I N the air of the Easter holidays that year there must have
been something unusually amorous even for April, for when
Michael came back to school he found that most of his friends
and contemporaries had been wounded by love’s darts. Alan, to
be sure, returned unscathed, but as he had been resting in the
comparatively cloistral seclusion of Cobble Place, Michael did
not count his whole heart much honour to anything except his
lack of opportunity. Everybody else had come back in possession
of girls; some even had acquired photographs. There was talk of
gloves and handkerchiefs, of flowers and fans, but nobody, as
far as Michael could cautiously ascertain, had thought of soap;
and he congratulated himself upon his relic. Also, apparently,
all his friends in their pursuit of Eastertide nymphs had been
successful, and he began to take credit to himself for being
unlucky. His refusal (to this already had come Kathleen’s
suddenly withdrawn hand) gave him a peculiar interest, and
those of his friends in whom he confided looked at him with
awe, and listened respectfully to his legend of despair.
Beneath the hawthorns on the golden afternoons and lingering topaz eves
of May, Michael would wait for Alan to finish his game of cricket, and
between lazily applauded strokes and catches he would tell the tale of
Kathleen to his fellows:
“I asked her to wait for me. Of course she was older than me. I
said I was ready to marry her when I was twenty-one, but there
was another chap, a decent fellow,
devilish handsome, too. He was frightfully rich, and so she
agreed to elope with him. I helped them no end. I told her
father he simply must not attempt to interfere. But, of
course, I was frightfully cut up—oh, absolutely knocked out.
We’re all of us unlucky in love in our family. My sister was
in love with an Austrian who was killed by an avalanche. I
don’t suppose I shall ever be in love again. They say you
never really fall in love more than once in your life. I feel
a good deal older this term. I suppose I look ... oh, well hit
indeed—run it out, and again, sir, and again ...!”
So Michael would break off the tale of his love, until one of his
listeners would seek to learn more of passion’s frets and fevers.
“But, Bangs, what about the day she eloped? What did you do?”
“I wrote poetry,” Michael would answer.
“Great Scott, that’s a bit of a swat, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it’s a bit difficult,” Michael would agree. “Only, of
course, I only write _vers libre_ . No rhymes or anything.”
And then an argument would arise as to whether poetry without rhymes
could fairly be called poetry at all. This argument, or another like
it, would last until the cricket stopped, when Michael and his fellows
would stroll into the pavilion and examine the scoring-book or
criticize the conduct of the game.
It was a pleasant time, that summer term, and life moved on
very equably for Michael, notwithstanding his Eastertide
heartbreak. Alan caused him a little trouble by his
indifference to anything but cricket, and one Sunday, when May
had deepened into June, Michael took him to task for his
attitude. Alan had asked Michael over to Richmond for the
week-end, and the two of them had punted down the river towards
Kew. They had moored their boat under a weeping willow about
the time when the
bells for church, begin to chime across the level
water-meadows.
“Alan, aren’t you ever going to fall in love?” Michael began.
“Why should I?” Alan countered in his usual way.
“I don’t know. I think it’s time you did,” said Michael. “You’ve no
idea how much older it makes you feel. And I suppose you don’t want to
remain a kid for ever. Because, you know, old chap, you are an awful
kid beside me.”
“Thanks very much,” said Alan. “I believe you’re exactly one month
older, as a matter of fact.”
“Yes, in actual time,” said Michael earnestly. “But in experience I’m
years older than you.”
“That must be why you’re such a rotten field,” commented Alan. “After
forty the joints get stiff.”
“Oh, chuck being funny,” said Michael severely. “I’m in earnest. Now
you know as well as I do that last term and the term before I was
miserable. Well, look at me now. I’m absolutely happy.”
“I thought you were so frightfully depressed,” said Alan, twinkling. “I
thought you’d had an unlucky love affair. It seems to take you
differently from the way it takes most people.”
“Oh, of course, I _was_ miserable,” Michael explained. “But now
I’m happy in her happiness. That’s love.”
Alan burst out laughing, and Michael observed that if he intended to
receive his confidences in such a flippant way, he would in future take
care to be more secretive.
