M ICHAEL managed to avoid during the rest of the week any
reference, direct or indirect, to his interrupted conversation
with Mrs. Ross, though he fancied a reproachfulness in her
manner towards him, especially at the moment of saying
good-bye. He was not therefore much surprized to receive a
letter from her soon after he was back in Carlington Road.
Cobble Place ,
_September 18th._
_My dear Michael,_
_I have blamed myself entirely for what happened the other
day. I should have been honoured by your confidence, and I
cannot think why a wretched old-fashioned priggishness
should have shown itself just when I least wished it would.
I confess I was shocked for a moment, and perhaps I
horridly imagined more than you meant to imply. If I had
paused to think, I should have known that your desire to
confide in me was alone enough to prove that you were fully
conscious of the effect of anything you may have done. And
after all in any sin—forgive me if I’m using too strong a
word under a misapprehension—it is the effect which counts
most deeply._
_ I’m inclined to think that in all you do through life,
you will chiefly have to think of the effect of it on other
people. I believe that you yourself are one of those
characters that never radically deteriorate. This is rather
a dangerous statement to make to anyone so young as you
are. But I’m sure you are wise enough not to use it in
justification of any wrong impulse. Do always
remember, my dear boy, that however unscathed you feel
yourself to be, you must never assume that to be the
case with anyone else. I am really dreadfully
distressed to think that by my own want of sympathy on
a crucial occasion I have had to try to put into a
letter what could only have been hammered out in a long
talk. And we did hammer out something the other day. Or
am I too optimistic? Write to me some time and reassure
me a little, for I’m truly worried about you, and so
indignant with my stupid self. Best love from us all, _
_Your affectionate_
_Maud Ross._
Michael merely pondered this letter coldly. He was still under the
influence of the disappointment, and when he answered Mrs. Ross he
answered her without regard to any wound he might inflict.
64 Carlington Road ,
_Sunday._
_Dear Mrs. Ross,_
_Please don’t bother any more about it. I ought to have
known better. I don’t think it was such a very crucial
occasion. The weather is frightfully hot, and I don’t feel
much like playing footer this term. I’m reading Dante, not
in Italian, of course. London is as near the Inferno as
anything, I should think. It’s horribly hot. Excuse this
short letter, but I’ve nothing to say._
_Yours affectionately,_
_Michael._
Mrs. Ross made one more brief attempt to recapture him, but
Michael put her off with the most superficial gossip of
school-life, and she did not try again. He meant to play
football, notwithstanding the hot weather, but finding that his
boots were worn out, he continually put off buying another pair
and let himself drift into October before he
began. Then he hurt his leg, and had to stop for a while. This
spoiled his faint chance for the First Fifteen, and in the end
he gave up football altogether without much regret.
Games were a great impediment after all, when October’s thin blue skies
and sheen of pearl-soft airs led him on to dream along the autumnal
streets. Sometimes he would wander by himself through the groves of
Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, or on some secluded green chair he
would sit reading Verlaine, while continuously about him the slow
leaves of the great planes swooped and fluttered down ambiguously like
silent birds.
One Saturday afternoon he was sitting thus, when through the silver fog
that on every side wrought the ultimate dissolution of the view Michael
saw the slim figure of a girl walking among the trees. His mind was gay
with Verlaine’s delicate and fantastic songs, and this slim girl, as
she moved wraith-like over the ground marbled with fallen leaves,
seemed to express the cadence of the verse which had been sighing
across the printed page.
The girl with downcast glance walked on, seeming to follow her
path softly as one might follow through embroidery a thread of
silk, and as she drew nearer to Michael out of the fog’s
enchantment she lost none of her indefinite charm; but she
seemed still exquisite and silver-dewed. There was no one else
in sight, and now already Michael could hear the lisping of her
steps; then a breath of air among the tree-tops more remote
sent floating, swaying, fluttering about her a flight of
leaves. She paused, startled by the sudden shower, and at that
moment the down-going autumnal sun glanced wanly through the
glades and lighted her gossamer-gold hair with kindred gleams.
