternoon," she told him.
+
+"Do you call sitting in the middle of Kensington Gardens being alone?
+Why, it was crammed with people," he ejaculated in disgust.
+
+"I must go, I must go, I must go," Lily whispered and almost seemed to
+be preening her wings in the lamplight before she flew away.
+
+"I say, what number is Drake's house?" Michael asked, with a consummate
+affectation of casual enquiry.
+
+She told him laughingly, and in a most malicious hurry would not even
+linger a moment to ask him why he wanted to know. Coldly and
+deliberately Michael after dinner rang the bell of Drake's house.
+
+"Is--er--Master Arthur at home?" he asked the maid.
+
+"Master Arthur," she cried. "Someone to see you."
+
+"Hullo, Bangs," shouted Drake, emerging effusively from a doorway.
+
+"Oh, hullo," said Michael loftily. "I thought I'd call to see if you
+felt like coming out."
+
+"Right-o," said Drake. "Wait half a tick while I tell my mater. Come in,
+and meet my people."
+
+"Oh, no," said Michael. "I'm beastly untidy."
+
+He would condescend to Drake for the sake of his love, but he did not
+think that love demanded the sacrifice of condescending to a possibly
+more expansive acquaintance with Drake's family.
+
+"So you've met the fair Lily," Drake said, as they strolled along.
+"Pretty smart, what, my boy?"
+
+"I'm going to tea with them to-morrow," Michael informed him.
+
+"Mrs. Haden's a bit thick," said Drake confidentially. "And Doris is of
+a very coming-on disposition."
+
+Michael thought of Alan and sighed; then he thought of himself listening
+to this and he was humiliated.
+
+"But Lily is a bit stand-offish," said Drake. "Of course I never could
+stand very fair girls, myself. I say, talking of girls, there's a girl
+in Sherringham Road, well--she's an actress's French maid, as a matter
+of fact, but, my gad, if you like cayenne, you ought to come along with
+me, and I'll introduce you. She'll be alone now. Are you on?"
+
+"Oh, thanks very much," said Michael. "But I must get back. Good-night,
+Drake."
+
+"Well, you're a nice chap to ask a fellow to come out. Come on, don't be
+an ass. Her name's Marie."
+
+"I don't care if her name's Marie or Mabel or what it is," Michael
+declared in exasperation. "I'm sorry. I've got to go home. Thanks for
+coming out."
+
+He turned abruptly and walked off, leaving Drake to apostrophize his
+eccentricity and seek consolation with Marie.
+
+On Sunday afternoon Michael, torn between a desire to arrive before the
+crowd of artists and actors who thronged the house and an unwillingness
+to obtrude upon the Sabbath lethargy of half-past three o'clock, set out
+with beating heart to invade Lily's home. Love made him reckless and
+luck rewarded him, for when he enquired for Mrs. Haden the maid told him
+that only Miss Lily was in.
+
+"Who shall I say?" she asked.
+
+"Mr. Fane."
+
+"Step this way, please. Miss Lily's down in the morning-room."
+
+And this so brief and so bald a colloquy danced in letters of fire
+across the darkling descent of the enclosed stairs down to the
+ground-floor.
+
+"Someone to see you, Miss Lily."
+
+Not Iris could have delivered a richer message.
+
+Deep in a wicker chair by a dull red fire sat Lily with open book upon
+her delicate dress of lavender. The door closed; the daylight of the
+grey October afternoon seemed already to have fled this room. Dusky in a
+corner stood a great dolls' house, somewhat sad like a real house that
+has been left long untenanted.
+
+"Well, now we're alone enough," murmured Lily.
+
+He knelt beside her chair and let his head fall upon her silken
+shoulder.
+
+"I'm glad you're in your own room," Michael sighed in answer.
+
+Outside, a muffin-man went ringing through the sombre Sabbath chill; and
+sometimes, disturbing the monotonous railings above the area, absurd
+legs were seen hurrying to their social tasks. No other sign was given
+of a life that went on unaware of these two on whom time showered twenty
+golden minutes.
+
+"Mother and Doris will be back at four," Lily said. "Is my face
+flushed?"
+
+Fresh carnations would have seemed faded near her, when she looked at
+Michael for an answer.
+
+"Only very slightly," he reassured her.
+
+"Come up to the drawing-room," she commanded.
+
+"Can I look at your dolls' house?" Michael asked.
+
+"That old thing," said Lily scornfully.
+
+Reverently he pulled aside the front of the battered dwelling-place, and
+saw the minute furniture higgledy-piggledy.
+
+"I wonder if anyone has ever thought of burning an old dolls' house,"
+said Michael thoughtfully. "It would be rather a rag. I've got an old
+toy fire-engine somewhere at home."
+
+"You baby," said Lily.
+
+"Well, it depresses me to see that dolls' house all disused and upside
+down and no good any more. My kiddy sister gave hers to a hospital. What
+a pity I never thought of burning that," sighed Michael regretfully. "I
+say, some time we must explore this room. It reminds me of all sorts of
+things."
+
+"What sort of things?" asked Lily indifferently.
+
+"Oh, being a kid."
+
+"Well, I don't want to be reminded of that," said Lily. "I wish I was
+older than I am."
+
+"Oh, so do I," said Michael. "I don't want to be a kid again."
+
+Upstairs in the drawing-room it was still fairly light, but the backs of
+the grey houses opposite and the groups of ghostly trees that filmed the
+leaden air seemed to call for curtains to be drawn across the
+contemplation of their melancholy. Yet before they sat down by the
+crackling fire, Michael and Lily stood with their cheeks against the
+cold window-panes in a luxury of bodeful silence.
+
+"No, you're not to sit so close now," Lily ordained, when by a joint
+impulse they turned to inhabit the room in which they had been standing.
+Michael saw a large photograph album and seized it.
+
+"No, you're not to look in that," Lily cried.
+
+"Why not?" he asked, holding it high above his head.
+
+"Because I don't want you to," said Lily. "Put it down."
+
+"I want to see if there are any photographs of you when you were a kid."
+
+"Well, I don't want you to see them," Lily persisted.
+
+In the middle of a struggle for possession of the album, Mrs. Haden and
+Doris came in, and Michael felt rather foolish.
+
+"What a dreadfully noisy girl you are, Lily," said Mrs. Haden. "And is
+this your friend Mr. Fane? How d'ye do?"
+
+"I'm afraid it was my fault," said Michael. "I was trying to bag the
+photograph album."
+
+"Oh, Lily hates anyone to see that picture of her," Doris interposed.
+"She's so conceited, and just because----"
+
+"Shut up, you beast," cried Lily.
+
+"Her legs----"
+
+"Doris!" interposed Mrs. Haden. "You must remember you're grown up now."
+
+"Mother, can't I burn the photograph?" said Lily.
+
+"No, she's not to, mother," Doris interrupted. "She's not to, is she?
+You jealous thing. You'd love to burn it because it's good of me."
+
+"Well, really," said Mrs. Haden, "what Mr. Fane can be thinking of you
+two girls, I shouldn't like to guess."
+
+The quarrel over the album died down as easily as it had begun, and the
+entrance of the tea adjusted the conversation to a less excited plane.
+
+Mrs. Haden was a woman whom Michael could not help liking for her open
+breezy manner and a certain large-handed toleration which suited her
+loud deep voice. But he was inclined to deprecate her obviously dyed
+hair and the plentifulness of pink powder; nor could he at first detect
+in her any likeness to Lily who, though Mrs. Haden persistently
+reproached her as a noisy girl, stood for Michael as the slim embodiment
+of a subtle and easy tranquillity. Gradually, however, during the
+afternoon he perceived slight resemblances between the mother and
+daughter that showed them vaguely alike, as much alike at any rate as an
+elk and a roedeer.
+
+Doris Haden was much less fair than Lily, though she could only have
+been called dark in comparison with her sister. She had a high
+complexion, wide almond-shaped eyes of a very mutable hazel, and a ripe,
+sanguine mouth. She was dressed in a coat and skirt of crushed-strawberry
+frieze, whose cool folds seemed to enhance her slightly exotic air.
+Michael could not help doubting whether she and Alan were perfectly
+suited to one another. He could not imagine that she would not care for
+him, but he wondered about Alan's feelings; and Drake's overnight
+description stuck unpleasantly in his mind with a sensation of
+disloyalty to Lily whose sister after all Doris was.
+
+They were not left very long without visitors, for one by one young men
+came in with a self-possession and an assumption of familiarity that
+Michael resented very much, and all the more deeply because he felt
+himself at a disadvantage. He wondered if Lily were despising him, and
+wished that she would not catch hold of these detestable young men by
+the lapels of their coats, or submit to their throaty persiflage. Once
+when the most absolutely self-possessed of all, a tall thin creature
+with black fuzzy hair and stilted joints, pulled Lily on to his knee to
+talk to him, Michael nearly dived through the window in a fury of
+resentment.
+
+All these young men seemed to him to revel in their bad taste, and their
+conversation, half-theatrical, half-artistic, was of a character that he
+could not enter into. Mrs. Haden's loud laugh rang out over the clatter
+of tea-cups; Doris walked about the room smoking a cigarette and humming
+songs; Lily moved from group to group with a nonchalance that seriously
+perturbed Michael, who retired more and more deeply behind a spreading
+palm in the darkest corner of the room. Yet he could not tear himself
+away from the fascination of watching Lily's grace; he could not
+surrender her to these marionettes of vulgar fashion; he could not go
+coldly out into the Sabbath night without the consolation of first
+hustling these intruders before him.
+
+The afternoon drew on to real dusk; the gas was lighted; songs were sung
+and music was played. All these young men seemed accomplished performers
+of insignificant arts. Mrs. Haden recited, and in this drawing-room her
+heightened air and accentuated voice made Michael blush. Doris went
+upstairs for a moment and presently came down in a Spanish
+dancing-dress, in which she swayed about and rattled castanets and
+banged a tambourine, while the young men sat round and applauded through
+the smoke of their cigarettes. These cigarettes began to affect
+Michael's nerves. Wherever he looked he could see their flattened
+corpses occupying nooks. They were in the flower-pots; they littered the
+grate; they were strewn on brass ash-trays; and even here and there on
+uninflammable and level spots they stood up like little rakish mummies
+slowly and acridly cremating themselves. Michael wondered uneasily what
+Lily was going to do to entertain these voracious listeners. He hoped
+she would not debase her beauty by dancing on the hearthrug like her
+sister. In the end, Lily was persuaded to sing, and her voice very low
+and sweet singing some bygone coon song, was tremendously applauded.
+
+Supper-time drew on, and at last the parlour-maid came in and enquired
+with a martyred air how many she should lay for.
+
+"You must all stay to supper," cried Mrs. Haden in deafening
+hospitality. "Everybody. Mr. Fane, you'll stay, won't you?"
+
+"Oh, thanks very much," said Michael shyly, and wished that these
+confounded young men would not all look at him as if they had perceived
+him suddenly for the first time. Everybody seemed as a matter of course
+to help to get supper ready, and Michael found himself being bumped
+about and handed plates and knives and glasses and salad-bowls. Even at
+supper he found himself as far as it was possible to be from Lily, and
+he thought that never in his life had food tasted so absolutely of
+nothing. But the evening came to an end, and Michael was consoled for
+his purgatory by Mrs. Haden's invitation to call whenever he liked. In
+the hall too Lily came out to see him off, and he besought her anxiously
+to assure him truthfully that to all these young men she was
+indifferent.
+
+"Of course, I don't care for any of them. Why, you silly, they all think
+I'm still a little girl."
+
+Then since a friendly draught had closed the drawing-room door, she
+kissed him; and he forgot all that had happened before, and sailed home
+on thoughts that carried him high above the iron-bound sadness of the
+Sunday night.
+
+Some time early in the week came a letter from Stella in answer to his,
+and when Michael read it he wished that Stella would come home, since
+only she seemed to appreciate what love meant. Yet Stella was even
+younger than Lily.
+
+     STUTTGART,
+
+     _Sunday_.
+
+     _Darling Michael_,
+
+     _I'm writing a sonata about Lily. It's not very good unfortunately,
+     so you'll never be able to hear it. But after all, as you don't
+     understand music, perhaps I will let you hear it. I wish you had
+     told me more about Lily. I think she's lucky. You must be simply a
+     perfect person to be in love with. Most boys are so silly. That's
+     why only men of at_ _least thirty attract me. But of course if I
+     could find someone younger who would be content to love me and not
+     mind whether I loved him, I should prefer that. You say I don't
+     know what love is. How silly you are, Michael. Now_ isn't _it
+     thrilling to take Lily's hand? I_ do _know what love is. But don't
+     look shocked, because if you can still look shocked, you don't know
+     what love is. Don't forget I'm seventeen next month, and don't
+     forget I'm a girl as well as Lily. Lily is a good name for her, if
+     she is very fair. I expect she really has cendre hair. I hope she's
+     rather tall and delicate-looking. I hope she's a violin sort of
+     girl, or like those notes half-way up the treble. It must have been
+     perfect when you met her. I can just imagine you, especially if you
+     like October as much as I do. Did the leaves come falling down all
+     round you, when you kissed her? Oh, Michael, it must have been
+     enchanting. I want to come back soon, soon, soon, and see this Lily
+     of yours. Will she like me? Is she fond of music?_
+
+     _I must have my first concert next summer. Mother must_ not _put me
+     off. Why doesn't she let me come home now? There's some reason for
+     it, I believe. Thank goodness, you'll have left school soon. You
+     must be sick of it, especially since you've fallen in love_.
