STUTTGART,Sunday.Darling Michael,I’m writing a sonata about Lily. It’s not very good unfortunately, so you’ll never be able to hear it. But after all, as you don’t understand music, perhaps I will let you hear it. I wish you had told me more about Lily. I think she’s lucky. You must be simply a perfect person to be in love with. Most boys are so silly. That’s why only men of atleast thirty attract me. But of course if I could find someone younger who would be content to love me and not mind whether I loved him, I should prefer that. You say I don’t know what love is. How silly you are, Michael. Nowisn’tit thrilling to take Lily’s hand? Idoknow what love is. But don’t look shocked, because if you can still look shocked, you don’t know what love is. Don’t forget I’m seventeen next month, and don’t forget I’m a girl as well as Lily. Lily is a good name for her, if she is very fair. I expect she really has cendré hair. I hope she’s rather tall and delicate-looking. I hope she’s a violin sort of girl, or like those notes half-way up the treble. It must have been perfect when you met her. I can just imagine you, especially if you like October as much as I do. Did the leaves come falling down all round you, when you kissed her? Oh, Michael, it must have been enchanting. I want to come back soon, soon, soon, and see this Lily of yours. Will she like me? Is she fond of music?I must have my first concert next summer. Mother mustnotput me off. Why doesn’t she let me come home now? There’s some reason for it, I believe. Thank goodness, you’ll have left school soon. You must be sick of it, especially since you’ve fallen in love.I think of you meeting Lily when I play Schumann, and when I play Chopin I think of you walking about underneath her window, and when I play Beethoven I think of you kissing her.Darling Michael, I love you more than ever. Be interested in me still, because I’m not interested in anybody but you, except, of course, myself and my music.Oh, do bring Lily to my first concert, and I’ll see you two alone of all the people in the Hall and play you so close together that you’ll nearly faint. Now you think I’m gushing, I suppose, so I’ll shut up.With a most tremendous amount of love,Your delightful sister,Stella.
STUTTGART,Sunday.
Darling Michael,
I’m writing a sonata about Lily. It’s not very good unfortunately, so you’ll never be able to hear it. But after all, as you don’t understand music, perhaps I will let you hear it. I wish you had told me more about Lily. I think she’s lucky. You must be simply a perfect person to be in love with. Most boys are so silly. That’s why only men of atleast thirty attract me. But of course if I could find someone younger who would be content to love me and not mind whether I loved him, I should prefer that. You say I don’t know what love is. How silly you are, Michael. Nowisn’tit thrilling to take Lily’s hand? Idoknow what love is. But don’t look shocked, because if you can still look shocked, you don’t know what love is. Don’t forget I’m seventeen next month, and don’t forget I’m a girl as well as Lily. Lily is a good name for her, if she is very fair. I expect she really has cendré hair. I hope she’s rather tall and delicate-looking. I hope she’s a violin sort of girl, or like those notes half-way up the treble. It must have been perfect when you met her. I can just imagine you, especially if you like October as much as I do. Did the leaves come falling down all round you, when you kissed her? Oh, Michael, it must have been enchanting. I want to come back soon, soon, soon, and see this Lily of yours. Will she like me? Is she fond of music?
I must have my first concert next summer. Mother mustnotput me off. Why doesn’t she let me come home now? There’s some reason for it, I believe. Thank goodness, you’ll have left school soon. You must be sick of it, especially since you’ve fallen in love.
I think of you meeting Lily when I play Schumann, and when I play Chopin I think of you walking about underneath her window, and when I play Beethoven I think of you kissing her.
Darling Michael, I love you more than ever. Be interested in me still, because I’m not interested in anybody but you, except, of course, myself and my music.
Oh, do bring Lily to my first concert, and I’ll see you two alone of all the people in the Hall and play you so close together that you’ll nearly faint. Now you think I’m gushing, I suppose, so I’ll shut up.
With a most tremendous amount of love,
Your delightful sister,Stella.
“I wonder if she ought to write like that,” said Michael to himself. “Oh, well, I don’t see why she shouldn’t.”
Certainly as one grew older a sister became a most valuable property.
TO Michael it seemed almost incredible that school should be able to continue as the great background against which his love stood out like a delicate scene carved by the artist’s caprice in an obscure corner of a strenuous and heroic decoration. Michael was hardly less conscious of school on Lily’s account, and in class he dreamed neither more nor less than formerly; but his dreams partook more of ecstasy than those nebulous pictures inspired by the ambitions and ideals and books of youth’s progress. Nevertheless in the most ultimate refinement of meditation school weighed down his spirit. It is true that games had finally departed from the realm of his consideration, but equally with games much extravagance of intellect and many morbid pleasures had gone out of cultivation. Balancing loss with gain, he found himself at the close of his last autumn term with a surer foothold on the rock-hewn foundations of truth.
Michael called truth whatever of emotion or action or reaction or reason or contemplation survived the destruction he was dealing out to the litter of idols that were beginning to encumber his passage, many of which he thought he had already destroyed when he had merely covered them with a new coat of gilt. During this period he began to enjoy Wordsworth, to whom he came by way of Matthew Arnold, like a wayfarer who crosses green fields and finds that mountains are faint upon the horizon. A successful lover, as he called himself, he began to despise anything in his reading of poetry that could not measure its power with the great commonplaces of human thought.
The Christmas holidays came as a relief from the burden of spending so much of his time in an atmosphere from which he was sure he had drained the last draught of health-giving breath. Michael no longer regarded, save in a contemptuous aside, the microcosm of school; the pleasures of seniority had staled; the whole business was now a tedious sort of mental quarantine. If he had not had Lily to occupy his leisure, he would have expired of restless inanition; and he wondered that the world went on allowing youth’s load of education to be encumbered by a dead-weight of superfluous information. Alan, for instance, had managed to obtain a scholarship some time in late December, and would henceforth devote himself to meditating on cricket for one term and playing it hard for another term. It would be nine months before he went to Oxford, and for nine months he would live in a state of mental catalepsy fed despairingly by the masters of the Upper Sixth with the few poor last facts they could scrape together from their own time-impoverished store. Michael, in view of Alan’s necessity for gaining this scholarship, had never tried to lure him towards Doris and a share in his own fortune. But he resolved that during the following term he would do his best to galvanize Alan out of the catalepsy that he woefully foresaw was imminent.
