T HE new term opened inauspiciously; for Miss Carthew fell ill
again more seriously, and Michael’s mother came back, seeming
cross and worried. She settled that, as she could not stay at
home for long, Michael must be a boarder for a year. Michael
did not at all like this idea, and begged that Nancy might come
and look after him. But Mrs. Fane told him not to make
everything more difficult than it was already by grumbling and
impossible suggestions. Michael was overcome by his mother’s
crossness and said no more. Mrs. Fane announced her intention
of shutting up the house in Carlington Road and of coming back
in the summer to live permanently at home, when Michael would
be able to be a day-boy again. Mrs. Fane seemed injured all the
time she had to spend in making arrangements for Michael to go
to Mr. Wheeler’s House. She wished that people would not get
ill just when it was most inconvenient. She could not
understand why everything happened at exactly the wrong moment,
and she was altogether different from the tranquil and lovely
lady whom Michael had hitherto known. However, the windows of
Number 64 were covered with newspapers, the curtain-poles were
stripped bare, the furniture stood heaped in the middle of
rooms under billowy sheets, and Michael drove up with all his
luggage to the gaunt boarding-house of Mr. Wheeler that
overlooked the School ground.
Michael knew that the alteration in his status would make a
great difference. Long ago he remembered how his friendship
with Buckley had been finally severed by the breaking
up of Buckley’s home and the collapse of all Buckley’s
previous opinions. Michael now found himself in similar case.
To be sure, there was not at St. James’ the same icy river of
prejudice between boarders and day-boys which divided them so
irreparably at Randell’s. Nevertheless, it was impossible for
a boarder to preserve unspoilt a real intimacy with a day-boy.
To begin with, all sorts of new rules about streets being in
and out of bounds made it impossible to keep up those
delightful walks home with boys who went in the same direction
as oneself. There was no longer that hurried appeal to ‘wait
for me at five o’clock’ as one passed a friend in the
helter-skelter of reaching the class-room, when the five
minutes’ bell had stopped and the clock was already chiming
three. It was not etiquette among the boarders of the four
Houses to walk home with day-boys except in a large and
amorphous company of both. It was impossible to go to tea with
day-boys on Saturday afternoons without special leave both
from the Housemaster and from the captain of the House. A
boarder was tied down mercilessly to athletics, particularly
to rowing, which was the pride of the Houses and was exalted
by them above every other branch of sport. Michael, as a
promising light-weight, had to swim, every Saturday, until he
could pass the swimming test at the Paddington Baths, when he
became a member of the rowing club, in order to cox the House
four. It did not add to his satisfaction with life, when by
his alleged bad steering Wheeler’s House was beaten by
Marlowe’s House coxed by the objectionable Buckley, now on the
Modern Side and, as a result of his capable handling of the
ropes likely to be cox of the School Eight in the race against
Dulford from Putney Bridge to Hammersmith. The Christmas
holidays were a dismal business in Mr. Wheeler’s empty
barracks. To be sure, Mrs. Wheeler made herself as plumply
agreeable as she could; but the boredom of it all was
exasperating and was only sustained
by reading every volume that Henty had ever written. Four
weeks never dragged so endlessly, even in the glooms of
Carlington Road under Nurse’s rule. The Lent term with its
persistent rowing practice on the muddy Thames was almost as
bad as the holidays. Michael hated the barges that bore down
upon him and the watermen who pulled across the bows of his
boat. He hated the mudlarks by the river-side who jeered as he
followed the crew into the School boathouse, and he loathed
the walk home with the older boys who talked incessantly of
their own affairs. Nor did the culminating disaster of the
defeat by Marlowe’s House mitigate his lot. When the Lent term
was over, to his great disappointment, some domestic trouble
made it impossible for Michael to spend the Easter holidays
with Alan, so that instead of three weeks to weld again that
friendship in April wanderings, in finding an early
white-throat’s nest in the front of May, and in all the long
imagined delights of spring, Michael was left again with Mr.
and Mrs. Wheeler to spend a month of rain at a bleak
golf-resort, where he was only kept from an unvoiced misery by
reading ‘Brother takes the hand of brother’ in Longfellow’s
Psalm of Life, melting thereat into a flood of tears that
relieved his lonely oppression.
