“Good-bye,” she said, looking at him curiously.
Michael turned away from her down the gravel-path, and a moment later slammed the door. He had only gone a few steps away, when he heard Sylvia calling after him.
“You stupid!” she said. “You never told me Lily’s address.”
“I’ll give you a card.”
“Mr. Michael Fane,” she read, “1 Ararat House, Island Road.” She looked at him and raised her eyebrows.
“You see, I expected to live there myself,” Michael explained. “I told a friend of mine, Maurice Avery, to clear up everything. The furniture can all be sold. If you want anything for here, take it of course; but I think most of the things will be too large for Mulberry Cottage.”
“And what shall I say to Lily?” she asked.
“Oh, I don’t think I should say anything about me.”
“Who was the man?”
“I never saw him,” said Michael. “I only saw his hat.”
She pulled him to her and kissed him.
“How many women have done that suddenly like that?” she demanded.
“One—well, perhaps two.” He was wondering if Mrs. Smith’s kiss ought to count in the comparison.
“I never have to any man,” she said, and vanished through the door in the wall.
Michael hoped that Sylvia intended to imply by that kiss that his offer of help was accepted. Fancy her having read Petronius! He could send her his Adlington’s Apuleius. She would enjoy reading that, and he would write in it:I’ve eaten rose-leaves and I am no longer a golden ass.Perhaps he would also send her his Shelton’s Don Quixote.
When Michael turned out of Tinderbox Lane into the Fulham Road, each person of humanity he passed upon the pavement seemed to him strange with unrevealed secrets. The people of London were somehow transfigured, and he longed to see their souls, if it were only in the lucid flashes of a nightmare. Yet for nearly a year he had been peeringinto the souls of people. Had he, indeed. Had he not rather been peering to see in their souls the reflection of his own? He was moved by the thought of Sylvia in London, and suddenly he was swept from his feet by the surging against him of the thoughts of all the passers-by and, struggling in the trough of these thoughts, he was more and more conscious that unless he fought for himself he would be lost. The illusion fled on the instant of its creation; and the people were themselves again—dull, quick, slow, ordinary, depressed, gay; political busy-bodies, political fools, political slaves, political animals. How they huddled together, each one of them afraid to stand for himself. It was political passion that made them animals, each dependent in turn on the mimicry of his neighbor. Each was solicitous or jealous or fond or envious of his neighbor’s opinion. God was meaningless to the political state: this herd cared only for idols. Michael began to make a catalogue of the Golden Calves that the Golden Asses of green England worshiped. They were bowing down and braying to their Golden Calves, these Golden Asses, and they could not see that there were rose-trees growing everywhere, most prodigally of all in the gutter, any one petal of which (what did the thorns matter?) would have given back to them their humanity. Yet even then, Michael dismally concluded, they would continue to bow down to the Golden Calves, because they would fancy that it was the Calves who had planted and cultivated the rose-trees. Then out of all the thronging thoughts made visible he began to pursue the fancy of Sylvia in London, and, as he did so, she faded farther and farther from his vision like a butterfly seen from a train, that keeps pace, it seems for a moment, and is lost upon the flowery embankment behind.
Meanwhile, Michael was feeling sharpened for conflict by that talk under the mulberry tree: he realized what anamount of determination he had stored up for the persuasion of Sylvia. Now there only remained Leppard Street, and then he would go away from London. He walked on through the Chelsea slums.
Leppard Street was more melancholy in the sunshine than it had ever seemed in Winter, not so much because the sun made more evident the corrosion and the foulness as because of the stillness it shed. Not a breath of air twitched the torn paper-bag on the doorstep of Number One; and the five tall houses with their fifty windows stared at the blank wall opposite.
Michael wondered if Barnes would be out of bed: it was not yet one o’clock. He rang the front-door bell, or rather he hoped that the creaking of the broken wire along the basement passage would attract Mrs. Cleghorne’s attention. When he had tugged many times, she came out into the area, and peered up to see who it was. The sudden sunlight must have dazzled her eyes, for she was shading them with her hand. With her fibrous neck working and with an old cap of her husband’s pinned on a skimpy bun at the back of her head, she was horrible after Mrs. Gainsborough in the black and green gingham. Michael looked down at her over the railings; and she, recognizing him at last, pounced back to come up and open the door.
“I couldn’t think who it was. We had a man round selling pots of musk this morning, and I didn’t want to come trapesing upstairs for nothing.”
Mrs. Cleghorne was receiving him so pleasantly that Michael scarcely knew what to say. No doubt his regular payment of rent had a good deal to do with it.
“Is Mr. Barnes up?” he asked.
“I don’t know, I’m sure. I never go inside his door now. No.”
“Oh, really? Why not?”
“I’m the last person to make mischief, Mr. Fane, but I don’t consider he has treated us fair.”
“Oh, really?”
“He’s got a woman here living with him. Now of course that’s a thing I should never allow, but seeing as you weren’t here and was paying the rent regular I thought to myself that I’ll just shut my eyes until you came back. It’s really disgusting, and we has to be so particular with the other lodgers. It’s quite upset me, it has; andMis-ter Cleghorne has been intending to speak to him about it. Only his asthma’s been so bad lately—it really seems to have knocked all the heart out of him.”
This pity for her husband was very ominous, Michael thought. Evidently the landlady was defending herself against an abrupt forfeiture of rent for the ground floor. Michael tapped at the door of his old room: it was locked.
“I’ll get on down again to my oven,” said Mrs. Cleghorne with a ratlike glance at the closed door. “I’m just cooking a bit of fish for my old man’s dinner.”
She fixed him with her eyes that were beady like the head of the hatpin in her cap, and sweeping her hand upward over her nose, she vanished.
Michael rapped again and, as there was no answer, he went along the passage and tried the bedroom door. Barnes’ voice called out to know who was there. Michael shouted his name, and heard Barnes whispering to somebody inside. Presently he opened the sitting-room door and invited Michael to come in.
It was extraordinary to see how with a few additions the character of the room had changed since Michael left it. The furniture was still there; but what had seemed ascetic was now mean. Spangled picture-postcards were standing along the mantelpiece. The autotypes of St. George and the Knight in Armor were both askew: the shelves hadnovelettes interspersed among the books; a soiled petticoat of yellow moirette lay over Michael’s narrow bed, which he was surprised to see in the sitting-room: a gas-stove had been fixed in the fireplace, and the old steel grate had been turned into a deposit for dirty plates and dishes: but what struck Michael most were the heavy curtains over the folding-doors between the two rooms. He looked at Barnes, waiting for him to explain the alterations.
