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        SOME PRESS OPINIONS

        OF  OTHER  BOOKS  BY

        COMPTON MACKENZIE

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            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

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        “ _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


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interested in receiving from time to time Announcement Lists,
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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

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            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
            clear in the course of a series of dialogues between such
            personified abstractions as Famine and Pestilence, War and
            Murder, Science and the World; Philosophy and an Angel.

Wide Crown Octavo (7½ in. by 5 in.)

Price 5s. net.

            New Fiction

            I.

                SINISTER STREET

                By COMPTON MACKENZIE

Author of “Carnival,”

Now in its 35th Thousand.

            II.

                THE STORY OF LOUIE

                By OLIVER ONIONS

Author of “The Debit Account.”

            III.

                HANDS UP!

                By FREDERICK NIVEN

Author of “The Porcelain Lady.”

            Martin Secker’s Series

            of Modern Monographs

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

            Frontispiece in Photogravure. Price 7s. 6d. net

            _The Athenæum_ says: “We congratulate the publisher.”

            _The Spectator_ says: “Mr. Secker’s excellent series of
            critical studies.”

            _The Yorkshire Observer_ says: “Mr. Secker’s admirable
            series.”

            _The Manchester Courier_ says: “This excellent series.”

            _The Illustrated London News_ says: “Mr. Martin Secker’s
            series of critical studies does justice to the publisher’s
            sense of pleasant format. The volumes are a delight to eye
            and hand, and make a welcome addition to the bookshelf.”

                MARTIN SECKER PUBLISHER

                Number Five John Street Adelphi


            AUTUMN

            BOOKS

            MCMXIII



                    MARTIN  SECKER

                    NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET

                    ADELPHI LONDON




    End of Project Gutenberg's Sinister Street, vol. 1, by Compton Mackenzie