+
+     _I think of you meeting Lily when I play Schumann, and when I play
+     Chopin I think of you walking about underneath her window, and when
+     I play Beethoven I think of you kissing her_.
+
+     _Darling Michael, I love you more than ever. Be interested in me
+     still, because I'm not interested in anybody but you, except, of
+     course, myself and my music_.
+
+     _Oh, do bring Lily to my first concert, and I'll see you two alone
+     of all the people in the Hall and play you so close together that
+     you'll nearly faint. Now you think I'm gushing, I suppose, so I'll
+     shut up_.
+
+     _With a most tremendous amount of love_,
+
+     _Your delightful sister_,
+
+     _Stella_.
+
+"I wonder if she ought to write like that," said Michael to himself.
+"Oh, well, I don't see why she shouldn't."
+
+Certainly as one grew older a sister became a most valuable property.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVIII: _Eighteen Years Old_
+
+
+To Michael it seemed almost incredible that school should be able to
+continue as the great background against which his love stood out like a
+delicate scene carved by the artist's caprice in an obscure corner of a
+strenuous and heroic decoration. Michael was hardly less conscious of
+school on Lily's account, and in class he dreamed neither more nor less
+than formerly; but his dreams partook more of ecstasy than those
+nebulous pictures inspired by the ambitions and ideals and books of
+youth's progress. Nevertheless in the most ultimate refinement of
+meditation school weighed down his spirit. It is true that games had
+finally departed from the realm of his consideration, but equally with
+games much extravagance of intellect and many morbid pleasures had gone
+out of cultivation. Balancing loss with gain, he found himself at the
+close of his last autumn term with a surer foothold on the rock-hewn
+foundations of truth.
+
+Michael called truth whatever of emotion or action or reaction or reason
+or contemplation survived the destruction he was dealing out to the
+litter of idols that were beginning to encumber his passage, many of
+which he thought he had already destroyed when he had merely covered
+them with a new coat of gilt. During this period he began to enjoy
+Wordsworth, to whom he came by way of Matthew Arnold, like a wayfarer
+who crosses green fields and finds that mountains are faint upon the
+horizon. A successful lover, as he called himself, he began to despise
+anything in his reading of poetry that could not measure its power with
+the great commonplaces of human thought.
+
+The Christmas holidays came as a relief from the burden of spending so
+much of his time in an atmosphere from which he was sure he had drained
+the last draught of health-giving breath. Michael no longer regarded,
+save in a contemptuous aside, the microcosm of school; the pleasures of
+seniority had staled; the whole business was now a tedious sort of
+mental quarantine. If he had not had Lily to occupy his leisure, he
+would have expired of restless inanition; and he wondered that the world
+went on allowing youth's load of education to be encumbered by a
+dead-weight of superfluous information. Alan, for instance, had managed
+to obtain a scholarship some time in late December, and would henceforth
+devote himself to meditating on cricket for one term and playing it hard
+for another term. It would be nine months before he went to Oxford, and
+for nine months he would live in a state of mental catalepsy fed
+despairingly by the masters of the Upper Sixth with the few poor last
+facts they could scrape together from their own time-impoverished store.
+Michael, in view of Alan's necessity for gaining this scholarship, had
+never tried to lure him towards Doris and a share in his own fortune.
+But he resolved that during the following term he would do his best to
+galvanize Alan out of the catalepsy that he woefully foresaw was
+imminent.
+
+Meanwhile the Christmas holidays were here, and Michael on their first
+night vowed all their leisure to Lily.
+
+There was time now for expeditions farther afield than Kensington
+Gardens, which in winter seemed to have lost some of their pastoral air.
+The naked trees no longer veiled the houses, and the city with its dingy
+railings and dingy people and mud-splashed omnibuses was always an
+intrusion. Moreover, fellow-Jacobeans used to haunt their privacy; and
+often when it was foggy in London, out in the country there was winter
+sunlight.
+
+These were days whose clarity and silence seemed to call for love's
+fearless analysis, and under a sky of turquoise so faintly blue that
+scarcely even at the zenith could it survive the silver dazzle of the
+low January sun, Michael and Lily would swing from Barnet into Finchley
+with Michael talking all the way.
+
+"Why do you love me?" he would flash.
+
+"Because I do."
+
+"Oh, can't you think of any better reason than that?"
+
+"Because--because--oh, Michael, I don't want to think of reasons," Lily
+would declare.
+
+"You _are_ determined to marry me?" Michael would flash again.
+
+"Yes, some day."
+
+"You don't think you'll fall in love with anybody else?"
+
+"I don't suppose so."
+
+"Only suppose?" Michael would echo on a fierce pause.
+
+"Well, no, I won't."
+
+"You promise?"
+
+"Yes, yes, I promise," Lily would pout.
+
+Then the rhythm of their walk would be renewed, and arm-in-arm they
+would travel on, until the next foolish perplexity demanded solution.
+Twilight would often find them still on the road, and when some lofty
+avenue engulphed their path, the uneasy warmth of the overarching trees
+would draw them very close, while hushed endearments took them slowly
+into lampshine.
+
+When the dripping January rains came down, Michael spent many afternoons
+in the morning-room of Lily's house. Here, subject only to Doris's
+exaggerated hesitation to enter, Michael would build up for himself and
+Lily the indissoluble ties of a childhood that, though actually it was
+spent in ignorance of each other's existence, possessed many links of
+sentimental communion.
+
+For instance, on the wall hung Cherry Ripe--the same girl in white frock
+and pink sash who nearly fourteen years ago had conjured for Michael
+the first hazy intimations of romance. Here she hung, staring down at
+them as demurely if not quite so sheerly beautiful as of old. Lily
+observed that the picture was not unlike Doris at the same age, and
+Michael felt at once that such a resemblance gave it a permanent value.
+Certainly his etchings of Montmartre and views of the Sussex Downs would
+never be hallowed by the associations that made sacred this oleograph of
+a Christmas Annual.
+
+There were the picture-books of Randolph Caldecott tattered identically
+with his own, and Michael pointed out to Lily that often they must have
+sat by the fire reading the same verse at the same moment. Was not this
+thought almost as fine as the actual knowledge of each other's daily
+life would have been? There were other books whose pages, scrawled and
+dog-eared, were softened by innumerable porings to the texture of
+Japanese fairy-books. In a condition practically indistinguishable all
+of these could be found both in Carlington Road and Trelawny Road.
+
+There were the mutilated games that commemorated Christmas after
+Christmas of the past. Here was the pack of Happy Families with Mrs.
+Chip now a widow, Mr. Block the Barber a widower, and the two young
+Grits grotesque orphans of the grocery. There were Ludo and Lotto and
+Tiddledy-Winks whose counters, though terribly depleted, were still
+eloquent with the undetermined squabbles and favourite colours of
+childhood.
+
+Michael was glad that Lily should spring like a lovely ghost from the
+dust of familiar and forgotten relics. It had been romantic to snatch
+her on a dying cadence of Verlaine out of the opalescent vistas of
+October trees; but his perdurable love for her rested on these
+immemorial affections whose history they shared.
+
+Lily herself was not so sensitive to this aroma of the past as Michael.
+She was indeed apt to consider his enthusiasm a little foolish, and
+would wonder why he dragged from the depths of untidy cupboards so much
+rubbish that only owed its preservation to the general carelessness of
+the household. Lily cared very little either for the past or the future,
+and though she was inclined to envy Doris her dancing-lessons and
+likelihood of appearing some time next year on the stage, she did not
+seem really to desire any activity of career for herself. This was a
+relief to Michael, who frankly feared what the stage might wreak upon
+their love.
+
+"But I wish you'd read a little more," he protested. "You like such
+rotten books."
+
+"I feel lazy when I'm not with you," she explained. "And, anyway, I hate
+reading."
+
+"Do you think of me all the time I'm away from you?" Michael asked.
+
+Lily told him she thought of nothing else, and his pride in her
+admission led him to excuse her laziness, and even made him encourage
+it. There was, however, about the atmosphere of Lily's home a laxity
+which would have overcome more forcible exhortations than Michael's. He
+was too much in love with Lily's kisses to do more than vaguely
+criticize her surroundings. He did not like Mrs. Haden's pink powder,
+but nevertheless the pink powder made him less sensitive than he might
+have been to Mrs. Haden's opinion of his daily visits and his long
+unchaperoned expeditions with Lily. The general laxity tended to obscure
+his own outlook, and he had no desire to state even to himself his
+intentions. He felt himself tremendously old when he thought of kisses,
+but when he tried to visualize Lily and himself even four years hence,
+he felt hopelessly young. Mrs. Haden evidently regarded him as a boy,
+and since that fact seemed to relieve her of the slightest anxiety,
+Michael had no desire to impress upon her his precocity. The only bann
+that Mrs. Haden laid on his intercourse with Lily was her refusal to
+allow him to take her out alone at night, but she had no objection to
+him escorting Doris and Lily together to the theatre; nor did she oppose
+Michael's plan to celebrate the last night of the holidays by inviting
+Alan to make a quartette for the Drury Lane pantomime. Alan had only
+just come back from skating in Switzerland with his father, and he could
+not refuse to join Michael's party, although he said he was "off girls"
+at the moment.
+
+"You always are," Michael protested.
+
+"And I'm not going to fall in love, even to please you," Alan added.
+
+"All right," Michael protested. "Just because you've been freezing
+yourself to death all the holidays, you needn't come back and throw cold
+water over me."
+
+They all dined with Mrs. Haden, and Michael could not help laughing to
+see how seriously and how shyly Alan took the harum-scarum feast at
+which, between every course, one of the girls would rush upstairs to
+fetch down a fan or a handkerchief or a ribbon.
+
+"I think your friend is charming," said Mrs. Haden loudly, when she and
+Michael were alone for a minute in the final confusion of not being
+late. Michael wondered why something in her tone made him resent this
+compliment. But there was no opportunity to puzzle over his momentary
+distaste, because it was time to start for the occupation of the box
+which Mrs. Haden had been given by one of her friends.
+
+"I vote we drive home in two hansoms," suggested Michael as they stood
+in the vestibule when the pantomime was over.
+
+Alan looked at him quickly and made a grimace. But Michael was
+determined to enjoy Lily's company during a long uninterrupted drive,
+and at the same time to give Alan the opportunity of finding out whether
+he could possibly attach himself to Doris.
+
+Michael's own drive enthralled him. The hot theatre and the glittering
+performance had made Lily exquisitely tired and languorous, and Michael
+thought she had never surrendered herself so breathlessly before, that
+never before had her flowerlike kisses been so intangible and her eyes
+so drowsily passionate. Lulled by the regularity of the motion, Lily lay
+along his bended arm as if asleep, and, as he held her, Michael's sense
+of responsibility became more and more dreamily indistinct. The
+sensuousness of her abandonment drugged all but the sweet present and
+the poignant ecstasy of possession.
+
+"I adore you," he whispered. "Lily, are you asleep? Lily! Lily, you are
+asleep, asleep in my arms, you lovely girl. Can you hear me talking to
+you?"
+
+She stirred in his embrace like a ruffling bird; she sighed and threw a
+fevered hand upon his shoulder.
+
+"Michael, why do you make me love you so?" she murmured, and fell again
+into her warm trance.
+
+"Are you speaking to me from dreams?" he whispered. "Lily, you almost
+frighten me. I don't think I knew I loved you so much. The whole world
+seems to be galloping past. Wake up, wake up. We're nearly home."
+
+She stretched herself in a rebellious shudder against consciousness and
+looked at Michael wide-eyed.
+
+"I thought you were going to faint or something," he said.
+
+Hardly another word they spoke, but sat upright staring before them at
+the oncoming lamp-posts. Soon Trelawny Road was reached, and in that
+last good night was a sense of nearness that never before had Michael
+imagined.
+
+By her house they waited for a minute in the empty street, silent,
+hand-in-hand, until the other cab swung round the corner. Alan and
+Michael watched the two girls disappear through the flickering doorway,
+and then they strolled back towards Carlington Road, where Alan was
+spending the night.
+
+"Well?" asked Michael. "What do you think of Lily?"