Meanwhile the Christmas holidays were here, and Michael on their first night vowed all their leisure to Lily.
There was time now for expeditions farther afield than Kensington Gardens, which in winter seemed to have lost some of their pastoral air. The naked trees no longer veiled the houses, and the city with its dingy railings and dingy people and mud-splashed omnibuses was always an intrusion. Moreover, fellow-Jacobeans used to haunt their privacy; and often when it was foggy in London, out in the country there was winter sunlight.
These were days whose clarity and silence seemed to callfor love’s fearless analysis, and under a sky of turquoise so faintly blue that scarcely even at the zenith could it survive the silver dazzle of the low January sun, Michael and Lily would swing from Barnet into Finchley with Michael talking all the way.
“Why do you love me?” he would flash.
“Because I do.”
“Oh, can’t you think of any better reason than that?”
“Because—because—oh, Michael, I don’t want to think of reasons,” Lily would declare.
“Youaredetermined to marry me?” Michael would flash again.
“Yes, some day.”
“You don’t think you’ll fall in love with anybody else?”
“I don’t suppose so.”
“Only suppose?” Michael would echo on a fierce pause.
“Well, no, I won’t.”
“You promise?”
“Yes, yes, I promise,” Lily would pout.
Then the rhythm of their walk would be renewed, and arm-in-arm they would travel on, until the next foolish perplexity demanded solution. Twilight would often find them still on the road, and when some lofty avenue engulphed their path, the uneasy warmth of the overarching trees would draw them very close, while hushed endearments took them slowly into lampshine.
When the dripping January rains came down, Michael spent many afternoons in the morning-room of Lily’s house. Here, subject only to Doris’s exaggerated hesitation to enter, Michael would build up for himself and Lily the indissoluble ties of a childhood that, though actually it was spent in ignorance of each other’s existence, possessed many links of sentimental communion.
For instance, on the wall hung Cherry Ripe—the same girl in white frock and pink sash who nearly fourteen yearsago had conjured for Michael the first hazy intimations of romance. Here she hung, staring down at them as demurely if not quite so sheerly beautiful as of old. Lily observed that the picture was not unlike Doris at the same age, and Michael felt at once that such a resemblance gave it a permanent value. Certainly his etchings of Montmartre and views of the Sussex Downs would never be hallowed by the associations that made sacred this oleograph of a Christmas Annual.
There were the picture-books of Randolph Caldecott tattered identically with his own, and Michael pointed out to Lily that often they must have sat by the fire reading the same verse at the same moment. Was not this thought almost as fine as the actual knowledge of each other’s daily life would have been? There were other books whose pages, scrawled and dog-eared, were softened by innumerable porings to the texture of Japanese fairy-books. In a condition practically indistinguishable all of these could be found both in Carlington Road and Trelawny Road.
There were the mutilated games that commemorated Christmas after Christmas of the past. Here was the pack of Happy Families with Mrs. Chip now a widow, Mr. Block the Barber a widower, and the two young Grits grotesque orphans of the grocery. There were Ludo and Lotto and Tiddledy-Winks whose counters, though terribly depleted, were still eloquent with the undetermined squabbles and favourite colours of childhood.
Michael was glad that Lily should spring like a lovely ghost from the dust of familiar and forgotten relics. It had been romantic to snatch her on a dying cadence of Verlaine out of the opalescent vistas of October trees; but his perdurable love for her rested on these immemorial affections whose history they shared.
Lily herself was not so sensitive to this aroma of the past as Michael. She was indeed apt to consider his enthusiasma little foolish, and would wonder why he dragged from the depths of untidy cupboards so much rubbish that only owed its preservation to the general carelessness of the household. Lily cared very little either for the past or the future, and though she was inclined to envy Doris her dancing-lessons and likelihood of appearing some time next year on the stage, she did not seem really to desire any activity of career for herself. This was a relief to Michael, who frankly feared what the stage might wreak upon their love.
“But I wish you’d read a little more,” he protested. “You like such rotten books.”
“I feel lazy when I’m not with you,” she explained. “And, anyway, I hate reading.”
“Do you think of me all the time I’m away from you?” Michael asked.
Lily told him she thought of nothing else, and his pride in her admission led him to excuse her laziness, and even made him encourage it. There was, however, about the atmosphere of Lily’s home a laxity which would have overcome more forcible exhortations than Michael’s. He was too much in love with Lily’s kisses to do more than vaguely criticize her surroundings. He did not like Mrs. Haden’s pink powder, but nevertheless the pink powder made him less sensitive than he might have been to Mrs. Haden’s opinion of his daily visits and his long unchaperoned expeditions with Lily. The general laxity tended to obscure his own outlook, and he had no desire to state even to himself his intentions. He felt himself tremendously old when he thought of kisses, but when he tried to visualize Lily and himself even four years hence, he felt hopelessly young. Mrs. Haden evidently regarded him as a boy, and since that fact seemed to relieve her of the slightest anxiety, Michael had no desire to impress upon her his precocity. The only bann that Mrs. Haden laid on his intercourse with Lilywas her refusal to allow him to take her out alone at night, but she had no objection to him escorting Doris and Lily together to the theatre; nor did she oppose Michael’s plan to celebrate the last night of the holidays by inviting Alan to make a quartette for the Drury Lane pantomime. Alan had only just come back from skating in Switzerland with his father, and he could not refuse to join Michael’s party, although he said he was “off girls” at the moment.
“You always are,” Michael protested.
“And I’m not going to fall in love, even to please you,” Alan added.
“All right,” Michael protested. “Just because you’ve been freezing yourself to death all the holidays, you needn’t come back and throw cold water over me.”
They all dined with Mrs. Haden, and Michael could not help laughing to see how seriously and how shyly Alan took the harum-scarum feast at which, between every course, one of the girls would rush upstairs to fetch down a fan or a handkerchief or a ribbon.
