LONG’SHOTEL,April 9.Darling Mother,When you get this you must comeat onceto London. You are the only person who can save Michael from marrying the most impossible creature imaginable. He had a stupid love-affair with her, when he was eighteen, and I think she treated him badly even then—I remember his being very upset about it in the summer before my first concert. Apparently he rediscovered her this winter, and for some reason or other wants tomarryher now. He brought her down to Hardingham, and I saw then that she was a minx. Alan remembers her mother as a dreadful woman who tried to make love to him. Imagine Alan at eighteen being pursued!Of course, I tackled Michael about her, and we had rather a row about it. We kept her at Hardingham for a month (a fortnight by herself), and we were bored to death by her. She had nothing to say, and nothing to do except look at herself in the glass. I had declared war on the marriage from the moment she left, but I had only a fortnight to stop it. I was rather in a difficulty because I knew nothing definite against her, though I was sure that if she wasn’t a bad lot already, she would be later on. I wrote first of all to Maurice Avery, who told me that she’d had a not at all reputable affair with a painter friend of his. It seems, however, that he had already spoken to Michael about thisand that Michael walked out of the house in a rage. Then I came up to town with Alan and saw Wedderburn, who knew nothing about her and hadn’t seen Michael for months. Then we got hold of Lonsdale. He has apparently met her at Covent Garden, andI’m perfectly surethat he has actually been away with her himself. Though, of course, he was much too polite to tell me so. He was absolutely horrified when he heard about her and Michael. I asked him to tell Michael anything he knew against her, but he didn’t see how he could. He said he wouldn’t have the heart. I told him it was his duty, but he said he wouldn’t be able to bear the sight of Michael’s face when he told him. Of course, the poor darling knows nothing about her. You must come at once to London and talk to him yourself. You’ve no time to lose. I’ll meet you if you send me a wire. I’ve no influence over Michael any more. You’re the only person who can stop it. He’s so sweet about her. She’s rather lovely to look at, I must say. Lots of love from Alan and from me.Your lovingStella.
LONG’SHOTEL,April 9.
Darling Mother,
When you get this you must comeat onceto London. You are the only person who can save Michael from marrying the most impossible creature imaginable. He had a stupid love-affair with her, when he was eighteen, and I think she treated him badly even then—I remember his being very upset about it in the summer before my first concert. Apparently he rediscovered her this winter, and for some reason or other wants tomarryher now. He brought her down to Hardingham, and I saw then that she was a minx. Alan remembers her mother as a dreadful woman who tried to make love to him. Imagine Alan at eighteen being pursued!
Of course, I tackled Michael about her, and we had rather a row about it. We kept her at Hardingham for a month (a fortnight by herself), and we were bored to death by her. She had nothing to say, and nothing to do except look at herself in the glass. I had declared war on the marriage from the moment she left, but I had only a fortnight to stop it. I was rather in a difficulty because I knew nothing definite against her, though I was sure that if she wasn’t a bad lot already, she would be later on. I wrote first of all to Maurice Avery, who told me that she’d had a not at all reputable affair with a painter friend of his. It seems, however, that he had already spoken to Michael about thisand that Michael walked out of the house in a rage. Then I came up to town with Alan and saw Wedderburn, who knew nothing about her and hadn’t seen Michael for months. Then we got hold of Lonsdale. He has apparently met her at Covent Garden, andI’m perfectly surethat he has actually been away with her himself. Though, of course, he was much too polite to tell me so. He was absolutely horrified when he heard about her and Michael. I asked him to tell Michael anything he knew against her, but he didn’t see how he could. He said he wouldn’t have the heart. I told him it was his duty, but he said he wouldn’t be able to bear the sight of Michael’s face when he told him. Of course, the poor darling knows nothing about her. You must come at once to London and talk to him yourself. You’ve no time to lose. I’ll meet you if you send me a wire. I’ve no influence over Michael any more. You’re the only person who can stop it. He’s so sweet about her. She’s rather lovely to look at, I must say. Lots of love from Alan and from me.
Your lovingStella.
Michael was touched by Lonsdale’s attitude. It showed, he thought, an exquisite sensitiveness, and he was grateful for it. Stella had certainly been very active: but he had foreseen all of this. Nothing was going to alter his determination. He waited gloomily for his mother to come down. Of all antagonists she would be the hardest to combat in argument, because he was debarred from referring to so much that had weighed heavily with him in his decision. His mother was upstairs such a very short time that Michael realized with a smile how deeply she must have been moved. Nothing but this marriage of his had ever brought her downstairs so rapidly from taking off her things.
“Have you read Stella’s letter?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Well, of course you see that the whole business must be stopped at once. It’s dreadful for you to hear all these things, and I know you must be suffering, dearest boy; but you ought to be obliged to Stella and not resent her interference.”
“I see that you feel bound to apologize for her,” Michael observed.
“Now, that is so bitter.”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“I feel rather bitter that she should come charging up to town to find out things I know already.”
“Michael! You knew about Lonsdale?”
“I didn’t know about him in particular, but I knew that there had been people. That’s one of the reasons I’m going to marry her.”
“But you’ll lose all your friends. It would be impossible for you to go on knowing Lonsdale, for instance.”
“Marriage seems to destroy friendships in any case,” Michael said. “You couldn’t have a better example of that than Stella and Alan. I daresay I shall be able to make new friends.”
“But, darling boy,” she said pleadingly, “your position will be so terribly ambiguous. Here you are with everything that you can possibly want, with any career you choose open to you. And you let yourself be dragged down by this horrible creature!”
“Mother, believe me, you’re getting a very distorted idea of Lily. She’s beautiful, you know; and if she’s not so clever as Stella, I’m rather glad of it. I don’t think I want a clever wife. At any rate, she hasn’t committed the sin of being common. She won’t disgrace you outwardly, and if Stella hadn’t gone round raking up all this abominableinformation about her you would have liked her very much.”
“My dearest boy, you are very young, but you surely aren’t too young to know that it’s impossible to marry a woman whose past is not without reproach.”
“But, mother, you ...” he stopped himself abruptly, and looked out of the window in embarrassment. Yet his mother seemed quite unconscious that she was using a weapon which could be turned against herself.
“Will nothing persuade you? Oh, why did Dick Prescott kill himself? I knew at the time that something like this would happen. You won’t marry her, you won’t, will you?”
“Yes, mother. I’m going to,” he said coldly.
“But why so impetuously?” she asked. “Why won’t you wait a little time?”
“There’s no object in waiting while Stella rakes up a few more facts.”
“If only your father were alive!” she exclaimed. “It would have shocked him so inexpressibly.”
“He felt so strongly the unwisdom of marriage, didn’t he?” Michael said, and wished he could have bitten his tongue out.
She had risen from her chair, and seemed to tower above him in tragical and heroic dignity of reproach:
“I could never have believed you would say such a thing to me.”
“I’m awfully sorry,” he murmured. “It was inexcusable.”
“Michael,” she pleaded, coming to him sorrowfully, “won’t you give up this marriage?”
He was touched by her manner so gently despairing after his sneer.