The girl resumed her dreaming progress, and Michael now frankly
stared in a rapture. She was dressed in deepest green
box-cloth, and the heavy folds that clung to that lissome form
made her ankles behind great pompons of black silk seem
astonishingly slender. One hand was masked by a small muff of
astrakhan; the other curled behind to gather close her skirt.
Her hair tied back with a black bow sprayed her tall neck with
its beaten gold. She came along downcast until she was within a
few feet of Michael; then she looked at him. He smiled, and her
mouth when she answered him with answering smile was like a
flower whose petals have been faintly stirred. Indeed, it was
scarcely a smile, scarcely more than a tremor, but her eyes
deepened suddenly, and Michael drawn into their dusky blue
exclaimed simply:
“I say, I’ve been watching you for a long time.”
“I don’t think you ought to talk to me like this in Kensington Gardens.
Why, there’s not a soul in sight. And I oughtn’t to let you talk.”
Her voice was low with a provocative indolence of tone, and while she
spoke her lips scarcely moved, so that their shape was never for an
instant lost, and the words seemed to escape like unwilling fugitives.
“What are you reading?” she idly asked, tapping Michael’s book with her
muff.
“Verlaine.”
“French?”
He nodded, and she pouted in delicious disapproval of his learned
choice.
“Fancy reading French unless you’ve got to.”
“But I enjoy these poems,” Michael declared. “As a matter of fact
you’re just like them. At least you were when I saw you first in the
distance. Now you’re more real somehow.”
Her gaze had wandered during his comparison and Michael, a little hurt
by her inattention, asked if she were expecting somebody.
“Oh, no. I just came out for a walk. I get a headache if I stay
in all the afternoon. Now I must go on. Good-bye.”
She scattered with a light kick the little heap of leaves that during
their conversation she had been amassing, and with a half-mocking wave
of her muff prepared to leave him.
“I say, don’t tear off,” Michael begged. “Where do you live?”
“Oh, a long way from here,” she said.
“But where?”
“West Kensington.”
“So do I,” cried Michael, thinking to himself that all the gods of luck
and love were fighting on his side this afternoon. “We’ll walk home
together.”
“Shall we?” murmured the girl, poised on bent toes as if she were
minded to flee from him in a breath.
“Oh, we must,” vowed Michael.
“But I mustn’t dawdle,” she protested.
“Of course not,” he affirmed with almost an inflexion of puritanical
rigour.
“You’re leaving your book, stupid,” she laughed, as he rose to take his
place by her side.
“I wouldn’t have minded, because all that’s in that book is in you,” he
declared. “I think I’ll leave it behind for a lark.”
She ran back lightly and opened it to see whether his name were on the
front page.
“Michael Fane,” she murmured. “What does ‘ex libris’ mean?” Yet even as
she asked the question her concentration failed, and she seemed not to
hear his answer.
“You didn’t really want to know, you funny girl,” said Michael.
“Know what?” she echoed, blinking round at him over her shoulder as
they walked on.
“The meaning of ‘ex libris.’”
“But I found out your name,” she challenged. “And you don’t
know mine.”
“What is it?” Michael dutifully asked.
“I don’t think I’ll tell you.”
“Ah, do.”
“Well, then, it’s Lily—and I’ve got a sister called Doris.”
“How old are you?”
“How old do you think?”
“Seventeen?” Michael hazarded.
She nodded. It was on the tip of his tongue to claim kinship on the
score of their similar years, but discretion defeated honesty, and he
said aloofly, gazing up at the sky:
“I’m nineteen and a half.”
She told him more as they mingled with the crowds in Kensington High
Street, that her mother was Mrs. Haden, who recited in public
sometimes, that her sister Doris wanted to go on the stage, and that
they lived in Trelawny Road.