“I’m showing you what a lot I care about you,” Michael went on in tones
of deepest injury, “by telling you about myself. I think it’s rather
rotten of you to laugh.”
“But you’ve told everybody,” Alan pointed out.
Michael took another tack, and explained to Alan that he wanted
the spur of his companionship in everything.
“It would be so ripping if we were both in love,” he sighed. “Honestly,
Alan, don’t you feel I’m much more developed since last term? I say,
you played awfully well yesterday against Dulford Second. If you go on
improving at the rate you are now, I don’t see why you shouldn’t get
your Blue at Oxford. By Jove, you know, in eighteen months we shall be
at Oxford. Are you keen?”
“Frightfully keen,” said Alan. “Especially if I haven’t got to be in
love all the time.”
“I’m not going to argue with you any more,” Michael announced. “But
you’re making a jolly big mistake. Still, of course, I do understand
about your cricket, and I dare say love might make you a bit boss-eyed.
Perhaps when footer begins again next term, I shall get over this
perpetual longing I have for Kathleen. You’ve no idea how awful I felt
when she said she loved Trimble. He was rather a bounder too, but of
course I had to help them. I say, Alan, do you remember Dora and
Winnie?”
“Rather,” said Alan, smiling. “We made pretty good asses of ourselves
over them. Do you remember how fed up Nancy got?”
So, very easily the conversation drifted into reminiscences of earlier
days, until the sky was quilted with rose-tipped pearly clouds. Then
they swung a Japanese lantern in the prow and worked up-stream towards
Richmond clustering dark against the west, while an ivory moon
shimmered on the dying azure of the day behind.
Throughout June the image of Kathleen became gradually fainter
and fainter with each materialization that Michael evoked. Then
one evening before dinner he found that the maid had forgotten
to put a fresh cake of soap in the dish. It was a question of
ringing the bell or of callously using Kathleen’s commemorative
tablet. Michael went to his drawer and, as he slowly washed his
hands, he washed from his mind the few insignificant
outlines of Kathleen that were printed there. The soap was
Trèfle Incarnat, and somewhat cynically Michael relished the
savour of it, and even made up his mind to buy a full fat cake
when this one should be finished. Kathleen, however, even in
the fragrant moment of her annihilation, had her revenge, for
Michael experienced a return of the old restlessness and
discontent that was not mitigated by Alan’s increasing
preoccupation with cricket. He did not complain of this, for
he respected the quest of School Colours, and was proud for
Alan. At the same time something must be done to while away
these warm summer evenings until at Basingstead Minor, where
his mother had delightfully agreed to take a cottage for the
summer, he and Alan could revive old days at Cobble Place.
One evening Michael went out about nine o’clock to post a letter and,
finding the evening velvety and calm, strolled on through the enticing
streets of twilight. The violet shadows in which the white caps and
aprons of gossiping maids took on a moth-like immaterial beauty, the
gliding, enraptured lovers, the scent of freshly watered flower-boxes,
the stars winking between the chimney-pots, and all the drowsy
alertness of a fine London dusk drew him on to turn each new corner as
it arrived, until he saw the sky stained with dull gold from the
reflection of the lively crater of the Earl’s Court Exhibition, and
heard over the vague intervening noises music that was sometimes
clearly melodious, sometimes a mere confusion of spasmodic sound.
Michael suddenly thought he would like to spend his evening at
the Exhibition, and wondered to himself why he had never
thought of going there casually like this, why always he had
considered it necessary to devote a hot afternoon and flurried
evening to its exploitation. By the entrance he met a
fellow-Jacobean, one Drake,
whose accentuated mannishness, however disagreeable in the
proximity of the school, might be valuable at the Exhibition.
Michael therefore accepted his boisterous greeting pleasantly
enough, and they passed through the turnstiles together.
“I’ll introduce you to a smart girl, if you like,” Drake offered, as
they paused undecided between the attractions of two portions of the
Exhibition. “She sells Turkish Delight by the Cave of the Four Winds.
Very O.T., my boy,” Drake went on.
“Do you mean——” Michael began.
“What? Rather,” said Drake. “I’ve been home to her place.”
“No joking?” Michael asked.