“Mother, I must keep faith with myself.”
“Only with yourself? Then she doesn’t care for you? And you’re not thinking ofher?”
“Of course she cares for me.”
“But she’d get over it almost at once?”
“Perhaps,” he admitted.
“Do you trust her? Do you believe she will be able to be a good woman?”
“That will be my look-out,” he said impatiently. “If she fails, it will be my fault. It’s always the man’s fault. Always.”
“Very well,” said his mother resignedly. “I can say no more, can I? You must do as you like.”
The sudden withdrawal of her opposition softened him as nothing else would have done. He compared the sweetness of her resignation with his own sneer of a minute ago. He felt anxious to do something that would show his penitence.
“Mother, I hate to wound you. But I must be true to what I have worked out for myself. I must marry Lily. Apart from a mad love I have for her, there is a deeper cause, a reason that’s bound up with my whole theory of behavior, my whole attitude toward existence. I could not back out of this marriage.”
“Is all your chivalry to be devoted to the service of Lily?” she asked.
He felt grateful to her for the name. When his mother no longer called her “this girl,” half his resentment fled. The situation concerned the happiness of human beings again; there were no longer prejudices or abstractions of morality to obscure it.
“Not at all, mother. I would do anything for you.”
“Except not marry her.”
“That wouldn’t be a sacrifice worth making,” he argued. “Because if I did that I should destroy myself to myself,and what was left of me wouldn’t be a complete Michael. It wouldn’t be your son.”
“Will you postpone your marriage, say for three months?”
He hesitated. How could he refuse her this?
“Not merely for your own sake,” she urged; “but for all our sakes. We shall all see things more clearly and pleasantly, perhaps, in three months’ time.”
He was conquered by the implication of justice for Lily.
“I won’t marry her for three months,” he promised.
“And you know, darling boy, the dreadful thing is that I very nearly missed the train owing to the idiocy of the head porter at the hotel.”
She was smiling through her tears, and very soon she became her stately self again.
Michael went at once to Ararat House, and told Lily that he had promised his mother to put off their marriage for three months. She pouted over her frocks.
“I wish you’d settled that before. What good will all these dresses be now?”
“You shall have as many more as you want. But will you be happy here without me?”
“Without you? Why are you going away?”
“Because I must, Lily. Because ... oh, dearest girl, can’t you see that I’m too passionately in love with you to be able to see you every day and every night as I have been all this fortnight?”
“If you want to go away, of course you must; but I shall be rather dull, shan’t I?”
“And shan’t I?” he asked.
She looked at him.
“Perhaps.”
“I shall write every day to you, and you must write to me.”
He held her close and kissed her. Then he hurried away.
Now that he had made the sacrifice to please his mother, he was angry with himself for having done so. He felt that during this coming time of trial he could not bear to see either his mother or Stella. He must be married and fulfill his destiny, and, after that, all would be well. He was enraged with his weakness, wondering where he could go to avoid the people who had brought it about.
Suddenly Michael thought he would like to see Clere Abbey again, and he turned into Paddington Station to find out if there were a train that would take him down into Berkshire at once.
It was almost dark when Michael reached the little station at the foot of the Downs. He was half inclined to put up at the village inn and arrive at the Abbey in the morning; but he was feeling depressed by the alteration of his plans, and longed to withdraw immediately into the monastic peace. He had bought what he needed for the couple of nights before any luggage could reach him, and he thought that with so little to carry he might as well walk the six miles to the Abbey. He asked when the moon would be up.
“Oh, not much before half-past nine, sir,” the porter said.
Michael suddenly remembered that to-morrow was Easter Sunday, and, thinking it would be as well not to arrive too late, in case there should be a number of guests, he managed to get hold of a cart. The wind blew very freshly as they slowly climbed the Downs, and the man who was driving him was very voluble on the subject of the large additions which had been made to the Abbey buildings during the last few years.
“They’ve put up a grand sort of a lodge—Gatehouse, so some do call it. A bit after the style of the Tower of London, I’ve heard some say.”
Michael was glad to think that Dom Cuthbert’s plans seemed to be coming to perfection in their course. Howlong was it since he and Chator were here? Eight or nine years; now Chator was a priest, and himself had done nothing.
The Abbey Gatehouse was majestic in the darkness, and the driver pealed the great bell with a portentous clangor. Michael recognized the pock-marked brother who opened the door; but he could not remember his name. He felt it would be rather absurd to ask the monk if he recognized him by this wavering lanthorn-light.
“Is the Reverend—is Dom Cuthbert at the Abbey now?” he asked. “You don’t remember me, I expect? Michael Fane. I stayed here one Autumn eight or nine years ago.”
The monk held up the lanthorn and stared at him.
“The Reverend Father is in the Guest Room now,” said Brother Ambrose. Michael had suddenly recalled his name.
“Do you think I shall be able to stay here to-night? Or have you a lot of guests for Easter?”
“We can always find room,” said Brother Ambrose. Michael dismissed his driver and followed the monk along the drive.
Dom Cuthbert knew him at once, and seemed very glad that he had come to the Abbey.
“You can have a cell in the Gatehouse. Our new Gatehouse. It’s copied from the one at Cerne Abbas in Dorsetshire. Very beautiful. Very beautiful.”
Michael was introduced to the three or four guests, all types of ecclesiastical laymen, who had been talking with the Abbot. The Compline bell rang almost at once, and the Office was still held in the little chapel of mud and laths built by the hands of the monks.
Here was worship unhampered by problems of social behavior: here was peace.
Lying awake that night in his cell; watching the lattices very luminous in the moonlight; hearing the April wind in the hazel coppice, Michael tried to reach a perspective of his life these nine months since Oxford, but sleep came to him and pacified all confusions. He went to Mass next morning, but did not make his Communion, because he had a feeling that he could only have done so under false pretenses. There was no reason why he should have felt thus, he assured himself; but this morning there had fallen upon him at the moment a dismaying chill. He went for a walk on the Downs, over the great green spaces that marked no season save in the change of the small flowers blowing in their turf. He wondered if he would be able to find the stones he had erected that July day when he first came here with Chator. He found what, as far as he could remember, was the place; and he also found a group of stones that might have been the ruins of his little monument. More remarkable than old stones now seemed to him a Pasque anemone colored a sharp cold violet. It curiously reminded him of the evening in March when he had walked with Lily in the wood at Hardingham.
The peace of last night vanished in a dread of the future: Michael’s partial surrender to his mother cut at his destiny with ominous stroke. He was in a turmoil of uncertainty, and afraid to find himself out here on these Downs with so little achieved behind him in the city. He hurried back to the Abbey and wrote a wild letter to Lily, declaring his sorrow for leaving her, urging her to be patient, protesting a feverish adoration. He wrote also to Miss Harper a hundred directions for Lily’s entertainment while he was away. He wrote to Nigel Stewart, begging him to look after Barnes. All the time he had a sense of being pursued andhaunted; an intolerable idea that he was the quarry of an evil chase. He could not stay at the Abbey any longer: he was being rejected by the spirit of the place.
Dom Cuthbert was disappointed when he said he must go.
