M ICHAEL, although Stella was more of a tie than a companion,
was shocked to hear that she would not accompany Miss Carthew
and himself to Eastbourne for the summer holidays. He heard
with a recurrence of the slight jealousy he had always felt of
Stella that, though she was not yet eleven years old, she was
going to Germany to live in a German family and study music. To
Michael this step seemed a device to spoil Stella beyond the
limits of toleration, and he thought with how many new
affectations Stella would return to her native land. Moreover,
why should Stella have all the excitement of going abroad and
living abroad while her brother plodded to school in dull
ordinary London? Michael felt very strongly that the balance of
life was heavily weighted in favour of girls and he deplored
the blindness of grown-up people unable to realize the greater
attractiveness of boys. It was useless for Michael to protest,
although he wasted an evening of Henty in arguing the point
with Miss Carthew. Stella became primed with her own importance
before she left England, and Michael tried to discourage her as
much as he could by pointing out that in Germany her
piano-playing would be laughed at and by warning her that her
so evident inclination to show off would prejudice against her
the bulk of Teutonic opinion. However, Michael’s well-meant
discouragement did not at all abash Stella, who under his most
lugubrious prophecies trilled exasperatingly cheerful scales or
ostentatiously folded unimportant articles of clothing with an
exaggerated carefulness, the while she fussed with her hair
and threw conceited glances over her shoulder into the mirror.
Then, one day, the bonnet of a pink and yellow Fräulein bobbed
from a cab-window, and, after a finale of affectation and
condescension on the front-door steps for the benefit of
passers-by, Stella set out for Germany and Michael turned back
into the house with pessimistic fears for her future. The
arrangements for Stella’s transportation had caused some delay
in Michael’s holidays, and as a reward for having been forced
to endure the sight of Stella going abroad, he was told that
he might invite a friend to stay with him at Eastbourne during
the remainder of the time. Such an unexpected benefaction made
Michael incredulous at first.
“Anyone I like?” he said. “For the whole of the hols? Good Lord, how
ripping.”
Forthwith he set out to consider the personal advantages of all
his friends in turn. The Macalisters as twins were ruled out;
besides, of late the old intimacy was wearing thin, and Michael
felt there were other chaps with more claim upon him. Norton
was ruled out, because it would be the worst of bad form to
invite him without the Macalisters and also because Norton was
no longer on the Classical side of St. James’. Suddenly the
idea of asking Merivale to stay with him occurred like an
inspiration. Merivale was not at present a friend with anything
like the pretensions of Norton or the Macalisters. Merivale
could not be visualized in earliest Randell days, indeed he had
been at a different private school, and it was only during this
last summer term that he and Michael had taken to walking arm
in arm during the ‘quarter.’ Merivale turned to the left when
he came out of school and Michael turned to the right, so that
they never met on their way nor walked home together
afterwards. Nevertheless, in the course of the term, the
friendship had grown, and once or twice
Michael and Merivale had sat beneath the hawthorn trees,
between them a stained bag of cherries in the long cool grass,
while intermittently they clapped the boundary hits of a
school match that was clicking drowsily its progress through
the summer afternoon. Tentative confidences had been
exchanged, and by reason of its slower advance towards
intimacy the friendship of Michael and Merivale seemed built
on a firmer basis than most of the sudden affinities of school
life. Now, as Michael recalled the personality of Merivale
with his vivid blue eyes and dull gold hair and his laugh and
freckled nose and curiously attractive walk, he had a great
desire for his company during the holidays. Miss Carthew was
asked to write to Mrs. Merivale in order to give the matter
the weight of authority; but Michael and Miss Carthew went off
to Eastbourne before the answer arrived. The sea sparkled, a
cool wind blew down from Beachy Head; the tamarisks on the
front quivered; Eastbourne was wonderful, so wonderful that
Michael could not believe in the probability of Merivale, and
the more he thought about it, the more he felt sure that Mrs.