“Yes,” affirmed Drake with a triumphant inhalation of sibilant breath.
“Rather lucky, wasn’t it?” Michael asked. “I mean to say, it was rather
lucky to meet her.”
“She might take you home,” suggested Drake, examining Michael
critically.
“But I mightn’t like her,” Michael expostulated.
“Good Lord,” exclaimed Drake, struck by a point of view that was
obviously dismaying in its novelty, “you don’t mean to say you’d bother
about that, if you could?”
“Well, I rather think I should,” Michael admitted. “I think I’d want to
be in love.”
“You are an extraordinary chap,” said Drake. “Now if I were dead nuts
on a girl, the last thing I’d think of would be that.”
They walked along silently, each one pondering the other’s
incomprehensibleness, until they came to the stall presided
over by Miss Mabel Bannerman, who in Michael’s opinion bore a
curious resemblance to the Turkish Delight she sold. With the
knowledge of her he had obtained from Drake, Michael regarded
Miss Bannerman very much
as he would have looked at an animal in the Zoological Gardens
with whose habits he had formed a previous acquaintanceship
through a book of natural history. He tried to perceive beyond
her sachet-like hands and watery blue eyes and spongy hair and
full-blown breast the fascination which had made her man’s
common property. Then he looked at Drake, and came to the
conclusion that the problem was not worth the difficulty of
solution.
“I think I’ll be getting back,” said Michael awkwardly.
“Why, it’s not ten,” gasped Drake. “Don’t be an ass. Mabel gets out at
eleven, and we can take her home. Can’t we, Mabel?”
“Sauce!” Mabel archly snapped.
This savoury monosyllable disposed of Michael’s hesitation, and, as the
personality of Mabel cloyed him with a sudden nausea like her own
Turkish Delight, he left her to Drake without another word and went
home to bed.
The night was hot and drew Michael from vain attempts at sleep
to the open window where, as he sat thinking, a strange
visionary survey of the evening, a survey that he himself could
scarcely account for, was conjured up. He had not been aware at
the time of much more than Drake and the Turkish Delight stall.
Now he realized that he too craved for a Mabel, not a peony of
a woman who could be flaunted like a vulgar button-hole, but a
more shy, a more subtle creature, yet conquerable. Then, as
Michael stared out over the housetops at the brooding pavilion
of sky which enclosed the hectic city, he began to recall the
numberless glances, the countless attitudes, all the sensuous
phantasmagoria of the Exhibition’s population. He remembered a
slim hand, a slanting eye, lips translucent in a burst of
light. He caught at scents that, always fugitive, were now
utterly incommunicable; he trembled at the remembrance of some
contact in a crowd
that had been at once divinely intimate and unendurably
remote. The illusion of all the city’s sleepers calling to him
became more and more vivid under each stifling breath of the
night. Somewhere beneath that sable diadem of chimney-tops she
lay, that lovely girl of his desire. He would not picture her
too clearly lest he should destroy the charm of this amazing
omnipotence of longing. He would be content to enfold the
imagination of her, and at dawn let her slip from his arms
like a cloud. He would sit all the night time at his window,
aware of kisses. Was this the emotion that prompted poets to
their verses? Michael broke his trance to search for paper and
pencil, and wrote ecstatically.
In the morning, when he read what he had written, he hastily tore it
up, and made up his mind that the Earl’s Court Exhibition would feed
his fire more satisfactorily than bad verses. Half a guinea would buy a
season-ticket, and July should be a pageant of sensations.
Every night Michael went to Earl’s Court, and here a hundred brilliant
but evanescent flames were kindled in his heart, just as in the
Exhibition gardens every night for three hours the fairy-lamps spangled
the edge of the paths in threads of many-tinted lights. Michael always
went alone, because he did not desire any but his own discoveries to
reward his excited speculation. At first he merely enjoyed the
sensation of the slow stream of people that continually went up and
down, or strolled backwards and forwards, or circled round the
bandstand that was set out like a great gaudy coronet upon the
parterres of lobelias and geraniums and calceolarias that with
nightfall came to seem brocaded cushions.
