M ICHAEL somehow felt shy when he heard his mother’s voice
telling him to come into her room. He had run upstairs and
knocked excitedly at her door before the shyness overwhelmed
him, but it was too late not to enter, and he sat down to give
her the account of his holidays. Rather dull it seemed, and
robbed of all vitality by the barrier which both his mother and
he hastened to erect between themselves.
“Well, dear, did you enjoy yourself at this Monastery?”
“Oh, rather.”
“Is the—what do you call him?—the head monk a nice man?”
“Oh, yes, awfully decent.”
“And your friend Chator, did he enjoy himself?”
“Oh, rather. Only he had to go before me. Did you enjoy yourself
abroad, mother?”
“Very much, dear, thank you. We had lovely weather all the time.”
“We had awfully ripping weather too.”
“Have you got everything ready for school in the morning?”
“There’s nothing much to get. I suppose I’ll go into Cray’s—the Upper
Fifth. Do you want me now, mother?”
“No, dear, I have one or two letters to write.”
“I think I’ll go round and see if Chator’s home yet. You don’t mind?”
“Don’t be late for dinner.”
“Oh, no, rather not.”
Going downstairs from his mother’s room, Michael had half an impulse to
turn back and confide in her the real account of his holidays. But on
reflection he protested to himself that his mother looked upon him as
immaculate, and he felt unwilling to disturb by such a revolutionary
step the approved tranquillities of maternal ignorance.
Mr. Cray, his new form-master, was a man of distinct personality, and
possessed a considerable amount of educative ability; but unfortunately
for Michael the zest of classics had withered in his heart after his
disappointment over the Oxford and Cambridge Certificate. Therefore Mr.
Cray with his bright archæology and chatty scholarship bored Michael
more profoundly than any of his masters so far had bored him. Mr. Cray
resented this attitude very bitterly, being used to keenness in his
form, and Michael’s dreary indolence, which often came nearer to
insolence, irritated him. As for the plodding, inky sycophants who
fawned upon Mr. Cray’s informativeness, Michael regarded them with
horror and contempt. He sat surrounded by the butts and bugbears of his
school-life. All the boys whose existence he had deplored seemed to
have clambered arduously into the Upper Fifth just to enrage him with
the sight of their industrious propinquity. There they sat with their
scraggy wrists protruding from shrinking coat-sleeves, with ambitious
noses glued to their books, with pens and pencils neatly disposed for
demonstrative annotation, and nearly all of them conscious of having
figured in the school-list with the printed bubble of the Oxford and
Cambridge Higher Certificate beside their names. Contemplating them in
the mass, Michael scarcely knew how he would endure another dusty year
of school.
“And now we come to the question of the Homeric
gate—the Homeric gate, Fane, when you can condescend to our
level,” said Mr. Cray severely.
“I’m listening, sir,” said Michael wearily.
“Of course the earliest type of gate was without hinges—without hinges,
Fane! Very much like your attention, Fane!”
Several sycophants giggled at this, and Michael, gazing very earnestly
at Mr. Cray’s benign but somewhat dirty bald head, took a bloody
revenge upon those in reach of his javelin of quadruple penholders.
“For Monday,” said Mr. Cray, when he had done with listening to the
intelligent advice of his favourite pupils on the subject of gates
ancient and modern, “for Monday the essay will be on Patriotism.”
Michael groaned audibly.
“Isn’t there an alternative subject, sir?” he gloomily enquired.
“Does Fane dislike abstractions?” said Mr. Cray. “Curious! Well, if
Fane wishes for an alternative subject, of course Fane must be obeyed.
The alternative subject will be An Examination into the Fundamental
Doctrines of Hegelian Idealism. Does that suit Fane?”
“Very well indeed,” said Michael, who had never heard of Hegel until
that moment, but vowed to himself that somehow between this muggy
Friday afternoon and next Monday morning he would conquer the fellow’s
opinions. As a matter of fact, the essay proved perfectly easy with the
assistance of The Popular Encyclopedia, though Mr. Cray called it a
piece of impudence and looked almost baleful when Michael showed it up.
