“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 wavingUnion 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 noqualms 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 thatyouwere 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 hismother 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 CARLINGTONROAD.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 affectionateMichael.
64 CARLINGTONROAD.
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 affectionateMichael.
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 toconverse 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.
MICHAEL left the house early next day that he might make sure of seeing Alan for a moment before Prayers. A snowy aggregation of cumulus sustained the empyrean upon the volume of its mighty curve and swell. The road before him stretched shining in a radiant drench of azure puddles. It was a full-bosomed morning of immense peace.
Michael rather dreaded to see Alan appear in oppressive black, and felt that anything like a costume would embarrass their meeting. But just before the second bell he came quickly up the steps dressed in his ordinary clothes, and Michael in the surging corridor gripped his arm for a moment, saying he would wait for him in the ‘quarter.’
“Is your mater fearfully cut up?” he asked when they had met and were strolling together along the ‘gravel.’
“I think she was,” said Alan. “She’s going up to Cobble Place this morning to see Aunt Maud.”
“I wrote to her last night,” said Michael.
“I spent nearly all yesterday in writing to her,” said Alan. “I couldn’t think of anything to say. Could you?”
“No, I couldn’t think of very much,” Michael agreed. “It seemed so unnecessary.”
“I know,” Alan said. “I’d really rather have come to school.”
“I wish you had. I made an awful fool of myself in the morning. I got in a wax with Abercrombie and the chaps, and said I’d never play football again.”
“Whatever for?”
“Oh, because I didn’t think they appreciated what it meant for a chap like your Uncle Kenneth to be killed.”
“Do you mean they said something rotten?” asked Alan, flushing.
“I don’t think you would have thought it rotten. In fact, I think the whole row was my fault. But they seemed to take everything for granted. That’s what made me so wild.”
“Look here, we can’t start a conversation like this just before school. Are you going home to dinner?” Alan asked.
“No, I’ll have dinner down in the Tuck,” said Michael, “and we can go for a walk afterwards, if you like. It’s the first really decent day we’ve had this year.”
So after a lunch of buns, cheese-cakes, fruit pastilles, and vanilla biscuits, eaten in the noisy half-light of the Tuckshop, accompanied by the usual storm of pellets, Michael and Alan set out to grapple with the situation Michael had by his own hasty behaviour created.
“The chaps seem rather sick with you,” observed Alan, as they strolled arm-in-arm across the school-ground not yet populous with games.
“Well, they are such a set of sheep,” Michael urged in justification of himself.
“I thought you rather liked them.”
“I did at first. I do still in a way. I do when nothing matters; but that horrible line in the paper did matter most awfully, and I couldn’t stick their bleating. You see, you’re different. You just say nothing. That’s all right. But these fools tried to say something and couldn’t. I always did hate people whotriedvery 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 Iama 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 seemedall 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 livesyou 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 lovingMaud 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.
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 livesyou 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 lovingMaud 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.
BACK once more upon his pedestal in the frieze, Michael devoted himself to enjoying, while still they were important to his life, the conversation and opinions of the immortals. He gave up worrying about the war and yielded himself entirely either to the blandishments of his seniority in the school or of dreams about himself at Oxford, now within sight of attainment. Four more terms of school would set him free, and he had ambitions to get into the Fifteen in his last year. He would then be able to look back with satisfaction to the accomplishment of something. He actually threw himself into the rowdiest vanguard of Mafeking’s celebrators, and accepted the occasion as an excuse to make a noise without being compelled to make the noise alone. These Bacchanalia of patriotism were very amusing, and perhaps it was a good thing for the populace to be merry; moreover, since he now had Alan to idealize, he could afford to let his high thoughts of England’s duty and England’s honour become a little less stringent.
He spent much time with Alan in discussing Oxford and in building up a most elaborate and logical scheme of their life at the University. He was anxious that Alan should leave the classical Lower Sixth, into which he had climbed somewhat hardly, and come to join him in the leisure of the History Sixth. He spoke of Strang whose Captaincy of Cricket shed such lustre on the form, of Terry whose Captaincy of Football next year would shed an equal lustre. But Alan, having found the journey to the LowerSixth 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 perfectthrill 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 thatheld 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 wasseized 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. “Atleast 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 littlemoueof 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 thanecho 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; althoughhe 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.