Sinister Street · Book II · Chapter 2 11 (2/3)

And when one bleak morning in early spring he read in a fatal column that Captain Kenneth Ross had been killed in action, his smouldering resentment blazed out, and as he hurried to school with sickened heart and eyes in a mist of welling tears, he could have cursed every one of the rosetted patriots for whose vainglory such a death paid the price. Alan, as he expected, was not at school, and Michael spent a restless, miserable morning. He hated the idea of discussing the news with his friends of the hot-water pipes, and when one by one the unimaginative, flaccid comments flowed easily forth upon an event that was too great for them even to hear, much less to speak of, Michael’s rage burst forth:

“For God’s sake, you asses, don’t talk so much. I’m sick of this war. I’m sick of reading that a lot of decent chaps have died for nothing, because it is for nothing, if this country is never again going to be able to stand defeat or victory. War isn’t anything to admire in itself. All the good of war is what it makes of the people who fight, and what it makes of the people who stay at home.”

The Olympians roared with laughter, and congratulated Michael on his humorous oration.

“Can’t you see that I’m serious? that it is important to be gentlemen?” Michael shouted.

“Who says we aren’t gentlemen?” demanded a very vapid, but slightly bellicose hero.

“Nobody says you aren’t a gentleman, you ass; at least nobody says you eat peas with a knife, but, my God, if you think it’s decent to wear that damned awful button in your coat when fellows are being killed every day for you, for your pleasure, for your profit, for your existence, all I can say is I don’t.”

Michael felt that the climax of this speech was somewhat weak, and he relapsed into silence, biting his nails with the unexpressed rage of limp words.

“You might as well say that the School oughtn’t to cheer at a football match,” said Abercrombie the Captain.

“I would say so, if I thought that all the cheerers never expected and never even intended to play themselves. That’s why professional football is so rotten.”

“You were damned glad to get your Third Fifteen cap,” Abercrombie pointed out gruffly.

The laugh that followed this rebuke from the mightiest of the immortals goaded Michael into much more than he had intended to say when he began his unlucky tirade.

“Oh, was I?” he sneered. “That’s just where you’re quite wrong, because, as a matter of fact, I don’t intend to play football any more, if School Footer is simply to be a show for a lot of wasters. I’m not going to exert myself like an acrobat in a circus, if it all means nothing.”

The heroes regarded Michael with surprise and distaste; they shrank from him coldly as if his unreasonable outburst in some way involved their honour. They laughed uncomfortably, each one hiding himself behind another’s shoulders, as if they mocked a madman. The bell for school rang, and the heroes left him. Michael, still enraged, went back to his classroom. Then he wondered if Alan would hate him for having made his uncle’s death an occasion for this breach of a school’s code of manners. He supposed sadly that Alan would not understand any more than the others what he felt. He cursed himself for having let these ordinary, obvious, fatheaded fools impose upon his imagination, as to lead him to consider them worthy of his respect. He had wasted three months in this society; he had thought he was happy and had congratulated himself upon at last finding school endurable. School was a prison, such as it always had been. He was seventeen and a schoolboy. It was ignominious. At one o’clock he waited for nobody, but walked quickly home to lunch, still fuming with the loss of his self-control and, as he looked back on the scene, of his dignity.

His mother came down to lunch with signs of a morning’s tears, and Michael looked at her in astonishment. He had not supposed that she would be much affected by the death of Captain Ross, and he enquired if she had been writing to Mrs. Ross.

“No, dear,” said Mrs. Fane. “Why should I have written to Mrs. Ross this morning?”

“Didn’t you see in the paper?” Michael asked.

“See what?”

“That Captain Ross was killed in action.”

“Oh, no,” gasped his mother, white and shuddering. “Oh, Michael, how horrible, and on the same day.”

“The same day as what?”

Mrs. Fane looked at her son for a moment very intently, as if she were minded to tell him something. Then the parlourmaid came into the room, and she seemed to change her mind, and finally said in perfectly controlled accents:

“The same day as the announcement is made that⁠—that your old friend Lord Saxby has raised a troop of horse⁠—Saxby’s horse. He is going to Africa almost at once.”

“Another gentleman going to be killed for the sake of these rowdy swine at home!” said Michael savagely.