“Stay at least to-night,” he urged, and Michael gave way.
He did not sleep at all that night. The alabaster image of the Blessed Virgin kept turning to a paper thing, kept nodding at him like a zany. He seemed to hear the Gatehouse bell clanging hour after hour. He felt more deeply sunk in darkness than ever in Leppard Street. At daybreak he dressed and fled through the woods, trampling under foot the primroses limp with dew. He hurried faster and faster across the Downs; and when the sun was up, he was standing on the platform of the railway station. To-day he ought to have married Lily.
At Paddington, notwithstanding all that he had suffered in the parting, unaccountably to himself he did not want to turn in the direction of Ararat House. It puzzled him that he should drive so calmly to Cheyne Walk.
“I think my temperature must have been a point or two up last night,” was the explanation he gave himself of what already seemed mere sleeplessness.
Michael found his mother very much worried by his disappearance; she had assumed that he had broken his promise. He consoled her, but excused himself from staying with her in town.
“You mustn’t ask too much of me,” he said.
“No, no, dearest boy; I’m glad for you to go away, but where will you go?”
He thought he would pay an overdue visit to Cobble Place.
Mrs. Ross and Mrs. Carthew were delighted to see him, and he felt as he always felt at Cobble Place the persistent tranquillity which not the greatest inquietude of spirit couldlong withstand. It was now nearly three years since he had been there, and he was surprised to see how very old Mrs. Carthew had grown in that time. This and the active presence of Kenneth, now a jolly boy of nine, were the only changes in the aspect of the household. Michael enjoyed himself in firing Kenneth with a passion for birds’ eggs and butterflies, and they went long walks together and made expeditions in the canoe.
Yet every day when Michael sat down to write to Lily, he almost wrote to say he was coming to London as soon as his letter. Her letters to him, written in a sprawling girlish hand, were always very much alike.
1 ARARATHOUSE,ISLANDROAD, W.My dear,Come back soon. I’m getting bored. Miss Harper isn’t bad. Can’t write a long letter because this nib is awful. Kisses.Your lovingLily.
1 ARARATHOUSE,ISLANDROAD, W.
My dear,
Come back soon. I’m getting bored. Miss Harper isn’t bad. Can’t write a long letter because this nib is awful. Kisses.
Your lovingLily.
This would stand for any of them.
May month had come in: Michael and Kenneth were finding whitethroats’ nests in the nettle-beds of the paddock, before a word to Mrs. Ross was said about the marriage.
“Stella has written to me about it,” she told him.
They were sitting in the straggling wind-frayed orchard beyond the stream: lamps were leaping: apple-blossom stippled the grass: Kenneth was chasing Orange Tips up the slope toward Grogg’s Folly.
“Stella has been very busy all round,” said Michael. “I suppose according to her I’m going to marry an impossible creature. Creature is as far as she usually gets in particular description of Lily.”
“She certainly wasn’t very complimentary about your choice,” Mrs. Ross admitted.
“I wish somebody could understand that it doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m mad because I’m going to marry a beautiful girl who isn’t very clever.”
“But I gathered from Stella,” Mrs. Ross said, “that her past ... Michael, you must be very tolerant of me if I upset you, because we happen to be sitting just where I was stupid and unsympathetic once before. You see what an impression that made on me. I actually remember the very place.”
“She probably has done things in the past,” said Michael. “But she’s scarcely twenty-three yet, and I love her. Her past becomes a trifle. Besides, I was in love with her six years ago, and I—well, six years ago I was rather thoughtless very often. I don’t want you to think that I’m going to marry her now from any sense of duty. I love her. At the same time when people argue that she’s not the correct young Miss they apparently expect me to marry, I’m left unmoved. Pasts belong to men as well as to women.”
Mrs. Ross nodded slowly. Kenneth came rushing up, shouting that he had caught a frightfully rare butterfly. Michael looked at it.
“A female Orange Tip,” was the verdict.
“But isn’t that frightfully rare?”
Michael shook his head.
“No rarer than the males; but you don’t notice them, that’s all.”
Kenneth retired to find some more.
“And you’re sure you’ll be happy with her?” Mrs. Ross asked.
“As sure as I am that I shall be happy with anybody. I ought to be married to her by now. This delay that I’ve so weakly allowed isn’t going to effect much.”
Michael sighed. He had meant to be in Provence this month of May.
“But the delay can’t do any harm,” Mrs. Ross pointed out. “At any rate, it will enable you to feel more sure of yourself, and more sure of her, too.”
“I don’t know,” said Michael doubtfully. “My theory has always been that if a thing’s worth doing at all, it’s worth doing at once.”
“And after you’re married,” she asked, “what are you going to do? Just lead a lazy life?”
“Oh, no; I suppose I shall find some occupation that will keep me out of mischief.”
“That sounds a little cynical. Ah, well, I suppose it is a disappointment to me.”
“What’s a disappointment?”
“I’ve hoped and prayed so much lately that you would have a vocation....”
“A priest,” he interrupted quickly, “It’s no good, Mrs. Ross. I have thought of being one, but I’m always put off by the professional side of it. And there are ways of doing what a priest does without being one.”
“Of course, I can’t agree with you there,” she said.
“Well, apart from the sacraments, I mean. Lately I’ve seen something of the underworld, and I shall think of some way of being useful down there. Already I believe I’ve done a bit.”
They talked of the problems of the underworld and Michael was encouraged by what he fancied was a much greater breadth in her point of view nowadays to speak of things that formerly would have made her gray eyes harden in fastidious disapproval.
“I feel happier about you since this talk,” she said. “As long as you won’t be content to let your great gift of humanity be wasted, as long as you won’t be content to thinkthat in marrying your Lily you have done with all your obligations.”
“Oh, no, I shan’t feel that. In fact, I shall be all the more anxious to justify myself.”
Kenneth came back to importune Michael for a walk as far as Grogg’s Folly.
“It’s such fun for Kenneth to have you here!” Mrs. Ross exclaimed. “I’ve never seen him so boisterously happy.”
“I used to enjoy myself here just as much as he does,” said Michael. “Though perhaps I didn’t show it. I always think of myself as rather a dreary little beast when I was a kid.”
“On the contrary, you were a most attractive boy; such a wide-eyed little boy,” said Mrs. Ross softly, looking back into time. “I’ve seldom seen you so happy as just before I blew out your candle the first night of your first stay here.”
“I say, do come up the hill,” interrupted Kenneth despairingly.
“A thousand apologies, my lord,” said Michael. “We’ll go now.”
They did not stop until they reached the tower on the summit.
“When I was your age,” Michael told him, “I used to think that I could see the whole of England from here.”
“Could you really?” said Kenneth, in admiration. “Could you see any of France, too?”
“I expect so,” Michael answered. “I expect really I thought I could see the whole world. Kenneth, what are you going to be when you grow up? A soldier?”
“Yes, if I can—or what is a philosopher?”
“A philosopher philosophizes.”
“Does he really? Is that a difficult thing to do, to philosopherize?”
“Yes; it’s almost harder to do than to pronounce.”
Soon they were tearing down the hill, frightening the larks to right and left of their progress.