It was a time profitable with a thousand reflections, this
crowded hour of the promenade. There was always the mesmeric
sighing of silk skirts and the ceaseless murmur of
conversation; there was the noise of the band and the
tapping of canes; there was, in fact, a regularity of sound
that was as infinitely soothing as breaking waves or a
wind-ruffled wood. There were the sudden provocative glances
which flashed as impersonally as precious stones, and yet
lanced forth a thrill that no faceted gem could give. There
were hands whose white knuckles, as they rippled over
Michael’s hands in some momentary pressure of the throng, gave
him a sense of being an instrument upon which a chord had been
clearly struck. There were strands of hair that floated
against his cheeks with a strange, but exquisitely elusive
intimacy of communication. It was all very intoxicating and
very sensuous; but the spell crept over him as imperceptibly
as if he were merely yielding himself to the influence of a
beautiful landscape, as if he were lotus-eating in a solitude
created by numbers.
Michael, however, was not content to dream away in a crowd these
passionate nights of July; and after a while he set out to find
adventures in the great bazaar of the Exhibition, wandering through the
golden corridors and arcades with a queer sense of suppressed
expectancy. So many fantastic trades were carried on here, that it was
natural to endow the girls behind the counters with a more romantic
life than that of ordinary and anæmic shop-assistants. Even Miss Mabel
Bannerman amid her Turkish Delight came to seem less crude in such
surroundings, and Michael once or twice had thoughts of prosecuting his
acquaintanceship; for as yet he had not been able to bring himself to
converse with any of the numerous girls, so much more attractive than
Mabel, who were haunting him with their suggestion of a strange
potentiality.
Michael wandered on past the palmists who went in and out of
their tapestried tents; past the physiognomists and
phrenologists and graphologists; past the vendors of scents and
silver; past the languid women who spread out their golden rugs
from Samarcand; past the Oriental
shops fuming with odorous pastilles, where lamps encrusted in
deep-hued jewels of glass glimmered richly; past that
slant-eyed cigarette-seller with the crimson fez crowning her
dark hair.
July was nearing its end; the holidays were in sight; and still Michael
had got no farther with his ambitions; still at the last moment he
would pass on and neglect some perfect opportunity for speech. He used
to rail at his cowardice, and repeat to himself all his academic
knowledge of frail womanhood. He even took the trouble to consult the
Ars Amatoria, and was so much impressed by Ovid’s prescription for
behaviour at a circus that he determined to follow his advice. To put
his theory into practice, Michael selected a booth where seals
performed for humanity at sixpence a head. But all his resolutions
ended in sitting mildly amused by the entertainment in a condition of
absolute decorum.
School broke up with the usual explosion of self-congratulatory
rhetoric from which Michael, owing to his Exhibition ticket, failed to
emerge with any calf-bound souvenir of intellectual achievement. He
minded this less than his own pusillanimous behaviour on the brink of
experience. It made him desperate to think that in two days he would be
at Basingstead with his mother and Alan and Mrs. Ross, utterly remote
even from the pretence of temptation.
“Dearest Michael, you really must get your things together,”
expostulated Mrs. Fane, when he announced his intention of going round
to the Exhibition as usual on the night before they were to leave town.
“Well, mother, I can pack when I come in, and I do want to get all I
can out of this ‘season.’ You see it will be absolutely wasted for
August and half September.”
“Michael,” said Mrs. Fane suddenly, “you’re not keeping
anything from me?”
“Good gracious, no. What makes you ask?” Michael demanded, blushing.
“I was afraid that perhaps some horrid girl might have got hold of
you,” said Mrs. Fane.
“Why, would you mind very much?” asked Michael, with a curious
hopefulness that his mother would pursue the subject, as if by so doing
she would give him an opportunity of regarding himself and his
behaviour objectively.
“I don’t know that I should mind very much,” said Mrs. Fane, “if I
thought you were quite certain not to do anything foolish.” Then she
seemed to correct the laxity of her point of view, and substituted,
“anything that you might regret.”
“What could I regret?” asked Michael, seeking to drive his mother on to
the rocks of frankness.
“Surely you know what better than I can tell you. Don’t you?” The note
of interrogation caught the wind, and Mrs. Fane sailed off on the
starboard tack.