“I think your friend is charming,” said Mrs. Haden loudly, when she and Michael were alone for a minute in the final confusion of not being late. Michael wondered why something in her tone made him resent this compliment. But there was no opportunity to puzzle over his momentary distaste, because it was time to start for the occupation of the box which Mrs. Haden had been given by one of her friends.
“I vote we drive home in two hansoms,” suggested Michael as they stood in the vestibule when the pantomime was over.
Alan looked at him quickly and made a grimace. But Michael was determined to enjoy Lily’s company during a long uninterrupted drive, and at the same time to give Alan the opportunity of finding out whether he could possibly attach himself to Doris.
Michael’s own drive enthralled him. The hot theatreand the glittering performance had made Lily exquisitely tired and languorous, and Michael thought she had never surrendered herself so breathlessly before, that never before had her flowerlike kisses been so intangible and her eyes so drowsily passionate. Lulled by the regularity of the motion, Lily lay along his bended arm as if asleep, and, as he held her, Michael’s sense of responsibility became more and more dreamily indistinct. The sensuousness of her abandonment drugged all but the sweet present and the poignant ecstasy of possession.
“I adore you,” he whispered. “Lily, are you asleep? Lily! Lily, you are asleep, asleep in my arms, you lovely girl. Can you hear me talking to you?”
She stirred in his embrace like a ruffling bird; she sighed and threw a fevered hand upon his shoulder.
“Michael, why do you make me love you so?” she murmured, and fell again into her warm trance.
“Are you speaking to me from dreams?” he whispered. “Lily, you almost frighten me. I don’t think I knew I loved you so much. The whole world seems to be galloping past. Wake up, wake up. We’re nearly home.”
She stretched herself in a rebellious shudder against consciousness and looked at Michael wide-eyed.
“I thought you were going to faint or something,” he said.
Hardly another word they spoke, but sat upright staring before them at the oncoming lamp-posts. Soon Trelawny Road was reached, and in that last good night was a sense of nearness that never before had Michael imagined.
By her house they waited for a minute in the empty street, silent, hand-in-hand, until the other cab swung round the corner. Alan and Michael watched the two girls disappear through the flickering doorway, and then they strolled back towards Carlington Road, where Alan was spending the night.
“Well?” asked Michael. “What do you think of Lily?”
“I think she’s very pretty.”
“And Doris?”
“I didn’t care very much for her really,” said Alan apologetically, “She’s pretty, not so pretty as Lily, of course; but, I say, Michael, I suppose you’ll be offended, but I’d better ask right out ... who are they?”
“The Hadens?”
“Yes. I thought Mrs. Haden rather awful. What’s Mr. Haden? or isn’t there a Mr. Haden?”
“I believe he’s in Burmah,” said Michael.
“Burmah?”
“Why shouldn’t he be?”
“No reason at all,” Alan admitted, “but ... well ... I thought there was something funny about that family.”
“You think everything’s funny that’s just a little bit different from the deadly average,” said Michael. “What exactly was funny, may I ask?”
“I don’t think Mrs. Haden is a lady, for one thing,” Alan blurted out.
“I do,” said Michael shortly, “And, anyway, if she weren’t, I don’t see that that makes any difference to me and Lily.”
“But what are you going to do?” Alan asked. “Do you think you’re going to marry her?”
“Some day. Life isn’t a cricket-match, you know,” said Michael sententiously. “You can’t set your field just as you would like to have it at the moment.”
“You know best what’s good for you,” Alan sighed.
“Yes ... I think I do. I think it’s better to live than to stagnate as you’re doing.”
“What does your mother say?” Alan asked.
“I haven’t told her anything about Lily.”
“No, because you’re not in earnest. And if you’re in earnest, Lily isn’t.”
“What the devil do you know about her?” Michael angrily demanded.
“I know enough to see you’re both behaving like a couple of reckless kids,” Alan retorted.
“Damn you!” cried Michael in exasperation. “I wish to god you wouldn’t try to interfere with what doesn’t after all concern you very much.”
“You insisted on introducing me,” Alan pointed out.
“Because I thought it would be a rag if we were both in love with sisters. But you’re turning into a machine. Since you’ve swotted up into the Upper Sixth, you’ve turned into a very good imitation of the prigs you associate with. Everybody isn’t like you. Some people develop.... I could have been just like you if I had cared to be. I could have been Captain of the School and Scholar of Balliol with my nose ground down toεἱandἑἁν, hammering out tenth-rate Latin lyrics and reading Theocritus with the amusing parts left out. But what’s the good of arguing with you? You’re perfectly content and you think you can be as priggish as you like, as long as you conceal it by making fifty runs in the Dulford match. I suppose you consider my behaviour unwholesome at eighteen. Well, I dare say it is by your standards. But are your standards worth anything? I doubt it. I think they’re fine up to a point. I’m perfectly willing to admit that we behaved like a pair of little blighters with those girls at Eastbourne. But this is something altogether different.”
“We shall see,” said Alan simply. “I’m not going to quarrel with you. So shut up.”
Michael walked along in silence, angry with himself for having caused this ill-feeling by his obstinacy in making an unsuitable introduction, and angry with Alan because he would accentuate by his attitude the mistake.
By the steps of his house Michael stopped and looked at Alan severely.
“This is the last time I shall attempt to cure you,” he announced.
“All right,” said Alan with perfect equanimity. “You can do anything you like but quarrel. You needn’t talk to me or look at me or think about me until you want to. I shall feel a bit bored, of course, but, oh, my dear old chap, do get over this love-sickness soon.”
“This isn’t like that silly affair at Bournemouth last Easter,” Michael challenged.
“I know that, my dear chap. I wish it was.”
With the subject of love finally sealed between him and Alan, Michael receded farther and farther from the world of school. He condescended indeed to occupy a distinguished position by the hot-water pipes of the entrance-hall, where his aloofness and ability to judge men and gods made him a popular, if slightly incomprehensible, figure. Towards all the masters he emanated a compassion which he really felt very deeply. Those whom he liked he conversed with as equals; those whom he disliked he talked to as inferiors. But he pitied both sections. In class he was polite, but somewhat remote, though he missed very few opportunities of implicitly deriding the Liberal views of Mr. Kirkham. The whole school with its ant-like energy, whose ultimate object and obvious result were alike inscrutable to Michael, just idly amused him, and he reserved for Lily all his zest in life.
