Sinister Street Volume I Part 64

"Yes ... I think I do. I think it's better to live than to stagnate as you're doing."

"What does your mother say?" Alan asked.

"I haven't told her anything about Lily."

"No, because you're not in earnest. And if you're in earnest, Lily isn't."

"What the devil do you know about her?" Michael angrily demanded.

"I know enough to see you're both behaving like a couple of reckless kids," Alan retorted.

"d.a.m.n you!" cried Michael in exasperation. "I wish to G.o.d you wouldn't try to interfere with what doesn't after all concern you very much."

"You insisted on introducing me," Alan pointed out.

"Because I thought it would be a rag if we were both in love with sisters. But you're turning into a machine. Since you've swotted up into the Upper Sixth, you've turned into a very good imitation of the prigs you a.s.sociate with. Everybody isn't like you. Some people develop.... I could have been just like you if I had cared to be. I could have been Captain of the School and Scholar of Balliol with my nose ground down to e? and ???, hammering out tenth-rate Latin lyrics and reading Theocritus with the amusing parts left out. But what's the good of arguing with you? You're perfectly content and you think you can be as priggish as you like, as long as you conceal it by making fifty runs in the Dulford match. I suppose you consider my behaviour unwholesome at eighteen.

Well, I dare say it is by your standards. But are your standards worth anything? I doubt it. I think they're fine up to a point. I'm perfectly willing to admit that we behaved like a pair of little blighters with those girls at Eastbourne. But this is something altogether different."

"We shall see," said Alan simply. "I'm not going to quarrel with you. So shut up."

Michael walked along in silence, angry with himself for having caused this ill-feeling by his obstinacy in making an unsuitable introduction, and angry with Alan because he would accentuate by his att.i.tude the mistake.

By the steps of his house Michael stopped and looked at Alan severely.

"This is the last time I shall attempt to cure you," he announced.

"All right," said Alan with perfect equanimity. "You can do anything you like but quarrel. You needn't talk to me or look at me or think about me until you want to. I shall feel a bit bored, of course, but, oh, my dear old chap, do get over this love-sickness soon."

"This isn't like that silly affair at Bournemouth last Easter," Michael challenged.

"I know that, my dear chap. I wish it was."

With the subject of love finally sealed between him and Alan, Michael receded farther and farther from the world of school. He condescended indeed to occupy a distinguished position by the hot-water pipes of the entrance-hall, where his aloofness and ability to judge men and G.o.ds made him a popular, if slightly incomprehensible, figure. Towards all the masters he emanated a compa.s.sion which he really felt very deeply.

Those whom he liked he conversed with as equals; those whom he disliked he talked to as inferiors. But he pitied both sections. In cla.s.s he was polite, but somewhat remote, though he missed very few opportunities of implicitly deriding the Liberal views of Mr. Kirkham. The whole school with its ant-like energy, whose ultimate object and obvious result were alike inscrutable to Michael, just idly amused him, and he reserved for Lily all his zest in life.

The Lent term pa.s.sed away with parsimonious February sunlight, with March lying grey upon the houses until it proclaimed itself suddenly in a booming London gale. The Easter holidays arrived, and Mrs. Fane determined to go to Germany and see Stella. Would Michael come? Michael pleaded many disturbed plans of cricket-practice; of Matriculation at St. Mary's College, Oxford; of working for the English Literature Prize; of anything indeed but his desire to see with Lily April break to May.

In the end he had his own way, and Mrs. Fane went to the continent without his escort.

Lily was never eager for the discussions and the contingencies and the doubts of love; in all their walks it had been Michael who flashed the questions, she who let slip her answers. The strange fatigue of spring made much less difference to her than to him, and however insistent he was for her kisses, she never denied him. Michael tried to feel that the acquiescence of the hard, the reasonable, the intellectual side of him to April's pa.s.sionate indulgence merely showed that he was more surely and more sanely growing deeper in love with Lily every day. Sometimes he had slight tremors of malaise, a sensation of weakening fibres, and dim stirrings of responsibility; but too strong for them was his heart's-ease, too precious was Lily's rose-bloomed grace of submission.