Merivale would write a letter of polite refusal. However, as
if they were all people in a book, everything happened
according to Michael’s most daringly optimistic hopes. Mrs.
Merivale wrote a pleasant letter to Miss Carthew to say that
her boy Alan was just now staying at Brighton with his uncle
Captain Ross, that she had written to her brother who had
written back to say that Alan and he would move on to
Eastbourne, as it did not matter a bit to him where he spent
the next week. Mrs. Merivale added that, if it were
convenient, Alan might stay on with Michael when his uncle
left. By the same post came a letter from Merivale himself to
say that he and his uncle Kenneth were arriving next day, and
that he jolly well hoped Fane was going to meet him at the
railway station.
Michael, much excited, waited until the train steamed in
with its blurred line of carriage windows, from one of which
Merivale was actually leaning. Michael waved: Merivale waved:
the train stopped: Merivale jumped out: a tall man with a very
fair moustache and close-cropped fair hair alighted after
Merivale and was introduced and shook hands and made several
jokes and was on terms of equality before he and Merivale and
Michael had got into the blue-lined fly that was to drive them
to Captain Ross’s hotel. During the few days of Captain Ross’s
stay, he and Michael and Merivale and Miss Carthew went
sailing and climbed up Beachy Head and watched a cricket match
in Devonshire Park and generally behaved like all the other
summer visitors to Eastbourne. Michael noticed that Captain
Ross was very polite to Miss Carthew and heard with interest
that they both had many friends in common—soldiers and sailors
and Royal Marines. Michael listened to a great deal of talk
about ‘when I was quartered there’ and ‘when he was stationed
at Malta’ and about Gunners and Sappers and the Service. He
himself spoke of General Mace and was greatly flattered when
Captain Ross said he knew him by reputation as a fine old
soldier. Michael was rather disappointed that Captain Ross was
not in the Bengal Lancers, but he concluded that next to being
in the Bengal Lancers, it was best to be with him in the
Kintail Highlanders (the Duke of Clarence’s own
Inverness-shire Buffs).
“Uncle Ken looks jolly ripping in a kilt,” Merivale informed Miss
Carthew, when on the last evening of Captain Ross’s stay they were all
sitting in the rubied light of the hotel table.
“Shut up, showman,” said Captain Ross, banging his nephew on the head
with a Viennese roll.
“Oh, I say, Uncle Kenneth, that loaf hurts most awfully,” protested
Merivale.
“Well, don’t play Barnum,” said the Captain as he twirled his
little moustache. “It’s not done, my lad.”
When Captain Ross went away next morning, Miss Carthew at his earnest
invitation accompanied the boys to see him off, and, as they walked out
of the station, Merivale nudged Michael to whisper:
“I say, I believe my uncle’s rather gone on Miss Carthew.”
“Rot,” said Michael. “Why, she’d be most frightfully annoyed. Besides,
chaps’ uncles don’t get gone on——” Michael was going to add ‘chaps’
sisters’ governesses,’ but somehow he felt the remark was all wrong,
and blushed the conclusion of the sentence.
The weather grew very hot, and Miss Carthew took to sitting in a canvas
chair and reading books on the beach, so that Michael and Merivale were
left free to do very much as they wanted which, as Michael pointed out,
was rather decent of her.
“I say, Merivale,” Michael began one day, as he and his friend, arm in
arm, were examining the credentials of the front on a shimmering
morning, “I say, did you notice that Miss Carthew called you Alan?”
“I know. She often does,” replied Merivale.
“I say, Merivale,” said Michael shyly, “supposing I call you Alan and
you call me Michael—only during the hols, of course,” he added hastily.
“I don’t mind,” Alan agreed.
“Because I suppose there couldn’t be two chaps more friends than you
and me,” speculated Michael.
“I like you more than I do any other chap,” said Alan simply.
“So I do you,” said Michael. “And it’s rather decent just to have one
great friend who you call by his Christian name.”