The Lent term passed away with parsimonious February sunlight, with March lying grey upon the houses until it proclaimed itself suddenly in a booming London gale. The Easter holidays arrived, and Mrs. Fane determined to go to Germany and see Stella. Would Michael come? Michael pleaded many disturbed plans of cricket-practice; of Matriculation at St. Mary’s College, Oxford; of working for the English Literature Prize; of anything indeed but his desire to see with Lily April break to May. In the endhe had his own way, and Mrs. Fane went to the continent without his escort.
Lily was never eager for the discussions and the contingencies and the doubts of love; in all their walks it had been Michael who flashed the questions, she who let slip her answers. The strange fatigue of spring made much less difference to her than to him, and however insistent he was for her kisses, she never denied him. Michael tried to feel that the acquiescence of the hard, the reasonable, the intellectual side of him to April’s passionate indulgence merely showed that he was more surely and more sanely growing deeper in love with Lily every day. Sometimes he had slight tremors of malaise, a sensation of weakening fibres, and dim stirrings of responsibility; but too strong for them was his heart’s-ease, too precious was Lily’s rose-bloomed grace of submission. The more sharply imminent her form became upon his thought, the more surely deathless did he suppose his love. Michael’s mind was always framing moments in eternity, and of all these moments the sight of her lying upon the vivid grass, the slim, the pastoral, the fair immortal girl stood unparagoned by any. There was no landscape that Lily did not make more inevitably composed. There was no place of which she did not become tutelary, whether she lay among the primroses that starred the steep brown banks of woodland or whether she fronted the great sunshine of the open country; but most of all when she sat in cowslips, looking over arched knees at the wind.
Michael fell into the way of talking to her as if he were playing upon Dorian pipes the tale of his love:
“I must buy you a ring, Lily. What ring shall I buy for you? Rings are all so dull. Perhaps your hands would look wrong with a ring, unless I could find a star-sapphire set in silver. I thought you were lovely in autumn, but I think you are more lovely in spring. How the days aregoing by; it will soon be May. Lily, if you had the choice of everything in the world, what would you choose?”
“I would choose to do nothing.”
“If you had the choice of all the people in the world, would you choose me?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Lily, you make me curiously lazy. I want never again to do anything but sit in the sun with you. Why can’t we stay like this for ever?”
“I shouldn’t mind.”
“I wish that you could be turned into a primrose, and that I could be turned into a hazel-bush looking down at you for ever. Or I wish you could be a cowslip and I could be a plume of grass. Lily, why is it that the longer I know you, the less you say?”
“You talk enough for both,” said Lily.
“I talk less to you than to anyone. I really only want to look at you, you lovely thing.”
But the Easter holidays were almost over, and Michael had to go to Oxford for his Matriculation. On their last long day together, Lily and he went to Hampton Court and dreamed the sad time away. When twilight was falling Michael said he had a sovereign to spend on whatever they liked best to do. Why should they not have dinner on a balcony over the river, and after dinner drive all the way home in a hansom cab?
So they sat grandly on the chilly balcony and had dinner, until Lily in her thin frock was cold.
“But never mind,” said Michael. “I’ll hold you close to me all the way to London.”
They found their driver and told him where to go. The man was very much pleased to think he had a fare all the way to London, and asked Michael if he wanted to drive fast.
“No, rather slow, if anything,” said Michael.
The fragrant miles went slowly past, and all the waythey drove between the white orchards, and all the way like a spray of bloom Lily was his. Past the orchards they went, past the twinkling roadside houses, past the gates where the shadows of lovers fell across the road, past the breaking limes and lilac, past the tulips stiff and dark in the moonlight, through the high narrow street of Brentford, past Kew Bridge and the slow trams with their dim people nodding, through Chiswick and into Hammersmith where a piano-organ was playing and the golden streets were noisy. It was Doris who opened the door.
“Eleven o’clock,” she said. “Mother’s rather angry.”
“You’d better not come in,” said Lily to Michael. “She’ll be all right again by next week, when you come back.”
“Oh, no, I’ll come in,” he insisted. “I’d rather explain why we’re so late.”
“It’s no use arguing with mother when she’s unreasonable,” said Lily. “I shall go up to bed; I don’t want to have a row.”
“That’s right,” Doris sneered. “Always take the shortest and easiest way. You are a coward.”
“Oh, shut up,” said Lily, and without another word went upstairs.
“You’ve spoilt her,” said Doris. “Well, are you going to see mother? She isn’t in a very pleasant mood, I warn you.”
“She’s never been angry before,” said Michael hopelessly.
“Well, she has really,” Doris explained. “Only she’s vented it on me.”
“I say, I’m awfully sorry. I had no idea—” Michael began.
“Oh, don’t apologize,” said Doris. “I’m used to it. Thank god, I’m going on the stage next year; and then Lily and mother will be able to squabble to their heart’s content.”
Mrs. Haden was sitting in what was called The Cosy Corner; and she treated Michael’s entrance with exaggerated politeness.
“Won’t you sit down? It’s rather late, but do sit down.”
All the time she was speaking the plate-rack above The Cosy Corner was catching the back of her hair, and Michael wondered how long it would be before she noticed this.
“Really, I think it’s very wrong of you to bring my daughter home at this hour,” Mrs. Haden clattered. “I’m sure nobody likes young people to enjoy themselves more than I do. But eleven o’clock! Where is Lily now?”
“Gone to bed,” said Doris, who seized the opportunity to depart also.
“I’m awfully sorry, Mrs. Haden,” said Michael awkwardly “But as it was my last night, I suggested driving back from Hampton Court. It was all my fault; I do hope you won’t be angry with Lily.”
“But I am angry with Lily,” said Mrs. Haden. “Very angry. She’s old enough to know better, and you’re old enough to know better. How will people think I’m bringing up my daughters, if they return at midnight with young men in hansoms? I never heard of such a thing. You’re presuming on your age. You’ve no business to compromise a girl like this.”
“Compromise?” stammered Michael.
