M ICHAEL left the house early next day that he might make sure
of seeing Alan for a moment before Prayers. A snowy aggregation
of cumulus sustained the empyrean upon the volume of its mighty
curve and swell. The road before him stretched shining in a
radiant drench of azure puddles. It was a full-bosomed morning
of immense peace.
Michael rather dreaded to see Alan appear in oppressive black, and felt
that anything like a costume would embarrass their meeting. But just
before the second bell he came quickly up the steps dressed in his
ordinary clothes, and Michael in the surging corridor gripped his arm
for a moment, saying he would wait for him in the ‘quarter.’
“Is your mater fearfully cut up?” he asked when they had met and were
strolling together along the ‘gravel.’
“I think she was,” said Alan. “She’s going up to Cobble Place this
morning to see Aunt Maud.”
“I wrote to her last night,” said Michael.
“I spent nearly all yesterday in writing to her,” said Alan. “I
couldn’t think of anything to say. Could you?”
“No, I couldn’t think of very much,” Michael agreed. “It seemed so
unnecessary.”
“I know,” Alan said. “I’d really rather have come to school.”
“I wish you had. I made an awful fool of myself in the morning. I got
in a wax with Abercrombie and the chaps, and said I’d never play
football again.”
“Whatever for?”
“Oh, because I didn’t think they appreciated what it meant for a chap
like your Uncle Kenneth to be killed.”
“Do you mean they said something rotten?” asked Alan, flushing.
“I don’t think you would have thought it rotten. In fact, I think the
whole row was my fault. But they seemed to take everything for granted.
That’s what made me so wild.”
“Look here, we can’t start a conversation like this just before school.
Are you going home to dinner?” Alan asked.
“No, I’ll have dinner down in the Tuck,” said Michael, “and we can go
for a walk afterwards, if you like. It’s the first really decent day
we’ve had this year.”
So after a lunch of buns, cheese-cakes, fruit pastilles, and vanilla
biscuits, eaten in the noisy half-light of the Tuckshop, accompanied by
the usual storm of pellets, Michael and Alan set out to grapple with
the situation Michael had by his own hasty behaviour created.
“The chaps seem rather sick with you,” observed Alan, as they strolled
arm-in-arm across the school-ground not yet populous with games.
“Well, they are such a set of sheep,” Michael urged in justification of
himself.
“I thought you rather liked them.”
“I did at first. I do still in a way. I do when nothing
matters; but that horrible line in the paper did matter most
awfully, and I couldn’t stick their bleating. You see, you’re
different. You just say nothing. That’s all right. But these
fools tried to say something and couldn’t. I always did hate
people who _tried_ very obviously. That’s why I like you.
You’re so casual and you always seem to fit.”
“I don’t talk, because I know if I opened my mouth I should
make an ass of myself,” said Alan.
“There you are, that’s what I say. That’s why it’s possible to talk to
you. You see I’m a bit mad.”
“Shut up, you ass,” commanded Alan, smiling.
“Oh, not very mad. And I’m not complaining. But I _am_ a little
bit mad. I always have been.”
“Why? You haven’t got a clot on your brain, have you?”
“Oh, Great Scott, no! It’s purely mental, my madness.”
“Well, I think you’re talking tosh,” said Alan firmly. “If you go on
thinking you’re mad, you will be mad, and then you’ll be sorry. So shut
up trying to horrify me, because if you really were mad I should bar
you,” he added coolly.
“All right,” said Michael, a little subdued, as he always was, by
Alan’s tranquil snubs. “All right. I’m not mad, but I’m excitable.”
“Well, you shouldn’t be,” said Alan.
“I can’t help my character, can I?” Michael demanded.
“You’re not a girl,” Alan pointed out.
“Men have very strong emotions often,” Michael argued.
“They may have them, but they don’t show them. Just lately you’ve been
holding forth about the rotten way in which everybody gets hysterical
over this war. And now you’re getting hysterical over yourself, which
is much worse.”
“Damn you, Alan, if I didn’t like you so much I shouldn’t listen to
you,” said Michael, fiercely pausing.
“Well, if I didn’t like you, I shouldn’t talk,” answered Alan simply.