Even the summer term was a bondage with its incessant fagging
for balls, while the lords of the House practised assiduously
at the nets. He and Alan walked together sometimes during the
‘quarter’ and held on to the stray threads of their friendship
that still resisted the exacting knife of the House’s
etiquette; but it became increasingly difficult under the
stress of boarding-school existence. Indeed, it was only the
knowledge that this summer term would end the miserable time
and that Alan was catching up to Michael’s class which
supported the two friends through their exile. Michael was
savagely jealous when he saw Alan leaving the School at five
o’clock arm in arm with another
boy. He used to sulk for a week afterwards, avoiding Alan in
the ‘quarter’ and ostentatiously burying himself in a group of
boarders. And if Alan would affectionately catch him up when
he was alone, Michael would turn on him and with bitter taunts
suggest that Alan’s condescension was unnecessary. In School
itself Michael was bored by his sojourn both in the Middle
Fourth and in the Upper Fourth B. The Cicero and the
Thucydides were vilely dull; all the dullest books of the
Æneid were carefully chosen, while Mr. Marjoribanks and Mr.
Gale were both very dull teachers. At the end of the summer
examinations, Michael found himself at the bottom of the Upper
Fourth B in Classics, in Drawing and in English. However, the
knowledge that next term would now inevitably find him and
Alan in the same class, meeting again as equals, as day-boys
gloriously free, sustained him through a thunderous interview
with Dr. Brownjohn. He emerged from the Doctor’s study in a
confusion of abusive epithets to find Alan loyally waiting for
him by the great plaster cast of the Laocoön.
“Damn old Brownjohn,” growled Michael. “I think he’s the damnedest old
beast that ever lived. I do hate him.”
“Oh, bother him,” cried Alan, dancing with excitement. “Look
here, I say, at this telegram. It’s just arrived. The porter
was frightfully sick at having to give me a telegram. He is a
sidy swine. What _do_ you think? My uncle is going to marry
Miss Carthew?”
“Get out,” scoffed Michael, whose brain, overwhelmed by the pealing
thunders of his late interview, refused to register any more shocks.
“No, really. Read this.”
Michael took the piece of paper and read the news. But he was still
under the influence of a bad year, and instead of dancing with Alan to
the tune of his excitement, grumbled:
“Well, why didn’t Miss Carthew send a telegram to me? I think
she might have. I believe this is all bally rot.”
Alan’s face changed, changed indeed to an expression of such absolute
disappointment that Michael was touched and, forgetting all that he had
endured, thrust his arm into Alan’s arm and murmured:
“By Jove, old Alan, it is rather decent, isn’t it?”
When Michael reached the House, he found a letter from Miss Carthew,
which consoled him for that bad year and made him still more penitent
for his late ungraciousness towards Alan.
C OBBLE P LACE ,
_July 27_ .