“None of the young people but you has ever ventured to behave like this,” Mrs. Haden went on with sharply metallic voice. “Not one of them. And, goodness knows, every Sunday the house is full of them.”
“But they don’t come to see Lily,” Michael pointed out. “They come to see you.”
“Are you trying to be rude to me?” Mrs. Haden asked.
“No, no,” Michael assured her. “And, honestly, Mrs. Haden, I didn’t think you minded me taking Lily out.”
“But what’s going to happen?” Mrs. Haden demanded.
“Well—I—I suppose I want to marry Lily.”
Michael wondered if this statement sounded as absurd to Mrs. Haden as it sounded to himself.
“What nonsense!” she snapped. “What utter nonsense! A schoolboy talking such nonsense. Marriage indeed! You know as well as I do that you’ve never thought about such a step.”
“But I have,” said Michael. “Very often, as it happens.”
“Then you mustn’t go out with Lily again. Why, it’s worse than I thought. I’m horrified.”
“Do you mean I’m never to come here again?” Michael asked in despair.
“Come occasionally,” said Mrs. Haden. “But only occasionally.”
“All right. Thanks,” said Michael, feeling stunned by this unexpected rebuke. “Good night, Mrs. Haden.”
In the hall he found Doris.
“Well?” she asked.
“Your mother says I’m only to come occasionally.”
“Oh, that won’t last,” said Doris encouragingly.
“Yes, but I’m not sure that she isn’t right,” said Michael. “Oh, Doris, damn. I wish I couldn’t always see other people’s point of view.”
“Mother often has fits of violent morality,” said Doris. “And then we always catch it. But really they don’t last.”
“Doris, you don’t understand. It isn’t your mother’s disapproval I’m worrying over. It’s myself. Lily might have waited to say good-night,” Michael murmured miserably.
But straight upon his complaint he saw Lily leaning over from the landing above and blowing kisses, and he felt more calm.
“Don’t worry too much about Lily,” whispered Doris, as she held the door open for him.
“Why?”
“I shouldn’t, that’s all,” she said enigmatically, and closed the door very gently.
At the time Michael was not conscious of any deep impression made by the visit to Oxford for his Matriculation; he was too much worried by the puzzle of his future conduct with regard to Lily. He felt dull in the rooms where he spent two nights alone; he felt shy among the forty or fifty boys from other public-schools; he was glad to go back to London. Vaguely the tall grey tower remained in his mind, and vaguely the cool Gothic seemed to offer a shelter from the problems of behaviour, but that was all.
When he returned, the torment of Lily’s desired presence became more acute. His mother wrote to say that she would not be back for three days, and the only consolation was the hint that most probably Stella would come back with her.
Meanwhile this was Saturday, and school did not begin until Tuesday. Time after time Michael set out towards Trelawny Road; time after time he checked himself and fought his way home again. Mrs. Haden had been right; he had behaved badly. Lily was too young to bear the burden of their passionate love. And was she happy without him? Was she sighing for him? Or would she forget him and resume an existence undisturbed by him? But the thought of wasted time, of her hours again unoccupied, of her footsteps walking to places ignorant of him was intolerable.
Sunday came round, and Michael thought that he would fling himself into the stream of callers; but the idea of doing so became humiliating, and instead he circled drearily round the neighbouring roads, circled in wide curves, and sometimes even swooped into the forbidden diameter of Trelawny Road. But always before he could bring himself to pass her very door, he would turn back into his circle and the melancholy Sabbath sunlight of May.
Twilight no more entranced him, and the lovers leaningover to one another languorously in their endearments, moving with intertwined arms and measured steps between the wine-dark houses, annoyed him with their fatuous complacency and their bland eyes. He wanted her, his slim and silent Lily, who blossomed in the night-time like a flower. Her wrists were cool as porcelain and the contact of her form swaying to his progress was light as silk. Everyone else had their contentment, and he must endure wretchedly without the visible expression of his beauty. It was not yet too late to see her; and Michael circled nearer to Trelawny Road. This time he came to Lily’s house; he paused within sound of laughter upon the easeful step; and then again he turned away and walked furiously on through the empty Sabbath streets.
In his room, when it was now too late to think of calling, Michael laughed at himself for being so sensitive to Mrs. Haden’s reproaches. He told himself that all she said was due to the irritation of the moment, that to-morrow he must go again as if nothing had happened, that people had no right to interfere between lovers. But then, in all its florid bulk, St. James’ School rose up, and Michael admitted to himself that to the world he was merely a foolish schoolboy. He, the dauntless lover, must be chained to a desk for five hours every day. A boy and girl affair! Michael ground his teeth with exasperation. He must simply prove by renouncing for a term his part in Lily’s life that he was a schoolboy by an accident of time. A man is as old as he feels! He would see Lily once more, and tell her that for the sake of their ultimate happiness, he would give her up for the term of his bondage. Other great and romantic lovers had done the same; they may not have gone to school, but they had accepted menial tasks for the sake of their love.
Yet in the very middle of the night when the thickest darkness seemed to stifle self-deception, Michael knew thathe had bowed to authority so easily because his conscience had already told him what Mrs. Haden so crudely hinted. When he was independent of school it would be different. Michael made up his mind that the utmost magnanimity would be possible, if he could see Lily once to tell her of his resolution. But on the next day Lily was out, and Mrs. Haden talked to him instead.
“I’ve forbidden Lily to go out with you alone,” she said. “And I would prefer that you only came here when I am in the house.”
“I was going to suggest that I shouldn’t come at all until July—until after I had left school, in fact,” answered Michael.
“Perhaps that would be best. Then you and Lily will be more sensible.”
“Good-bye,” said Michael hurriedly, for he felt that he must get out of this stifling room, away from this overwhelming woman with her loud voice and dyed hair and worldly-wise morality. Then he had a sudden conception of himself as part of a scene, perceiving himself in the rôle of the banished lover nobly renouncing all. “I won’t write to her. I won’t make any attempt to see her,” he offered.
“You’ll understand,” said Mrs. Haden, “that I’m afraid of—that I think,” she corrected, “it is quite likely that Lily is just as bad for you as you are for Lily. But of course the real reason I feel I ought to interfere is on account of what people say. If Mr. Haden were not in Burmah ... it would be different.”