+
+"I think she's very pretty."
+
+"And Doris?"
+
+"I didn't care very much for her really," said Alan apologetically,
+"She's pretty, not so pretty as Lily, of course; but, I say, Michael, I
+suppose you'll be offended, but I'd better ask right out ... who are
+they?"
+
+"The Hadens?"
+
+"Yes. I thought Mrs. Haden rather awful. What's Mr. Haden? or isn't
+there a Mr. Haden?"
+
+"I believe he's in Burmah," said Michael.
+
+"Burmah?"
+
+"Why shouldn't he be?"
+
+"No reason at all," Alan admitted, "but ... well ... I thought there was
+something funny about that family."
+
+"You think everything's funny that's just a little bit different from
+the deadly average," said Michael. "What exactly was funny, may I ask?"
+
+"I don't think Mrs. Haden is a lady, for one thing," Alan blurted out.
+
+"I do," said Michael shortly, "And, anyway, if she weren't, I don't see
+that that makes any difference to me and Lily."
+
+"But what are you going to do?" Alan asked. "Do you think you're going
+to marry her?"
+
+"Some day. Life isn't a cricket-match, you know," said Michael
+sententiously. "You can't set your field just as you would like to have
+it at the moment."
+
+"You know best what's good for you," Alan sighed.
+
+"Yes ... I think I do. I think it's better to live than to stagnate as
+you're doing."
+
+"What does your mother say?" Alan asked.
+
+"I haven't told her anything about Lily."
+
+"No, because you're not in earnest. And if you're in earnest, Lily
+isn't."
+
+"What the devil do you know about her?" Michael angrily demanded.
+
+"I know enough to see you're both behaving like a couple of reckless
+kids," Alan retorted.
+
+"Damn you!" cried Michael in exasperation. "I wish to god you wouldn't
+try to interfere with what doesn't after all concern you very much."
+
+"You insisted on introducing me," Alan pointed out.
+
+"Because I thought it would be a rag if we were both in love with
+sisters. But you're turning into a machine. Since you've swotted up into
+the Upper Sixth, you've turned into a very good imitation of the prigs
+you associate with. Everybody isn't like you. Some people develop.... I
+could have been just like you if I had cared to be. I could have been
+Captain of the School and Scholar of Balliol with my nose ground down to
+[Greek: ei] and [Greek: ean], hammering out tenth-rate Latin
+lyrics and reading Theocritus with the amusing parts left out. But
+what's the good of arguing with you? You're perfectly content and you
+think you can be as priggish as you like, as long as you conceal it by
+making fifty runs in the Dulford match. I suppose you consider my
+behaviour unwholesome at eighteen. Well, I dare say it is by your
+standards. But are your standards worth anything? I doubt it. I think
+they're fine up to a point. I'm perfectly willing to admit that we
+behaved like a pair of little blighters with those girls at Eastbourne.
+But this is something altogether different."
+
+"We shall see," said Alan simply. "I'm not going to quarrel with you. So
+shut up."
+
+Michael walked along in silence, angry with himself for having caused
+this ill-feeling by his obstinacy in making an unsuitable introduction,
+and angry with Alan because he would accentuate by his attitude the
+mistake.
+
+By the steps of his house Michael stopped and looked at Alan severely.
+
+"This is the last time I shall attempt to cure you," he announced.
+
+"All right," said Alan with perfect equanimity. "You can do anything you
+like but quarrel. You needn't talk to me or look at me or think about me
+until you want to. I shall feel a bit bored, of course, but, oh, my dear
+old chap, do get over this love-sickness soon."
+
+"This isn't like that silly affair at Bournemouth last Easter," Michael
+challenged.
+
+"I know that, my dear chap. I wish it was."
+
+With the subject of love finally sealed between him and Alan, Michael
+receded farther and farther from the world of school. He condescended
+indeed to occupy a distinguished position by the hot-water pipes of the
+entrance-hall, where his aloofness and ability to judge men and gods
+made him a popular, if slightly incomprehensible, figure. Towards all
+the masters he emanated a compassion which he really felt very deeply.
+Those whom he liked he conversed with as equals; those whom he disliked
+he talked to as inferiors. But he pitied both sections. In class he was
+polite, but somewhat remote, though he missed very few opportunities of
+implicitly deriding the Liberal views of Mr. Kirkham. The whole school
+with its ant-like energy, whose ultimate object and obvious result were
+alike inscrutable to Michael, just idly amused him, and he reserved for
+Lily all his zest in life.
+
+The Lent term passed away with parsimonious February sunlight, with
+March lying grey upon the houses until it proclaimed itself suddenly in
+a booming London gale. The Easter holidays arrived, and Mrs. Fane
+determined to go to Germany and see Stella. Would Michael come? Michael
+pleaded many disturbed plans of cricket-practice; of Matriculation at
+St. Mary's College, Oxford; of working for the English Literature Prize;
+of anything indeed but his desire to see with Lily April break to May.
+In the end he had his own way, and Mrs. Fane went to the continent
+without his escort.
+
+Lily was never eager for the discussions and the contingencies and the
+doubts of love; in all their walks it had been Michael who flashed the
+questions, she who let slip her answers. The strange fatigue of spring
+made much less difference to her than to him, and however insistent he
+was for her kisses, she never denied him. Michael tried to feel that the
+acquiescence of the hard, the reasonable, the intellectual side of him
+to April's passionate indulgence merely showed that he was more surely
+and more sanely growing deeper in love with Lily every day. Sometimes he
+had slight tremors of malaise, a sensation of weakening fibres, and dim
+stirrings of responsibility; but too strong for them was his
+heart's-ease, too precious was Lily's rose-bloomed grace of submission.
+The more sharply imminent her form became upon his thought, the more
+surely deathless did he suppose his love. Michael's mind was always
+framing moments in eternity, and of all these moments the sight of her
+lying upon the vivid grass, the slim, the pastoral, the fair immortal
+girl stood unparagoned by any. There was no landscape that Lily did not
+make more inevitably composed. There was no place of which she did not
+become tutelary, whether she lay among the primroses that starred the
+steep brown banks of woodland or whether she fronted the great sunshine
+of the open country; but most of all when she sat in cowslips, looking
+over arched knees at the wind.
+
+Michael fell into the way of talking to her as if he were playing upon
+Dorian pipes the tale of his love:
+
+"I must buy you a ring, Lily. What ring shall I buy for you? Rings are
+all so dull. Perhaps your hands would look wrong with a ring, unless I
+could find a star-sapphire set in silver. I thought you were lovely in
+autumn, but I think you are more lovely in spring. How the days are
+going by; it will soon be May. Lily, if you had the choice of everything
+in the world, what would you choose?"
+
+"I would choose to do nothing."
+
+"If you had the choice of all the people in the world, would you choose
+me?"
+
+"Yes. Of course."
+
+"Lily, you make me curiously lazy. I want never again to do anything but
+sit in the sun with you. Why can't we stay like this for ever?"
+
+"I shouldn't mind."
+
+"I wish that you could be turned into a primrose, and that I could be
+turned into a hazel-bush looking down at you for ever. Or I wish you
+could be a cowslip and I could be a plume of grass. Lily, why is it that
+the longer I know you, the less you say?"
+
+"You talk enough for both," said Lily.
+
+"I talk less to you than to anyone. I really only want to look at you,
+you lovely thing."
+
+But the Easter holidays were almost over, and Michael had to go to
+Oxford for his Matriculation. On their last long day together, Lily and
+he went to Hampton Court and dreamed the sad time away. When twilight
+was falling Michael said he had a sovereign to spend on whatever they
+liked best to do. Why should they not have dinner on a balcony over the
+river, and after dinner drive all the way home in a hansom cab?
+
+So they sat grandly on the chilly balcony and had dinner, until Lily in
+her thin frock was cold.
+
+"But never mind," said Michael. "I'll hold you close to me all the way
+to London."
+
+They found their driver and told him where to go. The man was very much
+pleased to think he had a fare all the way to London, and asked Michael
+if he wanted to drive fast.
+
+"No, rather slow, if anything," said Michael.
+
+The fragrant miles went slowly past, and all the way they drove between
+the white orchards, and all the way like a spray of bloom Lily was his.
+Past the orchards they went, past the twinkling roadside houses, past
+the gates where the shadows of lovers fell across the road, past the
+breaking limes and lilac, past the tulips stiff and dark in the
+moonlight, through the high narrow street of Brentford, past Kew Bridge
+and the slow trams with their dim people nodding, through Chiswick and
+into Hammersmith where a piano-organ was playing and the golden streets
+were noisy. It was Doris who opened the door.
+
+"Eleven o'clock," she said. "Mother's rather angry."
+
+"You'd better not come in," said Lily to Michael. "She'll be all right
+again by next week, when you come back."
+
+"Oh, no, I'll come in," he insisted. "I'd rather explain why we're so
+late."
+
+"It's no use arguing with mother when she's unreasonable," said Lily. "I
+shall go up to bed; I don't want to have a row."
+
+"That's right," Doris sneered. "Always take the shortest and easiest
+way. You are a coward."
+
+"Oh, shut up," said Lily, and without another word went upstairs.
+
+"You've spoilt her," said Doris. "Well, are you going to see mother? She
+isn't in a very pleasant mood, I warn you."
+
+"She's never been angry before," said Michael hopelessly.
+
+"Well, she has really," Doris explained. "Only she's vented it on me."
+
+"I say, I'm awfully sorry. I had no idea--" Michael began.
+
+"Oh, don't apologize," said Doris. "I'm used to it. Thank god, I'm going
+on the stage next year; and then Lily and mother will be able to
+squabble to their heart's content."
+
+Mrs. Haden was sitting in what was called The Cosy Corner; and she
+treated Michael's entrance with exaggerated politeness.
+
+"Won't you sit down? It's rather late, but do sit down."
+
+All the time she was speaking the plate-rack above The Cosy Corner was
+catching the back of her hair, and Michael wondered how long it would be
+before she noticed this.
+
+"Really, I think it's very wrong of you to bring my daughter home at
+this hour," Mrs. Haden clattered. "I'm sure nobody likes young people to
+enjoy themselves more than I do. But eleven o'clock! Where is Lily now?"
+
+"Gone to bed," said Doris, who seized the opportunity to depart also.
+
+"I'm awfully sorry, Mrs. Haden," said Michael awkwardly "But as it was
+my last night, I suggested driving back from Hampton Court. It was all
+my fault; I do hope you won't be angry with Lily."
+
+"But I am angry with Lily," said Mrs. Haden. "Very angry. She's old
+enough to know better, and you're old enough to know better. How will
+people think I'm bringing up my daughters, if they return at midnight
+with young men in hansoms? I never heard of such a thing. You're
+presuming on your age. You've no business to compromise a girl like
+this."
+
+"Compromise?" stammered Michael.
+
+"None of the young people but you has ever ventured to behave like
+this," Mrs. Haden went on with sharply metallic voice. "Not one of them.
+And, goodness knows, every Sunday the house is full of them."
+
+"But they don't come to see Lily," Michael pointed out. "They come to
+see you."
+
+"Are you trying to be rude to me?" Mrs. Haden asked.
+
+"No, no," Michael assured her. "And, honestly, Mrs. Haden, I didn't
+think you minded me taking Lily out."
+
+"But what's going to happen?" Mrs. Haden demanded.
+
+"Well--I--I suppose I want to marry Lily."
+
+Michael wondered if this statement sounded as absurd to Mrs. Haden as it
+sounded to himself.
+
+"What nonsense!" she snapped. "What utter nonsense! A schoolboy talking
+such nonsense. Marriage indeed! You know as well as I do that you've
+never thought about such a step."
+
+"But I have," said Michael. "Very often, as it happens."
+
+"Then you mustn't go out with Lily again. Why, it's worse than I
+thought. I'm horrified."
+
+"Do you mean I'm never to come here again?" Michael asked in despair.
+
+"Come occasionally," said Mrs. Haden. "But only occasionally."
+
+"All right. Thanks," said Michael, feeling stunned by this unexpected
+rebuke. "Good night, Mrs. Haden."
+
+In the hall he found Doris.
+
+"Well?" she asked.
+
+"Your mother says I'm only to come occasionally."
+
+"Oh, that won't last," said Doris encouragingly.
+
+"Yes, but I'm not sure that she isn't right," said Michael. "Oh, Doris,
+damn. I wish I couldn't always see other people's point of view."
+
+"Mother often has fits of violent morality," said Doris. "And then we
+always catch it. But really they don't last."
+
+"Doris, you don't understand. It isn't your mother's disapproval I'm
+worrying over. It's myself. Lily might have waited to say good-night,"
+Michael murmured miserably.
+
+But straight upon his complaint he saw Lily leaning over from the
+landing above and blowing kisses, and he felt more calm.