_My dear old Michael_ ,
_You will be tremendously surprized to hear that I am going
to marry Captain Ross. I fancy I can hear you say ‘What
rot, I don’t believe it!’ But I am, and of course you can
understand how gloriously happy I feel, for you know how
much you liked him. Poor old boy, I’m afraid you’ve had a
horrid time all this year and I wish I hadn’t been so
stupid as to get ill, but never mind, it’s over now and
Captain Ross and I are coming up to London to fetch you and
Alan down here to spend the whole of the holidays and make
the wedding a great success. May, Joan and Nancy and my
mother all send their very best love and Nancy says she’s
looking forward to your new ties (I don’t know what obscure
jest of hers this is) and also to hear of your engagement
(silly girl!). I shall see you on Wednesday and you’re
going to have splendid holidays, I can promise you. Your
mother writes to say that she is coming back to live at
home in September, so there’ll be no more boarding-school
for you. Stella wrote to me from Germany and I hear from
Frau Weingardt that everybody prophesies a triumphant
career for her, so don’t snub her when she comes back for
her holidays in the autumn. Just be as nice as you can, and
you can be very nice if you like. Will you? Now, dear old
boy, my best love till we meet on Wednesday._
_Your loving_
_Maud Carthew._
Then indeed Michael felt that life was the finest thing conceivable,
and in a burst of affectionate duty wrote a long letter to Stella,
giving with every detail an account of how Wheeler’s beat Marlowe’s at
cricket, including the running-out of that beast Buckley by Michael
amidst the plaudits of his House. Next morning Alan told him that his
mother was frightfully keen for Michael to stay with them at Richmond,
until his Uncle Ken and Miss Carthew arrived; and so Michael by special
leave from Mr. Wheeler left the House a day or two before the others
and had the exquisite pleasure of travelling up with Alan by the
District Railway to Hammersmith Broadway for a few mornings, and of
walking arm in arm with Alan through the School gates. Mrs. Merivale
was as pretty as ever, almost as pretty as his own beautiful mother,
and Mr. Merivale entertained Michael and Alan with his conjuring tricks
and his phonograph and his ridiculous puns. Even when they reached the
gate in a summer shower and ran past the sweet-smelling rose trees in
the garden, Mr. Merivale shouted from the front door ‘Hallo, here come
the Weterans,’ but when he had been severely punched for so disgraceful
a joke, he was flatly impenitent and made half a dozen more puns
immediately afterwards. In a day or two Miss Carthew and Captain Ross
arrived, and after they had spent long mysterious days shopping in
town, Michael and Alan and Miss Carthew and Captain Ross travelled down
to Hampshire—the jolliest railway party that was ever known.
Nothing at Basingstead Minor seemed to have changed in five
years, from the dun pony to the phloxes in the garden, from the
fantail pigeons to the gardener who fed the pigs. Michael spent
all the first few hours in rapid renewals of friendship with
scenery and animals, dragging Alan at his heels and even
suggesting about ten minutes before the gong would sound for
dinner that they should bunk round and borrow the key of the
tower on the hill.
He and Alan slept up in the roof in a delightful impromptu of
a room with uneven bare floor and sloping ceiling and above
their beds a trap-door into an apple loft. There were at least
half a dozen windows with every possible aspect to the neat
high road and the stable-yard and the sun-dyed garden and the
tall hills beyond. August was a blaze of blue and green and
gold that year, but everybody at Cobble Place was busy getting
ready for the wedding and Michael and Alan had the countryside
to themselves. Their chief enterprize was the exploration of
the sources of the stream in a canoe and a fixed endeavour to
reach Basingstead Major by water. Early in the morning they
would set out, well equipped with scarlet cushions and
butterfly-nets and poison-bottles and sandwiches and stone
bottles of ginger beer and various illustrated papers and
Duke’s Cameo cigarettes. Michael now paid fivepence for ten
instead of a penny for five cigarettes: he also had a pipe of
elegantly tenuous shape, which was knocked out so often that
it looked quite old, although it was scarcely coloured at all
by tobacco smoke. Nowadays he did not bother to chew highly
scented sweets after smoking, because Captain Ross smoked so
much that all the blame of suspicious odours could be laid on
him.
Those were halcyon days on that swift Hampshire river. Michael and Alan
would have to paddle hard all the morning scarcely making any progress
against the stream. Every opportunity to moor the canoe was taken
advantage of; and the number of Marsh Fritillaries that were sacrificed
to justify a landing in rich water-meadows was enormous.
“Never mind,” Michael used to say, “they’ll do for swaps.”