Michael pitied himself profoundly for the rest of that day; but after a long luxury of noble grief the image of Lily came to agitate and disconcert his acquiescence, and the insurgent fevers of love goaded his solitude.
Mrs. Fane and Stella returned during the first week of school. The great Steinway Grand that came laboriouslyin through the unsashed window of the third story gave Michael, as it lay like a boulder over Carlington Road, a wonderful sense of Stella’s establishment at home. Stella’s music-room was next to his bedroom, and when in her nightgown she came to practise in the six o’clock sunshine Michael thought her music seemed the very voice of day. So joyously did the rills and ripples and fountains of her harmony rouse him from sleep that he refrained from criticizing her apparel, and sat contented in the sunlight to listen.
Suddenly Stella wheeled round and said:
“Do tell me about Lily.”
“Well, there’s been rather a row,” Michael began. “You see, I took her to Hampton Court and we drove....” Michael stopped, and for the first time he obtained a cold clear view of his behaviour, when he found he was hesitating to tell Stella lest he might set her a bad example.
“Go on,” she urged. “Don’t stop.”
“Well, we were rather late. But of course it was the first time, and I hope you won’t think you can drive back at eleven o’clock with somebody because I did once—only once.”
“Why, was there any harm in it?” asked Stella quickly, and, as if to allay Michael’s fear by so direct a question, one hand went trilling in scale towards the airy unrealities of the treble.
“No, of course there was no harm in it,” said Michael.
“Then why shouldn’t I drive back at eleven o’clock if I wanted to?” asked Stella, striking elfin discords as she spoke.
“It’s a question of what people think,” said Michael, falling back upon Mrs. Haden’s line of defence.
“Bother people!” cried Stella, and immediately she put them in their place somewhere very far down in the bass.
“Well, anyway,” said Michael, “I understood whatMrs. Haden meant, and I’ve agreed not to see Lily until after I leave school.”
“And then?”
“Well, then I shall see her,” said Michael.
“And drive back at eleven o’clock in hansoms?”
“Not unless I can be engaged,” Michael surrendered to convention.
“And don’t you mind?”
“Of course I mind,” he confessed gloomily.
“Why did you agree, then?” Stella asked.
“I had to think about Lily, just as I should have to think about you,” he challenged.
“Darling Michael, I love you dreadfully, but I really should not pay the least little tiny bit of attention to you—or anybody else, if that’s any consolation,” she added. “As it happens, I’ve never yet met anybody with whom I’d care to drive about in a hansom at eleven o’clock, but if I did, three o’clock in the morning would be the same as three o’clock in the afternoon.”
“Stella, you ought not to talk like that,” Michael said earnestly. “You don’t realize what people would suppose. And really I don’t think you ought to practise in your nightgown.”
“Oh, Michael, if I practised in my chemise, I shouldn’t expect you to mind.”
“Stella! Really, you know!”
“Listen,” she said, swinging away from him back to the keyboard. “This is the Lily Sonata.”
Michael listened, and as he listened he could not help owning to himself that in her white nightgown, straight-backed against the shimmering ebony instrument, little indeed would matter very much among those dancing black and white notes.
“Or in nothing at all,” said Stella, stopping suddenly.
Then she ran across to Michael and, after kissing himon the top of his head, waltzed very slowly out of the room.
But not even Stella could for long take away from Michael the torment of Lily’s withheld presence. As a month went by, the image of her gained in elusive beauty, and the desire to see became a madness. He tried to evade his promise by haunting the places she would be likely to frequent, but he never saw her. He wondered if she could be in London, and he nearly wrote to ask. There was no consolation to be gained from books; there was no sentiment to be culled from the spots they had known together. He wanted herself, her fragility, her swooning kisses, herself, herself. She was the consummation of idyllic life, the life he longed for, the passionate life of beauty expressed in her. Stella had her music; Alan had his cricket; Mrs. Ross had her son; and he must have Lily. How damnable were these silver nights of June, how their fragrance musk-like even here in London fretted him with the imagination of wasted beauty. These summer nights demanded love; they enraged him with their uselessness.
“Isn’t Chopin wonderful?” cried Stella. “Just when the window-boxes are dripping and the earth’s warm and damp and the air is all turning into velvet.”
“Oh, very wonderful,” said Michael bitterly.
And he would go out on the dreaming balcony and, looking down on the motionless lamps, he would hear the murmur and rustle of people. But he was starving amid this rich plenitude of colour and scent; he was idle upon these maddening, these music-haunted, these royal nights that mocked his surrender.
And in the silent heart of the night when the sheets were fibrous and the mattress was jagged, when the pillow seared him and his eyes were like sand, what resolutions he made to carry her away from Kensington; but in the morning how coldly impossible it was to do so at eighteen.
One afternoon coming out of school, Michael met Drake.
“Hullo!” said Drake. “How’s the fair Lily? I haven’t seen you around lately.”
“Haven’t you?” said Michael. “No, I haven’t been round so much lately.”
He spoke as if he had suddenly noticed he had forgotten something.
“I asked her about you—over the garden-wall; so don’t get jealous,” Drake said with his look of wise rakishness. “And she didn’t seem particularly keen on helping out the conversation. So I supposed you’d had a quarrel. Funny girl, Lily,” Drake went on. “I suppose she’s all right when you know her. Why don’t you come in to my place?”
“Thanks,” said Michael.
He felt that fate had given him this opportunity. He had not sought it. He might be able to speak to Lily, and if he could, he would ask her to meet him, and promises could go to the devil. He determined that no more of summer’s treasure should be wasted.
He had a thrill in Drake’s dull drawing-room from the sense of nearness to Lily, and from the looking-glass room it was back to back with the more vital drawing-room next door.
Michael could hardly bear to look out of the window into the oblong gardens; two months away from Lily made almost unendurable the thought that in one tremulous instant he might be imparadised in the vision of her reality.
“Hullo! She’s there,” said Drake from the window. “With another chap.”
Michael with thudding heart and flaming cheeks stood close to Drake.