“Looks a bit more homelike than it did, doesn’t it?” said Barnes, blinking round him.
A deterioration was visible even in Barnes himself. This was not merely the result of being without a collar or a shave, Michael decided: it was as hard to define as the evidence of death in a man’s eyes; but there clung to him an aura of corruption, and it seemed as if at a touch he would dissolve into a vile deliquescence.
“You look pretty pasty,” said Michael severely.
“Worry, old man, worry,” said Barnes. “Well, to put it straight, I fell in with a girl who was down on her luck, and I knew you’d be the very one to encourage a bit of charity. So I brought her here.”
“Why are you sleeping in this room?” Michael asked.
“You’re getting a Mr. Smart, aren’t you?” said Barnes. “Fancy you’re noticing that. Oh, well, I suppose you’ve come to ask for your rooms back?”
Michael with the consciousness of the woman behind those curtained doors knew that he could discuss nothing at present. He felt that all the time her ear was at the keyhole, and he went out suddenly, telling Barnes to meet him at the Orange that night.
Again the beerhall impressed him with its eternal sameness. It was as if a cinema film had broken when he last went out of the Café d’Orange, and had been set in action again at the moment of his return. He looked round to seeif Daisy was there, and she was. Her hat which had formerly been black and trimmed with white daisies was now, to mark the season, white and trimmed with black daisies.
“Hulloa, little stranger!” she exclaimed. “Where have you been?”
So exactly the same was the Orange that Michael was almost surprised that she should have observed a passage of time.
“You never seem to come here now,” she said reproachfully. “Come on. Sit down. Don’t stand about like a man selling matches on the curb.”
“How’s Bert?” Michael asked.
“Who?”
“Bert Saunders. The man you were living with in Little Quondam Street.”
“Oh, him! Oh, I had to get rid of him double quick. What? Yes, when it came to asking me to go to Paris with a fighting fellow. Only fancy the cheek of it! It would help him, he said, with his business. Dirty Ecnop! I soon shoved him down the Apples-and-pears.”
“I haven’t understood a word of that last sentence,” said Michael.
“Don’t you know back-slang and rhyming-slang? Oh, it’s grand! Here, I forgot, there’s something I wanted to tell you. Do you remember you was in here with a fellow who you said his name was Burns?”
“Barnes, you mean, I expect. Yes, he’s supposed to be meeting me here to-night, as a matter of fact.”
“Well, you be careful of him. He’ll get you into trouble.”
Michael looked incredulous.
“It’s true as I sit here,” said Daisy earnestly. “Come over in the corner and let’s have our drink there. I can’ttalk here with that blue-nosed —— behind me, squinting at us across his lager.” She looked round indignantly at the man in question.
They moved across to one of the alcoves, and Daisy leaned over and spoke quietly and rather tensely, so differently from the usual rollick of her voice that Michael began to feel a presentiment of dread.
“I was out on the Dilly one night soon after you’d been round to my place, and I was with a girl called Janie Filson. ‘Oo-er,’ she said to me. ‘Did you see who that was passed?’ I looked round and saw this fellow Burns.”
“Barnes,” Michael corrected.
“Oh, well, Barnes. His name doesn’t matter, because it isn’t his own, anyway. ‘That’s Harry Meats,’ she said. And she called out after him. ‘Hulloa, Harry, where’s Cissie?’ He went as white as ... oh, he did go shocking white. He just turned to see who it was had called out after him, and then he slid up Swallow Street like a bit of paper. ‘Who’s Cissie?’ I said. ‘Don’t you remember Cissie Cummings?’ she said. ‘That fair girl who always wore a big purple hat and used to be in the Leicester Lounge and always carried a box of chocolates for swank?’ I did remember the girl when Janie spoke about her. Only I never knew her, see? ‘He wasn’t very pleased when you mentioned her,’ I said. ‘Didn’t he look awful?’ said Janie, and just then she got off with a fellow and I couldn’t ask her any more.”
“I don’t think that’s enough to make me very much afraid of Barnes,” Michael commented.
“Wait a minute, I haven’t finished yet. Don’t be in such a hurry. The other day I saw Janie Filson again. She’s been away to Italy—is there a place called Italy? Of course there is. Well, as I was saying, she’d been to Italy with her fellow who’s a commercial traveler and that’s why I hadn’t seen her. And Janie said to me, ‘Do you knowwhat they’re saying?’ I said, ‘No, what?’ And she said, ‘Did you read nearly a year ago about a woman who was found murdered in the Euston Road? A gay woman it was,’ she said. So I said, ‘Lots of women is found murdered, my dear. I can’t remember every one I see the picture of.’ Well, anyone can’t, can they?” Daisy broke off to ask Michael in an injured voice. Then she resumed her tale. “When I was with that fellow Bert I used to read nothing else but murders all the time. Give anyone the rats, it would. ‘Lots of women, my dear,’ I said. And she said, ‘Well, there was one in particular who the police never found out the name of, because there wasn’t any clothing or nothing found.’ So I did remember about it, and she said, ‘Well, they’re saying now it was Cissie Cummings.’ And I said, ‘Well, what of it, if it was?’ And she said, ‘What of it?’ she said. ‘Well, if it was her,’ she said, ‘I know who done it.’ ‘Who done it?’ I asked—because, you see, I’d forgotten about this fellow Burns. ‘Why, Harry Meats,’ she said. ‘That fellow I saw on the Dilly the night when I was along with you.’”
“I don’t think you have enough evidence for the police,” Michael decided, with half a smile. Yet nevertheless a malaise chilled him, and he looked over his shoulder at the mob in the beer hall.
“—— the police!” Daisy exclaimed. “I don’t care about them when I’m positive certain of something. I tell you, I know that fellow Burns, or Meats, or whatever his name is, done it.”
“But what am I to do about it?” Michael asked.
“Well, you’ll get into trouble, that’s all,” Daisy prophesied. “You’d look very funny if he was pinched for murder while you was out walking with him. Ugh! It gives me the creeps. Order me a gin, there’s a good boy.”
Michael obtained for Daisy her drink, and sat waiting for Barnes to appear.
“He won’t come,” Daisy scoffed. “If he’s feeling funny about the neck, he won’t come down here. He’s never been down since that night he came down with you. Fancy, to go and do a poor girl in like that! I’d spit in his face, if I saw him.”
“Daisy, you really mustn’t assume such horrible things about a man. He’s as innocent as you or me.”
“Is he?” Daisy retorted. “I don’t think so then. You never saw how shocking white his face went when Janie asked him about Cissie.”
“But if there were any suspicion of him,” Michael pointed out, “the police would have tackled him long ago.”