As they walked on again in silence for a while, Michael
continually tried to get a perspective view of his friend,
puzzling over his self-assurance, which was never offensive,
and wondering how a person so much less clever than himself
could possibly make him feel so humble. Alan was good-looking
and well-dressed; he was essentially debonair; he was
certainly in appearance the most attractive boy in the school.
It always gave Michael the most acute thrill of admiration to
see Alan swinging himself along so lithe and so graceful. It
made him want to go up and pat Alan’s shoulder and say, “You
fine and lovely creature, go on walking for ever.” But mere
good looks were not enough to explain the influence which Alan
wielded, an influence which had steadily increased during the
period of their greatest devotion to each other, and had never
really ceased during the period of their comparative
estrangement. Yet, if Michael looked back on their joint
behaviour, it had always been he who apparently led and Alan
who followed.
“Do you know, old chap,” said Michael suddenly, “you’re a great
responsibility to me.”
“Thanks very much and all that,” Alan answered, with a mocking bow.
“Have you ever imagined yourself the owner of some frightfully famous
statue?” Michael went on earnestly.
“Why, have you?” Alan countered, with his familiar look of embarrassed
persiflage.
Michael, however, kept tight hold of the thread that was guiding him
through the labyrinth that led to the arcana of Alan’s disposition.
“You’ve the same sort of responsibility,” he asserted. “I always feel
that if I were the owner of the Venus of Milo, though I could move her
about all over the place and set her up wherever I liked, I should be
responsible to her in some way. I should feel she was looking at me,
and if I put her in a wrong position, I should feel ashamed of myself
and half afraid of the statue.”
“Are you trying to prove you’re mad?” Alan enquired.
“Do be serious,” Michael begged, “and tell me if you think you
understand what I mean. Alan, you used to discuss everything with me
when we were kids, why won’t you discuss yourself now?”
Alan looked up at the sky for a moment, blinking in the sun, perhaps to
hide the tremor of feeling that touched for one instant the corners of
his mouth. Then he said:
“Do you remember years ago, when we were at Eastbourne and you met
Uncle Kenneth for the first time, he told me at dinner not to be a
showman? I’ve always remembered that remark of his, and I think it
applies to one showing off oneself as much as to showing off other
people. I think that’s why I’m different from you.”
Michael glanced up at this.
“You can be damned rude when you like,” he murmured.
“Well, you asked me.”
“So I’m a showman?” said Michael.
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake don’t begin to worry over it. It doesn’t make
any odds to me what you are. I don’t think it ever would,” he added
simply, and in this avowal was all that Michael craved for. Under a
sudden chill presentiment that before long he would test this friend of
his to the last red throb of his proud heart, Michael took comfort from
this declaration and asked no more for comprehension or sympathy. Those
were shifting sands of feeling compared with this rock-hewn permanence
of Alan. He remembered the stones upon the Berkshire downs, the stolid,
unperceiving, eternal stones. Comparable to them alone stood Alan.
They had turned out of the gates of the school-ground by now,
and were strolling heedless of direction through the streets of
West Kensington that to Michael seemed
all at once strangely alluring with their display of a sedate
and cosy life. He could not recall that he had ever before
been so sensitive to the atmosphere of sunlit security which
was radiated by these windows with their visions of rosy
babies bobbing and laughing, of demure and saucy maids, of
polished bird-cages and pots of daffodils. The white steps
were in tune with the billowy clouds, and the scarlet
pillar-box at the corner had a friendly, human smile. It was a
doll’s-house world, whose dainty offer of intimate citizenship
refreshed Michael’s imagination like a child’s picture-book.
He began to reflect that the opinions of Abercrombie and his friends
round the hot-water pipes were wrought out in such surroundings as
these, and he arrived gradually at a sort of compassion for them,
picturing the lives of small effort that would inevitably be their
portion. He perceived that they would bear the burden of existence in
the future, struggling to preserve their gentility against the envy of
the class beneath them and the contempt of those above. These gay
little houses, half of whose charm lay in their similarity, were as
near as they would ever come to any paradise of being. Michael had
experienced many spasms of love for his fellow-men, and now in one of
these outbursts he suddenly realized himself in sympathy with
mediocrity.
“Rather jolly round here,” said Alan. “I suppose a tremendous lot of
chaps from the school live about here. Funny thing, if you come to
think of it. Practically everybody at St. James’ slides into a little
house like this. A few go into the Army; a few go to the ‘Varsity. But
this is really the School.”