The weather grew warmer every day, and at last Mrs. Carthew came out in a wheel-chair to see the long-spurred columbines, claret and gold, watchet, rose and white.
“Really quite a display,” she said to Michael. “And so you’re to get married?”
He nodded.
“What for?” the old lady demanded, looking at him over her spectacles.
“Well, principally because I want to,” Michael answered, after a short pause.
“The best reason,” she agreed. “But in your case insufficient, and I’ll tell you why—you aren’t old enough yet to know what you do want.”
“Twenty-three,” Michael reminded her.
“Twenty-fiddlesticks!” she snapped. “And isn’t there a good deal of opposition?”
“A good deal.”
“And no doubt you feel a fine romantical heroical young fellow?”
“Not particularly.”
“Well, I’m not going to argue against your marrying her,” said Mrs. Carthew. “Because I know quite well that the more I proved you to be wrong, the more you’d be determined to proveIwas. But I can give you advice about marriage, because I’ve been married and you haven’t. Is she dark? If she’s dark, be very cold for a year, and if she doesn’t leave you in that time, she’ll adore you for the rest of her life.”
“But she’s fair,” said Michael. “Very fair indeed.”
“Then beat her. Not actually, of course; but beat her figuratively for a year. If you don’t, she’ll either be a shrew or a whiner. Both impossible to live with.”
“Which did Captain Carthew do to you?” asked Michael, twinkling.
“Neither; I ruled him with a rod of iron.”
“But do you think I’m wise to wait like this before marrying her?” Michael asked.
“There’s no wisdom in waiting to do an unwise thing.”
“You’re so sure it is unwise?”
“All marriages are unwise,” said Mrs. Carthew sharply. “That’s why everybody gets married. For most people it is the only imprudence they have an opportunity of committing. After that, they’re permanently cured of rashness, and settle down. There are exceptions, of course: they take to drink. I must say I’m greatly pleased with these long-spurred columbines.”
Michael thought she had finished the discussion of his marriage, but suddenly she said:
“I thought I told you to come and see me when you went down from Oxford.”
“I ought to have come,” Michael agreed rather humbly. He always felt inclined to propitiate the old lady.
“Here we have the lamentable result. Marriage at twenty-three.”
“Alan married at twenty-three,” he pointed out.
“Two fools don’t make a wise-man,” said Mrs. Carthew.
“He’s very happy.”
“He would be satisfied with much less than you, and he has married a delightful girl.”
“I’m going to marry a delightful girl.”
The old lady made no reply. Nor did she comment again upon his prospect of happiness.
In mid-May, after a visit of nearly a month, Michael left Cobble Place and went to stay at Plashers Mead. Guy Hazlewood was the only friend he still had who could not possibly have come into contact with Lily or her formersurroundings. Moreover, Guy was deep in love himself, and he had been very sympathetic when he wrote to Michael about his engagement.
“Do I intrude upon your May idyll?” Michael asked.
“My dear chap, don’t be so absurd. But why aren’t you married? You’re as bad as me.”
“Why aren’tyoumarried?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Guy sighed. “Everybody seems to be conspiring to put it off.”
They were sitting in Guy’s green library. The windows wide open let in across the sound of the burbling stream the warm air of the lucid May night, where bats and owls and evejars flew across the face of the decrescent moon.
“It’s this dreamy country in which you live,” said Michael.
“What about you? You’ve let people put off your marriage.”
“Only for another two months,” Michael explained.
“You see I’m down to one hundred and fifty pounds a year now,” Guy muttered. “I can’t marry on that, and I can’t leave this place, and her people can’t afford to make her an allowance. They think I ought to go away and work at journalism. However, I’m not going to worry you with my troubles.”
Guy was a good deal with Pauline every day: Michael wrote long letters to Lily and read poetry.
“Browning?” asked Guy one afternoon, looking over Michael’s shoulder.
“Yes; The Statue and The Bust.”
“Oh, don’t remind me of that poem. It haunts me,” Guy declared.
A week passed. There was no moon now, and the nights grew warmer. It was weather to make lovers happy, but Guy seemed worried. He would not come for walks withMichael through the dark and scented water-meadows, and Michael used to think that often at night he was meeting Pauline. It made him jealous to imagine them lost in this amaranthine profundity. They were happy now, if through all their lives they should never be happy again. Yet Guy was obviously fretted: he was getting spoiled by good fortune. “And I have had about a fortnight of incomplete happiness,” Michael said to himself. Supposing that a calamity fell upon him during this delay. He would never cease to regret his weakness in granting his mother’s request: he would hate Stella for having interfered: his life would be miserable forever. Yet what calamity did he fear? In a sudden apprehension, he struck a match and read her last letter:
1 ARARATHOUSE,ISLANDROAD, W.My dear,It’s getting awfully dull in London. Miss Harper asked me to call her “Mabel.” Rather cheek, I thought, don’t you think so? But she’s really awfully decent. I can’t write a long letter because we’re going to the Palace. I say, do buck up and come back to London, I’m getting bored. Love and kisses.Lily.What’s the good ofwriting“kisses”?
1 ARARATHOUSE,ISLANDROAD, W.
My dear,
It’s getting awfully dull in London. Miss Harper asked me to call her “Mabel.” Rather cheek, I thought, don’t you think so? But she’s really awfully decent. I can’t write a long letter because we’re going to the Palace. I say, do buck up and come back to London, I’m getting bored. Love and kisses.
Lily.
What’s the good ofwriting“kisses”?
What indeed was the good of writing “kisses”? Michael thought, as the match fizzed out in the dewy grass at his feet. It was not fair to treat Lily like this. He had captured her from life with Sylvia, because he had meant to marry her at once. Now he had left her alone in that flat with a woman he did not know at all. Whatever people might say against Lily, she was very patient and trustful.“She must love me a good deal,” Michael said. “Or she wouldn’t stand this casual treatment.”
Pauline came to tea next day with her sisters Margaret and Monica. Michael had an idea that she did not like him very much. She talked shyly and breathlessly to him; and he, embarrassed by her shyness, answered in monosyllables.
“Pauline is rather jealous of you,” said Guy that evening, as they sat in the library.
“Jealous of me?” Michael was amazed.
“She has some fantastic idea that you don’t approve of our engagement. Of course, I told her what nonsense she was thinking; but she vowed that this afternoon you showed quite plainly your disapproval of her. She insists that you are very cold and severe.”
“I’m afraid I was very dull,” Michael confessed apologetically. “But I was really envying you and her for being together in May.”
“Together!” Guy repeated. “It’s the object of everyone in Wychford to keep us apart!”
“Do tell her I’m not cold,” Michael begged. “And say how lovely I think her; for really, Guy, she is very lovely and strange. She is a fairy’s child.”
“She is, she is,” Guy said. “Sometimes I’m nearly off my head with the sense of responsibility I have for her happiness. I wonder and wonder until I’m nearly crazed.”
“I’m feeling responsible just now about Lily. I’ve never told you, Guy, but you may hear from other people that I’ve made what is called a mésalliance. Of course, Lily has been....” He stumbled. He could find no words that would not humiliate himself and her. “Guy, come up with me to-morrow and meet her. It’s not fair to leave her like this,” he suddenly proclaimed.