“Oh, they aren’t half artful, the police aren’t,” said Daisy. “Nothing they’d like better than get waiting about and seeing if he didn’t go and murder another poor girl, so as they could have him for the two, and be all the more pleased about it.”
“That’s talking nonsense,” Michael protested. “The police don’t do that sort of thing.”
“I don’t know,” Daisy argued. “One or two poor girls more or less wouldn’t worry them. After all, that’s what we’re for—to get pinched when they’ve got nothing better to do. Of course, I know it’s part of the game, but there it is. If you steal my purse and I follow you round and tell a copper, what would he do? Why, pinch me for soliciting. No, my motto is, ‘Keep out of the way of the police.’ And if you take my advice, you’ll do the same. If this fellow didn’t do the girl in,” Daisy asked earnestly, leaning forward over the table, “why doesn’t he come down here and keep his appointment with you to-night? Don’t you worry. He knows the word has gone round, and he’s going to lievery low for a bit. I wouldn’t say the tecs aren’t watching out for him even now.”
“My dear Daisy, you’re getting absolutely fanciful,” Michael declared.
“Oh, well, good luck to fanciful,” said Daisy, draining her glass. “Here, why don’t you come home with me to-night?”
“What, and spend another three hours hiding in a cupboard?”
“No, properly, I mean, this time. Only we should have to go to a hotel, because the woman I’m living with’s got her son come home from being a soldier and she wouldn’t like for him to know anything. Well, it’s better not. You’re much more comfortable when you aren’t in gay rooms, because they haven’t got a hold over you. Are you coming?”
For a moment Michael was inclined to invite Daisy to go away with him. For a moment it seemed desirable to bury himself in a corner of the underworld: to pass his life there for as long as he could stand it. He could easily make this girl fond of him, and he might be happy with her. No doubt, it would be ultimately a degrading happiness, but yet not much more degrading than the prosperity of many of his friends. He had always escaped so far and hidden himself successfully. Why not again more completely? What, after all, did he know of this underworld without having lived of it as well as in it? Hitherto he had been a spectator, intervening sometimes in the sudden tragedies and comedies, but never intervening except as very essentially a spectator. He thought, as he sat opposite to Daisy with her white dress and candid roguery, that it would be amusing to become a rogue himself. There would be no strain in living with Daisy. Love in the way that he had loved Lily would be a joke to her. Why should not he take her for what she was—shrewd, mirthful, kind, honest, thenatural light of love? He would do her no wrong by accepting her as such. She was immemorial in the scheme of the universe.
Michael was on the point of offering to Daisy his alliance, when he remembered what Sylvia had said about men and, though he knew that Daisy could not possibly think in that way about men, he had no courage to plunge with her into deeper labyrinths not yet explored. He thought of the contempt with which Sylvia would hail him, were they in this nightmare of London to meet in such circumstances. A few weeks ago—yesterday, indeed—he might have joined himself to Daisy under the pretext of helping her and improving her. Now he must help himself: he must aim at perfecting himself. Experiments, when at any moment passion might enter, were too dangerous.
“No, I won’t come home with you, dear Daisy,” he said, taking her hand over the puddly table. “You know, you didn’t kiss me that night in Quondam Street because you thought I might one day come home with you, did you?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“What’s the good of asking me why I kissed you?” she said, embarrassed and almost made angry by his reminder. “Perhaps I was twopence on the can. I can get very loving on a quartern of gin, I can. Oh, well, if you aren’t coming home, you aren’t, and I must get along. Sitting talking to you isn’t paying my rent, is it?”
He longed to offer her money, but he could not, because it was seeming to him now indissolubly linked with hiring. However genuinely it was a token of exchange, money was eluding his capacity for idealization, and he was at a loss to find a symbol service.
“Is there nothing I can do for you?”
“Yes, you can give me two quid in case I don’t get off to-night.”
He offered them to her eagerly.
“Go on, you silly thing,” she said, pushing the money away. “As if I meant it.”
“If you didn’t, I did,” said Michael.
“Oh, all right,” she replied, with a wink, putting the money in her purse. “Well, chin-chin, Clive, don’t be so long coming down here next time.”
“Michael is my name,” he said, for he was rather distressed to think that she would pass forever from his life supposing him to be called Clive.
“As if I didn’t know that,” she said. “I remember, because it’s a Jew name.”
“But it isn’t,” Michael contradicted.
“Jews are called that.”
“Very likely,” he admitted.
“Oh, well, it’ll be all the same in a hundred years.”
She picked up her white gloves, and swaggered across the crowded beerhall. At the foot of the stairs she turned and waved them to him. Then she disappeared.
Michael sat on in the Café d’Orange, waiting for Barnes, but he did not arrive before closing-time; and when Michael was walking home, the tale of Daisy gathered import, and he had a dreary feeling that her suspicions were true. He did not feel depressed so much because he was shocked by the notion of Barnes as a murderer (he thought that probably murder was by no means the greatest evil he had done), as because he feared the fancy of him in the hands of the police. It appalled him to imagine that material hell of the trial. The bandage dropped from the eyes of justice, and he saw her pig’s-eyes mean, cowardly, revengeful; and her scales were like a grocer’s. He pitied Barnes in the clutches of anthropocracy. What a ridiculous word: it probably did not exist. After all, Daisy’s story was ridiculous, too. Barnes had objected to himself’s hailing him as Meats:and there were plenty of reasons to account for his dislike of Janie Filson’s salute without supposing murder. Nevertheless, back again, as softly and coaxingly as the thought used to come to Michael when he was a small boy lying in bed, the thought of murder maintained an innuendo of probability. Yet it was absurd to think of murder on this summer night, with all these jingling hansoms and all that fountainous sky of stars. Why, then, had Barnes not met him at the Orange to-night? It was not like him to break an appointment when his pocket might be hurt. What rumor of Cissie Cummings had traveled even to Leppard Street?
Michael had reached Buckingham Palace Road, and he took the direction for Pimlico; it was not too late to get into the house. He changed his mind again and drove back to Cheyne Walk. Up in his bedroom, the curiosity to know why Barnes had not kept the appointment recurred with double force, and Michael after a search found the key of the house in Leppard Street and went out again. It was getting on for two o’clock, and without the lights of vehicles the night was more than ever brilliant. Under the plane-trees Michael was stabbed with one pang for Lily, and he repined at the waste of this warm June.
