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 wadefor 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 invitedhim 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 Fritillariesappeared 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 heavyblack 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.
“Sic cum his, inter quos eram, voluntatum enuntianaarum signa conmunicavi; et vitae humanae procellosam societatem altius ingressus sum, pendens ex parentum auctoritate nutuque maiorum hominum.”ST. AUGUSTINE.
“Sic cum his, inter quos eram, voluntatum enuntianaarum signa conmunicavi; et vitae humanae procellosam societatem altius ingressus sum, pendens ex parentum auctoritate nutuque maiorum hominum.”
ST. AUGUSTINE.
MICHAEL found the Lower Third at St. James’ a jolly class. He was so particularly young that he was called ‘Baby,’ but with enough obvious affection to make the dubious nickname a compliment. To be sure, Mr. Braxted would often cackle jokes in a raucous voice about his age, and if Michael made a false quantity he would grumble and say he was paid as a schoolmaster not as a wet-nurse. However, Mr. Braxted was such a dandy and wore such very sharply creased and tight trousers and was so well set up and groomed that the class was proud of his neat appearance, and would inform the Upper Third that Foxy Braxted did, at any rate, look a gentleman, a distinction which the Upper Third could scarcely claim for their own form-master.
Michael liked the greater freedom of a public school. There were no home-books to be signed by governesses: there was no longer any taboo upon the revelation of Christian names. Idiosyncrasies were overlooked in the vaster society of St. James’. The senior boys paid no attention to the juniors, but passed them by scornfully as if they were grubs not worth the trouble of squashing. There was no longer the same zest in the little scandals and petty spitefulness of a private school. There was much greater freedom in the choice of one’s friends, and Michael no longer felt bound to restrict his intimacy to the twin Macalisters and Norton. Sometimes in the ‘quarter’ (as the break was now called) Michael would stand on the top of the steps that led down from the great red building intothe 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 Sideand 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 atry—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 lessonstook 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 galleryof 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. Boysflitted 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 godsεἱandἑἁν,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 onεἱandἑἁν. 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 scratchinghis own head with the end of the holder would follow word by word the liturgy ofεἱandἑἁν, 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 ofεἱandἑἁνDr. 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 relievedfrom 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 toεἱandἑἁνby 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 withhis 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 wouldkeep 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’ andεἱandἑἁν. 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 beautyof 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 madeup 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.
MICHAEL, although Stella was more of a tie than a companion, was shocked to hear that she would not accompany Miss Carthew and himself to Eastbourne for the summer holidays. He heard with a recurrence of the slight jealousy he had always felt of Stella that, though she was not yet eleven years old, she was going to Germany to live in a German family and study music. To Michael this step seemed a device to spoil Stella beyond the limits of toleration, and he thought with how many new affectations Stella would return to her native land. Moreover, why should Stella have all the excitement of going abroad and living abroad while her brother plodded to school in dull ordinary London? Michael felt very strongly that the balance of life was heavily weighted in favour of girls and he deplored the blindness of grown-up people unable to realize the greater attractiveness of boys. It was useless for Michael to protest, although he wasted an evening of Henty in arguing the point with Miss Carthew. Stella became primed with her own importance before she left England, and Michael tried to discourage her as much as he could by pointing out that in Germany her piano-playing would be laughed at and by warning her that her so evident inclination to show off would prejudice against her the bulk of Teutonic opinion. However, Michael’s well-meant discouragement did not at all abash Stella, who under his most lugubrious prophecies trilled exasperatingly cheerful scales or ostentatiously folded unimportant articles of clothing with anexaggerated 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 twiceMichael 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 inwith 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 jointdevotion. 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:
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:
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, Michaeland 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 supposethere 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 saysomething,” 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 thefeat 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 DevonshirePark 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.