From this atmosphere of complacent effort Michael withdrew one
afternoon to consult Father Viner about his future. Underneath
the desire for practical advice was a desire to talk about
himself, and Michael was disappointed on arriving at Father
Viner’s rooms to hear that
he was out. However, learning that there was a prospect of his
speedy return, he came in at the landlady’s suggestion to
amuse himself with a book while he waited.
Wandering round the big bay-windowed room with its odour of tobacco and
books, and casting a careless glance at Father Viner’s desk, Michael
caught sight of his own name in the middle of a neatly written letter
on the top of a pile of others. He could not resist taking a longer
glance to see the address and verify the allusion to himself, and with
this longer glance curiosity conquered so completely the prejudice
against prying into other people’s correspondence that Michael,
breathing nervously under the dread of interruption, took up the letter
and read it right through. It was in his present mood of anxiety about
himself very absorbing.
Clere Abbey,
_Michael Mass._
PAX ✠
_Dear Brother,_
_I have been intending to write to you about young Michael
Fane ever since he left us, and your letter of enquiry has
had the effect of bringing me up to the point._
_I hardly know what to tell you._ _He’s a curious youth,
very lovable, and with enough brains to make one wish that
he might have a vocation for the priesthood._ _At the same
time I noticed while he was with us, especially after the
admirable Chator departed, an overwhelming languor which I
very much deplored._
_ He spent much of his time with a very bad hat indeed,
whom I have just sent away from Clere. If you ever come
across Mr. Henry Meats, be careful of him. Arbuthnot of St.
Aidan’s, Holloway, sent him to me. You know Arbuthnot’s
expansive (and for his friends expensive) Christianity.
This last effort of his was a snorter, a soft, nasty,
hysterical,
little blob of vice. I ought to have seen through the
fellow before I did. Heaven knows I get enough of the
tag-rag of the Movement trying to be taken on at
Clere. I suppose the monastic life will always make an
imperishable appeal to the worst, and, thank God, some
of the best. I mention this fellow to you because I’m
afraid he and Michael may meet again, and I don’t at
all like the idea of their acquaintanceship
progressing, especially as it was unluckily begun
beneath a religious roof. So keep an eye on Mr. Henry
Meats. He’s really bad. _
_Another fellow I don’t recommend for Michael is Percy
Garrod. Not that I think there is much danger in that
direction, for I fancy Michael was very cold with him.
Percy is a decent, honest, hard-working, common ass, with a
deep respect for the Pope and the Polytechnic. He’s a
trifle zealous, however, with bastard information about
physical science, and not at all the person I should choose
to lecture Michael on the complications of adolescence._
_We are getting on fairly well at Clere, but it’s hard work
trying to make this country believe there is the slightest
necessity for the contemplative life. I hope all goes well
with you and your work._
_Yours affectionately in Xt.,_
_Cuthbert Manners, O.S.B._
_Poor Michael. His will be a difficult position one day. I
feel on re-reading this letter that I’ve told you nothing
you don’t already know. But he’s one of those elusive boys
who have lived within themselves too much and too long._
Michael put this letter back where he had found it, and
wondered how much of the contents would be discussed by Father
Viner. He was glad that Brother Aloysius had vanished, because
Brother Aloysius had become like a bad dream with which he was
unwilling in the future to renew acquaintance. On his own
character Dom Cuthbert
had not succeeded in throwing very much light—at any rate not
in this letter. Father Viner came in to interrupt Michael’s
meditations, and began at once to discuss the letter.
“The Lord Abbot of Clere thinks you’re a dreamer,” he began abruptly.
“Does he, Mr. Viner?” echoed Michael, who somehow could never bring
himself to the point of addressing the priest as ‘Father.’ Shyness
always overcame his will.
“What do you dream about, young Joseph?”
“Oh, I only think about a good many things, and wonder what I’m going
to be and all that,” Michael replied. “I don’t want to go into the
Indian Civil Service or anything with exams. I’m sick of exams. What I
most want to do is to get away from school. I’m sick of school, and the
fellows in the Upper Fifth are a greasy crowd of swats always sucking
up to Cray.”