The more sharply imminent her form became upon his thought, the more surely deathless did he suppose his love. Michael's mind was always framing moments in eternity, and of all these moments the sight of her lying upon the vivid gra.s.s, the slim, the pastoral, the fair immortal girl stood unparagoned by any. There was no landscape that Lily did not make more inevitably composed. There was no place of which she did not become tutelary, whether she lay among the primroses that starred the steep brown banks of woodland or whether she fronted the great suns.h.i.+ne of the open country; but most of all when she sat in cowslips, looking over arched knees at the wind.

Michael fell into the way of talking to her as if he were playing upon Dorian pipes the tale of his love:

"I must buy you a ring, Lily. What ring shall I buy for you? Rings are all so dull. Perhaps your hands would look wrong with a ring, unless I could find a star-sapphire set in silver. I thought you were lovely in autumn, but I think you are more lovely in spring. How the days are going by; it will soon be May. Lily, if you had the choice of everything in the world, what would you choose?"

"I would choose to do nothing."

"If you had the choice of all the people in the world, would you choose me?"

"Yes. Of course."

"Lily, you make me curiously lazy. I want never again to do anything but sit in the sun with you. Why can't we stay like this for ever?"

"I shouldn't mind."

"I wish that you could be turned into a primrose, and that I could be turned into a hazel-bush looking down at you for ever. Or I wish you could be a cowslip and I could be a plume of gra.s.s. Lily, why is it that the longer I know you, the less you say?"

"You talk enough for both," said Lily.

"I talk less to you than to anyone. I really only want to look at you, you lovely thing."

But the Easter holidays were almost over, and Michael had to go to Oxford for his Matriculation. On their last long day together, Lily and he went to Hampton Court and dreamed the sad time away. When twilight was falling Michael said he had a sovereign to spend on whatever they liked best to do. Why should they not have dinner on a balcony over the river, and after dinner drive all the way home in a hansom cab?

So they sat grandly on the chilly balcony and had dinner, until Lily in her thin frock was cold.

"But never mind," said Michael. "I'll hold you close to me all the way to London."

They found their driver and told him where to go. The man was very much pleased to think he had a fare all the way to London, and asked Michael if he wanted to drive fast.

"No, rather slow, if anything," said Michael.

The fragrant miles went slowly past, and all the way they drove between the white orchards, and all the way like a spray of bloom Lily was his.

Past the orchards they went, past the twinkling roadside houses, past the gates where the shadows of lovers fell across the road, past the breaking limes and lilac, past the tulips stiff and dark in the moonlight, through the high narrow street of Brentford, past Kew Bridge and the slow trams with their dim people nodding, through Chiswick and into Hammersmith where a piano-organ was playing and the golden streets were noisy. It was Doris who opened the door.

"Eleven o'clock," she said. "Mother's rather angry."

"You'd better not come in," said Lily to Michael. "She'll be all right again by next week, when you come back."

"Oh, no, I'll come in," he insisted. "I'd rather explain why we're so late."

"It's no use arguing with mother when she's unreasonable," said Lily. "I shall go up to bed; I don't want to have a row."

"That's right," Doris sneered. "Always take the shortest and easiest way. You are a coward."

"Oh, shut up," said Lily, and without another word went upstairs.

"You've spoilt her," said Doris. "Well, are you going to see mother? She isn't in a very pleasant mood, I warn you."

"She's never been angry before," said Michael hopelessly.

"Well, she has really," Doris explained. "Only she's vented it on me."

"I say, I'm awfully sorry. I had no idea--" Michael began.

"Oh, don't apologize," said Doris. "I'm used to it. Thank G.o.d, I'm going on the stage next year; and then Lily and mother will be able to squabble to their heart's content."

Mrs. Haden was sitting in what was called The Cosy Corner; and she treated Michael's entrance with exaggerated politeness.