+
+"Don't worry too much about Lily," whispered Doris, as she held the door
+open for him.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I shouldn't, that's all," she said enigmatically, and closed the door
+very gently.
+
+At the time Michael was not conscious of any deep impression made by the
+visit to Oxford for his Matriculation; he was too much worried by the
+puzzle of his future conduct with regard to Lily. He felt dull in the
+rooms where he spent two nights alone; he felt shy among the forty or
+fifty boys from other public-schools; he was glad to go back to London.
+Vaguely the tall grey tower remained in his mind, and vaguely the cool
+Gothic seemed to offer a shelter from the problems of behaviour, but
+that was all.
+
+When he returned, the torment of Lily's desired presence became more
+acute. His mother wrote to say that she would not be back for three
+days, and the only consolation was the hint that most probably Stella
+would come back with her.
+
+Meanwhile this was Saturday, and school did not begin until Tuesday.
+Time after time Michael set out towards Trelawny Road; time after time
+he checked himself and fought his way home again. Mrs. Haden had been
+right; he had behaved badly. Lily was too young to bear the burden of
+their passionate love. And was she happy without him? Was she sighing
+for him? Or would she forget him and resume an existence undisturbed by
+him? But the thought of wasted time, of her hours again unoccupied, of
+her footsteps walking to places ignorant of him was intolerable.
+
+Sunday came round, and Michael thought that he would fling himself into
+the stream of callers; but the idea of doing so became humiliating, and
+instead he circled drearily round the neighbouring roads, circled in
+wide curves, and sometimes even swooped into the forbidden diameter of
+Trelawny Road. But always before he could bring himself to pass her very
+door, he would turn back into his circle and the melancholy Sabbath
+sunlight of May.
+
+Twilight no more entranced him, and the lovers leaning over to one
+another languorously in their endearments, moving with intertwined arms
+and measured steps between the wine-dark houses, annoyed him with their
+fatuous complacency and their bland eyes. He wanted her, his slim and
+silent Lily, who blossomed in the night-time like a flower. Her wrists
+were cool as porcelain and the contact of her form swaying to his
+progress was light as silk. Everyone else had their contentment, and he
+must endure wretchedly without the visible expression of his beauty. It
+was not yet too late to see her; and Michael circled nearer to Trelawny
+Road. This time he came to Lily's house; he paused within sound of
+laughter upon the easeful step; and then again he turned away and walked
+furiously on through the empty Sabbath streets.
+
+In his room, when it was now too late to think of calling, Michael
+laughed at himself for being so sensitive to Mrs. Haden's reproaches. He
+told himself that all she said was due to the irritation of the moment,
+that to-morrow he must go again as if nothing had happened, that people
+had no right to interfere between lovers. But then, in all its florid
+bulk, St. James' School rose up, and Michael admitted to himself that to
+the world he was merely a foolish schoolboy. He, the dauntless lover,
+must be chained to a desk for five hours every day. A boy and girl
+affair! Michael ground his teeth with exasperation. He must simply prove
+by renouncing for a term his part in Lily's life that he was a schoolboy
+by an accident of time. A man is as old as he feels! He would see Lily
+once more, and tell her that for the sake of their ultimate happiness,
+he would give her up for the term of his bondage. Other great and
+romantic lovers had done the same; they may not have gone to school, but
+they had accepted menial tasks for the sake of their love.
+
+Yet in the very middle of the night when the thickest darkness seemed to
+stifle self-deception, Michael knew that he had bowed to authority so
+easily because his conscience had already told him what Mrs. Haden so
+crudely hinted. When he was independent of school it would be different.
+Michael made up his mind that the utmost magnanimity would be possible,
+if he could see Lily once to tell her of his resolution. But on the next
+day Lily was out, and Mrs. Haden talked to him instead.
+
+"I've forbidden Lily to go out with you alone," she said. "And I would
+prefer that you only came here when I am in the house."
+
+"I was going to suggest that I shouldn't come at all until July--until
+after I had left school, in fact," answered Michael.
+
+"Perhaps that would be best. Then you and Lily will be more sensible."
+
+"Good-bye," said Michael hurriedly, for he felt that he must get out of
+this stifling room, away from this overwhelming woman with her loud
+voice and dyed hair and worldly-wise morality. Then he had a sudden
+conception of himself as part of a scene, perceiving himself in the role
+of the banished lover nobly renouncing all. "I won't write to her. I
+won't make any attempt to see her," he offered.
+
+"You'll understand," said Mrs. Haden, "that I'm afraid of--that I
+think," she corrected, "it is quite likely that Lily is just as bad for
+you as you are for Lily. But of course the real reason I feel I ought to
+interfere is on account of what people say. If Mr. Haden were not in
+Burmah ... it would be different."
+
+Michael pitied himself profoundly for the rest of that day; but after a
+long luxury of noble grief the image of Lily came to agitate and
+disconcert his acquiescence, and the insurgent fevers of love goaded his
+solitude.
+
+Mrs. Fane and Stella returned during the first week of school. The great
+Steinway Grand that came laboriously in through the unsashed window of
+the third story gave Michael, as it lay like a boulder over Carlington
+Road, a wonderful sense of Stella's establishment at home. Stella's
+music-room was next to his bedroom, and when in her nightgown she came
+to practise in the six o'clock sunshine Michael thought her music seemed
+the very voice of day. So joyously did the rills and ripples and
+fountains of her harmony rouse him from sleep that he refrained from
+criticizing her apparel, and sat contented in the sunlight to listen.
+
+Suddenly Stella wheeled round and said:
+
+"Do tell me about Lily."
+
+"Well, there's been rather a row," Michael began. "You see, I took her
+to Hampton Court and we drove...." Michael stopped, and for the first
+time he obtained a cold clear view of his behaviour, when he found he
+was hesitating to tell Stella lest he might set her a bad example.
+
+"Go on," she urged. "Don't stop."
+
+"Well, we were rather late. But of course it was the first time, and I
+hope you won't think you can drive back at eleven o'clock with somebody
+because I did once--only once."
+
+"Why, was there any harm in it?" asked Stella quickly, and, as if to
+allay Michael's fear by so direct a question, one hand went trilling in
+scale towards the airy unrealities of the treble.
+
+"No, of course there was no harm in it," said Michael.
+
+"Then why shouldn't I drive back at eleven o'clock if I wanted to?"
+asked Stella, striking elfin discords as she spoke.
+
+"It's a question of what people think," said Michael, falling back upon
+Mrs. Haden's line of defence.
+
+"Bother people!" cried Stella, and immediately she put them in their
+place somewhere very far down in the bass.
+
+"Well, anyway," said Michael, "I understood what Mrs. Haden meant, and
+I've agreed not to see Lily until after I leave school."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"Well, then I shall see her," said Michael.
+
+"And drive back at eleven o'clock in hansoms?"
+
+"Not unless I can be engaged," Michael surrendered to convention.
+
+"And don't you mind?"
+
+"Of course I mind," he confessed gloomily.
+
+"Why did you agree, then?" Stella asked.
+
+"I had to think about Lily, just as I should have to think about you,"
+he challenged.
+
+"Darling Michael, I love you dreadfully, but I really should not pay the
+least little tiny bit of attention to you--or anybody else, if that's
+any consolation," she added. "As it happens, I've never yet met anybody
+with whom I'd care to drive about in a hansom at eleven o'clock, but if
+I did, three o'clock in the morning would be the same as three o'clock
+in the afternoon."
+
+"Stella, you ought not to talk like that," Michael said earnestly. "You
+don't realize what people would suppose. And really I don't think you
+ought to practise in your nightgown."
+
+"Oh, Michael, if I practised in my chemise, I shouldn't expect you to
+mind."
+
+"Stella! Really, you know!"
+
+"Listen," she said, swinging away from him back to the keyboard. "This
+is the Lily Sonata."
+
+Michael listened, and as he listened he could not help owning to himself
+that in her white nightgown, straight-backed against the shimmering
+ebony instrument, little indeed would matter very much among those
+dancing black and white notes.
+
+"Or in nothing at all," said Stella, stopping suddenly.
+
+Then she ran across to Michael and, after kissing him on the top of his
+head, waltzed very slowly out of the room.
+
+But not even Stella could for long take away from Michael the torment of
+Lily's withheld presence. As a month went by, the image of her gained in
+elusive beauty, and the desire to see became a madness. He tried to
+evade his promise by haunting the places she would be likely to
+frequent, but he never saw her. He wondered if she could be in London,
+and he nearly wrote to ask. There was no consolation to be gained from
+books; there was no sentiment to be culled from the spots they had known
+together. He wanted herself, her fragility, her swooning kisses,
+herself, herself. She was the consummation of idyllic life, the life he
+longed for, the passionate life of beauty expressed in her. Stella had
+her music; Alan had his cricket; Mrs. Ross had her son; and he must have
+Lily. How damnable were these silver nights of June, how their fragrance
+musk-like even here in London fretted him with the imagination of wasted
+beauty. These summer nights demanded love; they enraged him with their
+uselessness.
+
+"Isn't Chopin wonderful?" cried Stella. "Just when the window-boxes are
+dripping and the earth's warm and damp and the air is all turning into
+velvet."
+
+"Oh, very wonderful," said Michael bitterly.
+
+And he would go out on the dreaming balcony and, looking down on the
+motionless lamps, he would hear the murmur and rustle of people. But he
+was starving amid this rich plenitude of colour and scent; he was idle
+upon these maddening, these music-haunted, these royal nights that
+mocked his surrender.
+
+And in the silent heart of the night when the sheets were fibrous and
+the mattress was jagged, when the pillow seared him and his eyes were
+like sand, what resolutions he made to carry her away from Kensington;
+but in the morning how coldly impossible it was to do so at eighteen.
+
+One afternoon coming out of school, Michael met Drake.
+
+"Hullo!" said Drake. "How's the fair Lily? I haven't seen you around
+lately."
+
+"Haven't you?" said Michael. "No, I haven't been round so much lately."
+
+He spoke as if he had suddenly noticed he had forgotten something.
+
+"I asked her about you--over the garden-wall; so don't get jealous,"
+Drake said with his look of wise rakishness. "And she didn't seem
+particularly keen on helping out the conversation. So I supposed you'd
+had a quarrel. Funny girl, Lily," Drake went on. "I suppose she's all
+right when you know her. Why don't you come in to my place?"
+
+"Thanks," said Michael.
+
+He felt that fate had given him this opportunity. He had not sought it.
+He might be able to speak to Lily, and if he could, he would ask her to
+meet him, and promises could go to the devil. He determined that no more
+of summer's treasure should be wasted.
+
+He had a thrill in Drake's dull drawing-room from the sense of nearness
+to Lily, and from the looking-glass room it was back to back with the
+more vital drawing-room next door.
+
+Michael could hardly bear to look out of the window into the oblong
+gardens; two months away from Lily made almost unendurable the thought
+that in one tremulous instant he might be imparadised in the vision of
+her reality.
+
+"Hullo! She's there," said Drake from the window. "With another chap."
+
+Michael with thudding heart and flaming cheeks stood close to Drake.
+
+"Naughty girl!" said Drake. "She's flirting."
+
+"I don't think she was," said Michael, but, even as he spoke, the
+knowledge that she was tore him to pieces.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIX: _Parents_
+
+
+The brazen sun lighted savagely the barren streets, as Michael left
+Trelawny Road behind him. His hopeless footsteps rasped upon the
+pavement. His humiliation was complete. Not even was his personality
+strong enough to retain the love of a girl for six weeks. Yet he
+experienced a morbid sympathy with Lily, so unutterably beneath the rest
+of mankind was he already inclined to estimate himself. Stella opened
+wide her grey eyes when she greeted his pale disheartened return.
+
+"Feeling ill?" she asked.
+
+"I'm feeling a worthless brute," said Michael, plunging into a dejected
+acquiescence in the worst that could be said about him.
+
+"Tell me," whispered Stella. "Ah, do."
+
+"I've found out that Lily is quite ready to flirt with anybody. With
+anybody!"
+
+"What a beastly girl!" Stella flamed.
+
+"Well, you can't expect her to remain true to a creature like me," said
+Michael, declaring his self-abasement.
+
+"A creature like you?" cried Stella. "Why, Michael, how can you be so
+absurd? If you speak of yourself like that, I shall begin to think you
+_are_ 'a creature' as you call yourself. Ah, no, but you're not,
+Michael. It's this Lily who is the creature. Oh, don't I know her, the
+insipid puss! A silly little doll that lets everybody pull her about. I
+hate weak girls. How I despise them!"
+
+"But you despise boys, Stella," Michael reminded her. "And this chap
+she was flirting with was much older than me. Perhaps Lily is like you,
+and prefers older men."
+
+Michael had no heart left even to maintain his stand against Stella's
+alarming opinions and prejudices so frankly expressed.