After this Michael and Alan became very intimate and neither
held a secret from the other, as through the crowds of seaside
folk they threaded their way along the promenade to whatever
band of minstrels had secured their joint
devotion. They greatly preferred the Pierrots to the Niggers,
and very soon by a week’s unbroken attendance at the three
daily sessions, Michael and Alan knew the words and music of
most of the repertory. Of the comic songs they liked best The
Dandy Coloured Coon, although they admired almost equally a
duet whose refrain was:
“We are a couple of barmy chaps, hush, not a word! A little bit loose
in our tiles, perhaps, hush, not a word! We’re lunatics, lunatics,
everybody declares We’re a couple of fellows gone wrong in our bellows,
As mad as a pair of March hares.”
Gradually, however, and more especially under the influence of Japanese
lanterns and a moon-splashed sea, Michael and Alan avowed openly their
fondness for the more serious songs sung by the Pierrettes. The words
of one song in particular were by a reiteration of passionate utterance
deeply printed on their memory:
“Two little girls in blue, lad,
Two little girls in blue,
They were sisters, we were brothers,
And learnt to love the two.
And one little girl in blue, lad,
Who won your father’s heart,
Became your mother: I married the other,
And now we have drifted apart.”
This lyric seemed to Michael and Alan the most profoundly
moving accumulation of words ever known. The sad words and
poignant tune wrung their hearts with the tears always imminent
in life. This lyric expressed for the two boys the
incommunicable aspirations of their most sacred moments. As
they leaned over the rail of the promenade and gazed down upon
the pretty Pierrette whose tremolo made the night air vibrant
with emotion, Michael
and Alan were moved by a sense of fleeting time, by thoughts
of old lovers and by an intense self-pity.
“It’s frightfully decent, isn’t it?” murmured Michael.
“Ripping,” sighed Alan. “I wish I could give her more than a penny.”
“So do I,” echoed Michael. “It’s beastly being without much tin.”
Then ‘Encore’ they both shouted as the Pierrette receded from the
crimson lantern-light into obscurity. Again she sang that song, so that
when Michael and Alan looked solemnly up at the stars, they became
blurred. They could not bear The Dandy Coloured Coon on such a night,
and, seeing no chance of luring Pierrette once more into the
lantern-light, they pushed their way through the crowd of listeners and
walked arm in arm along the murmurous promenade.
“It’s beastly rotten to go to bed at a quarter past nine,” Michael
declared.
“We can talk up in our room,” suggested Alan.
“I vote we talk about the Pierrots,” said Michael, affectionately
clasping his chum’s arm.
“Yes, I vote we do too,” Alan agreed.
The next day the Pierrots were gone. Apparently they had had a quarrel
with the Corporation and moved farther along the South Coast. Michael
and Alan were dismayed, and in their disgust forsook the beach for the
shrubberies of Devonshire Park where in gloomy by-ways, laurel-shaded,
they spoke quietly of their loss.
“I wonder if we shall ever see that girl again,” said Michael. “I’d
know her anywhere. If I was grown up I’d know her. I swear I would.”
“She was a clinker,” Alan regretted.
“I don’t suppose we shall ever see a girl half as pretty,” Michael
thought.
“Not by a long chalk,” Alan agreed. “I don’t suppose
there is a girl anywhere in the world a quarter as pretty. I
think that girl was simply fizzing.”
They paced the mossy path in silence and suddenly round a corner came
upon a bench on which were seated two girls in blue dresses. Michael
and Alan found the coincidence so extraordinary that they stared hard,
even when the two girls put their heads down and looked sidelong and
giggled and thumped each other and giggled again.
“I say, are you laughing at us?” demanded Michael.
“Well, you looked at us first,” said the fairer of the two girls.
In that moment Michael fell in love.
“Come away,” whispered Alan. “They’ll follow us if we don’t.”
“Do you think they’re at all decent?” asked Michael. “Because if you
do, I vote we talk to them. I say, Alan, do let’s anyway, for a lark.”
“Supposing anyone we know saw us?” queried Alan.
