B ACK once more upon his pedestal in the frieze, Michael
devoted himself to enjoying, while still they were important to
his life, the conversation and opinions of the immortals. He
gave up worrying about the war and yielded himself entirely
either to the blandishments of his seniority in the school or
of dreams about himself at Oxford, now within sight of
attainment. Four more terms of school would set him free, and
he had ambitions to get into the Fifteen in his last year. He
would then be able to look back with satisfaction to the
accomplishment of something. He actually threw himself into the
rowdiest vanguard of Mafeking’s celebrators, and accepted the
occasion as an excuse to make a noise without being compelled
to make the noise alone. These Bacchanalia of patriotism were
very amusing, and perhaps it was a good thing for the populace
to be merry; moreover, since he now had Alan to idealize, he
could afford to let his high thoughts of England’s duty and
England’s honour become a little less stringent.
He spent much time with Alan in discussing Oxford and in
building up a most elaborate and logical scheme of their life
at the University. He was anxious that Alan should leave the
classical Lower Sixth, into which he had climbed somewhat
hardly, and come to join him in the leisure of the History
Sixth. He spoke of Strang whose Captaincy of Cricket shed such
lustre on the form, of Terry whose Captaincy of Football next
year would shed an equal lustre. But Alan, having found the
journey to the Lower
Sixth so arduous, was disinclined to be cheated of the
intellectual eminence of the Upper Sixth which had been his
Valhalla so long.
Michael and Alan had been looking forward to a visit to Cobble Place
during the Easter holidays; but Mrs. Fane was much upset by the idea of
being left alone, and Michael had to decline the invitation, which was
a great disappointment. In the end he and his mother went to
Bournemouth, staying rather grandly at one of the large hotels, and
Michael was able to look up some old friends, including Father
Moneypenny of St. Bartholomew’s, Mrs. Rewins, their landlady of three
years back, and Mr. Prout.
The passion-flower at Esdraelon had grown considerably, but
that was the only thing which showed any signs of expansion,
unless Mr. Prout’s engagement to be married could be accepted
as evidence of expansion. Michael thought it had a contrary
effect, and whether from that cause or from his own increased
age he found poor Prout sadly dull. It was depressing to hear
that unpleasantness was expected at the Easter vestry that
year; Michael could not recall any year in which that had not
been the case. It was depressing to learn that the People’s
Churchwarden was still opposed to the Assumption. It was most
depressing of all to be informed that Prout saw no prospect of
being married for at least five years. Michael, having failed
with Prout, tried to recapture the emotion of his first
religious experience at St. Bartholomew’s. But the church that
had once seemed so inspiring now struck him as dingily and
poorly designed, without any of the mystery which once had made
it beautiful. He wondered if everything that formerly had
appealed to his imagination were going to turn out dross, and
he made an expedition to Christchurch Priory to test this idea.
Here he was relieved to find himself able to recapture the
perfect
thrill of his first visit, and he spent a rich day wandering
between the grey church and the watery meadows near by, about
whose plashy levels the green rushes were springing up in the
fleecy April weather.
Michael concluded that all impermanent emotions of beauty proved that
it was merely the emotion which had created an illusion of beauty, and
he was glad to have discovered for himself a touchstone for his
æsthetic judgments in the future. He would have liked to see Alan in
the cloistral glooms of the Priory, and thought how he would have
enhanced with his own eternity of classic shape the knights and ladies
praying there. Michael sympathized with the trousered boy whom Flaxman,
contrary to every canon, might almost be said to have perpetrated. He
felt slightly muddled between classic and romantic art, and could not
make up his mind whether Flaxman’s attempt or the mediæval sculptor’s
achievement were worthier of admiration. He tried to apply his own
test, and came to the conclusion that Flaxman was really all wrong. He
decided that he only liked the trousered boy because the figure gave
him sentimental pleasure, and he was sure that true classical art was
not sentimental. Finally he got himself in a complete muddle, sitting
among these hollow chantries and pondering art’s evaluations; so he
left the Priory behind him, and went dreamily through the water-meadows
under the spell of a simple beauty that needed no analysis. Oxford
would be like this, he thought; a place of bells and singing streams
and towers against the horizon.
He waited by a stile, watching the sky of which sunset had made
a tranced archipelago set in a tideless sea. The purple islands
stood out more and more distinct against the sheeted gold that
lapped their indentations; then in a few moments the gold went
out to primrose, the purple isles were grey as mice, and by an
imperceptible breath of time became merged in a luminous green
that
held the young moon led downwards through the west by one
great sulphur star.