The clocks had struck two when he reached Leppard Street, and the houses confronted him, their roofs and chimneys prinked with stars. Several windows glimmered with a turbid orange light; but these signals of habitation only emphasized the unconsciousness of the sleepers behind, and made the desolation of the rest more positive. The windows of his old rooms were black, and Michael unlocked the front door quietly and stood listening for a moment in the passage. He could hear a low snarling in the bedroom, but from where he was standing not a word was distinct, and he could not bring himself to point of listening close to thekeyhole. He shut the front door and waited in the blackness, fascinated by the rise and fall of the low snarl that was seeming so sinister in this house. It was incredible that a brief movement would open the front door again and let in the starlight; for, as he stood here, Leppard Street was under the earth deep down. He moved a little farther into the hall, and, putting out his hand to feel for the balusters, drew back with a start, for he might have clapped it down upon a cold bald head, so much like that was the newel’s wooden knob. Still the snarling rose and fell: the darkness grew thicker and every instant more atramental, beating upon him from the steeps of the house like the filthy wings of a great bat: and still the snarling rose and fell. It rose and fell like the bubbling of a kettle, and then without warning the kettle overflowed with spit and hiss and commotion. Every word spoken by Barnes and the woman was now audible.
“I say he gave you thirty shillings. Now then!” Barnes yapped.
“And I tell you he only gave me a sovereign, which you’ve had.”
“Don’t I hear through the door what you get?”
Michael knew why Barnes had not been able to keep his appointment to-night, and though he was outraged at the use to which his rooms had been put, he was glad to be relieved of the fear that this snarling was the prelude to the revelation of Barnes as a murderer. The recriminations with their details of vileness were not worth hearing longer, and Michael went quickly and quietly out into the Summer night, which smelled so sweet after that passage.
He turned round by the lamp-post at the corner and looked back at the five stark houses; he could not abandon their contemplation; and he pored upon them as intensely as he might have pored upon a tomb of black basalt risingout of desert sand. He was immured in the speculation of their blackness: he pondered hopelessly their meaning and brooded upon the builders that built them and the sphinx that commanded them to be built.
In his present mood Michael would have thought Stonehenge rather prosaic; and he leaned against the wall in the silence, thinking of brick upon brick, or brick upon brick slabbed with mortar and chipped and tapped in the past, of brick upon brick as the houses grew higher and higher ... a railway engine shrieked suddenly: the door of Number One slammed: and a woman came hurrying down the steps. She looked for a moment to right and left of her, and then she moved swiftly with a wild, irregular walk in Michael’s direction. He had a sensation that she had known he was standing here against this wall, that she had watched him all the while and was hurrying now to ask why he had been standing here against this wall. He could not turn and walk away: he could not advance to meet her: so he stood still leaning against the wall. Michael saw her very plainly as she passed him in the lamplight. Her hat was askew, and a black ostrich plume hung down over her big chalky face: her lips were glistening as if they had been smeared with jam. She was wearing a black satin cloak, and she seemed, as her skirts swept past him, like an overblown grotesque of tragedy being dragged by a wire from the scene.
Michael shuddered at the monstrousness of her femininity; he seemed to have been given a glimpse of a mere mass of woman, a soft obscene primeval thing that demanded blows from a club, nothing else. He realized how in a moment men could become haters of femininity, could hate its animalism and wish to stamp upon it. The physical repulsion he had felt vanished when the sound of her footsteps had died away. In the reaction Michael pitied her, and he went back quietly to Number One with the intention ofturning Barnes into the street. He was rather startled as he walked up the steps to see Barnes’ face pressed against the window-pane, for it seemed to him ludicrous that he should wave reassuringly to a mask like that.
Barnes hurried to open the front door before Michael had taken the key from his pocket, and was not at all surprised to see him.
“Here, I couldn’t get down to the Orange to-night. I’ve had a bit of trouble with this girl.”
The gas was flaring in the sitting-room by now, and the night, which outside had been lightening for dawn, was black as ink upon the panes.
“Sit on the bed. The chairs are all full of her dirty clothes. I’ll pull the blinds down. I’m going to leave here to-morrow, Fane. Did you see her going down the road? She must have passed you by. I tell you straight, Fane, half an hour back I was in two minds to do her in. I was, straight. And I would have, if ... Oh, well, I kept my temper and threw her out instead. Gratitude! It’s my belief gratitude doesn’t exist in this world. You sit down and have a smoke. He left some cigarettes behind.”
“Who did?” Michael asked sharply.
“Who did what?”
“Left these cigarettes.”
“Oh, they’re some I bought yesterday,” said Barnes.
“I think it’s just as well for you that you are going to-morrow morning. I hope you quite realize that otherwise I should have turned you out.”
“Well, don’t look at me in that tone of voice,” Barnes protested. “I’ve had quite enough to worry me without any nastiness between old friends to make it worse.”
“You can’t expect me to be pleased at the way you’ve treated my rooms,” Michael said.
“Oh, the gas-stove, you mean?”
“It’s not a question of gas-stoves. It’s a question of living on a woman.”
“Who did?”
“You.”
“If I’d had to live on her earnings, I should be very poorly off now,” grumbled Barnes, in an injured voice.
Under Michael’s attack he was regaining his old perkiness.
“At any rate, you must go to-morrow morning,” Michael insisted.
“Don’t I keep on telling you that I’m going? It’s no good for you to nag at me, Fane.”
“And what about the woman?”
“Her? Let her go to ——,” said Barnes contemptuously. “She can’t do me any harm. What if she does tell the coppers I’ve been living on her? They won’t worry me unless they’ve nothing better to do, and I’ll have hooked it by then.”
“You’re sure she can’t do you any harm?” Michael asked gravely. “There’s nothing else she could tell the police?”
“Here, what are you talking about?” asked Barnes, coming close to Michael and staring at him fixedly. Michael debated whether he should mention Cissie Cummings, but he lacked the courage either to frighten Barnes with the suggestion of his guilt or to preserve a superior attitude in the face of his enraged innocence.
“I shall come round to-morrow morning, or rather this morning, at nine,” said Michael. “And I shall expect to find you ready to clear out of here for good.”
“You’re very short with a fellow, aren’t you?” said Barnes. “What do you want to go away for? Why don’t you stay so as you can see me off the premises?”
Michael thought that he could observe underneath all theassurance a sharp anxiety on Barnes’ part not to be left alone.
“You can lay down and have a sleep in here. I’ll get on into the bedroom.”