“Well, we could say _some_ thing,” Michael urged. He was on
fire to prosecute this adventure and, lest Alan should still
hold back, he took from his pocket a feverish bag of Satin
Pralines and boldly offered them to the girl of his choice.
“I say, would you like some tuck?”
The girls giggled and sat closer together; but Michael still proffered
the sweets and at last the girl whom he admired dipped her hand into
the bag. As all the Satin Pralines were stuck together, she brought out
half a dozen and was so much embarrassed that she dropped the bag,
after which she giggled.
“It doesn’t matter a bit,” said Michael. “I can get some more. These
are beastly squashed. I say, what’s your name?”
So began the quadruple intrigue of Dora and Winnie and Michael
and Alan.
Judged merely by their dress, one would have unhesitatingly set down
Dora and Winnie as sisters; but they were unrelated and dressed alike
merely to accentuate, as girl friends do, the unanimity of their minds.
They were both of them older by a year or more than Michael and Alan;
while in experience they were a generation ahead of either. The
possession of this did not prevent them from giggling foolishly and
from time to time looking at each other with an expression compounded
of interrogation and shyness. Michael objected to this look, inasmuch
as it implied their consciousness of a mental attitude in which neither
he nor Alan had any part. He was inclined to be sulky whenever he
noticed an exchange of glances, and very soon insisted upon a temporary
separation by which he and Dora took one path, while Alan with Winnie
pursued another.
Dora was a neatly made child, and Michael thought the many-pleated blue
skirt that reached down to her knees and showed as she swung along a
foam of frizzy white petticoats very lovely. He liked, too, the curve
of her leg and the high buttoned boots and the big blue bow in her
curly golden hair. He admired immensely her large shady hat trimmed
with cornflowers and the string of bangles on her wrist and her general
effect of being almost grown up and at the same time still obviously a
little girl. As for Dora’s face, Michael found it beautiful with the
long-lashed blue eyes and rose-leaf complexion and cleft chin and
pouting bow mouth. Michael congratulated himself upon securing the
prettier of the two. Winnie with her grey eyes and ordinary hair and
dark eyebrows and waxen skin was certainly not comparable to this
exquisite doll of his own.
At first Michael was too shy to make any attempt to kiss Dora.
Nevertheless the kissing of her ran in his mind from the
beginning, and he would lie awake planning how the
feat was to be accomplished. He was afraid that if suddenly he
threw his arms round her, she might take offence and refuse to
see him again. Finally he asked Alan’s advice.
“I say, have you ever kissed Winnie?” he called from his bed.
Through the darkness came Alan’s reply:
“Rather not. I say, have you?”
“Rather not.” Then Michael added defiantly, “But I jolly well wish I
had.”
“She wouldn’t let you, would she?”
“That’s what I can’t find out,” Michael said despondently. “I’ve held
her hand and all that sort of rot, and I’ve talked about how pretty I
think she is, but it’s beastly difficult. I say, you know, I don’t
believe I should ever be able to propose to a girl—you know—a girl you
could marry—a lady. I’m tremendously gone on Dora and so are you on
Winnie. But I don’t think they’re ladies, because Dora’s got a sister
who’s in a pantomime and wears tights, so you see I couldn’t propose to
her. Besides, I should feel a most frightful fool going down on my
knees in the path. Still I must kiss her somehow. Look here, Alan, if
you promise faithfully you’ll kiss Winnie to-morrow, when the clock
strikes twelve, I’ll kiss Dora. Will you? Be a decent chap and kiss
Winnie, even if you aren’t beastly keen, because I am. So will you,
Alan?”
There was a minute’s deliberation by Alan in the darkness, and then he
said he would.
“I say, you are a clinker, Alan. Thanks most awfully.”
Michael turned over and settled himself down to sleep, praying for the
good luck to dream of his little girl in blue.