+
+"Like me," Stella cried, stamping her foot. "Like me! How dare you
+compare her with me? I'm not a doll. Do you think anyone has ever dared
+to kiss me?"
+
+"I'm sorry," said Michael. "But you talk so very daringly that I
+shouldn't be surprized by anything you told me. At the same time I can't
+help sympathizing with Lily. It must have been dull to be in love with a
+schoolboy--an awkward lout of eighteen."
+
+"Michael! I will not hear you speak of yourself like that. I'm ashamed
+of you. How can you be so weak? Be proud. Oh, Michael, do be proud--it's
+the only thing on earth worth being."
+
+Stella stood dominant before him. Her grey eyes flashed; her proud,
+upcurving mouth was slightly curled: her chin was like the chin of a
+marble goddess, and yet with that brown hair lapping her wide shoulders,
+with those long legs, lean-flanked and supple, she was more like some
+heroic boy.
+
+"Yes, you can be proud enough," said Michael. "But you've got something
+to be proud of. What have I got?"
+
+"You've got me," said Stella fiercely.
+
+"Why, yes, I suppose I have," Michael softly agreed. "Let's talk about
+your first appearance."
+
+"I was talking about it to mother when a man called Prescott came."
+
+"Prescott?" said Michael. "I seem to have heard mother speak about him.
+I wonder when it was. A long time ago, though."
+
+"Well, whoever he was," said Stella, "he brought mother bad news."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"Have you ever seen mother cry?"
+
+"Yes, once," said Michael. "It was when I was talking through my hat
+about the war."
+
+"I've never seen her cry," said Stella pensively. "Until to-day."
+
+Michael forgot about his own distress in the thought of his mother, and
+he sat hushed all through the evening, while Stella played in the
+darkness. Mrs. Fane went up to her own room immediately she came in that
+night, and the next morning, which was Saturday, Michael listlessly took
+the paper out to read in the garden, while he waited for Stella to dress
+herself so that they could go out together and avoid the house over
+which seemed to impend calamity.
+
+Opening the paper, Michael saw an obituary notice of the Earl of Saxby.
+He scanned the news, only half absorbing it:
+
+"In another column will be found the details--enteric--adds another
+famous name to the lamentable toll of this war--the late nobleman did
+not go into society much of late years--formerly Captain in the Welsh
+Guards--born 1860--married Lady Emmeline MacDonald, daughter of the Earl
+of Skye, K.T.--raised corps of Mounted Infantry (Saxby's Horse)--great
+traveller--unfortunately no heir to the title which becomes extinct."
+
+Michael guessed the cause of his mother's unhappiness of yesterday. He
+went upstairs and told Stella.
+
+"I suppose mother was in love with him," she said.
+
+"I suppose she was," Michael agreed. "I wish I hadn't refused to say
+good-bye to him. It seems rather horrible now."
+
+Mrs. Fane had left word that she would not be home until after dinner,
+and Michael and Stella sat apprehensive and silent in the drawing-room.
+Sometimes they would toss backwards and forwards to each other
+reassuring words, while outside the livid evening of ochreous oppressive
+clouds and ashen pavements slowly dislustred into a night swollen with
+undelivered rain and baffled thunders.
+
+About nine o'clock Mrs. Fane came home. She stood for a moment in the
+doorway of the room, palely regarding her children. She seemed undecided
+about something, but after a long pause she sat down between them and
+began to speak:
+
+"Something has happened, dear children, that I think you ought to know
+about before you grow any older."
+
+Mrs. Fane paused again and stared before her, seeming to be reaching out
+for strength to continue. Michael and Stella sat breathless as the air
+of the night. Mrs. Fane's white kid gloves fell to the floor softly like
+the petals of a blown rose, and as if she missed their companionship in
+the stress of explication, she went on more rapidly.
+
+"Lord Saxby has died in the Transvaal of enteric fever, and I think you
+both ought to know that Lord Saxby was your father."
+
+When his mother said this, the blood rushed to Michael's face and then
+immediately receded, so that his eyelids as they closed over his eyes to
+shield them from the room's suddenly intense light glowed greenly; and
+when he looked again anywhere save directly at his mother, his heart
+seemed to have been crushed between ice. The room itself went swinging
+up in loops out of reach of his intelligence, that vainly strove to
+bring it back to familiar conditions. The nightmare passed: the
+drawing-room regained its shape and orderly tranquillity: the story went
+on.
+
+"I have often wished to tell you, Michael, in particular," said his
+mother, looking at him with great grey eyes whose lustrous intensity
+cooled his first pained sensation of shamefulness, "Years ago, when you
+were the dearest little boy, and when I was young and rather lonely
+sometimes, I longed to tell you. But it would not have been fair to
+weigh you down with knowledge that you certainly could not have grasped
+then. I thought it was kinder to escape from your questions, even when
+you said that your father looked like a prince."
+
+"Did I?" Michael asked, and he fell to wondering why he had spoken and
+why his voice sounded so exactly the same as usual.
+
+"You see ... of course ... I was never married to your father. You must
+not blame him, because he wanted to marry me always, but Lady Saxby
+wouldn't divorce him. I dare say she had a right to nurse her injury.
+She is still alive. She lives in an old Scottish castle. Your father
+gave up nearly all his time to me. That was why you were both alone so
+much. You must forgive me for that, if you can. But I knew, as time went
+on that we should never be married, and.... Your father only saw you
+once, dearest Stella, when you were very tiny. You remember, Michael,
+when you saw him. He loved you so much, for of course, except in name,
+you were his heir. He wanted to have you to live with him. He loved
+you."
+
+"I suppose that's why I liked him so tremendously," said Michael.
+
+"Did you, dearest boy?" said Mrs. Fane, and the tears were in her grey
+eyes. "Ah, how dear it is of you to say that."
+
+"Mother, I can't tell you how sorry I am I never went to say good-bye. I
+shall never forgive myself," said Michael. "I shall never forgive
+myself."
+
+"But you must. It was my fault," said his mother. "I dare say I asked
+you tactlessly. I was so much upset at the time that I only thought
+about myself."
+
+"Why did he go?" asked Stella suddenly.
+
+"Well, that was my fault. I was always so dreadfully worried over the
+way in which I had spoilt his life that when he thought he ought to go
+and fight for his country, I could not bear to dissuade him. You see,
+having no heir, he was always fretting and fretting about the
+extinction of his family, and he had a fancy that the last of his name
+should do something for his country. He had given up his country for me,
+and I knew that if he went to the war he would feel that he had paid the
+debt. I never minded so much that we weren't married, but I always
+minded the feeling that I had robbed him by my love. He was such a very
+dear fellow. He was always so good and patient, when I begged him not to
+see you both. That was his greatest sorrow. But it wouldn't have been
+fair to you, dear children. You must not blame me for that. I knew it
+was better that you should be brought up in ignorance. It was, wasn't
+it?" she asked wistfully.
+
+"Better," Michael murmured.
+
+"Better," Stella echoed.
+
+Mrs. Fane stood up, and Michael beheld her tall, tragical form with a
+reverence he had never felt for anything.
+
+"Children, you must forgive me," she said.
+
+And then simply, with repose and exquisite fitness she left Michael and
+Stella to themselves. By the door Stella overtook her.
+
+"Mother darling," she cried. "You know we adore you. You do, don't you?"
+
+Mrs. Fane smiled, and Michael thought he would cherish that smile to the
+end of his life.
+
+"Well?" said Michael, when Stella and he were sitting alone again.
+
+"Of course I've known for years it was something like this," said
+Stella.
+
+"I can't think why I never guessed. I ought to have guessed easily,"
+Michael said. "But somehow one never thinks of anything like this in
+connection with one's own mother."
+
+"Or sister," murmured Stella, looking up at a spot on the ceiling.
+
+"I wish I could kick myself for not having said good-bye to him,"
+Michael declared. "That comes of talking too much. I talked much too
+much then. Talking destroys action. What a beast I was. Lily and I look
+rather small now, don't we?" he went on. "When you think of the amount
+that mother must have suffered all these years, it just makes Lily and
+me look like illustrations in a book. It's a curious thing that this
+business about mother and ... Lord Saxby ought, I suppose, to make me
+feel more of a worm than ever, but it doesn't. Ever since the first
+shock, I've been feeling prouder and prouder. I can't make it out."
+
+Then suddenly Michael flushed.
+
+"I say, I wonder how many of our friends have known all the time? Mrs.
+Carthew and Mrs. Ross both know. I feel sure by what they've said. And
+yet I wonder if Mrs. Ross does know. She's so strict in her notions that
+... I wonder ... and yet I suppose she isn't so strict as I thought she
+was. Perhaps I was wrong."
+
+"What are you talking about?" Stella asked.
+
+"Oh, something that happened at Cobble Place. It's not important enough
+to tell you."
+
+"What I'm wondering," said Stella, "is what mother was like when she was
+my age. She didn't say anything about her family. But I suppose we can
+ask her some time. I'm really rather glad I'm not 'Lady Stella Fane.' It
+would be ridiculous for a great pianist to be 'Lady Something.'"
+
+"You wouldn't have been Lady Stella Fane," Michael contradicted. "You
+would have been Lady Stella Cunningham. Cunningham was the family name.
+I remember reading about it all when I was interested in Legitimists."
+
+"What are they?" Stella asked. "The opposite of illegitimate?"
+
+Michael explained the difference, and he was glad that the word
+'illegitimate' should first occur like this. The pain of its utterance
+seemed mitigated somehow by the explanation.
+
+"It's an extraordinary thing," Michael began, "but, do you know, Stella,
+that all the agony of seeing Lily flirting seems to have died away, and
+I feel a sort of contempt ... for myself, I mean. Flirting sounds such a
+loathsome word after what we've just listened to. Alan was right, I
+believe. I shall have to tell Alan about all this. I wonder if it will
+make any difference to him. But of course it won't. Nothing makes any
+difference to Alan."
+
+"It's about time I met him," said Stella.
+
+"Why, haven't you?" Michael exclaimed. "Nor you have. Great Scott! I've
+been so desperately miserable over Lily that I've never asked Alan here
+once. Oh, I will, though."
+
+"I say, oughtn't we to go up to mother?" said Stella.
+
+"Would she like us to?" Michael wondered.
+
+"Oh, yes, I'm sure she would."
+
+"But I can't express what I feel," Michael complained. "And it will be
+absurd to go and stand in front of her like two dummies."
+
+"I'll say something," Stella promised; and, "Mother," she said, "come
+and hear me play to you."
+
+The music-room, with its spare and austere decoration, seemed to Michael
+a fit place for the quiet contemplation of the tale of love he had
+lately heard.
+
+Whatever of false shame, of self-consciousness, of shock remained was
+driven away by Stella's triumphant music. It was as if he were sitting
+beneath a mountain waterfall that, graceful and unsubstantial as
+wind-blown tresses, was yet most incomparably strong, and wrought an
+ice-cold, a stern purification.
+
+Then Stella played with healing gentleness, and Michael in the darkness
+kissed his mother and stole away to bed, not to dream of Lily that
+night, not to toss enfevered, but quietly to lie awake, devising how to
+show his mother that he loved her as much now as he had loved her in the
+dim sunlight of most early childhood.
+
+About ten days later Mrs. Fane came to Michael and Stella with a letter.
+
+"I want to read you something," she said. "Your father's last letter has
+come."
+
+     "_We are in Pretoria now, and I think the war will soon be over.
+     But of course there's a lot to be done yet. I'm feeling seedy
+     to-night, and I'm rather sighing for England. I wonder if I'm going
+     to be ill. I have a presentiment that things are going wrong with
+     me--at least not wrong, because in a way I would be glad. No, I
+     wouldn't, that reads as if I were afraid to keep going_.
+
+     "_I keep thinking of Michael and Stella. Michael must be told soon.
+     He must forgive me for leaving him no name. I keep thinking of
+     those Siamese stamps he asked for when I last saw him. I wish I'd
+     seen him again before I went. But I dare say you were right. He
+     would have guessed who I was, and he might have gone away
+     resentful_."
+
+Michael looked at his mother, and thanked her implicitly for excusing
+him. He was glad that his father had not known he had declined to see
+him.
+
+     "_I don't worry so much over Stella. If she really has the stuff in
+     her to make the name you think she will, she does not need any name
+     but her own. But it maddens me to think that Michael is cut out of
+     everything. I can scarcely bear to realize that I am the last. I'm
+     glad he's going to Oxford, and I'm very glad that he chose St.
+     Mary's. I was only up at Christ Church a year, and St. Mary's was a
+     much smaller college in those days. Now of course it's absolutely
+     one of the best. Whatever Michael wants to do he will be able to
+     do, thank God. I don't expect, from what you tell me of him, he'll
+     choose the Service. However, he'll do what he likes. When I come
+     back, I must see him and I shall be able to explain what will
+     perhaps strike him at first as the injustice of his position. I
+     dare say he'll think less hardly of me when I've told him all the
+     circumstances. Poor old chap! I feel that I've been selfish, and
+     yet_....
