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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: April 21, 2020]
+
+ Language: English
+
+ Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+ *** 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.)
+
+bookcover
+
+
+
+
+ SOME PRESS OPINIONS
+
+ OF OTHER BOOKS BY
+
+ COMPTON MACKENZIE
+
+ text decoration not available
+
+ 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.’”
+
+ _ATHENÆUM:_
+
+ “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
+
+ _ATHENÆUM_ :
+
+ “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
+
+ S I N I S T E R S T R E E T
+
+ _By COMPTON MACKENZIE_
+
+
+ L O N D O N : M A R T I N S E C K E R
+
+ 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
+
+ text decoration not available
+
+
+ “ _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._ “
+
+ J OHN K EATS .
+
+
+ CONTENTS
+
+ _BOOK ONE: The Prison House_
+
+ 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_
+
+
+ F ROM 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 anæmic. 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! 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 anæmic 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_
+
+
+ H IS 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_
+
+
+ D URING 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 Doré 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_
+
+
+ A FTER 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:
+
+Monday 10—11
+
+ 11—12
+
+ 12—1
+ French
+
+ Geography
+
+ History 2.30—4Walk Tuesday 10—11
+
+ 11—12
+
+ 12—1
+ Geography
+
+ History
+
+ French 2.30—4Walk Wednesday 10—11
+
+ 11—12
+
+ 12—1
+ History
+
+ Geography
+
+ French 2.30—4Walk Thursday 10—11
+
+ 11—12
+
+ 12—1
+ French
+
+ History
+
+ Geography 2.30—4Walk Friday 10—11
+
+ 11—12
+
+ 12—1
+ Geography
+
+ French
+
+ History 2.30—4Walk
+
+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 tête-à-tête 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-à-fait charmant, mais
+ charmant, mon petit. Il était si aimable, si gentil et d’un
+ cœur très très 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_
+
+
+ M ISS 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 manœuvring 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_
+
+
+ T HE 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 Blücher 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_
+
+
+ T HE 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 Cæsar
+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_
+
+
+ I N 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, Valérie,” 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, Valérie, 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, Valérie—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.”
+
+“Valérie, 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_
+
+
+ I N 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 cafés 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 sucrée and to crunch
+ Petit Beurre biscuits. Michael thought grenadine sucrée 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 café 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 déjeuner 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 manœuvred 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 café, drinking their grenadine sucrée,
+ 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 Laocoön.
+
+ 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.”_
+
+ S T . A UGUSTINE .
+
+
+
+
+ Chapter I: _The Jacobean_
+
+
+ M ICHAEL 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 pæans 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 ‘cavé’ 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 εἱ and ἑἁν ,
+
+ 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 εἱ and ἑἁν . 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 εἱ and ἑἁν , 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
+ εἱ and ἑἁν 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 εἱ and ἑἁν 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 patulæ 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 εἱ and ἑἁν . 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_
+
+
+ M ICHAEL, 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 Fräulein 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_
+
+
+ T HE 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
+ Æneid 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 Laocoön.
+
+“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.
+
+ C OBBLE P LACE ,
+
+ _July 27_ .
+
+ _My dear old Michael_ ,
+
+ _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_
+
+
+ W HEN 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 matinée. 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 ‘cavé,’
+ 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 cañons 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 trancéd 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 Æneid 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 innuptœque puellœ,_
+
+ _Impositique rogis juvenes ante ora parentum;_
+
+ _Quam multa in silvis auctumni frigore primo_
+
+ _Lapsa cadunt folia, aut ad terram gurgite ab alto_
+
+ _Quam multœ 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 Laocoön. 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_
+
+
+ S TELLA 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 Encyclopædia: still, the Encyclopædia
+ 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
+ Doré 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 Cœur 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 pæan 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_
+
+
+ T HE 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, Præmonstratensians, 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-à-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_
+
+
+ I N 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 mediæval 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_
+
+
+ M ICHAEL 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 archæology 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 ✠
+
+ _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 οὑλοχὑται 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_
+
+
+ D INNER 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 _outré_ ?” 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.
+Crème-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-wreathèd 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 démodé 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, Mallarmé, Verlaine, Catulle Mendès 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-à-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 æsthetic 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 trancèd 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 Laocoön 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 Laocoön 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
+Compiègne 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_
+
+
+ M ICHAEL 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 Compiègne, 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 déjeuner, 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
+ Compiègne. 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 Compiègne,
+ 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_
+
+
+ A LMOST 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 æsthetic 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 _dévergondage_ ,
+ 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 C ARLINGTON R OAD .