This speculation of the sky made Michael late for dinner, and gave his
mother an opportunity to complain of his daylong desertion of her.
“I rather wish we hadn’t come to Bournemouth,” said Michael. “I think
it’s a bad place for us to choose to come together. I remember last
time we stayed here you were always criticizing me.”
“I suppose Bournemouth must have a bad effect on you, dearest boy,”
said Mrs. Fane in her most gentle, most discouraging voice.
Michael laughed a little bitterly.
“You’re wonderful at always being able to put me in the wrong,” he
said.
“You’re sometimes not very polite, are you, nowadays? But I dare say
you’ll grow out of this curious manner you’ve lately adopted towards
me.”
“Was I rude?” asked Michael, quickly penitent.
“I think you were rather rude, dear,” said Mrs. Fane. “Of course, I
don’t want you never to have an opinion of your own, and I quite
realize that school has a disastrous effect on manners, but you didn’t
apologize very gracefully for being late for dinner, did you, dear?”
“I’m sorry. I won’t ever be again,” said Michael shortly.
Mrs. Fane sighed, and the meal progressed in silence. Michael, however,
could never bear to sulk, and he braced himself to be pleasant.
“You ought to come over to Christchurch, mother. Shall we drive over
one day?”
“Well, I’m not very fond of looking at churches,” said Mrs. Fane. “But
if you want to go, let us. I always like you to do everything you
want.”
Michael sighed at the ingenuity of his mother’s method, and
changed the subject to their fellow-guests.
“That’s rather a pretty girl, don’t you think?”
“Where, dear?” asked Mrs. Fane, putting up her lorgnette and staring
hard at the wife of a clergyman sitting across the room from their
table.
“No, no, mother,” said Michael, beaming with pleasure at the delightful
vagueness of his mother which only distressed him when it shrouded his
own sensations. “The next table—the girl in pink.”
“Yes, decidedly,” said Mrs. Fane. “But dreadfully common. I can’t think
why those sort of people come to nice hotels. I suppose they read about
them in railway guides.”
“I don’t think she’s very common,” said Michael.
“Well, dear, you’re not quite at the best age for judging, are you?”
“Hang it, mother, I’m seventeen.”
“It’s terrible to think of,” said Mrs. Fane. “And only such a little
while ago you were the dearest baby boy. Then Stella must be sixteen,”
she went on. “I think it’s time she came back from the Continent.”
“What about her first concert?”
“Oh, I must think a lot before I settle when that is to be.”
“But Stella is counting on it being very soon.”
“Dear children, you’re both rather impetuous,” said Mrs. Fane,
deprecating with the softness of her implied rebuke the quality, and in
Michael at any rate for the moment quenching all ardour.
“I wonder if it’s wise to let a girl be a professional musician,” she
continued. “Dear me, children are a great responsibility, especially
when one is alone.”
Here was an opportunity for Michael to revive the subject of
his father, but he had now lost the cruel frankness of
childhood and shrank from the directness of the personal
encounter such a topic would involve. He was
seized with one of his fits of shy sensitiveness, and he became
suddenly so deeply embarrassed that he could scarcely even
bring himself to address his mother as ‘you.’ He felt that he
must go away by himself until he had shaken off this
uncomfortable sensation. He actually felt a kind of immodesty
in saying ‘you’ to his mother, as if in saying so much he was
trespassing on the forbidden confines of her individuality. It
would not endure for more than an hour or so, this fear of
approach, this hyperæsthesia of contact and communication. Yet
not for anything could he kiss her good night and, mumbling a
few bearish excuses, he vanished as soon as dinner was over,
vowing that he would cure himself of this mood by walking
through the pine trees and blowy darkness of the cliffs.
As he passed through the hotel lounge, he saw the good-looking girl,
whom his mother had stigmatized as common, waiting there wrapped up in
a feathery cloak. He decided that he would sit down and observe her
until the sister came down. He wished he knew this girl, since it would
be pleasant after dinner to stroll out either upon the pier or to
listen to the music in the Winter Garden in such attractive company.
Michael fancied that the girl, as she walked slowly up and down the
lounge, was conscious of his glances, and he felt an adventurous
excitement at his heart. It would be a daring and delightful novelty to
speak to her. Then the sister came down, and the two girls went out
through the swinging doors of the hotel, leaving Michael depressed and
lonely. Was it a trick of the lamplight, or did he really perceive her
head turn outside to regard him for a moment?
During his walk along the cliffs Michael played with this idea.