+
+     "_I wonder if I'm going to be ill. I feel rotten. But don't worry.
+     Only, if by any chance I can't write again, will you give my love
+     to the children, and say I hope they'll not hate the thought of me?
+     That piano was the best Prescott could get. I hope Stella is
+     pleased with it_."
+
+"Thanks awfully for reading us that," said Michael.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XX: _Music_
+
+
+Mrs. Fane, having momentarily lifted the veil that all these years had
+hidden her personality from Michael and Stella, dropped it very swiftly
+again. Only the greatest emotion could have given her the courage to
+make that avowal of her life. During the days that elapsed between the
+revelation and the reading of Lord Saxby's last letter, she had lived
+very much apart from her children, so that the spectacle of her solitary
+grief had been deeply impressed upon their sensibility.
+
+Michael was reminded by her attitude of those long vigils formerly
+sustained by ladies of noble birth before they departed into a convent
+to pray, eternally remote from the world. He himself became endowed with
+a strange courage by the contemplation of his mother's tragical
+immobility. He found in her the expression of those most voiceless
+ideals of austere conduct that until this vision of resignation had
+always seemed doomed to sink broken-winged to earth. The thought of Lily
+in this mood became an intrusion, and he told himself that, even if it
+were possible to seek the sweet unrest of her presence, beneath the
+sombre spell of this more classic sorrow he would have shunned that
+lovely and romantic girl. Michael's own realization of the circumstances
+of his birth occupied a very small part of his thoughts. His mind was
+fixed upon the aspect of his mother mute and heavy-lidded from the
+remembrance of that soldier dead in Africa. Michael felt no outrage of
+fate in these events. He was glad that death should have brought to his
+father the contentment of his country's honour, that in the grace of
+reconciliation he should be healed of his thwarted life. Nor could
+Michael resent that news of death which could ennoble his mother with
+this placidity of comprehension, this staid and haughty mien of sorrow.
+And he was grateful, too, that death should upon his own brow dry the
+fever dew of passion.
+
+But when she had read that last letter, Mrs. Fane strangely resumed her
+ordinary self. She was always so finely invested with dignity, so
+exquisitely sheathed, in her repose, Michael scarcely realized that now,
+after she had read the letter, the vision of her grief was once more
+veiled against him by that faintly discouraging, tenderly deliberate
+withdrawal of her personality, and that she was still as seclusive as
+when from his childhood she had concealed the sight of her love, living
+in her own rose-misted and impenetrable privacy.
+
+It was Stella who by a sudden request first roused Michael to the
+realization that his mother was herself again.
+
+"Mother," she said, "what about my first concert? The season is getting
+late."
+
+"Dearest Stella," Mrs. Fane replied, "I think you can scarcely make your
+appearance so soon after your father's death."
+
+"But, mother, I'm sure he wouldn't have minded. And after all very few
+people would know," Stella persisted.
+
+"But I should prefer that you waited for a while," said Mrs. Fane,
+gently reproachful. "You forget that we are in mourning."
+
+For Michael somehow the conventional expression seemed to disturb the
+divinity of his mother's carven woe. The world suddenly intervened.
+
+"Well, I don't think I ought to wait for ever," said Stella.
+
+"Darling child, I wonder why you should think it necessary to exaggerate
+so foolishly," said Mrs. Fane.
+
+"But I'm so longing to begin," Stella went on.
+
+"I don't know that anybody has ever suggested you shouldn't begin," Mrs.
+Fane observed. "But there is a difference between your recklessness and
+my more carefully considered plans."
+
+"Mother, will you agree to a definite date?" Stella demanded.
+
+"By all means, dear child, if you will try to be a little less
+boisterous and impetuous. For one thing, I never knew you were ready to
+begin at once like this."
+
+"Oh, mother, after all these years and years of practising!" Stella
+protested.
+
+"But are you ready?" Mrs. Fane enquired in soft surprize. "Really ready?
+Then why not this autumn? Why not October?"
+
+"Before I go up to Oxford," said Michael quickly.
+
+Stella was immediately and vividly alert with plans for her concert.
+
+"I don't think any of the smaller halls. Couldn't I appear first at one
+of the big orchestral concerts at King's Hall? I would like to play a
+Concerto ... Chopin, I think, and nothing else. Then later on I could
+have a concert all to myself, and play Schumann, and perhaps some
+Brahms."
+
+So in the end it was settled after numberless interviews, letters,
+fixtures, cancellations, and all the fuming impediments of art's first
+presentation at the court of the world.
+
+The affairs and arrangements connected with Stella's career seemed to
+Michael the proper distraction for his mother and sister during his last
+two or three weeks of school, before they could leave London. Mrs. Fane
+had suggested they should go to Switzerland in August, staying at
+Lucerne, so that Stella would not be hindered in her steady practice.
+
+Michael's last week at school was a curiously unreal experience. As fast
+as he marshalled the correct sentiments with which to approach the last
+hours of a routine that had continued for ten years, so fast did they
+break up in futile disorder. He had really passed beyond the domain of
+school some time ago when he was always with Lily. It was impossible
+after that gradual secession, all the more final because it had been so
+gradual, to gather together now a crowd of associations for the sole
+purpose of effecting a violent and summary wrench. Indeed, the one
+action that gave him the expected pang of sentiment was when he went to
+surrender across the counter of the book-room the key of his locker. The
+number was seventy-five. In very early days Michael had been proud of
+possessing, through a happy accident, a locker on the ground-floor very
+close to the entrance-hall. His junior contemporaries were usually
+banished to remote corridors in the six-hundreds, waiting eagerly to
+inherit from departed seniors the more convenient lockers downstairs.
+But Michael from the day he first heard by the cast of the Laocoon the
+shuffle of quick feet along the corridor had owned the most convenient
+locker in all the school. At the last moment Michael thought he would
+forfeit the half-crown long ago deposited and keep the key, but in the
+end he, with the rest of his departing contemporaries, callously
+accepted the more useful half-crown.
+
+School broke up in a sudden heartless confusion, and Michael for the
+last time stood gossiping outside the school-doors at five o'clock. For
+a minute he felt an absurd desire to pick up a stone and fling it
+through the window of the nearest class-room, not from any spirit of
+indignation, but merely to assure himself of a physical freedom that he
+had not yet realized.
+
+"Where are you going for the holidays, Bangs?" someone asked.
+
+"Switzerland."
+
+"Hope you'll have a good time. See you next--oh, by Jove, I shan't
+though. Good-bye, hope you'll have good luck."
+
+"Thanks," said Michael, and he had a fleeting view of himself relegated
+to the past, one of that scattered host--
+
+    _Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks_
+    _In Vallombrosa_--
+
+Old Jacobeans, ghostly, innumerable, whose desks like tombstones would
+bear for a little while the perishable ink of their own idle epitaphs.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lucerne was airless; the avenue of pollarded limes sheltered a depressed
+bulk of dusty tourists; the atmosphere was impregnated with bourgeois
+exclamations; the very surface of the lake was swarming with humanity,
+noisy with the click of rowlocks, and with the gutturals that seemed to
+praise fitly such a theatrical setting.
+
+Mrs. Fane wondered why they had come to Switzerland, but still she asked
+Michael and Stella whether they would like to venture higher. Michael,
+perceiving the hordes of Teutonic nomads who were sweeping up into the
+heart of the mountains, thought that Switzerland in August would be
+impossible whatever lonely height they gained. They moved to Geneva,
+whose silverpointed beauty for a while deceived them, but soon both he
+and Stella became restless and irritable.
+
+"Switzerland is like sitting in a train and travelling through glorious
+country," said Michael. "It's all right for a journey, but it becomes
+frightfully tiring. And, mother, I do hate the sensation that all these
+people round are feeling compelled to enjoy themselves. It's like a
+hearty choral service."
+
+"It's like an oratorio," said Stella. "I can't play a note here. The
+very existence of these mobs is deafening."
+
+"Well, I don't mind where we go," said Mrs. Fane. "I'm not enjoying
+these peculiar tourists myself. Shall we go to the Italian lakes? I used
+to like them very much. I've spent many happy days there."
+
+"I'd rather go to France," said Michael. "Only don't let's go far. Let's
+go to Lyons and find out some small place in the country. I was talking
+to a decent chap--not a tourist--who said there were delightful little
+red-roofed towns in the Lyonnais."
+
+So they left Switzerland and went to Lyons where, sitting under the
+shade of trees by the tumbling blue Rhone, they settled with a polite
+agent to take a small house near Chatillon.
+
+Hither a piano followed them, and here for seven weeks they lived, each
+one lost in sun-dyed dreams.
+
+"I knew we should like this," Michael said to Stella, as they leaned
+against tubs of rosy oleanders on a lizard-streaked wall, and watched
+some great white oxen go smoothly by. "I like this heart of France
+better than Brittany or Normandy. But I hope mother won't be bored
+here."
+
+"There are plenty of books," said Stella. "And anyway she wants to lie
+back and think, and it's impossible to think except in the sun."
+
+The oxen were still in sight along the road that wound upwards to where
+Chatillon clustered red upon its rounded hill.
+
+"It doesn't look like a real town," said Michael. "It's really not
+different from the red sunbaked earth all about here. I feel it would be
+almost a pity ever to walk up that road and find it is a town. I vote we
+never go quite close, but just sit here and watch it changing colour all
+through the day. I never want to move out of this garden."
+
+"I can't walk about much," said Stella. "Because I simply must practise
+and practise and practise and practise."
+
+They always woke up early in the morning, and Michael used to watch
+Chatillon purple-bloomed with the shadow of the fled night, then hazy
+crimson for a few minutes until the sun came high enough to give it back
+the rich burnt reds of the day. All through the morning Michael used to
+sit among the peach trees of the garden, while Stella played. All
+through the morning he used to read novel after novel of ephemeral fame
+that here on the undisturbed shelves had acquired a certain permanence.
+In the afternoon Stella and he used to wander through the vineyards down
+to a shallow brown stream bordered by poplars and acacias, or in
+sun-steeped oak woods idly chase the long lizards splendid with their
+black and yellow lozenges and shimmering green mail.
+
+Once in a village at harvest-time, when the market-place was a fathom
+deep in golden corn, they helped in the threshing, and once when the
+grain had been stored, they danced here with joyful country-folk under
+the moon.
+
+During tea-time they would sit with their mother beneath an almond tree,
+while beyond in sunlit air vibrant with the glad cicadas butterflies
+wantoned with the oleanders, or upon the wall preened their slow fans.
+Later, they would pace a walk bordered by tawny tea-roses, and out of
+the globed melons they would scent the garnered warmth of the day
+floating forth to mingle with the sweet breath of eve. Now was the hour
+to climb the small hill behind the peach trees. Here across the mighty
+valley of the Saone they could see a hundred miles away the Alps riding
+across the horizon, light as clouds. And on the other side over their
+own little house lay Chatillon cherry-bright in the sunset, then
+damson-dark for a while, until it turned to a velvet gloom pricked with
+points of gold and slashed with orange stains.
+
+Michael and Stella always went to bed when the landscape had faded out.
+But often Michael would sit for a long time and pore upon the rustling,
+the dark, the moth-haunted night; or if the moon were up he would in
+fancies swim out upon her buoyant watery sheen.
+
+Sometimes, as he sat among the peach trees, a thought of Lily would come
+to him; and he would imagine her form swinging round the corner. The
+leaves and sunlight, while he dreamed of her, dappled the unread pages
+of his book. He would picture himself with Lily on these sunny uplands
+of the Lyonnais, and gradually she lost her urban actuality; gradually
+the disillusionment of her behaviour was forgotten. With the
+obliteration of Lily's failure the anguish for her bodily form faded
+out, and Michael began to mould her to an incorporeal idea of first
+love. In this clear air she stood before him recreated, as if the
+purifying sun, which was burning him to the likeness of the earth
+around, had been able at the same time to burn that idea of young love
+to a slim Etruscan shape which could thrill him for ever with its
+beauty, but nevermore fret him with the urgency of desire. He was glad
+he had not spoken to her again after that garden interlude; and though
+his heart would have leapt to see her motionable and swaying to his
+glances as she came delicately towards him through the peach trees,
+Michael felt that somehow he would not kiss her, but that he would
+rather lead her gravely to the hill-top and set her near him to stay for
+ever still, for ever young, for ever fair.
+
+So all through that summer the sun burned Michael, while day by day the
+white unhurried oxen moved, slow as clouds, up the hill towards the
+town. But Michael never followed their shambling steps, and therefore he
+never destroyed his dream of Chatillon.