Through the dazzling weather the kingfishers with wings of blue
fire would travel up and down the stream. The harvest was at
its height and in unseen meadows sounded the throb of the
reaper and binder, while close at hand above
the splash and gurgle of the rhythmic paddles could be heard
the munching of cattle. To left and right of the urgent boat
darted the silver companies of dace, and deep in brown embayed
pools swam the fat nebulous forms of chub. Sometimes the
stream, narrowing where a large tree-trunk had fallen, gushed
by their prow and called for every muscle to stand out, for
every inch to be fought, for every blade of grass to be
clutched before the canoe won a way through. Sometimes the
stream widened to purling rapids and scarcely would even a
canoe float upon the diamonded rivulets and tumbling pebbles
and silting silver sand, so that Michael and Alan would have
to disembark and drag the boat to deeper water. Quickly the
morning went by, long before the source of the stream was
found, long before even the village of Basingstead Major was
reached. Some fathomless millpool would hold Michael and Alan
with its hollow waterfall and overarching trees and gigantic
pike. Here grew, dipping down to the water, sprays of
dewberries, and here, remote even from twittering warblers and
the distant harvest cries, Michael and Alan drowsed away the
afternoon. They scarcely spoke, for they were too well
contented with the languorous weather. Sometimes one of them
would clothe a dream with a boy’s slang, and that was all.
Then, when the harvesters had long gone home and when the last
cow was stalled, and when the rabbits were scampering by the
edge of the sloping woodlands, Michael and Alan would unmoor
their canoe and glide homeward with the stream. Through the
deepening silence their boat would swing soundlessly past the
purple loosestrife and the creamy meadowsweet, past the yellow
loosestrife and scented rushes and the misted blue banks of
cranesbill, past the figwort and the little yellow
waterlilies, while always before their advance the voles
plumped into the water one by one and in hawthorn bushes the
wings of roosting birds fluttered. Around them on every side
crept the mist
in whose silver muteness they landed to gather white
mushrooms. Home they would come drenched with dew, and arm in
arm they would steal up the dusky garden to the rose-red lamps
and twinkling golden candlelight of Cobble Place.
In the actual week before the wedding Michael and Alan were kept far
too busy to explore streams. They ran from one end of Basingstead Minor
to the other and back about a dozen times a day. They left instructions
with various old ladies in the village at whose cottages guests were
staying. They carried complicated floral messages from Mrs. Carthew to
the Vicar and equally complicated floral replies from the Vicar to Mrs.
Carthew. They were allowed to drive the aged dun pony to meet Mr. and
Mrs. Merivale on the day before the wedding and had great jokes with
Mr. Merivale because he would say that it was an underdone pony and
because he would not believe that dun was spelt d-u-n. As for the
wedding-day itself, it was for Michael and Alan one long message
interrupted only by an argument with the cook with regard to the amount
of rice they had a right to take.
Michael felt very shy at the reception and managed to avoid
calling Miss Carthew Mrs. Ross; although Alan distinctly
addressed her once with great boldness as Aunt Maud, for which
he was violently punched in the ribs by Michael, as with
stifled laughter they both rushed headlong from the room.
However, they came back to hear old Major Carthew proposing the
bride and bridegroom’s health and plunged themselves into a
corner with handkerchiefs stuffed into their mouths to listen
to Captain Ross stammer an embarrassed reply. They were both
much relieved when Mr. Merivale by a series of the most
atrocious puns allowed their laughter to flow forth without
restraint. All the guests went back to London later in the
afternoon and Michael and Alan were left to the supervision of
Nancy, who had promised
to take them out for a day’s shooting. They had a wonderful
day over the flickering September stubble. Michael shot a lark
by mistake and Alan wounded a land-rail; Nancy, however,
redeemed the party’s credit by bagging three brace of fat
French partridges which, when eaten, tasted like pigeons,
because the boys could not bear to wait for them to be hung
even for two hours.
Michael had a conversation with Mrs. Carthew one afternoon, while they
paced slowly and regularly the gay path beside the sunny red wall of
the garden.
“Well, how do you like school now?” she asked. “Dear me, I must say
you’re greatly improved,” she went on. “Really, when you came here five
years ago, you were much too delicate-looking.”