Michael consented to stay, and Barnes was obviously relieved. He put out the gas and retired into the bedroom. The dawn was graying the room, and the sun would be up in less than an hour. Early sparrows were beginning to chirp. The woman who had burst out of the door and fled up the street seemed now a chimera of the night. Half-dozing, Michael lay on the bed, half dozing and faintly oppressed by the odor of patchouli coming from the clothes heaped upon the chairs. St. George was visible already, and even the outlines of The Knight in Armor were tremulously apparent. Michael wondered why he did not feel a greater resentment at the profanation of these rooms. And why did Barnes keep fidgeting on the other side of the folding doors? The sparrows were cheeping more loudly: the trains were more frequent. Michael woke from sleep with a start and saw that Barnes was throwing the clothes from the chairs on the floor: stirred up thus in this clear light the scent of patchouli was even more noticeable. What on earth was Barnes doing? He was turning the whole room upside-down.
“What the deuce are you looking for?” Michael yawned.
“That’s all right, old man, you get on with your sleep. I’m just putting my things together,” Barnes told him.
Michael turned over and was beginning to doze again when Barnes woke him by the noise he made in taking the dirty dishes out of the old grate.
“How on earth can I sleep, when you’re continually fidgeting?” Michael demanded fretfully. “What’s the time?”
“Just gone half-past five.”
Barnes paid no more attention to Michael’s rest, but began more feverishly than ever to rummage among all the things in the room.
Michael could not stand his activity any longer, and dry-mouthed from an uncomfortable sleep, he sat up.
“Whatareyou looking for?”
“Well, if you want to know, I’m looking for a watch-bracelet.”
“It’s not likely to be under the carpet,” said Michael severely.
Barnes was wrenching out the tacks to Michael’s annoyance.
“Perhaps it isn’t,” Barnes agreed. “But I’ve got to find this watch-bracelet. It’s gold. I don’t want to lose it.”
“Was it a woman’s?”
Barnes looked round at him like a small animal alarmed.
“Yes, it was a woman’s. What makes you ask?”
“What’s it like?”
“Gold. Gold, I keep telling you.”
“When did you have it last?”
“Last night.”
“Well, it can’t have gone far.”
“No, blast it, of course it can’t,” said Barnes, searching with renewed impatience. He was throwing the clothes about the room again, and the odor of staleness became nauseating.
“I’m going to wash,” Michael announced, moving across to the bedroom.
“You’ll excuse the untidiness,” Barnes called out after him, in a tone of rather strained jocularity.
Of Michael’s old room no vestige remained. A very large double-bed took up almost all the space, and all the furniture was new and tawdry. The walls were hung with studies of cocottes pretending to be naiads and dryads, horriblewomen posed in the silvanity of a photographer’s studio. The room was littered with clothes, and Michael could not move a step without entangling his feet in a petticoat or treading upon hidden shoes. He tried to splash his face, but the very washstand was sickly.
“Well, you’ve managed to debauch my bedroom quite successfully,” he said to Barnes, when he came back to the sitting-room.
“That’s all right. I’ll get rid of all the new furniture. I can pop the lot. Well, it’s mine. If I could find this bloody watch-bracelet, I could begin to make some arrangements.”
“What about breakfast?” Michael began to look for something to eat. Every plate and knife was dirty, and there were three or four half-finished tins of condensed milk which had turned pistachio green and stank abominably.
“There’s a couple of herrings somewhere,” said Barnes. “Or there was. But everything seems upside-down this morning. Where the hell is that watch? It can’t have walked away on its own. If that mare took it! I’ve a very particular reason for not wanting to lose that watch. Oh, —— ——! wherever can it have got to?”
“Well, anyway shut up using such filthy language. When does the milkman come round?”
“I don’t know when he comes round. Here, Fane, have you ever heard of anyone talking in their sleep?”
“Of course I’ve heard of people talking in their sleep,” Michael answered. “It’s not very unusual.”
“Ah, hollering out, yes—but talking in a sensible sort of a way, so that if you came in and listened to what they said, you’d think it was the truth? Have you ever heard of that?”
“I don’t suppose I can give you an instance, but obviously it must often happen.”
“Must it?” said Barnes, in a depressed voice. “You see, I set particular value by this watch-bracelet; and I thought perhaps I might have talked about it in my sleep, and that mare just to spite me have gone and taken it. I wonder where it is now.”
Michael also began to wonder where it was now, and Barnes’ anxiety was transferred to him, so that he began to fancy the whole of this fine morning was tremendously bound up with exactly where the watch-bracelet now was. Barnes had begun to turn over everything for about the sixth time.
“If the watch is here,” said Michael irritably, “it will be found when you move your things out, and if it’s not here, it’s useless to go on worrying about it.”
“Ah, it’s all very nice for you to be so calm! But what price it’s being my watch that’s lost, not yours, old sport?”
“I’m not going to talk about it any more,” Michael declared. “I want to know what you’re going to do when you leave here.”
“Ah, that’s it! What am I?”
“Would you like to go to the Colonies?”
“What, say good-bye to dear old Leicester Square and pop off for good and all? I wouldn’t mind.”
“I don’t mind telling you,” said Michael, “that if I’d discovered you here a week ago living like this, I should have had nothing more to do with you. As it is, I’ve a good mind to sling you out to look after yourself. However, I’m willing to get you a ticket for wherever you think you’d like to go, and when I hear you’ve arrived, I’ll send you enough money to keep you going for a time.”
“Fane, I don’t mind saying it. You’ve been a good pal to me.”
“Hark, there’s the milkman at last!” Michael exclaimed. He went out into the sparkling air of the fine Summermorning and came back with plenty of milk for breakfast. After they had made a sort of meal, he suggested that Barnes ought to come with him and visit some of the Colonial Agencies. They walked down Victoria Street and across St. James’ Park, and in the Strand he made Barnes have a shave. The visit to the barber took away some of his nocturnal raffishness, and Michael found him very amusing during the various discussions that took place in the Agencies.
“I think the walk has done you good.”
“Yes,” Barnes doubtfully admitted. “I don’t think it has done me much harm.”
They had lunch at Romano’s, where Barnes drank a good deal of Chianti and became full of confidence in his future.
“That’s where it is, Fane. A fellow like you is lucky. But that’s no reason why I shouldn’t be lucky in my turn. My life has been a failure so far. Yes, I’m not going to attempt to deny it. There are lots of things in my life that might have been different. You’ll understand when I say different I mean pleasanter for everybody all round, myself included. But that’s all finished. With this fruit-farm—well, of course it’s no good grumbling and running down good things—those apples we saw were big enough to make anybody’s fortune. Cawdashit, Fane, I can see myself sitting under one of those apple-trees and counting the bloody fruit falling down at my feet and me popping them into baskets and selling them—where was it he said we sold them?” Barnes poured out more Chianti. “Really, it seems a sin on a fine day like this to be hanging about in London. Well, I’ve had some sprees in old London, and that’s a fact; so I’m not going to start running it down now. If I hadn’t lost that watch-bracelet, I wouldn’t give a damn for anybody. Good old London,” he went on meditatively.“Yes, I’ve had some times—good times and bad times—and here I am.”