“Naughty girl!” said Drake. “She’s flirting.”
“I don’t think she was,” said Michael, but, even as he spoke, the knowledge that she was tore him to pieces.
THE brazen sun lighted savagely the barren streets, as Michael left Trelawny Road behind him. His hopeless footsteps rasped upon the pavement. His humiliation was complete. Not even was his personality strong enough to retain the love of a girl for six weeks. Yet he experienced a morbid sympathy with Lily, so unutterably beneath the rest of mankind was he already inclined to estimate himself. Stella opened wide her grey eyes when she greeted his pale disheartened return.
“Feeling ill?” she asked.
“I’m feeling a worthless brute,” said Michael, plunging into a dejected acquiescence in the worst that could be said about him.
“Tell me,” whispered Stella. “Ah, do.”
“I’ve found out that Lily is quite ready to flirt with anybody. With anybody!”
“What a beastly girl!” Stella flamed.
“Well, you can’t expect her to remain true to a creature like me,” said Michael, declaring his self-abasement.
“A creature like you?” cried Stella. “Why, Michael, how can you be so absurd? If you speak of yourself like that, I shall begin to think youare‘a creature’ as you call yourself. Ah, no, but you’re not, Michael. It’s this Lily who is the creature. Oh, don’t I know her, the insipid puss! A silly little doll that lets everybody pull her about. I hate weak girls. How I despise them!”
“But you despise boys, Stella,” Michael reminded her.“And this chap she was flirting with was much older than me. Perhaps Lily is like you, and prefers older men.”
Michael had no heart left even to maintain his stand against Stella’s alarming opinions and prejudices so frankly expressed.
“Like me,” Stella cried, stamping her foot. “Like me! How dare you compare her with me? I’m not a doll. Do you think anyone has ever dared to kiss me?”
“I’m sorry,” said Michael. “But you talk so very daringly that I shouldn’t be surprized by anything you told me. At the same time I can’t help sympathizing with Lily. It must have been dull to be in love with a schoolboy—an awkward lout of eighteen.”
“Michael! I will not hear you speak of yourself like that. I’m ashamed of you. How can you be so weak? Be proud. Oh, Michael, do be proud—it’s the only thing on earth worth being.”
Stella stood dominant before him. Her grey eyes flashed; her proud, upcurving mouth was slightly curled: her chin was like the chin of a marble goddess, and yet with that brown hair lapping her wide shoulders, with those long legs, lean-flanked and supple, she was more like some heroic boy.
“Yes, you can be proud enough,” said Michael. “But you’ve got something to be proud of. What have I got?”
“You’ve got me,” said Stella fiercely.
“Why, yes, I suppose I have,” Michael softly agreed. “Let’s talk about your first appearance.”
“I was talking about it to mother when a man called Prescott came.”
“Prescott?” said Michael. “I seem to have heard mother speak about him. I wonder when it was. A long time ago, though.”
“Well, whoever he was,” said Stella, “he brought mother bad news.”
“How do you know?”
“Have you ever seen mother cry?”
“Yes, once,” said Michael. “It was when I was talking through my hat about the war.”
“I’ve never seen her cry,” said Stella pensively. “Until to-day.”
Michael forgot about his own distress in the thought of his mother, and he sat hushed all through the evening, while Stella played in the darkness. Mrs. Fane went up to her own room immediately she came in that night, and the next morning, which was Saturday, Michael listlessly took the paper out to read in the garden, while he waited for Stella to dress herself so that they could go out together and avoid the house over which seemed to impend calamity.
Opening the paper, Michael saw an obituary notice of the Earl of Saxby. He scanned the news, only half absorbing it:
“In another column will be found the details—enteric—adds another famous name to the lamentable toll of this war—the late nobleman did not go into society much of late years—formerly Captain in the Welsh Guards—born 1860—married Lady Emmeline MacDonald, daughter of the Earl of Skye, K.T.—raised corps of Mounted Infantry (Saxby’s Horse)—great traveller—unfortunately no heir to the title which becomes extinct.”
Michael guessed the cause of his mother’s unhappiness of yesterday. He went upstairs and told Stella.
“I suppose mother was in love with him,” she said.
“I suppose she was,” Michael agreed. “I wish I hadn’t refused to say good-bye to him. It seems rather horrible now.”
Mrs. Fane had left word that she would not be home until after dinner, and Michael and Stella sat apprehensive and silent in the drawing-room. Sometimes they would toss backwards and forwards to each other reassuring words, while outside the livid evening of ochreous oppressive cloudsand ashen pavements slowly dislustred into a night swollen with undelivered rain and baffled thunders.
About nine o’clock Mrs. Fane came home. She stood for a moment in the doorway of the room, palely regarding her children. She seemed undecided about something, but after a long pause she sat down between them and began to speak:
“Something has happened, dear children, that I think you ought to know about before you grow any older.”
Mrs. Fane paused again and stared before her, seeming to be reaching out for strength to continue. Michael and Stella sat breathless as the air of the night. Mrs. Fane’s white kid gloves fell to the floor softly like the petals of a blown rose, and as if she missed their companionship in the stress of explication, she went on more rapidly.
“Lord Saxby has died in the Transvaal of enteric fever, and I think you both ought to know that Lord Saxby was your father.”
When his mother said this, the blood rushed to Michael’s face and then immediately receded, so that his eyelids as they closed over his eyes to shield them from the room’s suddenly intense light glowed greenly; and when he looked again anywhere save directly at his mother, his heart seemed to have been crushed between ice. The room itself went swinging up in loops out of reach of his intelligence, that vainly strove to bring it back to familiar conditions. The nightmare passed: the drawing-room regained its shape and orderly tranquillity: the story went on.
“I have often wished to tell you, Michael, in particular,” said his mother, looking at him with great grey eyes whose lustrous intensity cooled his first pained sensation of shamefulness, “Years ago, when you were the dearest little boy, and when I was young and rather lonely sometimes, I longed to tell you. But it would not have been fair to weigh you down with knowledge that you certainly could not havegrasped then. I thought it was kinder to escape from your questions, even when you said that your father looked like a prince.”