Michael kicked the gravel and tried to turn the trend of the
conversation by admiring the plums on the wall, but Mrs. Carthew went
on.
“Now you really look quite a boy. You and Alan both slouch abominably,
and I cannot think why boys always walk on one side of their boots. I
must say I do not like delicate boys. My own boy was always such a
boy.” Mrs. Carthew sighed and Michael looked very solemn.
“Well, do you like school?” she asked.
“I like holidays better,” answered Michael.
“I’m delighted to hear it,” Mrs. Carthew said decidedly.
“I thought last year was beastly,” said Michael. “You see I was a
boarder and that’s rot, if you were a day-boy ever, at least I think
so. Alan and me are in the same form next term. We’re going to have a
most frightful spree. We’re going to do everything together. I expect
school won’t be half bad then.”
“Your mother’s going to be at home, isn’t she?” Mrs. Carthew enquired.
“Yes. Rather,” said Michael. “It will be awfully rum. She’s
always away, you know. I wonder why.”
“I expect she likes travelling about,” said Mrs. Carthew.
“Yes, I expect she does,” Michael agreed. “But don’t you think it’s
very rum that I haven’t got any uncles or aunts or any relations? I do.
I never meet people who say they knew my father like Alan does and like
Miss—like Mrs. Ross does. Once I went with my mater to see an awfully
decent chap called Lord Saxby and my name’s Saxby. Do you think he’s a
relation? I asked the mater, but she said something about not asking
silly questions.”
“Humph!” said Mrs. Carthew, as she adjusted her spectacles to examine
an espalier of favourite peaches. “I think you’ll have to be very good
to your mother,” she continued after a minute’s silence.
“Oh, rather,” assented Michael vaguely.
“You must always remember that you have a particular responsibility, as
you will be alone with her for a long time, and, no doubt, she has
given up a great deal of what she most enjoys in order to stay with
you. So don’t think only of yourself.”
“Oh, rather not,” said Michael.
In his heart he felt while Mrs. Carthew was speaking a sense of
remote anxiety. He could not understand why, as soon as he
asked any direct questions, mystery enveloped his world. He had
grown used to this in Miss Carthew’s case, but Mrs. Carthew was
just as unapproachable. He began to wonder if there really were
some mystery about himself. He knew the habit among grown-up
people of wrapping everything in a veil of uncertainty, but in
his case it was so universally adopted that he began to be
suspicious and determined to question his mother relentlessly,
to lay conversational traps for her and thereby gain bit by bit
the details of his situation. He was older now and had already
heard such rumours of the real life of the world that a chimera
of unpleasant possibilities was rapidly forming. Left alone, he
began to speculate perpetually about himself,
to brood over anxious guesses. Perhaps his father was in
prison and not dead at all. Perhaps his father was in a
lunatic asylum. Perhaps he himself had been a foundling laid
on the doorstep long ago, belonging neither to his mother nor
to anyone else. He racked his brain for light from the past to
be shed upon his present perplexity, but he could recall no
flaw in the care with which his ignorance had been cherished.
When Michael reached Carlington Road on a fine September afternoon and
saw the window-boxes of crimson and white petunias and the sunlight
streaming down upon the red-brick houses, he was glad to be home again
in familiar Sixty-four. Inside it had all been re-papered and
re-painted. Every room was much more beautiful and his mother was glad
to see him. She took him round all the new rooms and hugged him close
and was her slim and lovely self again. Actually, among many surprizes,
Michael was to have the old gloomy morning-room for himself and his
friends. It looked altogether different now in the chequered sunlight
of the plane tree. The walls had been papered with scenes from cow-boy
life. There were new cupboards and shelves full of new books and an
asbestos gas fire. There were some jolly chairs and a small desk which
almost invited one to compose Iambics.
“Can I really have chaps to tea every Saturday?” Michael asked,
stupefied with pleasure.
“Whenever you like, dearest boy.”
“By Jove, how horribly decent,” said Michael.