He gradually became incoherent, and Michael thought it would be as well to escort him back to Leppard Street and impress on him once again that he must remove all his things immediately.
“You’ll have to be quick with your packing-up. You ought to sail next week. I shall go and see about your passage to-morrow.”
They drove back to Leppard Street in a taxi, and as they got out Barnes said emphatically:
“You know what it is, Fane? Cawdashit! I feel like a marquis when I’m out with you, and it I hadn’t have lost that watch-bracelet I’d feel like the bloody German Emperor. That’s me. All up in the air one minute, and yet worry myself barmy over a little thing like a watch the next.”
“Hullo!” he exclaimed, looking up the road as their taxi drove off. “Somebody else is playing at being a millionaire.”
Another taxi was driving into Leppard Street.
Michael had already opened the front door, and he told Barnes not to hang about on the steps. Barnes turned reluctantly from his inspection of the new taxi’s approach. It pulled up at Number One, and three men jumped out.
“That’s your man,” Michael heard one of them say, and in another moment he heard, “Henry Meats ... I hold a warrant ... murder of Cissie ... anything you say ... used against you,” all in the mumbo-jumbo of a nightmare.
Michael came down the steps again very quickly; and Barnes, now handcuffed, turned to him despairingly.
“Tell ’em my name isn’t Meats, Fane. Tell ’em they’ve made a mistake. Oh, my God, I never done it! I never done it!”
The two men were pushing him, dead white, crumpled,sobbing, into the taxi; he seemed very small beside the big men with their square shoulders and bristly mustaches. Michael heard him still moaning as the taxi jangled and whirred abruptly forward. The third man watched it disappear between the two walls; then he strolled up the steps to enter the house. Mrs. Cleghorne was already in the hall, and over the balusters of each landing faces could be seen peering down. As if the word were uttered by the house itself, “murder” floated in a whisper upon the air. The faces shifted; doors opened and shut far above; footsteps hurried to and fro; and still of all these sounds “murder” was the most audible.
“This is the gentleman who rents the rooms,” Mrs. Cleghorne was saying.
“But I’ve not been near them till yesterday evening for six months,” Michael hurriedly explained.
“That’s quite right,” Mrs. Cleghorne echoed.
“Well, I’m afraid we must go through them,” said the officer.
“Oh, of course.”
“Let me see, is this your address?”
“Well, no—Cheyne Walk—173.”
“We might want to have a little talk with you about this here Meats.”
Michael was enraged with himself for not asseverating “Barnes! Barnes! Barnes!” as he had been begged to do. He despised himself for not trying to save that white crumpled thing huddled between those big men with their bristly mustaches; yet all the while he felt violently afraid that the police officer would think him involved in these disgraceful rooms, that he would suppose the pictures and the tawdry furniture belonged to him, that he would imagine the petticoats and underlinen strewn about the floor had something to do with him.
“If you want me,” he found himself saying, “you have my address.”
Quickly he hurried away from Leppard Street, and traveled in a trance of shame to Hardingham. Alan was just going in to bat, when Michael walked across from the Hall to the cricket-field.
Stella came from her big basket chair to greet him, and for a while he sat with her in the buttercups, watching Alan at the wicket. Nothing had ever seemed so easy as the bowling of the opposite side on this fine June evening, and Michael tried to banish the thought of Barnes in the spaciousness of these level fields. Stella was evidently being very careful not to convey the impression that she had lately won a victory over him. It was really ridiculous, Michael thought, as he plucked idly the buttercups and made desultory observations to Stella about the merit of a stroke by Alan, it was more than ridiculous, it was deliberate folly to enmesh himself with such horrors as he had beheld at Leppard Street. There were doubtless very unpleasant events continually happening in this world, but willfully to drag one’s self into misery on account of them was merely to show an incapacity to appreciate the more fortunate surroundings of one’s allotted niche. The avoidance of even the sight of evil was as justifiable as the avoidance of evil itself, and the moral economy of the world might suffer a dangerous displacement, if everyone were to involve themselves in such events as those in which himself had lately been involved. Duty was owing all the time to people nearer at hand than Barnes. No doubt the world would be better for being rid of him; diseases of the body must be fought, and the corruption of human society must be cleansed. Any pity for Barnes was a base sentimentalism; it was merely a reaction of personal discomfort at having seen an unpleasant operation. The sentimentalism of that cry “Don’t hurthim!” was really contemptible, and since it seemed that he was likely to be too weak to bear the sight of the cleansing knife, he must in future avoid the occasion of its use. Otherwise his intellectual outlook was going to be sapped, and he would find himself in the ranks of the faddists.
“I think I shall stay down here the rest of the summer, if I may,” he said to Stella.
“My dear, of course you can. We’ll have a wonderful time. Hullo, Alan is retiring.”
Alan came up and sat beside them in the buttercups.
“I thought I saw you just as I was going in,” he said. “Anything going on in town?”
“No, nothing much,” said Michael. “I saw a man arrested for murder this afternoon.”
“Did you really? How beastly! Our team’s just beginning to get into shape. I say, Stella. That youth working on old Rundle’s farm is going to be pret-ty good. Did you see him lift their fast bowlers twice running over the pond?”
Michael strolled away to take a solitary walk. It seemed incredible now to think that he had brought Lily down here, that he had wandered with her over this field. What an infringement it must have seemed to Stella and Alan of their already immemorial peace. They had really been very good about his invasion. And here was the wood where he and Stella had fought. Michael sat down in the glade and listened to the busy flutterings of the birds. Why had Stella objected to his marriage with Lily? All the superficial answers were ready at once; but was not her real objection only another facet of the diamond of selfishness? Selfishness was a diamond. Precious, hard, and very often beautiful—when seen by itself.
Michael spent a week at Hardingham, during which he managed to put out of his mind the thought of Barnes in prison awaiting his trial. Then one day the butler informedhim of a person wishing to speak to him. In the library he found the detective who had asked for his address at Leppard Street.
“Sorry to have to trouble you, sir, but there was one or two little questions we wanted to ask.”
Michael feared he would have to appear at the trial, and asked at once if that was going to be necessary.
“Oh, no, I don’t think so. We’ve got it all marked out fair and square against Mr. Meats. He doesn’t stand a chance of getting off. How did you come to be mixed up with him?”
Michael explained the circumstances which had led up to his knowing Meats.