“And who is the gentleman with the crustacean name that attracts these
barnacles?”
“Cray? Oh, he’s my form-master, and tries to be funny.”
“So do I, Michael,” confessed Mr. Viner.
“Oh, well, that’s different. I’m not bound to listen to you, if I don’t
want to. But I have to listen to Cray for eighteen hours every week,
and he hates me because I won’t take notes for his beastly essays. I
think I’ll ask my mater if I can’t leave school after this term.”
“And then what would you do?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I could settle when I’d left.”
“What about Oxford?”
“Well, I could go to Oxford later on.”
“I don’t think you could quite so easily as you think. Anyway, you’d
much better go to Oxford straight from school.”
“Eight more terms before I leave. Phew!” Michael
groaned. “It’s such a terrible waste of time, and I know
Oxford’s ripping.”
“Perhaps something will come along to interest you. And always, dear
boy, don’t forget you have your religion.”
“Yes, I know,” said Michael. “But at the Abbey I met some people who
were supposed to be religious, and they were pretty good rotters.”
The priest looked at him and seemed inclined to let Michael elaborate
this topic, but almost immediately he dismissed it with a commonplace.
“Oh, well,” Michael sighed, “I suppose something will happen soon to
buck me up. I hope so. Perhaps the Kensitites will start making rows in
churches again,” he went on hopefully. “Will you lend me the Apocryphal
Gospels? We’re going to have a discussion about them at the De Rebus
Ecclesiasticis.”
“Oh, the society hasn’t broken up?” enquired Mr. Viner.
“Rather not. Only everybody’s changed rather. Chator’s become
frightfully Roman. He was Sarum last term, and he thinks I’m
frightfully heretical, only of course I say a lot I don’t mean just to
rag him. I say, by the way, who wrote ‘In a Garden’?”
“It sounds a very general title,” commented Mr. Viner, with a smile.
“Well, it’s some poem or other.”
“Swinburne wrote a poem in the Second Series of Poems and Ballads
called ‘A Forsaken Garden.’ Is that what you mean?”
“Perhaps. Is it a famous poem?”
“Yes, I should say it was distinctly.”
“Well, that must be it. Cray tried to be funny about it to-day
in form, and said to me, ‘Good heavens, haven’t you read “In a
Garden”?’ And I said I’d never heard of it. And then he said in
his funny way to the class,
‘I suppose you’ve all read it.’ And none of them had, which
made him look rather an ass. So he said we’d better read it by
next week.”
“I can lend you my Swinburne. Only take care of it,” said Mr. Viner.
“It’s a wonderful poem.”
_In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland,_
_At the sea-down’s edge between windward and lee,_
_Walled round with rocks as an inland island,_
_The ghost of a garden fronts the sea._
“I say,” exclaimed Michael eagerly, “I never knew Swinburne was a
really great poet. And fancy, he’s alive now.”
“Alive, and living at Putney,” said Mr. Viner.
“And yet he wrote what you’ve just said!”
“He wrote that, and many other things too. He wrote:
_Before the beginning of years_
_There came to the making of man_
_Time, with a gift of tears;_
_Grief, with a glass that ran;_
_Pleasure, with pain for leaven,_
_Summer, with flowers that fell;_
_Remembrance fallen from heaven,_
_And madness risen from hell.”_
“Good Lord!” sighed Michael. “And he’s in Putney at this very moment.”
Michael went home clasping close the black volume, and in his
room that night, while the gas jet flamed excitably in defiance
of rule, he read almost right through the Second Series of
Poems and Ballads. It was midnight when he turned down the gas
and sank feverishly into bed. For a long while he was saying to
himself isolated lines: _‘The wet skies harden, the gates are
barred on the summer side.’ ‘The rose-red acacia that mocks the
rose.’ ‘Sleep, and if life was bitter to thee, brother.’ ‘For
whom all winds are quiet as the sun, all waters as the shore.’_
In school on Monday morning Mr. Cray, to Michael’s regret, did not
allude to the command that his class should read ‘In a Garden.’ Michael
was desperately anxious at once to tell him how much he had loved the
poem and to remind him of the real title, ‘A Forsaken Garden.’ At last
he could bear it no longer and went up flushed with enthusiasm to Mr.