“But as long as you’re not keeping anything from me,” she went on, “I
don’t mind. So go out, dear child, and enjoy yourself by all means. But
don’t be very late.”
“I never am,” said Michael quickly, and a little resentfully as he
thought of his very decorous homecomings.
“I know you’re not. You’re really a very dear fellow,” his mother
murmured, now safe in port.
So at nine o’clock as usual Michael passed through the turnstiles and
began his feverish progress across the Exhibition grounds, trying as he
had never tried before to screw himself up to the pitch of the
experience he craved.
He was standing by one of the entrances to the Court of
Marvels, struggling with his self-consciousness and egging
himself on to be bold on this his last night, when he heard
himself accosted as Mr. Michael Fane. He looked round and saw a
man whom he instantly recognized, but for the moment could not
name.
“It is Mr. Michael Fane?” the stranger asked. “You don’t remember me? I
met you at Clere Abbey.”
“Brother Aloysius!” Michael exclaimed, and as he uttered the
high-sounding religious appellation he almost laughed at the
incongruity of it in connection with this slightly overdressed and
dissolute-looking person he so entitled.
“Well, not exactly, old chap. At least not in this get-up. Meats is my
name.”
“Oh, yes,” said Michael vaguely. There seemed no other comment on such
a name, and Mr. Meats himself appeared sensitive to the implication of
uncertainty, for he made haste to put Michael at ease by commenting on
its oddity.
“I suppose you’re thinking it’s a damned funny exchange for Brother
Aloysius. But a fellow can’t help his name, and that’s a fact.”
“You’ve left the Abbey then?” enquired Michael.
“Oh Lord, yes. Soon after you went. It was no place for me. Manners,
O.S.B., gave me the push pretty quick. And I don’t blame him. Well,
what are you doing? Have a drink? Or have you got to meet your best
girl? My, you’ve grown since I saw you last. Quite the Johnny nowadays.
But I spotted you all right. Something about your eyes that would be
very hard to forget.”
Michael thought that if it came to unforgettable eyes, the eyes of Mr.
Meats would stand as much chance of perpetual remembrance as any, since
their unholy light would surely set any heart beating with the
breathless imagination of sheer wickedness.
“Yes, I have got funny eyes, haven’t I?” said Meats in complacent
realization of Michael’s thoughts. And as he spoke he seemed
consciously to exercise their vile charm, so that his irises kindled
slowly with lambent blue flames.
“Come on, let’s have this drink,” urged Meats, and
he led the way to a scattered group of green tables. They sat
down, and Michael ordered a lemon-squash.
“Very good drink too,” commented Meats. “I think I’ll have the same,
Rosie,” he said to the girl who served them.
“Do you know that girl?” Michael asked.
“Used to. About three years ago. She’s gone oil though,” said Meats
indifferently.
Michael, to hide his astonishment at the contemptuous suggestion of
damaged goods, enquired what Meats had been doing since he left the
Monastery.
“Want to know?” asked Meats.
Michael assured him that he did.
“You’re rather interested in me, aren’t you? Well, I can tell you a few
things and that’s a fact. I don’t suppose that there’s anybody in
London who could tell you more. But you might be shocked.”
“Oh, shut up!” scoffed Michael, blushing with indignation.
Then began the shameless narration of the late Brother Aloysius, whom
various attainments had enabled to gain an equal profit from religion
and vice. Sometimes as Michael listened to the adventures he was
reminded of Benvenuto Cellini or Casanova, but almost immediately the
comparison would be shattered by a sudden sanctimonious blasphemy which
he found nauseating. Moreover, he disliked the sly procurer that
continually leered through the man’s personality.
“You seem to have done a lot of dirty work for other people,” Michael
bluntly observed at last.
“My dear old chap,” replied Meats, “of course I have. You see,
in this world there are lots of people who can always square
their own consciences, if the worst of what they want to do is
done for them behind the scenes as it were. You never yet heard
a man confess that he ruined
a girl. Now, did you? Why, I’ve heard the most shocking
out-and-outers anyone could wish to meet brag that they’ve
done everything, and then turn up their eyes and thank God
they’ve always respected real purity. Well, I never respected
anything or anybody. And why should I? I never had a chance.