“I don’t think I can come away.”
“Oh, yes, you can. Of course. You must,” Michael urged.
“Pauline will be more jealous of you than ever, if I do.”
“For one night,” Michael pleaded. “I must see her. And you must meet her. Everyone has been so rotten about her, and, Guy, you’ll appreciate her. I won’t bore you by describing her. You must meet her to-morrow. And the rooms in Ararat House. By Jove, you’ll think them wonderful. You should see her in candlelight among the mirrors. Pauline won’t mind your coming away with me for a night. We’ll stay at Cheyne Walk.”
“Well, as a matter of fact, I’m rather hard up just now....”
“Oh, what rot! This is my expedition. And when you’ve seen her, you must talk to my mother about her. She’s so prejudiced against Lily. You will come, won’t you?”
Guy nodded a promise, and Michael went off to bed on the excitement of to-morrow’s joy.
Guy would not start before the afternoon, and Michael spent the morning under a willow beside the river. It was good to lie staring up at the boughs, and know that every fleecy cloud going by was a cloud nearer to his seeing Lily again.
Michael and Guy arrived at Paddington about five o’clock.
“We’ll go straight round from here and surprise her,” Michael said, laughing with excitement, as they got into a taxi. “She’ll have had a letter from me this morning, in which I was lamenting not seeing her for six weeks. My gad, supposing she isn’t in! Oh, well, we can wait. You’ll love the room, and we’ll all three sit out in the garden to-night, and you’ll tell me as we walk home to Chelsea what you think of her. Guyyou’ve absolutely got to like her. And if you don’t ... oh, but you will. It isn’t everybody who can appreciate beauty like hers. And there’s an extraordinary subtlety about her. Of course, she isn’t at all subtle. She’s simple. In fact, that’s one of the things Stella has got against her. What I call simplicity and absence of training for effect Stella calls stupidity. My own belief is that you’ll be quite content to look at her and not care whether she talks or not. I tell you, she’s like a Piero della Francesca angel. Cheer up, Guy. Why are you looking so depressed?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Guy. “I’m thinking what a lucky chap you are. What’s a little family opposition when you know you’re going to be able to do what you want? Who can stop you? You’re independent, and you’re in love.”
“Of course they can’t stop me!” Michael cried, jumping up and down on the cushions of the taxi in his excitement. “Guy, you’re great! You really are. You’re the only person who’s seen the advantage of going right ahead. But don’t look so sad yourself. You’ll marry your Pauline.”
“Yes, in about four years,” Guy sighed.
“Oh, no, no; in about four months. Will Pauline like Lily? She won’t be jealous of me when I’m married will she?”
“No, but I think I shall be,” Guy laughed.
“Laugh, you old devil, laugh!” Michael shouted. “Here we are. Did you ever see such a house? It hasn’t quite the austerity of Plashers Mead, has it?”
“It looks rather fun,” Guy commented.
“You know,” Michael said solemnly, pausing for a moment at the head of the steps going down to the front door. “You know, Guy, I believe that you’ll be able to persuade my mother to withdraw all her opposition to-night. I believeI’m going to marry Lily this week. And I shall be so glad—Guy, you don’t know how glad I shall be.”
He ran hurriedly down the steps and had pressed the bell of Number One before Guy had entered the main door.
“I say, you know, it will be really terrible if she’s out after all my boasting,” said Michael. “And Miss Harper, too—that’s the housekeeper—my housekeeper, you know. If they’re both out, we’ll have to go round and wait in the garden until they come in. Hark, there’s somebody coming.”
The door opened, and Michael hurried in.
“Hullo, good afternoon, Miss Harper. You didn’t expect to see me, eh? I’ve brought a friend. Is Miss Haden in the big room?”
“Miss Haden is out, Mr. Fane,” said the housekeeper.
“What’s the matter? You’re looking rather upset.”
“Am I, Mr. Fane?” she asked blankly. “Am I? Oh, no, I’m very well. Oh, yes, very well. It’s the funny light, I expect, Mr. Fane.”
She seemed to be choking out all her words, and Michael looked at her sharply.
“Well, we’ll wait in the big room.”
“It’s rather untidy. You see, we—I wasn’t expecting you, Mr. Fane.”
“That’s all right,” said Michael. “Hulloa ...I say, Guy, go on into that room ahead. I’ll be with you in a minute.”
Guy mistook the direction and turned the handle of Lily’s bedroom door.
“No, no,” Michael called. “The double doors opposite.”
“My mistake,” said Guy cheerfully. “But don’t worry: the other door was locked. So if you’ve got a Bluebeard’s Closet, I’ve done no harm.”
He disappeared into the big room, and the moment he was inside Michael turned fiercely to Miss Harper.
“Who’s is this hat?” he demanded, snatching it up.
“Hat? What hat?” she choked out.
“Why is the door of her bedroom locked? Why is it locked—locked?”
The stillness of the crepuscular hall seemed to palpitate with the woman’s breath.
“Miss Haden must have locked it when she went out,” she stammered.
“Is that the truth?” Michael demanded. “It’s not the truth. It’s a lie. You wouldn’t be panting like a fish in a basket, unless there was something wrong. I’ll break the door in.”
“No, Mr. Fane, don’t do that!” the woman groaned out, in a cracked expostulation. “This is the first time since you’ve been away. And it was an old friend.”
“How dare you tell me anything about him? Guy! Guy!”
Michael rushed into the big room and dragged Guy out.
“Come away, come away, come away! I’ve been sold!”
“If you’d only listen a moment. I could——” Miss Harper began.
Michael pushed her out of their path.
“What on earth is it?” Guy asked.
“Come on, don’t hang about in this hell of a house. Come on, Guy.”
Michael had flung the door back to slam into Miss Harper’s face, and, seizing Guy by the wrist, he dragged him up the steps, and had started to run down the road, when Guy shouted:
“Michael, the taxi! The taxi’s waiting with our bags.”
“Oh, very well, in a taxi then, a taxi if you like,” Michael chattered, and he plunged into it.
“Where to?” the driver asked.
“Cheyne Walk. But drive quickly. Don’t hang about up and down this road.”
The driver looked round with an expression of injured dignity, shook his head in exclamation, and drove off.
“What on earth has happened?” Guy asked. “And why on earth are you holding a top-hat?”
Michael burst into laughter.
“So I am. Look at it. A top-hat. I say, Guy, did you ever hear of anyone being cut out by a top-hat, cuckolded by a top-hat? We’ll present it to the driver. Driver! Do you want a top-hat?”
“Here, who are you having a game with?” demanded the driver, pulling up the car.
“I’m not having a game with anybody,” Michael said. “But two people and this top-hat have just been having a hell of a game with me. You’d much better take it as a present. I shall only throw it away. He refuses,” Michael went on. “He refuses a perfectly good top-hat. Who’s the maker? My god, his dirty greasy head has obliterated the name of the maker. Good-bye, hat! Drive on, drive on!” he shouted to the driver, and hurled the hat spinning under an omnibus. Then he turned to Guy.