On the next morning Alan and Michael eyed each other bashfully
across the breakfast table, conscious as they were of the
guilty vow not yet fulfilled. Miss Carthew tried in vain to
make them talk. They ate in silence, oppressed with
resolutions. They saw Winnie and Dora in Devonshire
Park at eleven o’clock, and presently went their different
ways along the mazy paths. Michael talked of subjects most
remote from love. He expounded to Dora the ranks of the
British Army; he gave her tips on birds’-nesting; he told her
of his ambition to join the Bengal Lancers and he boasted of
the exploits of the St. James’ Football Fifteen. Dora giggled
the minutes away, and at five minutes to twelve they were on a
seat, screened against humanity’s intrusion. Michael listened
with quickening pulses to the thump of tennis balls in the
distance. At last he heard the first stroke of twelve and
looked apprehensively towards Dora. Four more strokes sounded,
but Michael still delayed. He wondered if Alan would keep his
promise. He had heard no scream of dismay or startled giggle
from the shrubbery. Then as the final stroke of midday crashed
forth, he flung his arms round Dora, pressed her to him and in
his confusion kissed very roughly the tilted tip of her nose.
“Oh, you cheek!” she gasped.
Then Michael kissed her lips, coldly though they were set against his
love.
“I say, kiss me,” he whispered, with a strange new excitement
crimsoning his cheeks and rattling his heart so loudly that he wondered
if Dora noticed anything.
“Shan’t!” murmured Dora.
“Do.”
“Oh, I couldn’t,” she said, wriggling herself free. “You have got a
cheek. Fancy kissing anyone.”
“Dora, I’m frightfully gone on you,” affirmed Michael, choking with the
emotional declaration. “Are you gone on me?”
“I like you all right,” Dora confessed.
“Well then, do kiss me. You might. Oh, I say, do.”
He leaned over and sought those unresponsive lips that, mutely
cold, met his. He spent a long time trying
to persuade her to give way, but Dora protested she could not
understand why people kissed at all, so silly as it was.
“But it’s not,” Michael protested. “Or else everybody wouldn’t want to
do it.”
However, it was useless to argue with Dora. She was willing to put her
curly golden head on his shoulder, until he nearly exploded with
sentiment; she seemed not to mind how often he pressed his lips to
hers; but all the time she was passive, inert, drearily unresponsive.
The deeper she seemed to shrink within herself and the colder she
stayed, the more Michael felt inclined to hurt her, to shake her
roughly, almost to draw blood from those soft lifeless lips. Once she
murmured to him that he was hurting her, and Michael was in a quandary
between an overwhelming softness of pity and an exultant desire to make
her cry out sharply with pain. Yet as he saw that golden head upon his
shoulder, the words and tune of ‘Two little girls in blue’ throbbed on
the air, and with an aching fondness Michael felt his eyes fill with
tears. Such love as his for Dora could never be expressed with the
eloquence and passion it demanded.
Michael and Alan had tacitly agreed to postpone all discussion of their
passionate adventure until the blackness of night and secret intimacy
of their bedroom made the discussion of it possible.
“I say, I kissed Dora this morning,” announced Michael.
“So did I Winnie,” said Alan.
“She wouldn’t kiss me, though,” said Michael.
“Wouldn’t she?” Alan echoed in surprize, “Winnie kissed me.”
“She didn’t!” exclaimed Michael.
“She did, I swear she did. She kissed me more than I kissed
her. I felt an awful fool. I nearly got up and walked away.
Only I didn’t like to.”
“Good Lord,” apostrophized Michael. He was staggered by Alan’s success
and marvelled that Alan, who was admittedly less clever than himself,
should conquer when he had failed. He could not understand the reason;
but he supposed that Dora, being so obviously the prettier, was
deservedly the more difficult to win. However, Michael felt disinclined
to pursue the subject, because it was plain that Alan took no credit to
himself for his success, and he wished still to be the leader in their
friendship. He did not want Alan to feel superior in anything.