By the time he went to bed his mind was full of this girl, and
it was certainly thrilling to come down to breakfast next
morning and see what blouse she was wearing. Mrs. Fane always
had breakfast in her room,
so Michael was free to watch this new interest over the
cricket matches in The Sportsman. He grew almost jealous of
the plates and forks and cups which existed so intimately upon
her table, and he derived a sentimental pleasure from the
thought that nothing was more likely than that to-morrow there
would be an exchange of cups between his table and hers. He
conceived the idea of chipping a piece out of his own cup and
watching every morning on which table it would be laid, until
it reached her.
At lunch Michael, as nonchalantly as he could speak, asked his mother
whether she did not think the pretty girl dressed rather well.
“Very provincial,” Mrs. Fane judged.
“But prettily, I think,” persisted Michael. “And she wears a different
dress every day.”
“Do you want to know her?” asked Mrs. Fane.
“Oh, mother, of course not,” said Michael, blushing hotly.
“I dare say they’re very pleasant people,” Mrs. Fane remarked. “I’ll
speak to them after lunch, and tell them how anxious you are to make
their acquaintance.”
“I say, mother,” Michael protested. “Oh, no, don’t, mother. I really
don’t want to know them.”
Mrs. Fane smiled at him, and told him not to be a foolish boy. After
lunch, in her own gracious and distinguished manner which Michael
always admired, Mrs. Fane spoke to the two sisters and presently
beckoned to Michael who crossed the room, feeling rather as if he were
going in to bat first for his side.
“I don’t think I know your name,” said Mrs. Fane to the elder sister.
“McDonnell—Norah McDonnell, and this is my sister Kathleen.”
“Scotch?” asked Mrs. Fane vaguely and pleasantly.
“No, Irish,” contradicted the younger sister. “At
least by extraction. McDonnell is an Irish name. But we live
in Burton-on-Trent. Father and mother are coming down later
on.”
She spoke with the jerky speech of the Midlands, and Michael rather
wished she did not come from Burton-on-Trent, not on his own account,
but because his mother would be able to point out to him how right she
had been about their provincialism.
“Are you going anywhere this evening?” Michael managed to ask at last.
“I suppose we shall go on the pier. We usually go on the pier. Eh, but
it’s rather dull in Bournemouth. I like Llandudno better. Llandudno’s
fine,” said the elder Miss McDonnell with fervour.
Mrs. Fane came to the rescue of an awkward conversation by asking the
Miss McDonnells if they would take pity on her son and invite him to
accompany them. And so it was arranged.
“Happy, Michael?” asked his mother when the ladies, with many smiles,
had withdrawn to their rooms.
“Yes. I’m all right,” said Michael. “Only I rather wish you hadn’t
asked them so obviously. It made me feel rather a fool.”
“Dearest boy, they were delighted at the idea of your company. They
seem quite nice people too. Only, as I said, very provincial. Older,
too, than I thought at first.”
Michael asked how old his mother thought they were, and she supposed
them to be about twenty-seven and thirty. Michael was inclined to
protest against this high estimate, but since he had spoken to the Miss
McDonnells, he felt that after all his mother might be right.
In the evening his new friends came down to dinner much
enwrapped in feathers, and Michael thought that Kathleen looked
very beautiful in the crimson lamplight of the dinner-table.
“How smart you are, Michael, to-night!” said Mrs. Fane.
“Oh, well, I thought as I’d got my dinner-jacket down here I might as
well put it on. I say, mother, I think I’ll get a tail-coat. Couldn’t I
have one made here?”
“Isn’t that collar rather tight?” asked Mrs. Fane anxiously. “And it
seems dreadfully tall.”
“I like tall collars with evening dress,” said Michael severely.
“You know best, dear, but you look perfectly miserable.”
“It’s only because my chin is a bit sore after shaving.”
“Do you have to shave often?” enquired Mrs. Fane, tenderly horrified.
“Rather often,” said Michael. “About once a week now.”
“She has pretty hands, your lady love,” said Mrs. Fane, suddenly
looking across to the McDonnells’ table.
“I say, mother, for goodness’ sake mind. She’ll hear you,” whispered
Michael.
“Oh, Michael dear, don’t be so foolishly self-conscious.”
After dinner Michael retired to his room, and came down again smoking a
cigarette.
Mrs. Fane made a little _moue_ of surprise.
“I say, mother, don’t keep on calling attention to everything I do. You
know I’ve smoked for ages.”
“Yes, but not so very publicly, dear boy.”
“Well, you don’t mind, do you? I must begin some time,” said Michael.