Who was my mother? A servant. Who was my father? A minister, a
Nonconformist minister in Wales. And what did the old tyke do?
Why, he took the case to court and swore my mother was out for
blackmail. So she went to prison, and he came smirking home
behind the village band; and all the old women in the place
hung out Union Jacks to show they believed in him. And then
his wife gave a party.”
Michael looked horrified and felt horrified at this revelation of
vileness, and yet, all the time he was listening, through some
grotesquery of his nerves he was aware of thinking to himself the
jingle of Little Bo-peep.
“Ah, that’s touched you up, hasn’t it?” said Meats, eagerly leaning
forward. “But wait a bit. What did my mother do when she came out? Went
on the streets. Do you hear? On the streets, and mark you, she was a
servant, a common village servant, none of your flash Empire goods. Oh,
no, she never knew what it was like to go up the river on a Sunday
afternoon. And she drank. Well, of course she drank. Gin was as near as
she ever got to paradise. And where was I brought up? Not among the
buttercups, my friend, you may lay on that. No, I was down underneath,
underneath, underneath where a chap like you will never go because
you’re a gentleman. And so, though, of course, you’re never likely to
ruin a girl, you’ll always have your fun. Why shouldn’t you? Being a
nicely brought-up young gentleman, it’s your birthright.”
“But how on earth did you ever become a monk?” asked Michael,
anxious to divert the conversation away from himself.
“Well, it does sound a bit improbable, I must say. I was recommended
there by a priest—a nice chap called Arbuthnot who’d believe a
chimney-sweep was a miller. But Manners was very sharp on to me, and I
was very sharp on to Manners. Picking blackberries and emptying slops!
What a game! I came with a character and left without one. Probationer
was what they called me. Silly mug was what I called myself.”
“You seem to know a lot of priests,” said Michael.
“Oh, I’ve been in with parsons since I was at Sunday-school. Well,
don’t look so surprized. You don’t suppose my mother wanted me hanging
round all the afternoon! Now I very soon found out that one can always
get round a High Church slum parson, and very often a Catholic priest
by turning over a new leaf and confessing. It gets them every time, and
being by nature generous, it gets their pockets. That’s why I gave up
Dissenters and fashionable Vicars. Dissenters want more than they give,
and fashionable Vicars are too clever. That’s why they become
fashionable Vicars, I suppose,” said Meats pensively.
“But you couldn’t go on taking in even priests for ever,” Michael
objected.
“Ah, now I’ll tell you something. I do feel religious sometimes,” Meats
declared solemnly. “And I do really want to lead a new life. But it
doesn’t last. It’s like love. Never mind, perhaps I’ll be lucky enough
to die when I’m working off a religious stretch. I give you my word,
Fane, that often in these fits I’ve felt like committing suicide just
to cheat the devil. Would you believe that?”
“I don’t think you’re as bad as you make out,” said Michael
sententiously.
“Oh, yes, I am,” smiled the other. “I’m rotten bad. But I
reckon the first man I meet in hell will be my father, and if
it’s possible to hurt anyone down there more than they’re being
hurt already, I’ll do it. But look here, I shall
get the hump with this blooming conversation you’ve started me
off on. Come along, drink up and have another, and tell us
something about yourself.”
“Oh, there’s nothing to tell,” Michael sighed. “My existence is pretty
dull after yours.”
“I suppose it is,” said Meats, as if struck by a new thought.
“Everything has its compensations, as they say.”
“Frightfully dull,” Michael vowed. “Why, here am I still at school! You
know I wouldn’t half mind going down underneath, as you call it, for a
while. I believe I’d like it.”
“If you knew you could get up again all right,” commented Meats.
“Oh, of course,” Michael answered. “I don’t suppose Æneas would have
cared much about going down to hell, if he hadn’t been sure he could
come up again quite safely.”
“Well, I don’t know your friend with the Jewish name,” said Meats. “But
I’ll lay he didn’t come out much wiser than he went in if he knew he
could get out all right by pressing a button and taking the first lift
up.”