“Michael! What do you mean? Don’t you admire a man for⁠—for trying to do something for his country?”

“It depends on the country,” Michael answered. “If you think it’s worth while doing anything for what England is now, I don’t. I wouldn’t raise a finger, if London were to be invaded tomorrow.”

“I don’t understand you, dearest boy. You’re talking rather like a Radical, and rather like old Conservative gentlemen I remember as a girl. It’s such a strange mixture. I don’t think you quite understand what you’re saying.”

“I understand perfectly what I’m saving,” Michael contradicted.

“Well, then I don’t think you ought to talk like that. I don’t think it’s kind or considerate to me and, after you’ve just heard about Captain Ross’s death, I think it’s irreverent. And I thought you attached so much importance to reverence,” Mrs. Fane added in a complaining tone.

Michael was vexed by his mother’s failure to understand his point of view, and became harder and more perverse every minute.

“Lord Saxby would be shocked to hear you talking like this, shocked and horrified,” she went on.

“I’m very sorry for hurting Lord Saxby’s feelings,” said Michael with elaborate sarcasm. “But really I don’t see that it matters much to him what I think.”

“He wants to see you before he sails,” said Mrs. Fane.

“To see me? Why?” gasped Michael. “Why on earth should he want to see me?”

“Well, he’s⁠—he’s in a way the head of our family.”

“He’s not taken much interest in me up to the present. It’s rather odd he should want to see me now when he’s going away.”

“Michael, don’t be so bitter and horrid. Lord Saxby’s so kind, and he⁠—and he⁠—might never come back.”

“Dearest mother,” said Michael, “I think you’re a little unreasonable. Why should I go and meet a man now, and perhaps grow to like him⁠—and then say goodbye to him, perhaps forever?”

“Michael, do not talk like that. You are selfish and brutal. You’ve grown up to be perfectly heartless, although you can be charming. I think you’d better not see Lord Saxby. He’d be ashamed of you.”

Michael rose in irritation.

“My dear mother, what on earth business is it of Lord Saxby’s how I behave? I don’t understand what you mean by being ashamed of me. I have lived all these years, and I’ve seen Lord Saxby once. He sent me some Siamese stamps and some soldiers. I dare say he’s a splendid chap. I know I liked him terrifically, when I was a kid, and if he’s killed I shall be sorry⁠—I shall be more than sorry⁠—I shall be angry, furious that for the sake of these insufferable rowdies another decent chap is going to risk his life.”

Mrs. Fane put out her hand to stop Michael’s flowing tirade, but he paid no attention, talking away less to her than to himself. Indeed, long before he had finished, she made no pretence of listening, but merely sat crying quietly.

“I’ve been thinking a good deal lately about this war,” Michael declared. “I’m beginning to doubt whether it’s a just war, whether we didn’t simply set out on it for brag and money. I’m not sure that I want to see the Boers conquered. They’re a small independent nation, and they have old-fashioned ideas and they’re narrow-minded Bible-worshippers, but there’s something noble about them, something much nobler than there is in these rotten adventurers who go out to fight them. Of course, I don’t mean by that people like Captain Ross or Lord Saxby. They’re gentlemen. They go either because it’s their duty or because they think it’s their duty. And they’re the ones that get killed. You don’t hear of these swaggerers in khaki being killed. I haven’t heard yet of many of them even going to the front at all. Oh, mother, I am fed up with the rotten core of everything that looks so fine on the outside.”

Mrs. Fane was now crying loud enough to make Michael stop in sudden embarrassment.

“I say, mother, don’t cry. I expect I’ve been talking nonsense,” he softly told her.

“I don’t know where you get these views. I was always so proud of you. I thought you were charming and mysterious, and you’re simply vulgar!”

“Vulgar?” echoed Michael in dismay.

Mrs. Fane nodded vehemently.

“Oh, well, if I’m vulgar, I’ll go.”

Michael hurried to the door.

“Where are you going?” asked his mother in alarm.

“Oh, Lord, only to school. That’s what makes a scene like this so funny. After I’ve worked myself up and made you angry⁠—”

“Not angry, dear. Only grieved,” interrupted his mother.