“Michael, don’t be cross with me. You’re so deliciously amusing, and so
much too nice for those absurd women,” Mrs. Fane laughed.
Just then the Miss McDonnells appeared on the staircase, and Michael
frowned at his mother not to say any more about them.
It was a fairly successful evening. The elder Miss McDonnell
bored Michael rather with a long account of why her father had
left Ireland, and what a blow it had been to him to open a
large hotel in Burton-on-Trent. He was also somewhat fatigued
by the catalogue of Mr. McDonnell’s virtues, of his wit and
courage and good looks and shrewdness.
“He has a really old-fashioned sense of humour,” said Miss McDonnell.
“But then, of course, he’s Irish. He’s accounted quite the cleverest
man in Burton, but then, being Irish, that’s not to be wondered at.”
Michael wished she would not say ‘wondered’ as if it were ‘wandered,’
and indeed he was beginning to think that Miss McDonnell was a great
trial, when he suddenly discovered that by letting his arm hang very
loosely from his shoulder it was possible without the slightest hint of
intention occasionally to touch Kathleen’s hand as they walked along.
The careful calculation that this proceeding demanded occupied his mind
so fully that he was able to give mechanical assents to Miss
McDonnell’s praise of her father, and apparently at the same time
impress her with his own intelligence.
As the evening progressed Michael slightly increased the number of
times he tapped Kathleen’s hand with his, and after about an hour’s
promenade of the pier he was doing a steady three taps a minute. He now
began to speculate whether Kathleen was aware of these taps, and from
time to time he would glance round at her over his shoulder, hopeful of
catching her eyes.
“Are you admiring my sister’s brooch?” asked Miss McDonnell. “Eh, I
think it’s grand. Don’t you?”
Kathleen giggled lightly at this, and asked her sister how she
could, and then Michael with a boldness that on reflection made
him catch his breath at the imagination of it, said that while
he was admiring Miss Kathleen’s brooch he was admiring her eyes
still more.
“Oh, Mr. Fane. How can you!” exclaimed Kathleen.
“Well, he’s got good taste, I’m sure,” said Miss McDonnell. “But,
there, after all, what can you expect from an Irish girl? All Irish
girls have fine eyes.”
When Michael went to bed he felt that on the whole he had acquitted
himself that first evening with considerable success, and as he fell
asleep he dreamed triumphantly of a daring to-morrow.
It was an April day, whose deeps of azure sky made the diverse foliage
of spring burn in one ardent green. Such a day spread out before his
windows set Michael on fire for its commemoration, and he made up his
mind to propose a long bicycling expedition to the two Miss McDonnells.
He wished that it were not necessary to invite the elder sister, but
not even this April morning could embolden him so far as to ask
Kathleen alone. Mrs. Fane smilingly approved of his proposal, but
suggested that on such a warm day it would be wiser not to start until
after lunch. So it was arranged, and Michael thoroughly enjoyed the
consciousness of escorting these girls out of Bournemouth on their trim
bicycles. Indeed, he enjoyed his position so much that he continually
looked in the shop-windows, as they rode past, to observe the effect
and was so much charmed by the result that he crossed in front of Miss
McDonnell, and upset her and her bicycle in the middle of the town.
“Eh, that’s a nuisance,” said Miss McDonnell, surveying bent handlebars
and inner tyre swelling like a toy balloon along the rim. “That was
quite a mishap,” she added, shaking the dust from her skirt.
Michael was in despair over his clumsiness, especially when Miss
Kathleen McDonnell remarked that there went the ride she’d been looking
forward to all day.
“Well, you two go on an I’ll walk back,” Miss McDonnell
offered.
“Oh, but I can easily hire another machine,” said Michael.
“No. I’ll go back. I’ve grazed my knee a bit badly.”
Michael was so much perturbed to hear this that without thinking he
anxiously asked to be allowed to look, and wished that the drain by
which he was standing would swallow him up when he realized by
Kathleen’s giggling what he had said.
“It’s all right,” said Miss McDonnell kindly. “There’s no need to
worry. I hope you’ll have a pleasant ride.”
“I say, it’s really awfully ripping of you to be so jolly good-tempered
about it,” Michael exclaimed. “Are you sure I can’t do anything?”
“No, you can just put my bicycle in the shop along there, and I’ll take
the tram back. Mind and enjoy yourselves, and don’t be late.”
The equable Miss McDonnell then left her sister and Michael to their
own devices.