The next day Miss Carthew was laid up in bed with a sick headache, so
that Michael and Alan were free to take Dora and Winnie upon the
promenade without the risk of detection. Accordingly, when they met in
Devonshire Park, Michael proposed this public walk. He was the more
willing to go, because since Alan’s revelation of Winnie, he took a
certain pleasure in denying to her the attraction of Alan’s company.
Winnie was not very anxious for the walk, but Dora seemed highly
pleased, and Dora, being the leader of the pair, Winnie had to give
way. While they strolled up and down the promenade in a row, Dora
pointed out to Michael and Alan in how many respects they both failed
to conform to the standards of smartness, as she conceived them. For
instance, neither of them carried a stick and neither of them wore a
tie of any distinction. Dora called their attention to the perfectly
dressed youths of the promenade with their high collars and butterfly
ties and Wanghee canes and pointed boots and vivid waistcoats.
After the walk the boys discussed Dora’s criticism and owned
that she was right. They marshalled their money and bought
made-up bow-ties of purple and pink that were twisted round the
stud with elastic and held in position by a crescent of
whalebone. They bought made-up white silk knotted ties sown
with crimson fleurs-de-lys and impaled
with a permanent brass horseshoe. They spent a long time in
the morning plastering back their hair with soap and water,
while in the ribbons of their straw hats they pinned inscribed
medallions. Finally they purchased Wanghee canes and when they
met their two little girls in blue, the latter both averred
that Michael and Alan were much improved.
Miss Carthew remained ill for two or three days; so Michael and Alan
were able to display themselves and their sweethearts all the length of
the promenade. They took to noticing the cut of a coat as it went by
and envied the pockets of the youths they met; they envied, too, the
collars that surrounded the adolescent neck, and wished the time had
come for them to wear ‘chokers.’ Sometimes, before they undressed, they
would try to pin round their necks stiff sheets of note-paper in order
to gauge, however slightly, the effect of high collars on their
appearance.
The weather was now steadily fine and hot, and Michael begged
Miss Carthew to let him and Alan buy two blazers and cricket
belts. Somewhat to his surprize, she made no objection, and
presently Michael and Alan appeared upon the front in white
trousers, blue and yellow blazers and cherry-coloured silk
belts fastened in front by a convenient metal snake. Dora
thought they looked ‘all right,’ and, as Miss Carthew had
succumbed again to her headache, Michael and Alan were free to
swagger up and down on the melting asphalt of the promenade.
Miss Carthew grew no better, and one day she told the boys that
Nancy was coming down to look after them. Michael did not know
whether he were really glad or not, because, fond as he was of
Nancy, he was deeply in love with Dora and he had a feeling
that Nancy would interfere with the intrigues. In the end, as
it happened, Nancy arrived by some mistake on the day before
she was expected and, setting forth to look for the boys, she
walked straight into them arm in arm with Dora and Winnie.
Michael was very much upset, and told the
girls to scoot, a command which they obeyed by rushing across
the road, giggling loudly, standing on the opposite curb and
continuing to giggle.
“Hullo!” said Nancy, “who are your young friends in blue cashmere?”
Michael blushed and said quickly they were friends of Alan, but Alan
would not accept the responsibility.
“Well, I don’t admire your taste,” said Nancy contemptuously. “No, and
I don’t admire your get-up,” she went on. “Did you pick those canes up
on the beach, what?”
“We bought them,” said Michael, rather affronted.
“My goodness,” said Nancy. “What dreadful-looking things. I say,
Michael, you’re in a fair way towards looking like a thorough young
bounder. Don’t you come to Cobble Place with that button on your hat.
Well, don’t let me disturb you. Cut off to the Camera Obscura with
Gertie and Evangeline. I don’t expect I’m smart enough for you two.”
“We don’t particularly want to go with those girls,” said Michael,
looking down at his boots, very red and biting his under-lip. Alan was
blushing too and greatly abashed.