“You were more than grieved when you said I was vulgar. At least I hope you were. But, after it’s all over, I go trotting off like a good little boy to school⁠—to school⁠—to school. Oh, mother, what is the good of expecting me to believe in the finest fellows in the world being killed, while I’m still at school? What’s the good of making me more wretched, more discontented, more alive to my own futile existence by asking me now, when he’s going away, to make friends with Lord Saxby? Oh, darling mother, can’t you realize that I’m no longer a little boy who wants to clap his hands at the sight of a red coat? Let me kiss you, mother, I’m sorry I was vulgar, but I’ve minded so dreadfully about Captain Ross, and it’s all for nothing.”

Mrs. Fane let herself be petted by her son, but she did not again ask Michael to see Lord Saxby before he went away to the war.

Alan was still absent at afternoon school, and Michael, disdaining his place in the heroic group, passed quickly into the classroom and read in Alison of Salamanca and Albuera and of the storming of Badajoz, wondering what had happened to his country since those famous dates. He supposed that then was the nation’s zenith, for from what he could make out of the Crimean War, that had been as little creditable to England as this miserable business of the present.

In the afternoon Michael thought he would walk over to Notting Dale and see Mr. Viner⁠—perhaps he would understand some of his indignation⁠—and this evening when all was quiet he must write to Mrs. Ross. On his way down the Kensington Road he met Wilmot, whom he had not seen since the summer, for luckily about the time of the row Wilmot had been going abroad and was only lately back. He recognized Wilmot’s fanciful walk from a distance, and nearly crossed over to the opposite pavement to avoid meeting him; but on second thoughts decided he would like to hear a fresh opinion of the war.

“Why, here’s a delightful meeting,” said Wilmot, “I have been wondering why you didn’t come round to see me. You got my cards?”

“Oh, yes, rather,” said Michael.

“I have been in Greece and Italy. I wish you had been with me. I thought of you, as I sat in the ruined rose-gardens of Paestum. You’ve no idea how well those columns of honey-coloured Travertine would become you, Michael. But I’m so glad to see that you have not yet clothed yourself in khaki. This toy war is so utterly absurd. I feel as if I were living in a Christmas bazaar. How dreadfully these puttees and haversacks debase even the most beautiful figures. What is a haversack? It sounds so Lenten, so eloquent of mortification. I have discovered some charming Cyprian cigarettes. Do come and let me watch you enjoy them. How young you look, and yet how old!”

“I’m feeling very fit,” said Michael loftily.

“How abruptly informative you are! What has happened to you?”

“I’m thinking about this war.”

“Good gracious,” cried Wilmot in mincing amazement. “What an odd subject. Soon you will be telling me that by moonlight you brood upon the Albert Memorial. But perhaps your mind is full of trophies. Perhaps you are picturing to yourself in Piccadilly a second column of Trajan displacing the amorous and acrobatic Cupid who now presides over the painted throng. Come with me some evening to the Long Bar at the Criterion, and while the Maori-like barmaids titter in their dévergondage, we will select the victorious site and picture to ourselves the Boer commanders chained like hairy Scythians to the chariot of whatever absurd general chooses to accept the triumph awarded to him by our legislative bourgeoisie.”

“I think I must be getting on,” said Michael.

“How urgent! You speak like Phaeton or Icarus, and pray remember the calamities that befell them. But seriously, when are you coming to see me?”

“Oh, I’m rather busy,” said Michael briefly.

Wilmot looked at him curiously with his glittering eyes for a moment. Then he spoke again:

“Farewell, Narcissus. Have you learnt that I was but a shallow pool in which to watch your reflection? Did I flatter you too much or not enough? Who shall say? But you know I’m always your friend, and when this love-affair is done, I shall always be interested to hear the legend of it told movingly when and where you will, but perhaps best of all in October when the full moon lies like a huge apricot upon the chimneys of the town. Farewell, Narcissus. Does she display your graces very clearly?”

“I’m not in love with anybody, if that’s what you mean,” said Michael.

“No? But you are on the margin of a strange pool, and soon you will be peeping over the bulrushes to stare at yourself again.”

Then Mr. Wilmot, making his pontifical and undulatory adieu, passed on.

“Silly ass!” said Michael to himself. “And he always thinks he knows everything.”