They rode along in alert silence until they left Branksome behind them
and came into hedgerows, where an insect earned Michael’s cordial
gratitude by invading his eye. He jumped off his bicycle immediately
and called for Kathleen’s aid, and as he stood in the quiet lane with
the girl’s face close to his and her hand brushing his cheeks, Michael
felt himself to be indeed a favourite of fortune.
“There it is, Mr. Fane,” said Miss Kathleen McDonnell. And, though he
tried to be sceptical for a while of the insect’s discovery, he was
bound to admit the evidence of the handkerchief.
“Thanks awfully,” said Michael. “And I say, I wish you wouldn’t call me
Mr. Fane. You know my Christian name.”
“Oh, but I’d feel shy to call you Michael,” said Miss
McDonnell.
“Not if I called you Kathleen,” Michael suggested, and felt inclined to
shake his own hand in congratulation of his own magnificent daring.
“Well, I must say one thing. You don’t waste much time. I think you’re
a bit of a flirt, you know,” said Kathleen.
“A flirt,” Michael echoed. “Oh, I say, do you really think so?”
“I’m afraid I do,” murmured Kathleen. “Shall we go on again?”
They rode along in renewed silence for several miles, and then they
suddenly came upon Poole Harbour lying below them, washed in the
tremulous golden airs of the afternoon.
“I say, how ripping!” cried Michael, leaping from his machine and
flinging it away from him against a bank of vivid grass. “We must sit
down here for a bit.”
“It is pretty,” said Kathleen. “It’s almost like a picture.”
“I’m glad you’re fond of beautiful things,” said Michael earnestly.
“Well, one can’t help it, can one?” sighed Kathleen.
“Some people can,” said Michael darkly. “There’s rather a good place to
sit over there,” he added, pointing to a broken gate that marked the
entrance to an oak wood, and he faintly touched the sleeve of
Kathleen’s blouse to guide her towards the chosen spot.
Then they sat leaning against the gate, she idly plucking
sun-faded primroses, he brooding upon the nearness of her hand.
In such universal placidity it could not be wrong to hold that
hand wasting itself amid small energies. Without looking into
her eyes, without turning his gaze from the great tranquil
water before him, Michael took her hand in his so lightly that
save for the pulsing of his heart he scarcely knew he held it.
So he sat breathless,
enduring pins and needles, tolerating the uncertain pilgrimage
of ants rather than move an inch and break the yielding spell
which made her his.
“Are you holding my hand?” she asked, after they had sat a long while
pensively.
“I suppose I am,” said Michael. Then he turned and with full-blooded
cheeks and swimming eyes met unabashed Kathleen’s demure and faintly
mocking glance.
“Do you think you ought to?” she enquired.
“I haven’t thought anything about that,” said Michael. “I simply
thought I wanted to.”
“You’re rather old for your age,” she went on, with an inflection of
teazing surprize in her soft voice. “How old are you?”
“Seventeen,” said Michael simply.
“Goodness!” cried Kathleen, withdrawing her hand suddenly. “And I
wonder how old you think I am?”
“I suppose you’re about twenty-five.”
Kathleen got up and said in a brisk voice that destroyed all Michael’s
bravery, “Come, let’s be getting back. Norah will be thinking I’m
lost.”
Just when they were nearing the outskirts of Branksome, Kathleen
dismounted suddenly and said:
“I suppose you’ll be surprized when I tell you I’m engaged to be
married?”
“Are you?” faltered Michael; and the road swam before him.
“At least I’m only engaged secretly, because my fiancé is poor. He’s
coming down soon. I’d like you to meet him.”
“I should like to meet him very much,” said Michael politely.
“You won’t tell anybody what I’ve told you?”
“Good Lord, no. Perhaps I might be of some use,” said Michael.
“You know, in arranging meetings.”
“Eh, you’re a nice boy,” exclaimed Kathleen suddenly.
And Michael was not perfectly sure whether he thought himself a hero or
a martyr.
Mrs. Fane was very much diverted by Michael’s account of Miss
McDonnell’s accident, and teazed him gaily about Kathleen. Michael
would assume an expression of mystery, as if indeed he had been
entrusted with the dark secrets of a young woman’s mind; but the more
mysterious he looked the more his mother laughed. In his own heart he
cultivated assiduously his devotion, and regretted most poignantly that
each new blouse and each chosen evening-dress was not for him. He used
to watch Kathleen at dinner, and depress himself with the imagination
of her spirit roaming out over the broad Midlands to meet her lover. He
never made the effort to conjure up the lover, but preferred to picture
him and Kathleen gathering like vague shapes upon the immeasurable
territories of the soul.