“Oh, well, I was only speaking figuratively,” Michael explained.
“So was I. The same here, and many of them, old chap,” retorted Meats
enigmatically.
“Ah, you don’t think I’m in earnest. You think I’m fooling,” Michael
complained.
“Oh, yes, I think you’d like to take a peep without letting go of
Nurse’s apron,” sneered Meats.
“Well, perhaps one day you’ll see me underneath,” Michael almost
threatened.
“No offence, old chap,” said Meats cordially. “It’s no good my
giving you an address because it won’t last, but London isn’t
very big, and we’ll run up against one another again, that’s a
cert. Now I’ve got to toddle off and meet a girl.”
“Have you?” asked Michael, and his enquiry was tinged with a faint
longing that the other noticed at once.
“Jealous?” enquired Meats. “Why, look at all the girls round about you.
It’s up to you not to feel lonely.”
“I know,” said Michael fretfully. “But how the deuce can I tell whether
they want me to talk to them?”
Meats laughed shrilly.
“What are you afraid of? Leading some innocent lamb astray?”
Again to Michael occurred the ridiculous rhyme of Bo-peep. So insistent
was it that he could scarcely refrain from humming it aloud.
“Of course I’m not afraid of that,” he protested. “But how am I to tell
they won’t think me a brute?”
“What would it matter if they did?” asked Meats.
“Well, I should feel a fool.”
“Oh, dear. You’re very young, aren’t you?”
“It’s nothing to do with being young,” Michael asserted. “I simply
don’t want to be a cad.”
“Somebody else is to be the cad first and then it’s all right, eh?”
chuckled Meats. “But it’s a shame to teaze a nice chap like you. I dare
say Daisy’ll have a friend with her.”
“Is Daisy the girl you’re going to see?”
“You’ve guessed my secret,” said Meats. “Come on, I’ll introduce you.”
As Michael rose to follow Meats, he felt that he was like Faust with
Mephistopheles. But Faust had asked for his youth back again. Michael
only demanded the courage not to waste youth while it was his to enjoy.
He felt that his situation was essentially different from the other,
and he hesitated no longer.
The next half-hour passed in a whirl. Michael was conscious of
a slim brunette in black and scarlet, and of a fairy-like
figure by her side in a dress of shimmering blue;
he was conscious too of a voice insinuating, softly metallic,
and of fingers that touched his wrist as lightly as silk.
There were whispers and laughters and sudden sweeping
embarrassments. There was a horrible sense of publicity, of
curious mocking eyes that watched his progress. There was an
overwhelming knowledge of money burning in his pocket, of
money hard and round and powerful. There were hot waves of
remorse and the thought of his heart hammering him on to be
brave. A cabman leaned over from his box like a gargoyle. A
key clicked.
Then, it seemed a century afterwards, Carlington Road stretched dim,
austere, forbidding to Michael’s ingress. A policeman’s deep salutation
sounded portentously reproachful. The bloom of dawn was on the windows.
The flames in the street-lamps were pale as primroses. At his own house
Michael saw the red and amber sparrows in their crude blue vegetation
horribly garish against the lighted entrance-hall. The Salve printed
funereally upon the mat was the utterance of blackest irony. He hastily
turned down the gas, and the stairs caught a chill unreality from the
creeping dawn. The balustrade stuck to his parched hands; the stairs
creaked grotesquely to his breathless ascent. His mother stood like a
ghost in her doorway.
“Michael, how dreadfully late you are.”
“Am I?” said Michael. “I suppose it is rather late. I met a fellow I
know.”
He spoke petulantly to conceal his agitation, and his one thought was
to avoid kissing her before he went up to his own room.
“It’s all right about my packing,” he murmured hastily. “In the morning
I shall have time. I’m sorry I woke you. Good night.”
He had passed; and he looked back compassionately, as she faded
in her rosy and indefinite loveliness away to her room.
Then, with the patterns of foulard ties crawling like insects
before his strained eyes, with collars coiling and uncoiling
like mainsprings, with all his clothes in one large intolerable
muddle, Michael pressed the cold sheets to his forehead and
tried to imagine that to-morrow he would be in the country.