Cray’s desk, nominally to enquire into an alleged mistake in his Latin
Prose, but actually to inform Mr. Cray of his delight in Swinburne.
When the grammatical blunder had been discussed, Michael said with as
much nonchalance as he could assume:
“I read that poem, sir. I think it’s ripping.”
“What poem?” repeated Mr. Cray vaguely. “Oh, yes, ‘Enoch Arden.’”
“‘Enoch Arden,’” stammered Michael. “I thought you said ‘In a Garden.’
I read ‘A Forsaken Garden’ by Swinburne.”
Mr. Cray put on his most patronizing manner.
“My poor Fane, have you never heard of Enoch Arden? Perhaps you’ve
never even heard of Tennyson?”
“But Swinburne’s good, isn’t he, sir?”
“Swinburne is very well,” said Mr. Cray. “Oh, yes, Swinburne will do,
if you like rose-jam. But I don’t recommend Swinburne for you, Fane.”
Then Mr. Cray addressed his class:
“Did you all read ‘Enoch Arden’?”
“Yes, sir,” twittered the Upper Fifth.
“Fane, however, with that independence of judgment which distinguishes
his Latin Prose from, let us say, the prose of Cicero, preferred to
read ‘A Forsaken Garden’ by one Swinburne.”
The Upper Fifth giggled dutifully.
“Perhaps Fane will recite to us his discovery,” said Mr. Cray,
scratching his scurfy head with the gnawed end of a penholder.
Michael blushed resentfully, and walked back to his desk.
“No?” said Mr. Cray with an affectation of great surprise.
Then he and the Upper Fifth, contented with their superiority, began to
chew and rend some tough Greek particles which ultimately became
digestible enough to be assimilated by the Upper Fifth; while Mr. Cray
himself purred over his cubs, looking not very unlike a mangy old
lioness.
“Eight more terms,” groaned Michael to himself.
Mr. Cray was not so blind to his pupils’ need for mild
intellectual excitement, however much he might scorn the easy
emotions of Swinburne. He really grew lyrical over Homeric
difficulties, and even spoke enthusiastically of Mr. Mackail’s
translation of the Georgics; but always he managed to conceal
the nobility of his theme beneath a mass of what he called
‘minor points.’ He would create his own rubbish heap and invite
the Upper Fifth to scratch in it for pearls. One day a question
arose as to the exact meaning of οὑλοχὑται in Homer. Michael
would have been perfectly content to believe that it meant
‘whole barleycorns,’ until Mr. Cray suggested that it might be
equivalent to the Latin ‘mola,’ meaning ‘grain coarsely
ground.’ An exhausting discussion followed, illustrated by
examples from every sort of writer, all of which had to be
taken down in notes in anticipation of a still more exhausting
essay on the subject.
“The meal may be trite,” said Mr. Cray, “but not the subject,” he
added, chuckling. “However, I have only touched the fringe of it: you
will find the arguments fully set forth in Buttmann’s Lexilogus. Who
possesses that invaluable work?”
Nobody in the Upper Fifth possessed it, but all anxiously made
a note of it, in order to acquire it over the counter of the
Book Room downstairs.
“No use,” said Mr. Cray. “Buttmann’s Lexilogus is now out of print.”
Michael pricked up at this. The phrase leant a curious flavour of
Romance to the dull book.
“No doubt, however, you will be able to obtain it second-hand,” added
Mr. Cray.
The notion of tracking down Buttmann’s Lexilogus possessed the Upper
Fifth. Eagerly after school the diligent ones discussed ways and means.
Parties were formed, almost one might say expeditions, to rescue the
valuable work from oblivion. Michael stood contemptuously aside from
the buzz of self-conscious effort round him, although he had made up
his own mind to be one of the first to obtain the book. Levy, however,
secured the first copy for fourpence in Farringdon Street, earning for
his sharpness much praise. Another boy bought one for three shillings
and sixpence in Paddington, the price one would expect to pay, if not a
Levy; and there were rumours of a copy in Kensington High Street. To
Michael the mart of London from earliest youth had been Hammersmith
Broadway, and thither he hurried, hopeful of discovering Buttmann’s
dingy Lexilogus, for the purchase of which he had thoughtfully begged a
sovereign from his mother. Michael did not greatly covet Buttmann, but
he was sure that the surplus from three shillings and sixpence,
possibly even from fourpence, would be very welcome.