Then one morning Kathleen took him aside after breakfast to question
his steadfastness.
“Were you in earnest about what you said?” she asked.
“Of course I was,” Michael affirmed.
“He’s come down. He’s staying in rooms. Why don’t you ask me to go out
for a bicycle ride?”
“Well, will you?” Michael dutifully invited.
“I’m so excited,” said Kathleen, fluttering off to tell her sister of
this engagement to go riding with Michael.
In about half an hour they stood outside the small red-brick house
which cabined the bold spirit of Michael’s depressed fancies.
“You’ll come in and say ‘how do you do’?” suggested Kathleen.
“I suppose I’d better,” Michael agreed.
They entered together the little efflorescent parlour of the
house.
“This is my fiancé—Mr. Walter Trimble,” Kathleen proudly announced.
“Pleased to meet you,” said Mr. Trimble. “Kath tells me you’re on to do
us a good turn.”
Michael looked at Mr. Trimble, resolutely anxious to find in him the
creator of Kathleen’s noble destiny. He saw a thick-set young man in a
splendidly fitting, but ill-cut blue serge suit; he saw a dark
moustache of silky luxuriance growing amid regular features; in fact,
he saw someone that might have stepped from one of the grandiose frames
of that efflorescent little room. But he was Kathleen’s choice, and
Michael refused to let himself feel at all disappointed.
“I think it’s bad luck not to be able to marry, if one wants to,” said
Michael deeply.
“You’re right,” Mr. Trimble agreed. “That’s why I want Kath here to
marry me first and tell her dad afterwards.”
“I only wish I dared,” sighed Kathleen. “Well, if we’re going to have
our walk, we’d better be getting along. Will I meet you by the
side-gate into the Winter Garden at a quarter to one?”
“Right-o,” said Michael.
“I wonder if you’d lend Mr. Trimble your bicycle?”
“Of course,” said Michael.
“Because we could get out of the town a bit,” suggested Kathleen. “And
that’s always pleasanter.”
Michael spent a dull morning in wandering about Bournemouth,
while Kathleen and her Trimble probably rode along the same
road he and she had gone a few days back. He tried to console
himself with thoughts of self-sacrifice, and he took a morbid
delight in the imagination of the pleasure he had made possible
for others. But undeniably his own morning was dreary, and not
even could Swinburne’s canorous Triumph of Time do much more
than
echo somewhat sadly through the resonant emptiness of his
self-constructed prison, whose windows opened on to a
sentimental if circumscribed view of unattainable sweetness.
Michael sat on a bench in a sophisticated pine-grove and,
having lighted a cigarette, put out the match with his sighing
exhalation of _‘O love, my love, and no love for me.’_ It was
wonderful to Michael how perfectly Swinburne expressed his
despair. _‘O love, my love, had you loved but me.’_ And why had
she not loved him? Why did she prefer Trimble? Did Trimble ever
read Swinburne? Could Trimble sit like this smoking calmly a
cigarette and breathing out deathless lines of love’s despair?
Michael began to feel a little sorry for Kathleen, almost as
sorry for her as he felt for himself. Soon the Easter holidays
would be over, and he would go back to school. He began to
wonder whether he would wear the marks of suffering on his
countenance, and whether his friends would eye him curiously,
asking themselves in whispers what man this was that came among
them with so sad and noble an expression of resignation. As
Michael thought of Trimble and Kathleen meeting in
Burton-on-Trent and daily growing nearer to each other in love,
he became certain that his grief would indeed be manifest. He
pictured himself sitting in the sunlit serene class-room of the
History Sixth, a listless figure of despair, an object of
wondering, whispering compassion. And so his life would lose
itself in a monotone of discontent. Grey distances of time
presented themselves to him with a terrible menace of
loneliness; the future was worse than ever, a barren waste
whose horizon would never darken to the silhouette of Kathleen
coming towards him with open arms. Never would he hold her hand
again; never would he touch those lips at all; never would he
even know what dresses she wore in summer. _‘O love, my love,
and no love for me.’_
When Michael met Kathleen by the side-gate of the Winter Gardens, and
received his bicycle back from Trimble, he suddenly wondered whether
Kathleen had told her betrothed that another had held her hand. Michael
rather hoped she had, and that the news of it had made Trimble jealous.
Trimble, however, seemed particularly pleased with himself, and invited
Michael to spend the afternoon with him, which Michael promised to do,
if his mother did not want his company.
“Well, did you have a decent morning?” Michael enquired of Kathleen, as
together they rode towards their hotel.