+
+ _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_
+
+
+ M ICHAEL 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_
+
+
+ B ACK 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
+æsthetic 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 mediæval 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 hyperæsthesia 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 fiancé 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 fiancé—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_
+
+
+ I N 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
+ Trèfle 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 anæmic 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 Æneas 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
+
+
+ A S 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. Λευκὡλενος Ἡρη
+ —that was his mother,
+ and γλαυκὡπις Ἁθἡνη —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— αὑτὑμαται δἑ πὑλαι μὑκοον οὑρανοι ἁς ἑχον Ὡραι . 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_
+
+
+ M ICHAEL 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
+
+
+ W HEN 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.
+
+ S TUTTGART ,
+
+ _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 cendré 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_
+
+
+ T O 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 εἱ and ἑἁν ,
+ 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
+rôle 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_
+
+
+ T HE 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_
+
+
+ M RS. 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 Laocoön 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 Rhône, they settled with a polite
+agent to take a small house near Châtillon.
+
+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
+Châtillon 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
+Châtillon 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 Saône 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 Châtillon 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 Châtillon.
+
+ 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_ S INISTER S TREET ,
+ _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
+
+ I T 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_
+ Volume II
+
+ _Social Dramas_
+
+ Before Dawn
+
+ The Weavers
+
+ The Beaver Coat
+
+ The Conflagration
+ Drayman Henschel
+
+ Rose Bernd
+
+ The Rats
+
+ Volume III
+
+ _Domestic Dramas_
+ Volume IV
+
+ _Symbolic and Legendary Dramas_
+
+ The Reconciliation
+
+ Lonely Lives
+
+ Colleague Crampton
+
+ Michael Kramer
+ Hannele
+
+ The Sunken Bell
+
+ Henry of Aue
+
+ Volume V
+
+ _Symbolic and Historical Dramas_
+ Volume VI
+
+ _Later Dramas in Prose_
+
+ Schluck and Jau
+
+ And Pippa Dances
+
+ Charlemagne’s Hostage
+ The Maidens of the Mount
+
+ Griselda
+
+ Gabriel Schilling’s Flight
+
+ Each Volume Crown 8vo. (7½ in. by 5 in.)
+
+ Price 5s. net.
+
+ Vie de Bohème:
+
+ A Patch of Romantic Paris
+
+ By ORLO WILLIAMS
+
+ T HE phrase “Vie de Bohème” 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 Bohème” 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 5½ in.)
+
+ Fully Illustrated. Price 15s. net.
+
+
+ The
+
+ Art of Silhouette
+
+ By DESMOND COKE
+
+ I N 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 5½ in.)
+
+ Fully Illustrated. Price 10s. 6d. net.
+
+ Personality in Literature
+
+ By R. A. SCOTT-JAMES
+
+ I N 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 effect upon men of letters.
+
+ Demy Octavo (9 in. by 5½ in.)
+
+ Price 7s. 6d. net.
+
+ Walter Pater
+
+ A Critical Study
+
+ By EDWARD THOMAS
+
+ T HIS 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 æsthetic 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 5½ in.)
+
+ With Portrait. Price 7s. 6d. net.
+
+ Walt Whitman
+
+ A Critical Study
+
+ By BASIL DE SELINCOURT
+
+ M R. 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 5½ in.)
+
+ With Portrait. Price 7s. 6d. net.
+
+ Dramatic Portraits
+
+ By P. P. HOWE
+
+ T HROUGHOUT 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. Hoppé, reproduced by a new process
+ which does full justice to his original prints.
+
+ Crown Octavo (7½ in. by 5 in.)
+
+ Illustrated. Price 5s. net.
+
+ Speculative Dialogues
+
+ By LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE
+
+ T HESE 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
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+ Murder, Science and the World; Philosophy and an Angel.
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+ I.
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+ SINISTER STREET
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+ By COMPTON MACKENZIE
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+Author of “Carnival,”
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+Now in its 35th Thousand.
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+ II.
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+ THE STORY OF LOUIE
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+J. M. SYNGEBy P. P. Howe HENRIK IBSENBy R. Ellis Roberts WALTER PATERBy
+Edward Thomas THOMAS HARDYBy L. Abercrombie WALT WHITMAN By Basil
+de Selincourt GEORGE GISSINGBy Frank Swinnerton WILLIAM MORRISBy John
+Drinkwater A. C. SWINBURNEBy Edward Thomas
+
+ Each volume Demy Octavo, Cloth Gilt, with a
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+ _The Athenæum_ says: “We congratulate the publisher.”
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+ _The Spectator_ says: “Mr. Secker’s excellent series of
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+ _The Yorkshire Observer_ says: “Mr. Secker’s admirable
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+ _The Manchester Courier_ says: “This excellent series.”
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+ _The Illustrated London News_ says: “Mr. Martin Secker’s
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+ and hand, and make a welcome addition to the bookshelf.”
+
+ MARTIN SECKER PUBLISHER
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+ Number Five John Street Adelphi
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+ BOOKS
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+
+ End of Project Gutenberg's Sinister Street, vol. 1, by Compton Mackenzie
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