“I see; and you just wanted to give him a bit of a helping hand. Oh, well, the feeling does you credit, I’m bound to say; but another time, sir, I should make a few inquiries first. We should probably have had him before, if he hadn’t been helped by you. Of course, I quite understand you knew nothing about this murder, but anyone can often do a lot of harm by helping undeserving people. We mightn’t have nabbed him even now, if some woman hadn’t brought us a nice little bit of evidence, and I found some more things myself after a search. Oh, yes, he doesn’t stand an earthly. We knew for a moral cert who did it, straightaway; but the police don’t get a fair chance in England. We let all these blooming Radicals interfere too much. That’s my opinion. Anyone would think the police was a lot of criminals by the way some people talk about them.”
“Is anybody defending him?” Michael asked.
“Oh, he’ll be awarded a counsel,” said the detective indignantly. “For which you and me has to pay. That’s a nice thing, isn’t it? But he doesn’t stand an earthly.”
“Where will he be hanged?”
“Pentonville.”
Michael thought how Mrs. Murdoch in Neptune Crescent would shudder some Tuesday morning in the near future.
“I’m sorry you should have had to come all this way to find me,” Michael said. He hated himself for being polite to the inspector, but he could not help it. He rang the bell.
“Oh, Dawkins, will you give Inspector—what is your name, by the bye?”
“Dawkins,” said the inspector.
“How curious!” Michael laughed.
“Yes, sir,” the inspector laughed.
“Lunch in the gun room, Dawkins. You must be hungry.”
“Well, sir, I could do with a snack, I daresay.” He followed his namesake from the room, and outside Michael could hear them begin to chatter of the coincidence.
“But supposing I’d been in the same state of life as Meats,” Michael said to himself. “What devil’s web wouldn’t they be trying to spin round me?”
He was seized with fury at himself for his cowardice. He had thought of nothing but his own reputation ever since Meats had been arrested. He had worried over the opinion of a police inspector; had been ashamed of the appearance of the rooms; had actually been afraid that he would be implicated in the disgraceful affair. So long as it had been easy to flatter himself with the pleasure he was giving or the good he was doing to Meats, he had kept him with money. Now when Meats had been dragged away, he was anxious to disclaim the whole acquaintanceship for fear of the criticism of a big man with a bristly mustache. The despair in Meats’ last cry to him echoed round this library. He had seen society in action: not all the devils and fiends imagined by mediæval monks were so horrible as those big men with bristly mustaches. What did they knowof Meats and his life? What did they care, but that they were paid by society to remove rubbish? Justice had decreed that Meats should be arrested, and like a dead rat in the gutter he was swept up by these scavengers. What compact had he broken that men should freeze to stones and crush him? He had broken the laws of men and the laws of God; he had committed murder. And were not murders as foul being committed every moment? Murdered ambition, murdered love, murdered pity, murdered gratitude, murdered faith, did none of these cry out for vengeance?
Society had seized the murderer, and it was useless to cry out. Himself was as impotent as the prisoner. Meats had sinned against the hive: this infernal hive, herd, pack, swarm, whichever word expressed what he felt to be the degradation of an interdependent existence. Mankind was become a great complication of machinery fed by gold and directed by fear. Something was needed to destroy this gregarious organism. War and pestilence must come; but in the past these two had come often enough, and mankind was the same afterward. This ant-hill of a globe had been ravaged often enough, but the ants were all busy again carrying their mean little burdens of food hither and thither in affright for the comfort of their mean little lives.
“And I’m as bad as any of them,” said Michael to himself. “I know I have obligations in Leppard Street, and I’ve run away from them because I’m afraid of what people will think. Of course, I always fail. I’m a coward.”
He could not stay any longer at Hardingham. He must go and see about Mrs. Smith now. Society would be seizing her soon and bringing her miserable life to an end in whitewashed prison corridors. He must do something for Meats. Perhaps he would not be able to save him from death, but he must not sit here ringing bells for butlers called Dawkins to feed inspectors called Dawkins.
Stella came in with the first roses of the year.
“Aren’t they beauties?”
“Yes, splendid. I’m going up to town this afternoon.”
“But not for long?”
“I don’t know. It depends. Do you know, Stella, it’s an extraordinary thing, but ever since you’ve practically given up playing, I feel very much more alive. How do you account for that?”
“Well, I haven’t given up playing for one thing,” Stella contradicted.
“Stella do you ever feel inspired nowadays?”
“Not so much as I did,” she admitted.
“I feel now as if I were on the verge of an inspiration.”
“Not another Lily,” she said quickly, with half a laugh.
“You’ve no right to sneer at me about that,” he said fiercely. “You must be very careful, you know.You’llbecome flabby, if you aren’t careful, here at Hardingham.”
“Oh, Michael!” she laughed. “Don’t look at me as if you were a Major Prophet. I won’t become flabby. I shall start composing at once.”
“There you are!” he cried triumphantly. “Never say again that I can’t wake you up.”
“You did not wake me up.”
“I did. I did. And do you know I believe I’ve discovered that I’m an anarchist?”
“Is that your inspiration?”
“Who knows? It may be.”
“Well, don’t come and be anarchical down here, because Alan is going to stand at the next election.”
“What on earth good would Alan be in Parliament?” Michael asked derisively. “He’s much too happy.”
“Michael, why are you so horrid about Alan nowadays?”
He was penitent in a moment at the suggestion, but whenhe said good-bye to Stella he had a curious feeling that from henceforth he was going to be stronger than her.
On reaching London, Michael went to see Castleton at the Temple, and he found him in chambers at the top of dusty stairs in King’s Beach Walk.
“Lucky to get these, wasn’t I?” said Castleton. By craning out of the window, the river was visible.
“I suppose you’ve never had a murder case yet?” Michael asked.
“Not yet,” said Castleton. “In fact, I’m going in for Chancery work. And I shall get my first brief in about five years, with luck.”
Michael inquired how one went to work to retain the greatest criminal advocate of the day, and Castleton said he would have to be approached through a solicitor.
“Well, will you get hold of him for me?”
Castleton looked rather blank.
“If you can’t get him, get the next best, and so on. Tell him the man I want to defend hasn’t a chance, and that’s why I’m particularly anxious he should get off.”
They discussed details for some time, and Castleton was astonished at Michael’s wish to aid Meats.
“It seems very perverse,” he said.
“Perverse!” Michael echoed. “And what about your profession? That is really the most perverse factor in modern life.”
“But in this case,” Castleton argued, “the victim seems so utterly worthless.”
“Exactly,” said Michael. “But as society never interfered when he was passively offensive, why, the moment he becomes actively offensive, should society have the right to put him out of the way? They never tried to cure him for his own good. Why should they kill him for their own?”