“Oh, we had a grand time; we sat down where you and me sat the other
day.”
Michael nearly mounted the pavement at this news, and looked very
gloomy.
“What’s the matter?” Kathleen pursued. “You’re not put out, are you?”
“Oh, no, not at all,” said Michael sardonically. “All the same, I think
you might have turned off and gone another road. I sat and thought of
you all the morning. But I don’t mind really,” he added, remembering
that at any rate for Kathleen he must remain that chivalrous and
selfless being which had been created by the loan of a bicycle. “I’m
glad you enjoyed yourself. I always want you to be happy. All my life I
shall want that.”
Michael was surprized to find how much more eloquent he was in
the throes of disappointment than he had ever been through the
prompting of passion. He wished that the hotel were not already
in sight, for he felt that he could easily say much more about
his renunciation, and indeed he made up his mind to do so at
the first opportunity. In the afternoon he told his mother he
was going to pay a visit to Father Moneypenny. He did not tell
her about Trimble, because he feared her teazing; although
he tried to deceive himself that the lie was due to his
loyalty to Kathleen.
“What shall we do?” asked Trimble. “Shall we toddle round to the Shades
and have a drink?”
“Just as you like,” Michael said.
“Well, I’m on for a drink. It’s easier to talk down at the Shades than
in here.”
Michael wondered why, but he accepted a cigar, and with Trimble sought
the speech-compelling Shades.
“It’s like this,” Trimble began, when they were seated on the worn
leather of the corner lounge. “I took a fancy to you right off. Eh, I’m
from the North, and I may be a bit blunt, but by gum I liked you, and
that’s how it is. Yes. I’m going to talk to you the same as I might to
my own brother, only I haven’t got one.”
Michael looked a little apprehensive of the sack of confidences that
would presently be emptied over his head, and, seeking perhaps to turn
Trimble from his intention, asked him to guess his age.
“Well, I suppose you’re anything from twenty-two to twenty-three.”
Michael choked over his lemon-and-dash before he announced grimly that
he was seventeen.
“Get out,” said Trimble sceptically. “You’re more than that. Seventeen?
Eh, I wouldn’t have thought it. Never mind, I said I was going to tell
you. And by gum I will, if you say next you haven’t been weaned.”
Michael resented the freedom of this expression and knitted his
eyebrows in momentary distaste.
“It’s like this,” Mr. Trimble began again, “I made up my mind to-day
that Kath’s the lass for me. Now am I right? That’s what I want to ask
you. Am I right?”
“I suppose if you’re in love with her and she’s in love with you, yes,”
said Michael.
“Well, she is. Now you wouldn’t think she was passionate,
would you? You’d say she was a bit of ice, wouldn’t you? Well,
by gum, I tell you, lad, she’s a furnace. Would you believe
that?” Mr. Trimble leaned back triumphantly.
Michael did not know what comment to make on this information, and took
another sip of his lemon-and-dash.
“Well, now what I say is—and I’m not a chap who’s flung round a great
deal with the girls—what I say is,” Trimble went on, banging the marble
table before him, “it’s not fair on a lass to play around like this,
and so I’ve made up my mind to marry her. Am I right? By gum, lad, I
know I’m right.”
“I think you are,” said Michael solemnly. “And I think you’re awfully
lucky.”
“Lucky?” echoed Trimble, “I’m lucky enough, if it wasn’t for her domned
old father. The lass is fine, but him—well, if I was to tell you what
he is, you’d say I was using language. So it’s like this. I want Kath
to marry me down here. I’ll get the license. I’ve saved up a hundred
pounds. I’m earning two hundred a year now. Am I right?”
“Perfectly right,” said Michael earnestly, who, now that Trimble was
showing himself to possess real fervour of soul, was ready to support
him, even at the cost of his own suffering. He envied Trimble his
freedom from the trammels of education, which for such a long while
would prevent himself from taking such a step as marriage by license.
Indeed, Michael scarcely thought he ever would take such a step now,
since it was unlikely that anyone with Kathleen’s attraction would lure
him on to such a deed.
Trimble’s determination certainly went a long way to excuse the
failings of his outer person in Michael’s eyes, and indeed, as
he pledged him a stirrup-cup of lemon-and-dash, Trimble and
Young Lochinvar were not seriously distinct in Michael’s
imaginative anticipation of the exploit.