“Did I?” Michael asked, and he fell to wondering why he had spoken and why his voice sounded so exactly the same as usual.
“You see ... of course ... I was never married to your father. You must not blame him, because he wanted to marry me always, but Lady Saxby wouldn’t divorce him. I dare say she had a right to nurse her injury. She is still alive. She lives in an old Scottish castle. Your father gave up nearly all his time to me. That was why you were both alone so much. You must forgive me for that, if you can. But I knew, as time went on that we should never be married, and.... Your father only saw you once, dearest Stella, when you were very tiny. You remember, Michael, when you saw him. He loved you so much, for of course, except in name, you were his heir. He wanted to have you to live with him. He loved you.”
“I suppose that’s why I liked him so tremendously,” said Michael.
“Did you, dearest boy?” said Mrs. Fane, and the tears were in her grey eyes. “Ah, how dear it is of you to say that.”
“Mother, I can’t tell you how sorry I am I never went to say good-bye. I shall never forgive myself,” said Michael. “I shall never forgive myself.”
“But you must. It was my fault,” said his mother. “I dare say I asked you tactlessly. I was so much upset at the time that I only thought about myself.”
“Why did he go?” asked Stella suddenly.
“Well, that was my fault. I was always so dreadfully worried over the way in which I had spoilt his life that when he thought he ought to go and fight for his country, I could not bear to dissuade him. You see, having no heir, he wasalways fretting and fretting about the extinction of his family, and he had a fancy that the last of his name should do something for his country. He had given up his country for me, and I knew that if he went to the war he would feel that he had paid the debt. I never minded so much that we weren’t married, but I always minded the feeling that I had robbed him by my love. He was such a very dear fellow. He was always so good and patient, when I begged him not to see you both. That was his greatest sorrow. But it wouldn’t have been fair to you, dear children. You must not blame me for that. I knew it was better that you should be brought up in ignorance. It was, wasn’t it?” she asked wistfully.
“Better,” Michael murmured.
“Better,” Stella echoed.
Mrs. Fane stood up, and Michael beheld her tall, tragical form with a reverence he had never felt for anything.
“Children, you must forgive me,” she said.
And then simply, with repose and exquisite fitness she left Michael and Stella to themselves. By the door Stella overtook her.
“Mother darling,” she cried. “You know we adore you. You do, don’t you?”
Mrs. Fane smiled, and Michael thought he would cherish that smile to the end of his life.
“Well?” said Michael, when Stella and he were sitting alone again.
“Of course I’ve known for years it was something like this,” said Stella.
“I can’t think why I never guessed. I ought to have guessed easily,” Michael said. “But somehow one never thinks of anything like this in connection with one’s own mother.”
“Or sister,” murmured Stella, looking up at a spot on the ceiling.
“I wish I could kick myself for not having said good-bye to him,” Michael declared. “That comes of talking too much. I talked much too much then. Talking destroys action. What a beast I was. Lily and I look rather small now, don’t we?” he went on. “When you think of the amount that mother must have suffered all these years, it just makes Lily and me look like illustrations in a book. It’s a curious thing that this business about mother and ... Lord Saxby ought, I suppose, to make me feel more of a worm than ever, but it doesn’t. Ever since the first shock, I’ve been feeling prouder and prouder. I can’t make it out.”
Then suddenly Michael flushed.
“I say, I wonder how many of our friends have known all the time? Mrs. Carthew and Mrs. Ross both know. I feel sure by what they’ve said. And yet I wonder if Mrs. Ross does know. She’s so strict in her notions that ... I wonder ... and yet I suppose she isn’t so strict as I thought she was. Perhaps I was wrong.”
“What are you talking about?” Stella asked.
“Oh, something that happened at Cobble Place. It’s not important enough to tell you.”
“What I’m wondering,” said Stella, “is what mother was like when she was my age. She didn’t say anything about her family. But I suppose we can ask her some time. I’m really rather glad I’m not ‘Lady Stella Fane.’ It would be ridiculous for a great pianist to be ‘Lady Something.’”
“You wouldn’t have been Lady Stella Fane,” Michael contradicted. “You would have been Lady Stella Cunningham. Cunningham was the family name. I remember reading about it all when I was interested in Legitimists.”
“What are they?” Stella asked. “The opposite of illegitimate?”
Michael explained the difference, and he was glad that the word ‘illegitimate’ should first occur like this. Thepain of its utterance seemed mitigated somehow by the explanation.
“It’s an extraordinary thing,” Michael began, “but, do you know, Stella, that all the agony of seeing Lily flirting seems to have died away, and I feel a sort of contempt ... for myself, I mean. Flirting sounds such a loathsome word after what we’ve just listened to. Alan was right, I believe. I shall have to tell Alan about all this. I wonder if it will make any difference to him. But of course it won’t. Nothing makes any difference to Alan.”
“It’s about time I met him,” said Stella.
“Why, haven’t you?” Michael exclaimed. “Nor you have. Great Scott! I’ve been so desperately miserable over Lily that I’ve never asked Alan here once. Oh, I will, though.”
“I say, oughtn’t we to go up to mother?” said Stella.
“Would she like us to?” Michael wondered.
“Oh, yes, I’m sure she would.”
“But I can’t express what I feel,” Michael complained. “And it will be absurd to go and stand in front of her like two dummies.”
“I’ll say something,” Stella promised; and, “Mother,” she said, “come and hear me play to you.”
The music-room, with its spare and austere decoration, seemed to Michael a fit place for the quiet contemplation of the tale of love he had lately heard.
Whatever of false shame, of self-consciousness, of shock remained was driven away by Stella’s triumphant music. It was as if he were sitting beneath a mountain waterfall that, graceful and unsubstantial as wind-blown tresses, was yet most incomparably strong, and wrought an ice-cold, a stern purification.
Then Stella played with healing gentleness, and Michael in the darkness kissed his mother and stole away to bed, not to dream of Lily that night, not to toss enfevered, butquietly to lie awake, devising how to show his mother that he loved her as much now as he had loved her in the dim sunlight of most early childhood.
About ten days later Mrs. Fane came to Michael and Stella with a letter.
“I want to read you something,” she said. “Your father’s last letter has come.”