“I know Trelawny Road,” Michael interjected, and in the
gathering crowds she was perforce closer to him, so that he was
fain to guide her gently past the glittering shops, immensely
conscious of the texture of her dress. They emerged into wider,
emptier pavements, and the wind came chilly down from Camden
Hill, so that she held her muff against her cheek, framing its
faint rose. Twilight drew them closer, and Michael wishful of
an even less frequented pavement suggested they should cross
the road by Holland Park. A moment she paused while a scarlet
omnibus clattered past, then she ran swiftly to where the trees
overhung the railings. It was exhilarating to follow her over
the wooden road that answered to his footsteps like castanets,
and as he caught up with her to fondle her bent arm. Their walk
died away to a saunter, while the street-lamps beamed upon them
with longer intervals of dark between each succeeding
lampshine. More slowly still they moved towards West Kensington
and parting. Her arm was twined round his like ivy, and
their two hands came together like leaves. At last the turning
she must take appeared on the other side of the road, and again
she ran and again he caught her arm. But this time it was still
warm with long contact and divinely familiar, since but for a
moment had it been relinquished. The dim side-street enfolded
them, and no dismaying passers-by startled their intercourse.
“But soon it will be Trelawny Road,” she whispered.
“Then kiss me quickly,” said Michael. “Lily, you must.”
It was in the midmost gloom between two lamps that they kissed first.
“Lily, once again.”
“No, no,” she whispered.
“But you’re mine,” he called exultantly. “You are. You know you are.”
“Perhaps,” she whispered, but even as his arms drew her towards him,
she slipped from his embrace, laughed very low and sweet, bounded
forward, waved her muff, ran swiftly to the next lamp-post, paused and
blew him kisses, then vanished round the corner of her road.
But a long time ago they had said they would meet to-morrow, and as
Michael stood in a maze all the clocks in the world ding-donged in his
ears the hour of their tryst.
There was only one thing to do for the expression of his joy, and that
was to run as hard as he could. So he ran, and when he saw two
coal-holes, he would jump from one to the other, rejoicing in the ring
of their metal covers. And all the time out of breath he kept saying,
“I’m in love, in love, in love.”
Every passer-by into whose eyes he looked seemed to have the
most beautiful expression; every poor man seemed to demand that
he should stay awhile from his own joy to comfort him. The
lamp-posts bloomed like tropic flowers, swaying and nodding
languorously. Every house took on a
look of the most unutterable completeness; the horses galloped
like Arabian barbs; policemen expanded like beneficent genii;
errand boys whistled like nightingales; all familiarity was
enchanted, and seven-leagued boots took him forward as easily
as if he travelled a world subdued to the effortless
transitions of sleep. Carlington Road stretched before him
bright, kindly, beckoning to his ingress. Against the lighted
entrance-hall of Number 64 Michael saw the red and amber
sparrows like humming-birds, ruby-throated, topaz-winged. The
parlour-maid’s cap and apron were of snow, and the banisters of
sandalwood.
Michael went to bed early that he might meet her in dreams, but still
for a long time he sat by his window peering at the tawny moon, while
at intervals trains went quickly past sparkling and swift as lighted
fuses. The scent of the leaves lying in the gardens all along
Carlington Road was vital with the airs from which she had been evoked
that afternoon, and his only regret was that his bedroom looked out on
precisely the opposite direction from that where now she was sleeping.
Then he himself became envious of sleep, and undressed quickly like one
who stands hot-footed by a lake’s edge, eager for the water’s cool.
Michael met Lily next day by the dusky corner of a street whose
gradual loss of outline he had watched occur through a patient
hour. It was not that Lily was late, but that Michael was so
early. Yet in his present mood of elation he could enjoy
communion even with bricks and mortar. He used every guileful
ruse to cheat time of his determined moment. He would walk
along with closed eyes for ten paces and with open eyes for ten
paces, the convention with himself, almost the wager, being
that Lily should appear while his eyes were closed. It would
have been truly disappointing had she swung round the corner
while his eyes were open. But as it still lacked half an hour
of her
appointment, there was not much fear of that. Then, as really
her time drew near, a tenser game was played, by which Lily
was to appear when his left foot was advanced. This match
between odd and even lasted until in all its straightness of
perfect division six o’clock was inscribed upon his watch. No
other hour could so well have suited her form.