So all day and every day for ten days Michael presumably spent his time
with Kathleen, notwithstanding Mrs. Fane’s tenderly malicious teazing,
notwithstanding the elder Miss McDonnell’s growing chill, and
notwithstanding several very pointed questions from the interfering old
spinsters and knitters in the sun of the hotel-gardens. That actually
he spent his time alone in watching slow-handed clocks creep on towards
a quarter to one or a quarter to five or a quarter to seven, filled
Michael daily more full with the spiritual rewards of his sacrifice. He
had never known before the luxury of grief, and he had no idea what a
variety of becoming attitudes could be wrought of sadness, and not
merely attitudes, but veritable dramas. One of the most heroically
poignant of these was founded on the moment when Kathleen should ask
him to be godfather to her first-born. “No, no,” Michael would exclaim.
“Don’t ask me to do that. I have suffered enough.” And Kathleen would
remorsefully and silently steal from the dusky room a-flicker with sad
firelight, leaving Michael a prey to his own noble thoughts. There was
another drama scarcely less moving, in which the first-born died, and
Michael, on hearing the news, took the night express to Burton in order
to speak words of hope above the little duplicate of Trimble now for
ever still in his cradle. Sometimes in the more expansive moments of
Michael’s celibacy Trimble and Kathleen would lose all their money, and
Michael, again taking the night express to Burton-on-Trent, would offer
to adopt about half a dozen duplicates of Trimble.
Finally the morning of the marriage arrived, and Michael,
feeling that this was an excellent opportunity to have the
first of his dramas staged in reality, declined to be present.
His refusal was a little less dramatic than he had intended,
because Kathleen was too much excited by her own reckless
behaviour to act up. While Michael waited for the ceremony’s
conclusion, he began a poem called ‘Renunciation.’
Unfortunately the marriage service was very much faster than
his Muse, and he never got farther than half the opening line,
‘_If I renounce_.’ Michael, however, ascribed his failure to a
little girl who would persist in bouncing a tennis ball near
his seat in the gardens.
The wedding was only concluded just in time, because Mr. and Mrs.
McDonnell arrived on the following day and Michael’s expeditions with
Kathleen were immediately forbidden. Possibly the equable Miss
McDonnell had been faintly alarmed for her sister’s good name. At any
rate she had certainly been annoyed by her continuous neglect.
Michael, however, had a long interview with Trimble, and managed to
warn Kathleen that her husband was going to present himself after
dinner. Trimble and he had thought this was more likely to suit Mr.
McDonnell’s digestion than an after-breakfast confession. Michael
expressed himself perfectly willing to take all the blame, and
privately made up his mind that if Mr. McDonnell tried to be ‘too
funny,’ he would summon his mother to ‘polish him off’ with the vision
of her manifest superiority.
Somewhat to Michael’s chagrin his share in the matter was overlooked by
Mr. McDonnell, and the oration he had prepared to quell the long-lipped
Irish father was never delivered. Whatever scenes of domestic strife
occurred, occurred without Michael’s assistance, and he was not a
little dismayed to be told by Kathleen in the morning that all had
passed off well, but that in the circumstances her father had thought
they had better leave Bournemouth at once.
“You’re going?” stammered Michael.
“Yes. We must be getting back. It’s all been so sudden, and
Walter’s coming into the business, and eh, I’m as happy as the
day is long.”
Michael watched them all depart, and after a few brave
good-byes and three flutters from Kathleen’s handkerchief
turned sadly back into the large, unfriendly hotel. He knew the
number of Kathleen’s room, and in an access of despair that
was, however, not so overwhelming as to preclude all
self-consciousness, he wandered down the corridor and peeped
into the late haunt of his love. The floor was littered with
tissue paper, broken cardboard-boxes, empty toilet-bottles, and
all the disarray of departure. Michael caught his breath at the
sudden revelation of this abandoned room’s appeal. Here was the
end of Kathleen’s maidenhood; here still lingered the
allurement of her presence; but Trimble could never see this
last virginal abode, this elusive shrine that Michael wished he
could hire for sentimental meditations. Along the corridor came
the sound of a dustpan. He looked round hastily for one
souvenir of Kathleen, and perceived still moist from her last
quick ablution a piece of soap. He seized it quickly and
surrendered the room to the destructive personality of the
housemaid.
“Well, dear,” asked Mrs. Fane at lunch, “did your lady love give you
anything to commemorate your help? Darling Michael, you must have made
a most delicious knight-errant.”
“Oh, no, she didn’t give me anything,” said Michael. “Why should she?”
Then he blushed, thinking of the soap that was even now
enshrined in a drawer and scenting his handkerchiefs and ties.
He wondered if Alan would understand the imperishable effluence
from that slim cenotaph of soap.