Alan indicated an empty perambulator standing outside one of
the houses. “Funny thing if the kid that’s waiting for should
be Captain of the School in another eighteen years. I wouldn’t
be surprized.”
Alan had just expressed so much of what Michael himself was thinking
that he felt entitled to put the direct question which a moment ago he
had been shy of asking.
“Do you feel as if you belonged to all this?”
“No,” said Alan very coolly.
“Nor do I,” Michael echoed.
“And that’s why it was rotten of you to give yourself away to
Abercrombie and the other chaps,” Alan went on severely.
“Yes, I think it was,” Michael agreed.
Then they retraced their steps unconsciously, wandering along silently
in the sunlight towards the school. Michael did not want to converse
because he was too much elated by this walk, and the satisfying way in
which Alan had lived up to his ideal of him. He began to weave a fine
romance of himself and Alan going through life together in a lofty
self-sufficiency from which they would condescend to every aspect of
humanity. He was not sure whether Alan would condescend so far and so
widely as himself, and he was not sure whether he wanted him to,
whether it would not always be a relief to be aware of Alan as a cold
supernal sanctuary from the vulgar struggles in which he foresaw his
own frequent immersion. Meanwhile he must make it easy for Alan by
apologizing to Abercrombie and the rest for his ridiculous passion of
yesterday. He did not wish to imperil Alan’s superb aloofness by
involving him in the acrimonious and undignified defence of a friend.
There should be no more outbreaks. So much Michael vowed to his
loyalty. However, the apology must be made quickly—if possible, this
afternoon before school—and as they entered the school-ground again,
Michael looked up at the clock, and said:
“Do you mind if I bunk on? I’ve something I must do before the bell
goes.”
Alan shook his head.
To Abercrombie and the other immortals Michael came up quickly and
breathlessly.
“I say, you chaps, I’m sorry I made such an ass of myself yesterday; I
felt chippy over that friend of mine being killed.”
“That’s all right, old bangabout,” said Abercrombie cordially, and the
chorus guffawed their forgiveness. They did more. They called him
‘Bangs’ thereafter, commemorating, as schoolboys use, with an
affectionate nickname their esteem.
The next day a letter came for Michael from Mrs. Ross, and impressed
with all the clarity of writing much of what he had dimly reached out
for in his friendship with Alan. He read the letter first hurriedly on
his way to school in the morning; but he read it a second and third
time along those serene and intimate streets where he and Alan had
walked the day before.
Cobble Place ,
_March, 1900_ .
_My dearest Michael,_
_You and Alan are the only people to whom I can bear to
write to-day. I am grieving most for my young son, because
he will have to grow up without his father’s splendid
example always before him. I won’t write of my own sorrow.
I could not._
_ My husband, as you know, was very devoted to you and
Alan, and he had been quite worried (and so had I) that you
and he seemed to have grown away from one another. It was a
moment of true delight to him, when he read a long letter
from dear old Alan describing his gladness at playing
football again with you. Alan expresses himself much less
eloquently than you do, but he is as deeply fond of you as
I know you are of him. His letters are full of you and your
cleverness and popularity; and I pray that all your lives
you will pull together for the good. Kenneth used
always to admire you both so much for your ability to
‘cope with a situation.’ He was shot, as you know,
leading his men (who adored him) into action. Ah, how
I wish he could lead his own little son into action.
You and Alan will have that responsibility now. _
_It is sweet of you to thank me for being so ‘stunning’ to
you. It wasn’t very difficult. But you know how high my
hopes have always been and always will be for you, and I
know that you will never disappoint me. There may come
times which with your restless, sensitive temperament you
will find very hard to bear. Always remember that you have
a friend in me. I have suffered very much, and suffering
makes the heart yearn to comfort others. Be very chivalrous
always, and remember that of all your ideals your mother
should be the highest. I hope that you’ll be able to come
and stay with us soon after Easter. God bless you, dear
boy, and thank you very much for your expression of the
sorrow I know you share with me._
_Your loving_
_Maud Ross._
_I wonder if you remember how you used to love Don Quixote
as a child. Will you always be a Don Quixote, however much
people may laugh? It really means just being a gentleman._