He found at last in a turning off Hammersmith Broadway a
wonderful bookshop, whose rooms upon rooms leading into one
another were all lined and loaded with every kind of book. The
proprietor soon found a copy of Buttmann, which he sold to
Michael for half a crown, leaving him with fifteen shillings
for himself, since he decided that it would be as well to
return his mother at least half a crown from her sovereign. The
purchase completed, Michael began to wander round the shop,
taking down a book here,
a book there, dipping into them from the top of a ladder,
sniffing them, clapping their covers together to drive away
the dust, and altogether thoroughly enjoying himself, while
the daylight slowly faded and street-lamps came winking into
ken outside. At last, just as the shop-boy was putting up the
shutters, Michael discovered a volume bound in half-morocco of
a crude gay blue, that proved on inspection to contain the
complete poetical works of Algernon Charles Swinburne, for the
sum of seventeen shillings and sixpence.
What was now left of his golden sovereign that should have bought so
much beside Buttmann’s brown and musty Lexilogus?
Michael approached the proprietor with the volume in his hand.
“How much?” he asked, with a queer choking sensation, a throbbing
excitement, for he had never before even imagined the expenditure of
seventeen shillings and sixpence on one book.
“What’s this?” said the proprietor, putting on his spectacles. “Oh,
yes, Swinburne—pirated American edition. Seventeen shillings and
sixpence.”
“Couldn’t you take less?” asked Michael, with a vague hope that he
might rescue a shilling for his mother, if not for cigarettes.
“Take less?” repeated the bookseller. “Good gracious, young
man, do you know what you’d have to pay for Swinburne’s stuff
separate? Something like seven or eight pounds, and then they’d
be all in different volumes. Whereas here you’ve got—lemme
see—Atalanta in Calydon, Chastelard, Poems and Ballads, Songs
before Sunrise, Bothwell, Tristram of Lyonesse, Songs of Two
Nations, and heaven knows what not. I call seventeen shillings
and sixpence very cheap for what you might almost call a man’s
life-work. Shall I wrap it up?”
“Yes, please,” said Michael, gasping with the effect of the plunge.
But when that night he read
_Swallow, my sister, O fair swift swallow,_
he forgot all about the cost.
The more of Swinburne that Michael read, the more impatient he grew of
school. The boredom of Mr. Cray’s class became stupendous; and Michael,
searching for some way to avoid it, decided to give up Classics and
apply for admission to the History Sixth, which was a small association
of boys who had drifted into this appendix for the purpose of defeating
the ordinary rules of promotion. For instance, when the Captain of the
School Eleven had not attained the privileged Sixth, he was often
allowed to enter the History Sixth, in order that he might achieve the
intellectual dignity which consorted with his athletic prowess.
Michael had for some time envied the leisure of the History Sixth, with
its general air of slackness and its form-master, Mr. Kirkham, who, on
account of holding many administrative positions important to the
athletic life of the school, was so often absent from his class-room.
He now racked his brains for an excuse to achieve the idle bliss of
these charmed few. Finally he persuaded his mother to write to the
Headmaster and apply for his admission, on the grounds of the greater
utility of History in his future profession.
“But what are you going to be, Michael?” asked his mother.
“I don’t know, but you can say I’m going to be a barrister or
something.”
“Is History better for a barrister?”
“I don’t know, but you can easily say you think it is.”
In the end his mother wrote to Dr. Brownjohn, and
one grey November afternoon the Headmaster sailed into the
class-room of the Upper Fifth, extricated Michael with a roar,
and marched with him up and down the dusky corridor in a
ferocious discussion of the proposal.
“Why do you want to give up your Classics?” bellowed Dr. Brownjohn.
In the echoing corridor Michael’s voice sounded painfully weak against
his monitor’s.