“I’ve been sold by the girl I was going to marry,” he said. “I say, Guy, I’ve got some jolly good advice for you. Don’t you marry a whore. Sorry, old chap!—I forgot you were engaged already. Besides, people don’t marry whores, unless they’re fools like me. Didn’t you say just now that I was very lucky? Do you know—I think I am lucky. I think it was a great piece of luck bringing you to see that girl to-day. Don’t you? Oh, Guy, I could go mad with disappointment. Will nothing in all the world ever be what it seems?”
“Look here, Michael, are you sure you weren’t too hasty?You didn’t wait to see if there was any explanation, did you?”
“She was only going back to her old habits,” said Michael bitterly. “I was a fool to think she wouldn’t. And yet I adored her. Fancy, you’ve never seen her, after all. Lovely, lovely animal!”
“Oh, you knew what she was?” exclaimed Guy.
“Knew? Yes, of course I knew; but I thought she loved me. I didn’t care about anything when I was sure she loved me. She could only have gone such a little way down, I thought. She seemed so easy to bring out. Seeds of pomegranate. Seeds of pomegranate! She’s only eaten seeds of pomegranate, but they were enough to keep her behind. Where are we going? Oh, yes, Cheyne Walk. My mother will be delighted when she hears my news, and so will everybody. That’s what’s amusing me. Everybody will clap their hands, and I’m wretched. But you are sorry for me, Guy? You don’t think I’m just a fool being shown his folly? And at eighteen I was nearly off my head only because I saw someone kiss her! There’s one thing over which I score—the only person who can appreciate all the humor of this situation is myself.”
Nearly all the way to Cheyne Walk Michael was laughing very loudly.
Guy thought it would be better if he went straight back to Plashers Mead; but Michael asked him to stay until the next day. He was in no mood, he said, for a solitary evening, and he could not bear the notion of visiting friends, or of talking to his mother without the restriction that somebody else’s presence would produce.
So Guy agreed to spend the night in London, and they dined with Mrs. Fane. Michael in the sun-colored Summer room felt smothered by a complete listlessness; and talking very little, he sat wondering at the swiftness with which a strong fabric of the imagination had tumbled down. The quiet of Cheyne Walk became a consciousness of boredom and futility, and he suggested on a sudden impulse that he and Guy should go and visit Maurice in the studio. It would be pleasant walking along the Embankment, he said.
“But I thought you wanted to keep quiet,” Guy exclaimed.
“No, I’ve grown restless during dinner; and, besides, I want to make a few arrangements about the flat, and then be done with that business—forever.”
They started off without waiting for coffee. It was a calm Summer evening of shadows blue and amethyst, of footfalls and murmurs, an evening plumy as a moth, warmand gentle as the throat of a pigeon. Nobody on any pavement was hurrying; and maidservants loitered in area gates, looking up and down the roads.
The big room at the top of 422 Grosvenor Road had never seemed so romantic. There were half a dozen people sitting at the open windows; and Cunningham was playing a sonata of Brahms, a sonata with a melody that was drawing the London night into this big room where the cigarettes dimmed and brightened like stars. The player sat at the piano for an hour, and Maurice unexpectedly made no attempt to disturb the occasion. Michael thought that perhaps he was wondering what had brought himself and Guy here, and for that reason did not rush to show Guy his studio by gaslight: Maurice was probably thinking how strange it was for Michael to revisit him suddenly like this after their quarrel.
When the room was lighted up, Michael and Guy were introduced to the men they did not know. Among them was Ronnie Walker, the painter whom Maurice had mentioned to Michael as an old lover of Lily. Michael knew now why Maurice had allowed the music to go on so long, and he was careful to talk as much as possible to Walker in order to embarrass Maurice, who could scarcely pay any attention to Guy, so nervously was he watching over his shoulder the progress of the conversation.
Later on Michael called Maurice aside, and they withdrew to the window-seat which looked out over the housetops. A cat was yauling on a distant roof, and in the studio Cunningham had seated himself at the piano again.
“I say, I’m awfully sorry that Ronnie Walker should happen to be here to-night,” Maurice began. “I have been rather cursing myself for telling you about him and....”
“It doesn’t matter at all,” Michael interrupted. “I’m not going to marry her.”
“Oh, that’s splendid!” Maurice exclaimed. “I’ve been tremendously worried about you.”
Michael looked at him; he was wondering if it were possible that Maurice could be “tremendously worried” by anything.
“I want you to arrange matters,” said Michael. “I can’t go near the place again. She will probably prefer to go away from Ararat House. The rent is paid up to the June quarter. The furniture you can do what you like with. Bring some of it here. Sell the rest, and give her the money. Get rid of the woman who’s there—Miss Harper her name is.”
“But I shall feel rather awkward....”
“Oh, don’t do it. Don’t do it, then!” Michael broke in fretfully. “I’ll ask Guy.”
“You’re getting awfully irascible,” Maurice complained. “Of course I’ll do anything you want, if you won’t always jump down my throat at the first word I utter. What has happened, though?”
“What do you expect to happen when you’re engaged to a girl like that?” Michael asked.
Maurice shrugged his shoulders.
“Oh, well, of course I should expect to be badly let down. But then, you see, I’m not a very great believer in women. What are you going to do yourself?”
“I haven’t settled yet. I’ve got to arrange one or two things in town, and then I shall go abroad. Would you be able to come with me in about a week?”
“I daresay I might,” Maurice answered, looking vaguely round the room. Already, Michael thought, the subject was floating away from his facile comprehension.
The piano had stopped, and conversation became general again.
“This is where you ought to be, if you want to write,”Maurice proclaimed to Guy. “It’s ridiculous for you to bury yourself in the country. You’ll expire of stagnation.”
“Just at present I recommend you to stay where you are,” said Castleton. “I’m almost expiring from the violence with which I am being precipitated from one to another of Maurice’s energies.”
Soon afterward Michael and Guy left the studio and walked home; and next morning Guy went back to Wychford.
Michael was astonished at his own calmness. After the first shock of the betrayal he had gone and talked to a lot of people; he had coldly made financial arrangements; he had even met and rather liked a man whom only yesterday morning he could not have regarded without hatred for the part he had played in Lily’s life. Perhaps he had lost the power to feel anything deeply for long; perhaps he was become a sort of Maurice; already Lily seemed a shade of the underworld, merely more clearly remembered than the others. Yet in the moment that he was calling her a shade his present emotion proved that she was much more than that, for the conjured image of her was an icy pang to his heart. Then the indifference returned, but always underneath it the chill remained.
Mrs. Fane asked if he would care to go to the Opera in the evening: and they went to Bohême. Michael used to be wrung by the music, but he sat unmoved to-night. Afterward, at supper, he looked at his mother as if she were a person in a picture; he was saddened by the uselessness of all beauty, and by the number of times he would have to undress at night and dress again in the morning. He had no objection to life itself, but he felt an overwhelming despair at the thought of any activity in the conduct of it. He was sorry for the people sitting here at supper and for their footmen waiting outside. He felt that he was spirituallywithered, because he was aware that he was surrendering to the notion of a debased material comfort as the only condition worth achieving for a body that remained perfectly well; grossly well, it almost seemed.