“You want to strike at the foundations of the legal system,” said the barrister.
“Exactly,” Michael agreed; and the argument came to an end because there was obviously nothing more to be said.
Castleton promises to do all he could for Meats, and also to keep Michael’s name out of the business. As Michael walked down the stairs, it gave him a splendid satisfaction to think how already the law was being set in motion against the law. A blow for Inspector Dawkins. And what about the murdered girl? “She won’t be helped by Meats’ death,” said Michael to himself. “Society is not considering her protection now any more than it did when she was alive.”No slops must be emptied here: and as Michael read the ascetic command above the tap on the stairs he wondered for a moment if he were, after all, a sentimentalist.
Mrs. Cleghorne was very voluble when he reached Leppard Street.
“A nice set-out and no mistake!” she declared. “Half of the neighborhood have been peeping over my area railings as if the murder had been done in here. Mr. Cleghorne’s quite hoarse with hollering out to them to keep off. And it never rains but what it pours. There’s a poor woman gone and died here now. However, a funeral’s a little more lively than the police nosing round, though her not having a blessed halfpenny and owing me three weeks on the rent it certainly won’t be anything better than a pauper’s funeral.”
“What woman?” Michael asked.
“Oh, a invalid dressmaker which I’ve been very good to—a Mrs. Smith.”
“Dead?” he echoed.
“Yes, dead, and laid out, and got a clergyman sitting with her body. What clergyman? Roman Catholic, Ishouldsay. It quite worried Mr. Cleghorne. He said it gave him the rats to have a priest hanging around so closeat hand. You see, being asthmatic, he’s read a lot about these Roman Catholics, and he doesn’t hold with them. They’re that underhand, he says, it makes him nervous.”
“Can I see this priest?” Michael asked.
“Well, it’s hardly the room you’re accustomed to. I’ve really looked at her more as a charity than an actual lodger. In fact, my poor old mother has gone on at me something cruel for being so good to her.”
“I think I should like to see this priest,” Michael persisted.
Mrs. Cleghorne was with difficulty persuaded to show him the way, and she was evidently a little suspicious of the motive of his visit. They descended into the gloom of the basement, and the landlady pointed out to him the room that was down three steps and up another. She excused herself from coming too. The priest, a monkey-faced Irishman, was sitting on the pale blue chest, and as Michael entered, he did not look up from his Office.
“Is that you, Sister?” he asked. Then he perceived Michael and waited for him to explain his business.
“I wanted to ask about this poor woman.”
Mrs. Smith lay under a sheet with candles winking at her head. Nothing was visible except her face still faintly rouged in the daylight.
“I was interested in her,” Michael exclaimed.
“Indeed!” said the priest dryly. “I wouldn’t have thought so.”
“Is her cat here?”
“There was some sort of an animal, but the woman of the house took it off.”
A silence followed, and Michael was aware of the priest’s hostility.
“I suppose she didn’t see her son before she died?” Michael went on. “Her son is with the Jesuits.”
“You seem to know a great deal about the poor soul?”
“I thought I had managed to help her,” said Michael, in a sad voice.
“Indeed?” commented the priest, even more dryly.
“And there is nothing I can do now?”
“Almighty God has taken her,” said the priest. “There is nothing you can do.”
“I could have some Masses said for her.”
“Are you a Catholic?” the priest asked.
“No; but I fancy I shall be a Catholic,” Michael said; and as he spoke it was like a rushing wind. He hurried out into the passage where a nun passed him in the gloom. “She will be praying,” Michael thought, and, looking back over his shoulder, he said:
“Pray for me, Sister.”
The nun was evidently startled by the voice, and went on quickly down the three steps and up the other into Mrs. Smith’s den.
Michael climbed upstairs to interview the Solutionist. He found him lying in bed.
“Why wasn’t that money paid regularly?” he asked severely.
“Who is it?” the Solutionist muttered, in fuddled accents. “Wanted the money myself. Had a glorious time. The cat’s all right, and the poor old rabbits are dead. Can’t give everybody a good time. Somebody’s got to suffer in this world.”
Michael left him, and without entering his old rooms again went away from Leppard Street.
The moment had come to visit Rome, and remembering how he had once dissuaded Maurice from going there, he felt some compunction now in telling him that he wanted to travel alone. However, it would be impossible to visitRome for the first time with Maurice. In the studio he led up to his backing out of the engagement.
“About this going abroad,” he began.
“I say, Michael, I don’t think I can come just now. The editor of The Point of View wants a series of articles on the ballet, and I’m going to start on them at once.”
It was a relief to Michael, and he wished Maurice good luck.
“Yes, I think they’re going to be rather good,” he said confidently. “I’m going to begin with the Opera: then the Empire and the Alhambra: and in September there will be the new ballet at the Orient. Of course, I’ve got a theory about English ballet.”
“Is there anything about which you haven’t got a theory?” Michael asked. “Hullo, you’ve got the Venetian mirror from Ararat House. I’m so glad!”
“I’ve arranged all that,” Maurice said. “Lily Haden has gone to live with a girl called Sylvia Scarlett. Rather a terror, I thought.”
“Yes, I had an idea you’d find her a bit difficult.”
“Oh, but I scored off her in the end,” said Maurice quickly.
“Congratulations,” said Michael. “Well, I’m going to Rome.”
“I say, rather hot.”
“So much the better.”
“I used to be rather keen on Rome, but I’ve a theory it’s generally a disappointment. However, I suppose I shall have to go one day.”
“Yes, I don’t think Rome ought to miss your patronage, Maurice.”
They parted as intimate friends, but while Michael was going downstairs from the studio he thought that it might very easily be for the last time.
His mother was at home for tea; lots of women and a bishop were having a committee about something. When they had all rustled away into the mellow June evening, Michael asked what had been accomplished.
“It’s this terrible state of the London streets,” said Mrs. Fane. “Something has got to be done about these miserable women. The Bishop of Chelsea has promised to bring in some kind of a bill in Parliament. He feels so strongly about it.”
“What does he feel?” Michael asked.
“Why, of course, that they shouldn’t be allowed.”
“The remedy lies with him,” Michael said. “He must take them the Sacraments.”
“My dearest boy, what are you talking about? He does his best. He’s always picking them up and driving them home in his brougham. He can’t do more than that. Really he quite thrilled us with some of his experiences.”
Michael laughed and took hold of her hand.
“What would you say if I told you that I was thinking very seriously of being a priest?”
“Oh, my dear Michael, and you look so particularly nice in tweeds!”
Michael laughed and went upstairs to pack. He would leave London to-morrow morning.