“I don’t want to give them up, sir. Only I would like to learn History
as well,” he explained.
“What’s the good of History?” roared the Doctor.
“I thought I’d like to learn it,” said Michael.
“You shouldn’t think, you infamous young sluggard.”
“And I could go on reading Classics, sir, I could really.”
“Bah!” shouted Dr. Brownjohn. “Impudent nonsense, you young sloth. Why
didn’t you get your Certificate?”
“I failed in Arithmetic, sir.”
“You’ll fail in your whole life, boy,” prophesied Dr. Brownjohn in
bull-deep accents of reproach. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”
“No, sir,” said Michael. “I don’t think I am, because I worked jolly
hard.”
“Worked, you abominable little loafer? You’ve never worked in your
life. You could be the finest scholar in the school, and you’re merely
a coruscation of slatternly, slipshod paste. Bah! What do you expect to
do when you leave school? Um?”
“I want to go to Oxford.”
“Then get the Balliol Scholarship.”
“I don’t want to be at Balliol,” said Michael.
“Then get the major scholarship at Trinity, Cambridge.”
“I don’t intend to go to Cambridge,” said Michael.
“Good heavens, boy,” roared Dr. Brownjohn, “are you trying to
arrange your own career?”
“No, sir,” said Michael. “But I want to go to St. Mary’s, Oxford.”
“Then get a scholarship at St. Mary’s.”
“But I don’t want to be a Scholar of any college. I want to go up as a
Commoner.”
The veins on Dr. Brownjohn’s forehead swelled with wrath, astonishment
and dismay.
“Get out of my sight,” he thundered. “Get back into your class-room.
I’ve done with you; I take no more interest in you. You’re here to earn
glory for your school, you’re here to gain a scholarship, not to air
your own opinions. Get out of my sight, you young scoundrel. How dare
you argue with me? You shan’t go into the History Sixth! You shall stew
in your own obstinate juice in the Upper Fifth until I choose to move
you out of it. Do you hear? Go back into your class-room. I’ll write to
your mother. She’s an idiotic woman, and you’re a slovenly, idle,
good-for-nothing cub.”
Overwhelmed with failure and very sensitive to the inquisitive glances
of his classmates, Michael sat down in his own desk again as
unobtrusively as he could.
Michael’s peace of mind was not increased by the consciousness of Mr.
Cray’s knowledge of his appeal to withdraw from the Upper Fifth, and he
became exposed to a large amount of sarcasm in allusion to his
expressed inclination towards history. He was continually referred to
as an authority on Constitutions; he was invited to bring forward
comparisons from more modern times to help the elucidation of the
Syracusan expedition or the Delian Confederacy.
All that Michael gained from Mr. Cray was a passion for second-hand
books—the latest and most fervid of all his collecting hobbies.
One wintry evening in Elson’s Bookshop at Hammersmith he was
enjoying himself on the top of a ladder,
when he became aware of an interested gaze directed at himself
over the dull-gilt edges of a large and expensive work on
Greek sculpture. The face that so regarded him was at once
fascinating and repulsive. The glittering blue eyes full of
laughter were immediately attractive, but something in the
pointed ears and curled-back lips, something in the peculiarly
white fingers faintly pencilled about the knuckles with fine
black hairs, and after a moment something cruel in the bright
blue eyes themselves restrained him from an answering smile.
“What is the book, Hyacinthus?” asked the stranger, and his voice was
so winning and so melodious in the shadowy bookshop that Michael
immediately fell into the easiest of conversations.
“Fond of books?” asked the stranger. “Oh, by the way, my name is
Wilmot, Arthur Wilmot.”
Something in Wilmot’s manner made Michael suppose that he ought to be
familiar with the name, and he tried to recall it.
“What’s your name?” the stranger went on.
Michael told his name, and also his school, and before very long a good
deal about himself.
“I live near you,” said Mr. Wilmot. “We’ll walk along presently. I’d
like you to dine with me one night soon. When?”
“Oh, any time,” said Michael, trying to speak as if invitations to
dinner occurred to him three or four times a day.