“Michael, have you been bored to-night?” his mother asked, when they had come home and were sitting by the window in the drawing-room, while Michael finished a cigar.
He shook his head.
“You seemed to take no interest in the opera, and you usually enjoy Puccini, don’t you? Or was it Wagner you enjoy so much?”
“I think summer in London is always tiring,” he said.
She was in that rosy mist of clothes with which his earliest pictures of her were vivid. Suddenly he began to cry.
“Dear child, what is it?” she whispered, with fluttering arms outstretched to comfort him.
“Oh, I’ve finished with all that! I’ve finished with all that! You’ll be delighted—you mustn’t be worried because I seem upset for the moment. I found out that Lily did not care anything about me. I’m not going to marry her or even see her again.”
“Michael! My dearest boy! What is it?”
“Finished! Finished! Finished!” he sobbed.
“Nothing is finished at twenty-three,” she murmured, leaning over to pet him.
“I do hate myself for having hurt your feelings the other day.”
It was as if he seized upon a justification for grief so manifest. It seemed to him exquisitely sad that he should have wounded his mother on account of that broken toy of a girl. Soon he could control himself again; and he went off to bed.
Next day Michael’s depression was profound because hecould perceive no reaction from himself on Lily. The sense of personal loss was merged in the reproach of failure; he had simply been unable to influence her. She was the consummation of many minor failures. And what was to happen to her now? What was to happen to all the people with whose lives he had lately been involved? Must he withdraw entirely and confess defeat? No doubt a cynic would argue that Lily was hopeless, and indeed he knew that from any point of view where marriage was concerned she was hopeless. He must leave her where he had found her, in that pretty paradise of evil which now she well adorned. If her destiny was to whirl downward through the labyrinths of the underworld, he could do no more. That himself had issued with the false dreams through the ivory gate was her fault, and she must pay the penalty of her misdirection. He would revisit Leppard Street, and from the innermost circle where he had beheld Mrs. Smith he would seek a way out through the gate of true dreams. He would be glad to see if the amount of security he had been able to guarantee to Barnes had helped him at all. He had money and he could leave money behind in Leppard Street, money that might preserve the people in the house where he had lived. Was this a quixotic notion, to leave one set of people free from the necessity to hand themselves over to evil? Michael’s spirits began to rise as he looked forward to what he could still effect in Leppard Street. And for Lily what could he still do? He would visit Sylvia and consult with her. She was strong, and if she had chosen harlotry, she was still strong. She was not lazy nor languid. Lazy, laughing, languid Lily! Lily did not laugh much; she was too lazy even for that. How beautiful she had been! Her beauty stabbed him with the poignancy of what was past. How beautiful she had been! When Maurice went to tell her of the final ending of it all, shewould pout and shrug her shoulders. That was all she would do; and she would be faintly resentful at having been disturbed in her lazy life. Perhaps Maurice would fall in love with her, and it would be ironical and just that she should fall violently in love with Maurice and be cast off by him. Maurice would never suffer; as soon as a woman showed a sign of upsetting his theories about feminine behavior he would be done with her. He would jilt her as easily as he jilted one Muse for another. Why was he being so hard on Maurice?
“I believe that down in my heart I still don’t really like him,” Michael said to himself. “Right back from the time I met him in Macrae’s form at Randell’s I’ve never really liked him.”
It was curious how one could grow more and more intimate with a person, and all the time never really like him; so intimate with him as to intrust him with the disposal of a wrecked love-affair, and all the while never really like him. Why, then, had he invited Maurice to go abroad? Perhaps he wanted the company of someone he could faintly despise. Even friendship must pay tribute to human vanity. Life became a merciless business when one ceased to stand alone. The herding instinct of man was responsible for the corruption of civilization, and Michael thought of the bestiality of a crowd. How loathsome humanity was in the aggregate, but individually how rare, how wonderful.
Michael walked boldly enough toward Tinderbox Lane; and when he rang the bell of Mulberry Cottage not a qualm of sentiment assailed him. He was definitely pleased with himself, as he stood outside the door in the wall, to think with what a serenity of indifference he was able to visit a place so much endeared to him a little time ago.
Mrs. Gainsborough answered the door and nearly fell upon Michael’s neck.
“Good Land! Here’s a surprise.”
“It’s almost more of a surprise for me to see you, Mrs. Gainsborough.”
“Why, who else should you see?”
“I was beginning to think you never existed. Can I come in?”
“Sylvia’s indoors,” she said warningly.
“I rather wanted to see her.”
“She’s been carrying on alarming about you ever since you stole her Lily. And she didn’t take me on her knee and cuddle me, when she found you were gone off. How do you like me new frock?”
Michael thought that in her checkered black and green gingham she looked like an old Summer number of an illustrated magazine, and he told her so.
“Well, there! Did you ever? I never did. There’s a bouquet to hand a lady! Back number! Whatever next? I wonder you hadn’t the liberty to say I’d rose from the grave.”
“Aren’t I to see Sylvia?” Michael asked, laughing.
“Well, don’t blame me if she packs you off with a flea in your ear, as they say—well, she is a Miss Temper, and no mistake. How do you like me garden?”
Mulberry Cottage was just the bower of greenery that Michael had supposed he would find in early June.
“Actually roses,” he exclaimed. “Or at least there will be very soon.”
“Oh, yes. Glory de Die-Johns. That was always Pa’s favorite. That and a good snooze of a Sunday afternoon was about what he cared most for in this world. But my Captain he used to like camellias, and gardenias of course—oh, he had a very soft corner in his heart for a nice gardenia. Ah dear, what a masher he was to be sure!”
Sylvia had evidently seen them walking up the gardenpath, for leaning over the railings of the balcony she was waiting for them.
“Here’s quite a stranger come to see you,” said Mrs. Gainsborough, with a propitiatory glance in Sylvia’s direction.
“I rather want to have a talk with you,” said Michael, and he, too, found himself rather annoyingly adopting a deprecating manner.
Sylvia came slowly down the balcony steps.
“I suppose you want my help,” she said, and her underlip had a warning out-thrust.
“I’ll get on with my fal-lals,” Mrs. Gainsborough muttered, and she bundled herself quickly indoors.
Sylvia and Michael sat down on the garden-seat under the mulberry tree whose leaves were scarcely yet uncurling. Michael found a great charm in sitting close to Sylvia like this: she and Stella both possessed a capacity for bracing him that he did not find in anyone else. Sylvia was really worth quarreling with; but it would be very delightful to be friends with her. He had never liked a person so much whom he had so little reason to like. He could not help thinking that in her heart Sylvia must like him. It was a strangely provocative fancy.
“Lily and I have parted,” he began at once.
“And why do you suppose that piece of information will interest me?” Sylvia asked.
Michael was rather taken aback. When he came to consider it, there did seem no good reason why Sylvia should any longer be interested after the way in which Lily had been snatched away from her. He was silent for a moment.