+
+As the time drew nearer and nearer for Stella's concert, she practised
+more incessantly. Nor would she walk now with Michael through the
+vineyards down to the shallow poplar-shadowed stream. Michael was seized
+with a reverence for her tireless concentration, and he never tried to
+make her break this rule of work, but would always wander away by
+himself.
+
+One day, when he was lying on a parched upland ridge, Michael had a
+vision of Alan in green England. Suddenly he realized that in a few
+weeks they would be setting out together for Oxford. The dazzling azure
+sky of France lightened to the blown softness of an English April.
+Cloistral he saw Oxford, and by the base of St. Mary's Tower the people,
+small as emmets, hurrying. The roofs and spires were wet with rain, and
+bells were ringing. He saw the faces of all those who from various
+schools would encounter with him the greyness and the grace of Oxford,
+and among them was Alan.
+
+How familiar Oxford seemed after all!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The principal fact that struck Michael about Stella in these days of
+practising for her concert was her capacity for renouncing all
+extravagance of speech and her steady withdrawal from everything that
+did not bear directly on her work. She no longer talked of her
+brilliance; she no longer tried to astonish Michael with predications of
+genius; she became curiously and impressively diligent, and, without
+conveying an idea of easy self-confidence, she managed to make Michael
+feel perfectly sure of her success.
+
+During the latter half of September Michael went to stay with Alan at
+Richmond, partly because with the nearness of Stella's appearance he
+began to feel nervous, and partly because he found speculation about
+Oxford in Alan's company a very diverting pursuit. From Richmond he went
+up at the end of the month in order to pass Responsions without
+difficulty. On the sixth of October was the concert at King's Hall.
+
+Michael had spent a good deal of time in sending letters to all the
+friends he could think of, inviting their attendance on this occasion
+of importance. He even wrote to Wilmot and many of the people he had met
+at Edwardes Square. Everyone must help in Stella's triumph.
+
+At the beginning of October Mrs. Ross arrived at the Merivales' house,
+and for the first time since their conversation in the orchard she and
+Michael met. He was shy at first, but Mrs. Ross was so plainly anxious
+to show that she regarded him as affectionately as ever that Michael
+found himself able to resume his intimacy at once. However, since Stella
+was always uppermost in his thoughts, he did not test Mrs. Ross with any
+more surprizing admissions.
+
+On the night before the concert Mr. and Mrs. Merivale, Mrs. Ross, Alan
+and Michael sat in the drawing-room, talking over the concert from every
+point of view.
+
+"Of course she'll be a success," said Mr. Merivale, and managed to
+implicate himself as usual in a network of bad puns that demanded the
+heartiest reprobation from his listeners.
+
+"Dear little girl," said Mrs. Merivale placidly. "How nice it is to see
+children doing things."
+
+"Of course she'll be a success," Alan vowed. "You've only got to look at
+her to see that. By gad, what an off-drive she would have had, if she'd
+only been a boy."
+
+Michael looked at Alan quickly. This was the first time he had ever
+heard him praise a girl of his own accord. He made up his mind to ask
+Stella when her concert was over how Alan had impressed her.
+
+"Dear Michael," said Mrs. Ross earnestly, "you must not worry about
+Stella. Don't you remember how years ago I said she would be a great
+pianist? And you were so amusing about it, because you would insist that
+you didn't like her playing."
+
+"Nor I did," said Michael in laughing defence of himself at eight years
+old. "I used to think it was the most melancholy noise on earth.
+Sometimes I think so now, when Stella wraps herself up in endless
+scales. By Jove," he suddenly exclaimed, "what's the time?"
+
+"Half-past eight nearly. Why?" Alan asked.
+
+"I forgot to write and tell Viner to come. It's not very late. I think
+I'll go over to Notting Hill now, and ask him. I haven't been to see him
+much lately, and he was always awfully decent to me."
+
+Mr. Viner was reading in his smoke-hung room.
+
+"Hullo," he said. "You've not been near me for almost a year."
+
+"I know," said Michael apologetically. "I feel rather a brute. Some time
+I'll tell you why."
+
+Then suddenly Michael wondered if the priest knew about Lord Saxby, and
+he felt shy of him. He felt that he could not talk intimately to him
+until he had told him about the circumstances of his birth.
+
+"Is that what's been keeping you away?" asked the priest. "Because, let
+me tell you, I've known all about you for some years. And look here,
+Michael, don't get into your head that you've got to make this sort of
+announcement every time you form a new friendship."
+
+"Oh, that wasn't the reason I kept away," said Michael. "But I don't
+want to talk about myself. I want to talk about my sister. She's going
+to play at the King's Hall concert to-morrow night. You will come, won't
+you?"
+
+"Of course I will," said the priest.
+
+"Thanks, and--er--if you could think about her when you're saying Mass
+to-morrow morning, why, I'd rather like to serve you, if I may. I must
+tear back now," Michael added. "Good night."
+
+"Good night," said the priest, and as Michael turned in the doorway his
+smile was like a benediction.
+
+Very early on the next morning through the curdled October mists Michael
+went over to Notting Hill again. The Mission Church stood obscurely
+amid a press of mean houses, and as Michael hurried along the fetid
+narrow thoroughfare, the bell for Mass was clanging among the fog and
+smoke. Here and there women were belabouring their doorsteps with mangy
+mats or leaning with grimed elbows on their sills in depressed
+anticipation of a day's drudgery. From bed-ridden rooms came the sound
+of children wailing and fighting over breakfast. Lean cats nosed in the
+garbage strewn along the gutters.
+
+The Mission Church smelt strongly of soap and stale incense, and in the
+frore atmosphere the coloured pictures on the walls looked more than
+usually crude and violent. It was the Octave of St. Michael and All
+Angels, and the white chrysanthemums on the altar were beginning to turn
+brown. There was not a large congregation--two sisters of mercy, three
+or four pious and dowdy maiden ladies, and the sacristan. It was more
+than two years since Michael had served at Mass, and he was glad and
+grateful to find that every small ceremony still seemed sincere and fit
+and inevitable. There was an exquisite morning stillness in this small
+tawdry church, and Michael thought how strange it was that in this
+festering corner of the city it was possible to create so profound a
+sense of mystery. Whatever emotion he gained of peace and reconciliation
+and brooding holiness he vowed to Stella and to her fame and to her joy.
+
+After Mass Michael went back to breakfast with Mr. Viner, and as they
+sat talking about Oxford, Michael thought how various Oxford was
+compared with school, how many different kinds of people would be
+appropriate to their surroundings, and he began with some of the ardour
+that he had given hitherto to envy of life to covet all varieties of
+intellectual experience. What a wonderfully suggestive word was
+University, and how exciting it was to see Viner tabulating
+introductions for his benefit.
+
+Michael sat by himself at the concert. During the afternoon he had
+talked to Stella for a few minutes, but she had seemed more than ever
+immeasurably remote from conversation, and Michael had contented himself
+with offering stock phrases of encouragement and exhortation. He went
+early to King's Hall and sat high up in the topmost corner looking down
+on the orchestra. Gradually through the bluish mist the indefinite
+audience thickened, and their accumulated voices echoed less and less.
+The members of the orchestra had not yet entered, but their music-stands
+stood about with a ridiculous likeness to human beings. In the middle
+was Stella's piano black and lifeless, a little ominous in its naked and
+insistent and faintly shining ebon solemnity. One of the orchestra
+threaded his way through the chairs to where the drums stood in a
+bizarre group. From time to time this lonely human figure struck his
+instruments to test their pitch, and the low boom sounded hollowly above
+the murmurous audience.
+
+A general accession of light took place, and now suddenly the empty
+platform was filled with nonchalant men who gossiped while they made
+discordant sounds upon their instruments. The conductor came in and
+bowed. The audience clapped. There was a momentary hush, followed by a
+sharp rat-tat of the baton, and the Third Leonora Overture began.
+
+To Michael the music was a blur. It was soundless beside his own beating
+heart, his heart that thudded on and on, on and on, while the faces of
+the audience receded farther and farther through the increasing haze.
+The Overture was finished. From the hall that every moment seemed to
+grow darker came a sound of ghostly applause. Michael looked at his
+programme in a fever. What was this unpronounceable German composition,
+this Tonic Poem that must be played before Stella's turn would arrive?
+It seemed to go on for ever in a most barbaric and amorphous din; with
+corybantic crashings, with brazen fanfares and stinging cymbals it flung
+itself against the audience, while the woodwind howled and the violins
+were harsh as cats. Michael brooded unreceptive; he had a sense of
+monstrous loneliness; he could think of nothing. The noise overpowered
+his beating heart, and he began to count absurdly, while he bit his
+nails or shivered in alternations of fire and snow. Then his programme
+fluttered down on to the head of a bald violoncellist, and the ensuing
+shock of self-consciousness, that was mingled with a violent desire to
+laugh very loudly, restored him to his normal calm. The Tonic Poem
+shrieked and tore itself to death. The world became very quiet.
+
+There was a gradual flap of rising applause, and it was Stella who, tall
+and white, was being handed across the platform. It was Stella who was
+sitting white and rigid at the black piano that suddenly seemed to have
+shrunk into a puny insignificance. It was Stella whose fingers were
+causing those rills of melody to flow. She paused, while the orchestra
+took up their part, and then again the rills began to flow, gently,
+fiercely, madly, sadly, wildly. Now she seemed to contend against the
+mighty odds of innumerable rival instruments; now her own frail
+instrument seemed to flag; now she was gaining strength; her cool clear
+harmonies were subduing this welter of violins, this tempest of horns
+and clarionets, this menace of bass-viols and drums. The audience was
+extinguished like a candle. The orchestra seemed inspired by the angry
+forces of Nature herself. The bows of the violins whitened and flickered
+like willows in a storm, and yet amid this almost intolerable movement
+Stella sat still as a figure of eternal stone. A faint smile curved more
+sharply her lips; the black bows in her hair trembled against her white
+dress; her wonderful hands went galloping away to right and left of her
+straight back. Plangent as music itself, serene as sculpture, with
+smiling lips magically crimson, adorably human, she finished her first
+concerto. And while she bowed to the audience and to the orchestra and
+the great shaggy conductor, Michael saw ridiculous teardrops bedewing
+his sleeve, not because he had been moved by the music, but because he
+was unable to shake by the hand every single person in King's Hall who
+was now applauding his sister.
+
+It was not until Beethoven's somber knock at the opening of the Fifth
+Symphony that Michael began to dream upon the deeps of great music, that
+his thoughts liberated from anxiety went straying into time. Stella,
+when for a little while he had reveled in her success, was forgotten,
+and the people in this hall, listening, listening, began to move him
+with their unimaginable variety. Near him were lovers who in this
+symphony were fast imparadised; their hands were interlaced; visibly
+they swayed nearer to each other on the waves of melody. Old men were
+near him, solitary old men listening, listening ... old men who at the
+summons of these ringing notes were traversing their past that otherwise
+might have stayed forever unvoyageable.
+
+Michael sometimes craved for Lily's company, wished that he could clasp
+her to him and swoon away upon these blinding chords. But she was
+banished from this world of music, she who had betrayed the beauty of
+love. There was something more noble in this music than the memory of a
+slim and lovely girl and of her flower-soft kisses. The world itself
+surely seemed to travel the faster for this urgent symphony. Michael was
+spinning face to face with the spinning stars.
+
+And then some thread of simple melody would bring him back to the green
+world and the little memories of his boyhood. Now more than ever did it
+seem worth while to live on earth. He recognized, as if suddenly he had
+come down from incredible heights, familiar faces in the audience. He
+saw his mother with Mrs. Ross beside her, two figures that amid all this
+intoxication of speeding life must forever mourn. Now while the flood
+of music was sounding in his ears, he wished that he could fly down
+through this dim hall, and tell them, as they sat there in black with
+memories beside them, how well he loved them, how much he honoured them,
+how eagerly he demanded from them pride in himself.
+
+After the first emotions of the mighty music had worn themselves out,
+Michael's imagination began to wander rapidly. At one point the bassoons
+became very active, and he was somehow reminded of Mr. Neech. He was
+puzzled for awhile to account for this association of an old form-master
+with the noise of bassoons. '_For he heard the loud bassoon_.' Out of
+the past came the vision of old Neech wagging the tail of his gown as he
+strode backward and forwards over the floor of the Shell class-room.
+'_The Wedding-Guest here beat his breast, For he heard the loud
+bassoon_.' Out of the past came the shrill sound of boys ruining The
+Ancient Mariner, and Michael heard again the outraged apostrophes of Mr.