“Here’s my card,” said the stranger. “You’d better show it to your
mother—so that she’ll know it’s all right. I’m a writer, you know.”
“Oh, yes,” Michael vaguely agreed.
“I don’t suppose you’ve seen any of my stuff. I don’t publish
much. Sometimes I read my poems to Interior people.”
Michael looked puzzled.
“Interior is my name for the people who understand. So few do. I should
say you’d be sympathetic. You look sympathetic. You remind me of those
exquisite boys who in scarlet hose run delicately with beakers of wine
or stand in groups about the corners of old Florentine pictures.”
Michael tried to look severe, and yet, after the Upper Fifth, even so
direct and embarrassing a compliment was slightly pleasant.
“Shall we go along? To-night the Hammersmith Road is full of mystery.
But, first, shall I not buy you a book—some exquisite book full of
strange perfumes and passionate courtly gestures? And so you are at
school? How wonderful to be at school! How Sicilian! Strange youth, you
should have been sung by Theocritus, or, better, been crowned with
myrtle by some wonderful unknown Greek, some perfect blossom of the
Anthology.”
Michael laughed rather foolishly. There seemed nothing else to do.
“Won’t you smoke? These Chian cigarettes in their diaphanous paper of
mildest mauve would suit your oddly remote, your curiously shy glance.
You had better not smoke so near to the savage confines of St. James’
School? How ascetic! How stringent! What book shall I buy for you, O
greatly to be envied dreamer of Sicilian dreams? Shall I buy you
Mademoiselle de Maupin, so that all her rococo soul may dance with
gilded limbs across your vision? Or shall I buy you A Rebours, and
teach you to live? And yet I think neither would suit you perfectly. So
here is a volume of Pater—Imaginary Portraits. You will like to read of
Denys l’Auxerrois. One day I myself will write an imaginary portrait of
you, wherein your secret, sidelong smile will reveal to the world the
whole art of youth.”
“But really—thanks very much,” stammered Michael,
who was beginning to suspect the stranger of madness—“it’s
awfully kind of you, but, really, I think I’d rather not.”
“Do not be proud,” said Mr. Wilmot. “Pride is for the pure in heart,
and you are surely not pure in heart. Or are you? Are you indeed like
one of those wonderful white statues of antiquity, unaware of the soul
with all its maladies?”
In the end, so urgent was Mr. Wilmot, Michael accepted the volume of
Pater, and walked with the stranger through the foggy night. Somehow
the conversation was so destructive of all experience that, as Michael
and his new friend went by the school-gates and perceived beyond the
vast bulk of St. James’ looming, Michael felt himself a stranger to it
all, as if he never again would with a crowd of companions surge out
from afternoon school. The stranger came as far as the corner of
Carlington Road with Michael.
“I will write to your mother and ask her to let you dine with me one
night next week. You interest me so much.”
Mr. Wilmot waved a pontifical good-bye and vanished in the direction of
Kensington.
At home Michael told his mother of the adventure. She looked a little
doubtful at his account of Mr. Wilmot.
“Oh, he’s all right, really, Mother. Only, you know, a little peculiar.
But then he’s a poet.”
Next day came a letter from Mr. Wilmot.
205 Edwardes Square, W.
_November._
_Dear Mrs. Fane,_
_ I must apologize for inviting your son to dinner so
unceremoniously. But he made a great appeal to me, sitting
on the top of a ladder in Elson’s Bookshop. I have a
library, in which he may enjoy himself whenever he likes.
Meanwhile,
may he come to dinner with me on Friday next? Mr.
Johnstone, the Member for West Kensington, is coming
with his nephew who may be dull without Michael.
Michael tells me he thinks of becoming an
ecclesiastical lawyer. In that case Johnstone will be
particularly useful, and can give him some hints. He’s
a personal friend of old Dr. Brownjohn. With many
apologies for my ‘impertinence,’ _
_Yours very truly,_
_Arthur Wilmot._
“This is a perfectly sensible letter,” said Mrs. Fane.
“Perhaps I thought he was funnier than he really was. Does he say
anything else except about me sitting on the top of a ladder?”
Somehow Michael was disappointed to hear that this was all.