“But it would have interested you a short time ago,” he said.
“No doubt,” Sylvia agreed. “But luckily for me one ofthe benefits conferred by my temperament is an ability to throw aside things that have disappointed me, things that have ceased to be useful—and what applies to things applies even more strongly to people.”
“You mean to say you’ve put Lily right out of your life?” Michael exclaimed.
He was shocked by the notion, for he did not realize until this moment how much he had been depending upon Sylvia for peace of mind.
“Haven’t you put her out ofyourlife?” she asked, looking round at him sharply. Until this question she had been staring sullenly down at the grass.
“Well, I had to,” said Michael.
“You’re bearing up very well under the sad necessity,” she sneered.
“I don’t know that I am bearing up very well. I don’t think that coming to you to talk about it is a special sign of fortitude.”
“What do you want me to do?” Sylvia demanded. “Get her back into your life again? Isn’t that the phrase you like?”
“Oh, no, that’s unimaginable,” said Michael. “You see, it was really the second time. Once six years ago, and again now, very much more—more utterly. You said that your temperament enables you to throw off things and people. Mine makes me bow to what I fancy are irremediable strokes of fate.”
“Unimaginable! Irremediable! We’re turning this interview into a Rossetti sonnet,” Sylvia scoffed.
“I was thinking about that poem Jenny to-day. It’s funny you should mention Rossetti.”
“Impervious youth!” she exclaimed.
“It’s hopeless for you to try to wound me with words,” Michael assured her, with grave earnestness. “I was woundedthe day before yesterday into complete immunity from small pains.”
“I suppose you found her ...”
Michael flushed and gripped her by the wrist.
“No, no, don’t say something brutal and beastly!” he stammered. “You know what happened. You prophesied it. Well, I thought you were wrong, and you were right. That’s a victory for you. You couldn’t wish for me to be more humbled than I am by having to admit that I wasn’t strong enough to keep her faithful for six weeks. But we did agree, I think, about one thing.” He smiled sadly. “We did agree that she was beautiful. You were as proud of that as I was, and of course you had a great deal more reason to be proud. You did own her. I never owned her, and isn’t that your great objection to the relation between man and woman?”
“What are you trying to make me do?” Sylvia asked.
“I want you to have Lily to live with you again.”
“To relieve yourself of all responsibility, I suppose,” she said bitterly.
“No, no; why will you persist in ascribing the worst motive to everything I say? Isn’t your jealousy fed full enough even yet?”
Sylvia made the garden-seat quiver with an irritable movement.
“You will persist in thinking that jealousy solved all problems,” she cried.
“Oh, don’t let us turn aside into what isn’t very important. You can’t care whether I think you’re jealous or not.”
“I don’t care in so far as it is your opinion,” Sylvia admitted. “But I object to inaccurate thinking. If your life was spent in a confusion of all moral values as mine is,you would be anxious for a little straightforward computation for a change.”
“Perhaps you are right,” Michael admitted, “in thinking that I’m asking you to look after Lily to relieve myself of a responsibility. But it’s only because I see no chance of doing it in any other way. I mean—it’s not laziness on my part. It’s a confession of absolute failure.”
“In fact, you’re throwing yourself on my mercy,” Sylvia said.
“Yes; and also her,” he added gently.
“Am I such a moral companion—such an ennobling influence?”
“I would sooner think of her under your influence than think of her drifting. What I want you to understand is that I’m not consigning her to you for sentimental reasons. I would sooner that Lily were dragged down by you at a gallop than that she should sink slowly and lazily of her own accord. You have a strong personality. You are well-read. You are quite out of the common, and in the life you have chosen, so far as I have had experience, you are unique.”
Sylvia stared in front of her, and Michael waited anxiously for the reply.
“Have you ever read Petronius?” she asked suddenly.
“Yes, but what an extraordinary girl you are—have you ever read Petronius?”
“It’s the only book in which anyone in my position with my brains could behold herself. Oh, it is such a nightmare. And life is a nightmare, too. After all, what is life for me? Strange doors in strange houses. Strange men and strange intimacies. Scenes incredibly grotesque and incredibly beastly. The secret vileness of human nature flung at me. Man revealing himself through individual after individual as utterly contemptible. What can I worship? Not my own body soiled by my traffic in it. Not any religion I’ve everheard of, for in all religions man is set up to be respected. I tell you, my dear eager fool, it is beyond my conception ever, ever, ever to regard a man as higher than a frog, as less repulsive than—ugh! it makes me shudder—but oh, my son, doesn’t it make me laugh....” She rocked herself with extravagant mirth for a moment. Then she began again, staring out in front of her intensely, fiercely, speaking with the monotonous voice of a visionary. “So I worship woman, and in this nightmare city, in this nightmare life, Lily was always beautiful; only beautiful, mind you. I don’t want to worship anything but beauty. I don’t care about purity or uprightness, but I must have beauty. And you came blundering along and kidnapped my lovely girl. You came along, thinking you were going to regenerate her, and you can’t understand that I’m only able to see you in the shape of a frog. It does amuse me to hear you talking to me so solemnly and so earnestly and so nobly ... and all the time I can only see a clumsy frog.”
“But what has all this to do with Petronius? There’s nothing in that romance particularly complimentary to women,” Michael argued.
“It’s the nightmare effect of it that I adore,” Sylvia exclaimed. “It’s the sensation of being hopelessly plunged into a maze of streets from which there’s no escape. I was plunged just like that into London. It is gloriously and sometimes horribly mad, and that’s all I want in my reading now. I want to be given the sensation of other people having been mad before me ... years ago in a nightmare. Besides, think of the truth, the truth of a work of art that seems ignorant of goodness. Not one moderately decent person all through.”
“And you will take Lily back?” Michael asked.
“Yes, yes, of course I will. But not because you ask me, mind. Don’t for heaven’s sake, puff yourself up with theidea that I’m doing anything except gratify myself in this matter.”
“I don’t want you to do it for any other reason,” he said. “I shall feel more secure with that pledge than with any you could think of. By the way, tell me about a man called Walker. Ronald Walker—a painter. He had an affair with Lily, didn’t he?”
“Ronnie Walker? He painted her; that was all. There was never anything more.”
“And Lonsdale? Arthur Lonsdale?”
“Who? The Honorable Arthur?”
Michael nodded.
“Yes, we met him first at Covent Garden, and went to Brighton with him and another boy—Clarehaven—Lord Clarehaven.”
“Oh, I remember him at the House,” said Michael.
“Money is necessary sometimes, you know,” Sylvia laughed.
“Of course it is. Look here. Will you in future, whenever you feel you’re in a nightmare—will you write to me and let me send money?” he asked. “I know you despise me and of course ... I understand; but I can’t bear to think of anyone being haunted as you must be haunted sometimes. Don’t be proud about this, becauseI’vegot no pride left. I’m only terribly anxious to be of service to somebody. There’s really no reason for you to be proud. You see, I should always be so very much more anxious to help than you would to be helped. And it really isn’t only because of Lily that I say this. I’ve got a good many books you’d enjoy, and I think I’ll send them to you. Good-bye.”