+Neech. He began to create from his fancy of Mr. Neech a grotesque symbol
+of public-school education. Certainly he was the only master who had
+taught him anything. Yet he had probably tried less earnestly to teach
+than any other masters. Why did this image of Mr. Neech materialize
+whenever his thoughts went back to school? Years had passed since he had
+enjoyed the Shell. He had never talked intimately to Neech; indeed, he
+had scarcely held any communication with him since he left his form. The
+influence of Neech must have depended on a personality that demanded
+from his pupils a stoic bearing, a sense of humour, a capacity for
+inquisitiveness, an idea of continuity. He could not remember that any
+of these qualities had been appreciated by himself until he had entered
+the Shell. Michael regretted very deeply that on the day before he left
+school he had not thanked Neech for his existence. How nebulous already
+most of his other masters seemed. Only Neech stood out clear-cut as the
+intagliation of a sardonyx.
+
+Meditation upon Neech took Michael off to Thackeray. He had been reading
+Pendennis lately, and the book had given him much the same sensation of
+finality as his old form-master, and as Michael thought of Thackeray, he
+began to speculate upon the difference between Michael Fane and the
+fourteenth Earl of Saxby. Yet he was rather glad that after all he was
+not the fourteenth Earl of Saxby. It would be interesting to see how his
+theories of good-breeding were carried out by himself as a nobody with
+old blood in his veins. He would like to test the common talk that rank
+was an accident, that old families, old faiths, old education, old
+customs, old manners, old thoughts, old books were all so much
+moonshine. Michael wondered whether it were so; whether indeed all men
+if born with equal chances would not display equal qualities. He did not
+believe it: he hated the doctrine. Yet people in all their variety
+called to him still, and as he surveyed the audience he was aware from
+time to time of a great longing to involve himself in the web of
+humanity. He was glad that he had not removed himself from the world
+like Chator. Chator! He must go down to Clere and see how Chator was
+getting on as a monk. He had not even thought of Chator for a year. But
+after all Oxford had a monastic intention, and Michael believed that
+from Oxford he would gain as much austerity of attitude as Chator would
+acquire from the rule of St. Benedict. And when he left Oxford, he would
+explore humanity. He would travel through the world and through the
+underworld and apply always his standard of ... of what? What was his
+standard? A classic permanence, a classic simplicity and inevitableness?
+
+The symphony stopped. He must hurry out and congratulate Stella. What a
+possession she was; what an excitement her career would be. How he would
+love to control her extravagance, and even as he controlled it, how he
+would admire it. And his mother had talked of taking a house in Chelsea.
+What various interests were springing into existence. He must not forget
+to ask Alan what train he was going by to Oxford. They must arrive
+together. He had not yet bought his china. His china! His pictures! His
+books! His rooms in college! Life was really astonishing.
+
+The concert was over, and as Michael came swirling down the stairs on
+the flood of people going home, he had a strange sensation of life
+beginning all over again.
+
+
+THE END OF THE FIRST VOLUME
+
+
+_NOTE_
+
+_The second and final volume of_ SINISTER STREET, _containing Book III:
+Dreaming Spires and Book IV: Romantic Education, will be published early
+next year._
+
+
+WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PLYMOUTH
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+AUTUMN
+
+BOOKS
+
+MCMXIII
+
+MARTIN SECKER
+
+NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET
+
+ADELPHI LONDON
+
+The Books in this list should be obtainable from all Booksellers and
+Libraries, and if any difficulty is experienced the Publisher will be
+glad to be informed of the fact. He will also be glad if those
+interested in receiving from time to time Announcement Lists,
+Prospectuses, &c. of new and forthcoming books from Number Five John
+Street, will send their names and addresses to him for this purpose. Any
+book in this List may be obtained on approval through the booksellers,
+or direct from the Publisher, on remitting him the published price, plus
+the postage.
+
+Telephone 4779 City
+
+Telegraphic Address:
+
+Psophidian London.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+The Complete Dramatic Works of
+
+Gerhart Hauptmann
+
+AUTHORISED EDITION
+
+It is generally conceded that Gerhart Hauptmann is the most notable
+dramatist of the present day. His work combines literary, psychological
+and dramatic interest in greater measure than that of any other
+contemporary writer, and the award of the Nobel prize in literature was
+a public recognition of his genius. An authorised translation of his
+dramas makes it possible at last for English people to study and enjoy
+Hauptmann. Excellent translations of a few plays had already been made,
+and these, by arrangement with the respective translators, will be
+adapted to the present edition; but new translations will be made
+whenever it seems necessary in order to maintain the highest standard.
+The editor of the edition is Professor Ludwig Lewisohn. He supplies a
+general introduction to Hauptmann's works in Volume I, and a briefer
+introduction to each succeeding volume. The contents of the volumes are
+given on the next page.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann
+
+CONTENTS
+
+    Volume I
+
+    _Social Dramas_
+
+    Before Dawn
+    The Weavers
+    The Beaver Coat
+    The Conflagration
+
+    Volume II
+
+    _Social Dramas_
+
+    Drayman Henschel
+    Rose Bernd
+    The Rats
+
+    Volume III
+
+    _Domestic Dramas_
+
+    The Reconciliation
+    Lonely Lives
+    Colleague Crampton
+    Michael Kramer
+
+    Volume IV
+
+    _Symbolic and Legendary
+    Dramas_
+
+    Hannele
+    The Sunken Bell
+    Henry of Aue
+
+    Volume V
+
+    _Symbolic and Historical
+    Dramas_
+
+    Schluck and Jau
+    And Pippa Dances
+    Charlemagne's
+    Hostage
+
+    Volume VI
+
+    _Later Dramas in Prose_
+
+    The Maidens of
+    the Mount
+    Griselda
+    Gabriel Schilling's
+    Flight
+
+Each Volume Crown 8vo. (7-1/2 in. by 5 in.)
+
+Price 5s. net.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Vie de Boheme:
+
+A Patch of Romantic Paris
+
+By ORLO WILLIAMS
+
+The phrase "Vie de Boheme" is one in very frequent use, but few of its
+users recognize its implication. At the time when the term originated in
+French literature it had a very special meaning. That time was the
+Romantic period, one of the most brilliant in all the history of French
+artistic achievement, and the phrase denoted the life of an important
+section of Parisian Society between the years of 1830 and 1848. It was
+called into being by special circumstances and conditions in 1830;
+reached its golden age in 1835, and slowly declined till the revolution
+of 1848 reduced it to a mere excrescence on the life of art students, as
+it now is. "La Boheme" was strictly Parisian, as Henri Murger said it
+must be; it arose through the literary and social revolution of 1830; it
+flourished because of the universality of the Romantic spirit of which
+it was a flower; it declined because its second generation had neither
+the enthusiasm nor the talent of its first. Mr. Orlo Williams surveys
+the period very thoroughly, and his book is illustrated in colour and
+half-tone, from contemporary pictures and prints.
+
+Demy Octavo (9 in. by 5-1/2 in.)
+
+Fully Illustrated. Price 15s. net.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+The Art of Silhouette
+
+By DESMOND COKE
+
+In the popular belief a silhouette is something snipped from black paper
+on a pier for sixpence. Mr. Desmond Coke, as a fourteen-year collector
+of the fine eighteenth century profiles painted upon chalk, glass or
+paper, has set himself to correct this fallacy. The reproductions of
+miniature likenesses in silhouette by Miers, Charles, Rosenberg, Mrs.
+Beetham, and the other profilists who set Bath beaux and belles in black
+outline for ever, will probably surprise most readers by their delicate
+craftsmanship and life-like quality. The book is lightly planned: more
+an essay than a history or treatise. The joys of collecting--the charm
+of silhouette--the men who practised this short-lived art, including the
+tragi-comic Edouart, a man whom Dickens would have loved--the humours of
+their labels--the horrors of Victorian decadence--groups--some famous
+silhouette collections--fancy subjects cut in paper--Cupid and this set
+of shadows--a plea for austerity, addressed to modern artists--such are
+a few points covered by a book which (to quote the author's foreword) is
+intended for "collectors, artists, lovers of the past, and all such as
+think nothing human or curious alien from themselves."
+
+Demy Octavo (9 in. by 5-1/2 in.)
+
+Fully Illustrated. Price 10s. 6d. net.
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+       *       *       *       *       *
+
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+Personality in Literature
+
+By R. A. SCOTT-JAMES
+
+In the third and longest part of this book, Mr. Scott-James estimates
+the work of some of the more prominent modern authors. But he presents
+these criticisms as the sequel to a general consideration of what it is
+that readers at all times look for in the best literature, and secondly,
+what are the special conditions of modern life that are having their
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+
+Demy Octavo (9 in. by 5-1/2 in.)
+
+Price 7s. 6d. net.
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+Walter Pater
+
+A Critical Study
+
+By EDWARD THOMAS
+
+This is a combined character study and criticism. The man's life is used
+to elucidate his books, which in turn contribute many unquestionable
+touches of character. All his published books and scattered essays are
+considered from a practical and aesthetic standpoint. His fundamental
+ideas and tendencies, his purpose and effect, his style and his theory
+of style, are examined in a book for which there should be a distinct
+demand.
+
+Demy Octavo (9 in. by 5-1/2 in.)
+
+With Portrait. Price 7s. 6d. net.
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+Walt Whitman
+
+A Critical Study
+
+By BASIL DE SELINCOURT
+
+MR. DE SELINCOURT'S object has been to show that, when all deductions
+have been made and elements of crudeness, reaction and extravagance
+fully allowed for, Whitman's contribution to literature has the
+uniqueness and the solidity claimed for it by his admirers and by
+himself. The book differs from others in endeavouring more explicitly to
+exhibit the relation of Whitman's form and style to those of
+conventional literature and to justify his apparent anomalies. Whitman's
+peculiar use of language, his love of specification and cataloguing,
+etc., are explained in reference to the underlying purposes of language
+generally. His identification as a man with humanity, as an artist with
+America, are shown to have been genuine forces in him, available for
+expression and the real spring of his work.
+
+Demy Octavo (9 in. by 5-1/2 in.)
+
+With Portrait. Price 7s. 6d. net.
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+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Dramatic Portraits
+
+By P. P. HOWE
+
+THROUGHOUT this book a particular point of view has been adhered to,
+from which the drama is looked upon as a separate art from literature,
+and from which especial attention is paid to the manner of its practice.
+Thus nearly all the plays of the dramatists passed under review are to
+be studied in book form, but they are spoken of here, as far as
+possible, in terms of their actual presentation in the theatre. The
+dramatists include Pinero, Henry Arthur Jones, Oscar Wilde, Henry James,
+Bernard Shaw, Barrie, Granville Barker, Hankin, Galsworthy and
+Masefield. It is a book for all playgoers who have done their playgoing
+in the English theatre of the past twenty-five years. The portraits
+which illustrate it are from camera studies by Mr. E. O. Hoppe,
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+
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+
+By LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE
+
+These dialogues are the work of a poet and critic who has rapidly
+achieved distinction, and although their primary purpose is to suggest a
+philosophic attitude towards modern metaphysical problems, they stand to
+be judged as literature as well as philosophy. Mr. Abercrombie's
+attitude, one of individualism and Pyrrhonism, makes itself clear in the
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+Famine and Pestilence, War and Murder, Science and the World; Philosophy
+and an Angel.
+
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+Price 5s. net.
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+       *       *       *       *       *
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+New Fiction
+
+I.
+
+SINISTER STREET
+
+By COMPTON MACKENZIE
+
+Author of "Carnival,"
+
+Now in its 35th Thousand.
+
+II.
+
+THE STORY OF LOUIE
+
+By OLIVER ONIONS
+
+Author of "The Debit Account."
+
+III.
+
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+
+By FREDERICK NIVEN
+
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+
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+
+
+Martin Secker's Series of Modern Monographs
+
+J. M. SYNGE By P. P. Howe
+
+HENRIK IBSEN By R. Ellis Roberts
+
+WALTER PATER By Edward Thomas
+
+THOMAS HARDY By L. Abercrombie
+
+WALT WHITMAN By Basil de Selincourt
+
+GEORGE GISSING By Frank Swinnerton
+
+WILLIAM MORRIS By John Drinkwater
+
+A. C. SWINBURNE By Edward Thomas
+
+Each volume Demy Octavo, Cloth Gilt, with a Frontispiece in
+Photogravure. Price 7s. 6d. net
+
+_The Athenaeum_ says: "We congratulate the publisher."
+
+_The Spectator_ says: "Mr. Secker's excellent series of critical
+studies."
+
+_The Yorkshire Observer_ says: "Mr. Secker's admirable series."
+
+_The Manchester Courier_ says: "This excellent series."
+
+_The Illustrated London News_ says: "Mr. Martin Secker's series of
+critical studies does justice to the publisher's sense of pleasant
+format. The volumes are a delight to eye and hand, and make a welcome
+addition to the bookshelf."
+
+MARTIN SECKER PUBLISHER
+
+Number Five John Street Adelphi
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+AUTUMN
+
+BOOKS
+
+MCMXIII
+
+MARTIN SECKER
+
+NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET
+
+ADELPHI LONDON
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Sinister Street, vol. 1, by Compton Mackenzie
+
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