“Well,” said the relentless Nancy, “it’s a pity you don’t black
your faces, for I never saw two people look more like nigger
minstrels. Where _did_ you get that tie? No wonder my sister
feels bad. That belt of yours, Michael, would give a South Sea
Islander a headache. Go on, hurry off like good little boys,”
she jeered. “Flossie and Cissie are waiting for you.”
Michael could not help admitting, as he suffered this
persiflage from Nancy, that Dora and Winnie did look rather
common, and he wished they would not stand, almost within
earshot, giggling and prodding each other. Then suddenly
Michael began to hate Dora and the quadruple intrigue was
broken up.
“I say, Alan,” he said, looking up again, “let’s bung these sticks into
the sea. They’re rotten sticks.”
Alan at once threw his as far as it would go and betted Michael he
would not beat the distance. So Michael’s stick followed its companion
into oblivion. Nancy was great sport, after all, as both boys admitted,
and when Michael grazed his finger very slightly on a barnacled rock,
he bandaged it up with his silk tie. Very soon he discovered the cut
was not at all serious, but he announced the tie was spoilt and dipped
it casually into a rock pool, where it floated blatantly among the
anemones and rose-plumed seaweed. Alan’s tie vanished less obtrusively:
no one noticed when or where. As for the buttons inscribed with mottoes
they became insignificant units in the millions of pebbles on the
beach.
Nancy was great sport and ready to do whatever the boys suggested in
the way of rock-climbing and walking, provided they would give her due
notice, so that she could get into a hockey skirt and thick shoes. They
had fine blowy days with Nancy up on Beachy Head above the sparkling
blue water. They caught many blue butterflies, but never the famous
Mazarin blue which legend in the butterfly-book said had once been
taken near Eastbourne.
Michael and Alan, even in the dark privacy of their room, did
not speak again of Dora and Winnie. Michael had an idea that
Alan had always been ashamed of the business, and felt mean
when he thought how he had openly told Nancy that they were his
friends. Once or twice, when Michael was lying on his back,
staring up at the sky over Beachy Head, the wind lisping round
him sadly made him feel sentimental, but sentimental in a
dominion where Dora and Winnie were unknown, where they would
have been regarded as unpleasant intruders. Up here in the
daisy’s eye, the two little girls in blue seemed tawdry and
took their place in the atmosphere of Michael’s earlier
childhood
with Mrs. Frith’s tales and Annie’s love-letters. For Michael
the whole affair now seemed like the half-remembered dreams
which, however pleasant at the time, repelled him in the
recollection of them. Moreover, he had experienced a sense of
inequality in his passion for Dora. He gave all: she returned
nothing. Looking back at her now under the sailing clouds, he
thought her nose was ugly, her mouth flabby, her voice odious
and her hair beastly. He blushed at the memory of the
ridiculous names he had called her, at the contemplation of
his enthusiastic praise of her beauty to Alan. He was glad
that Alan had been involved, however unwillingly. Otherwise he
was almost afraid he would have avoided Alan in future, unable
to bear the injury to his pride. This sad sensation promoted
by the wind in the grasses, by the movement of the clouds and
the companionship of Alan and Nancy, was more thrilling than
the Pierrette’s tremolo in the lantern light. Michael’s soul
was flooded with a vast affection for Alan and for Nancy. He
wished that they all could stay here in the wind for ever. It
was depressing to think of the autumn rain and the dreary
gaslit hours of afternoon school. And yet it was not
depressing at all, for he and Alan might be able to achieve
the same class. It would be difficult, for Michael knew that
he himself must inevitably be moved up two forms, while Alan
was only in the Upper Third now and could scarcely from being
ninth in his class get beyond the Lower Fourth, even if he
escaped the Shell. How Michael wished that Alan could go into
the Special for a time, and how pleasant it would be suddenly
to behold Alan’s entrance into his class, so that, without
unduly attracting attention, he could manage to secure a desk
for Alan next to himself.
But when Michael and Alan (now again the austere Fane and
Merivale) went back to school, Michael was in the Middle
Fourth, and Alan just missed the double remove and inherited
Michael’s scrabbled desk in the Shell.