Now began the best game of all, since it was played less with himself
than with fortune. Michael went to the next turning, and, hiding
himself from the view of Trelawny Road, only allowed himself to peep at
each decade. At a hundred and sixty-three he said “She’s in sight,” one
hundred and sixty-four, “She’s coming.” The century was eliminated, too
cumbersome for his fiery enumeration. Sixty-five, “I know she is.”
Sixty-six, sixty-seven, sixty-eight, sixty-nine! One hundred and
seventy was said slowly with an exquisite dragging deliberation. Then
Michael could look, and there she was with muff signalling through the
azure mists of twilight.
“I say, I told mother about you,” murmured Lily. “And she said, ‘Why
didn’t you ask him to come in to tea?’ But of course she doesn’t know
I’m meeting you this evening. I’m supposed to be going to church.”
Michael’s heart leaped at the thought that soon he would be able to see
her in her own home among her own belongings, so that in future no
conjured picture of her would be incomplete.
“Rather decent of your mother,” he said.
“Oh, well, she’s got to be very easy-going and all that, though of
course she doesn’t like us to get talked about. What shall we do now?”
“Walk about, I suppose,” said Michael. “Unless we get on top of
a bus and ride somewhere? Why not ride up to Hammersmith
Broadway and then walk along the towing-path?”
They found a seat full in the frore wind’s face, but yet the ride was
all too short, and almost by the time Michael had finished securing the
waterproof rug in which they sat incapable of movement, so tightly were
they braced in, it was time to undo it again and dismount. While the
church bells were ringing, they crossed Hammersmith Suspension Bridge
ethereal in the creeping river-mist and faintly motionable like a ship
at anchor. Then they wandered by the river that lapped the dead reeds
and gurgled along the base of the shelving clay bank. The wind drearily
stirred the osier-beds, and from time to time the dull tread of
indefinite passing forms was heard upon the sodden path. Michael could
feel the humid fog lying upon Lily’s sleeve, and when he drew her cheek
to his own it was bedewed with the falling night. But when their lips
met, the moisture and October chill were all consumed, and like a
burning rose she flamed upon his vision. Words to express his adoration
tumbled around him like nightmare speech, evasive, mocking, grotesquely
inadequate.
“There are no words to say how much I love to hold you, Lily,” he
complained. “It’s like holding a flower. And even in the dark I can see
your eyes.”
“I can’t see yours,” she murmured, and therefore nestled closer, “I
like you to kiss me,” she sighed.
“Oh, why do you?” Michael asked. “Why me?”
“You’re nice,” she less than whispered.
“Lily, I do love you.”
And Michael bit his lip at the close of “love” for the sweet pain of
making the foolish word more powerful, more long.
“What a funny husky voice,” she murmured in her own deep indolent
tones.
“Do you like me to call you ‘darling’ or ‘dearest’ best?” he asked.
“Both.”
“Ah, but which do you like best?”
To Michael the two words were like melodies which he had lately learned
to play. Indeed, they seemed to him his own melodies never played
before, and he was eager for Lily to pronounce judgment.
“Why do you ask questions?” she wondered.
“Say ‘dearest’ to me,” Michael begged.
“No, no,” she blushed against his heart.
“But say which you like best,” he urged. “Darling or dearest?”
“Well, darling,” she pouted.
“You’ve said it,” cried Michael rapturously. “Now you can say it of
your own accord. Oh, Lily, say it when you kiss me.”
“But supposing I never kiss you ever again?” asked Lily, pulling away
from his arms. “And besides we must go back.”
“Well, we needn’t hurry.”
“Not if you come at once,” she agreed.
One more kiss, one more gliding dreaming walk, one more pause to bid
the river farewell from the towering bridge, one more wrestle with the
waterproof-rug, one more slow lingering and then suddenly swift
escaping finger, one more wave of the muff, one last aerial salutation,
and she was gone till Wednesday.
Michael was left alone between the tall thin houses of
Kensington, but beneath his feet he seemed to feel the world
swing round through space; and all the tall thin houses, all
the fluted lamp-posts, all the clustering chimney-pots reeled
about him in the ecstasy of his aroused existence.