Sinister Street · Book II · Chapter 2 17 (2/3)

“Has Drake ever dared to make love to you?” demanded Michael.

“That’s my business,” said Lily. “You’ve no right to ask me questions like that.”

Michael looked at her so adorable even now, and suddenly throwing his dignity to the dead leaves, he sat close beside her caressingly.

“Darling Lily,” he whispered, “it was my fault. I lied first. I don’t care how much you talked about me. I don’t care about anything but you. I’ll even say Drake is a decent chap⁠—though he really isn’t even moderately decent. Lily, we had such a rotten Wednesday, and today ought to be perfect. Will you forgive me? Will you?”

And the quarrel was over.

“But you don’t care anything about Drake?” Michael asked, when half an hour had dreamed itself away.

“Of course not,” she reassured him. “Arthur likes Doris better than me.”

“But he mustn’t like Doris,” said Michael eagerly. “At least she mustn’t like him. Because I’ve got a friend⁠—at least three million times as decent as Drake⁠—who wants to be in love with Doris, or rather he will want to be when he sees her.”

“Why, you haven’t seen Doris yourself yet,” laughed Lily.

“Oh, of course my plan may all come to nothing,” Michael admitted. “But look here, I vote we don’t bother about anybody else in the world but ourselves for the rest of the afternoon.”

Nor did they.

“Shall I wear a top-hat tomorrow?” Michael asked even in the very poignancy of farewell. “I mean⁠—will your mother prefer it?”

“Oh, no, the people who come to tea with us on Sunday are mostly artists and actors,” decided Lily judicially.

“Do lots of people come then?” asked Michael, quickly jealous.

“A good many.”

“I might as well have fallen in love with one of the Royal Family,” sighed Michael in despair.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I never can see you alone,” he declared.

“Why, we’ve had the whole of this afternoon,” she told him.

“Do you call sitting in the middle of Kensington Gardens being alone? Why, it was crammed with people,” he ejaculated in disgust.

“I must go, I must go, I must go,” Lily whispered and almost seemed to be preening her wings in the lamplight before she flew away.

“I say, what number is Drake’s house?” Michael asked, with a consummate affectation of casual enquiry.

She told him laughingly, and in a most malicious hurry would not even linger a moment to ask him why he wanted to know. Coldly and deliberately Michael after dinner rang the bell of Drake’s house.

“Is⁠—er⁠—Master Arthur at home?” he asked the maid.

“Master Arthur,” she cried. “Someone to see you.”

“Hullo, Bangs,” shouted Drake, emerging effusively from a doorway.

“Oh, hullo,” said Michael loftily. “I thought I’d call to see if you felt like coming out.”

“Right-o,” said Drake. “Wait half a tick while I tell my mater. Come in, and meet my people.”

“Oh, no,” said Michael. “I’m beastly untidy.”

He would condescend to Drake for the sake of his love, but he did not think that love demanded the sacrifice of condescending to a possibly more expansive acquaintance with Drake’s family.

“So you’ve met the fair Lily,” Drake said, as they strolled along. “Pretty smart, what, my boy?”

“I’m going to tea with them tomorrow,” Michael informed him.

“Mrs. Haden’s a bit thick,” said Drake confidentially. “And Doris is of a very coming-on disposition.”

Michael thought of Alan and sighed; then he thought of himself listening to this and he was humiliated.

“But Lily is a bit standoffish,” said Drake. “Of course I never could stand very fair girls, myself. I say, talking of girls, there’s a girl in Sherringham Road, well⁠—she’s an actress’s French maid, as a matter of fact, but, my gad, if you like cayenne, you ought to come along with me, and I’ll introduce you. She’ll be alone now. Are you on?”

“Oh, thanks very much,” said Michael. “But I must get back. Good night, Drake.”

“Well, you’re a nice chap to ask a fellow to come out. Come on, don’t be an ass. Her name’s Marie.”

“I don’t care if her name’s Marie or Mabel or what it is,” Michael declared in exasperation. “I’m sorry. I’ve got to go home. Thanks for coming out.”

He turned abruptly and walked off, leaving Drake to apostrophize his eccentricity and seek consolation with Marie.

On Sunday afternoon Michael, torn between a desire to arrive before the crowd of artists and actors who thronged the house and an unwillingness to obtrude upon the Sabbath lethargy of half-past three o’clock, set out with beating heart to invade Lily’s home. Love made him reckless and luck rewarded him, for when he enquired for Mrs. Haden the maid told him that only Miss Lily was in.

“Who shall I say?” she asked.

“Mr. Fane.”

“Step this way, please. Miss Lily’s down in the morning-room.”

And this so brief and so bald a colloquy danced in letters of fire across the darkling descent of the enclosed stairs down to the ground-floor.

“Someone to see you, Miss Lily.”

Not Iris could have delivered a richer message.

Deep in a wicker chair by a dull red fire sat Lily with open book upon her delicate dress of lavender. The door closed; the daylight of the grey October afternoon seemed already to have fled this room. Dusky in a corner stood a great dolls’ house, somewhat sad like a real house that has been left long untenanted.

“Well, now we’re alone enough,” murmured Lily.

He knelt beside her chair and let his head fall upon her silken shoulder.

“I’m glad you’re in your own room,” Michael sighed in answer.

Outside, a muffin-man went ringing through the sombre Sabbath chill; and sometimes, disturbing the monotonous railings above the area, absurd legs were seen hurrying to their social tasks. No other sign was given of a life that went on unaware of these two on whom time showered twenty golden minutes.

“Mother and Doris will be back at four,” Lily said. “Is my face flushed?”

Fresh carnations would have seemed faded near her, when she looked at Michael for an answer.

“Only very slightly,” he reassured her.

“Come up to the drawing-room,” she commanded.

“Can I look at your dolls’ house?” Michael asked.

“That old thing,” said Lily scornfully.

Reverently he pulled aside the front of the battered dwelling-place, and saw the minute furniture higgledy-piggledy.

“I wonder if anyone has ever thought of burning an old dolls’ house,” said Michael thoughtfully. “It would be rather a rag. I’ve got an old toy fire-engine somewhere at home.”

“You baby,” said Lily.

“Well, it depresses me to see that dolls’ house all disused and upside down and no good any more. My kiddy sister gave hers to a hospital. What a pity I never thought of burning that,” sighed Michael regretfully. “I say, some time we must explore this room. It reminds me of all sorts of things.”

“What sort of things?” asked Lily indifferently.

“Oh, being a kid.”

“Well, I don’t want to be reminded of that,” said Lily. “I wish I was older than I am.”

“Oh, so do I,” said Michael. “I don’t want to be a kid again.”

Upstairs in the drawing-room it was still fairly light, but the backs of the grey houses opposite and the groups of ghostly trees that filmed the leaden air seemed to call for curtains to be drawn across the contemplation of their melancholy. Yet before they sat down by the crackling fire, Michael and Lily stood with their cheeks against the cold windowpanes in a luxury of bodeful silence.

“No, you’re not to sit so close now,” Lily ordained, when by a joint impulse they turned to inhabit the room in which they had been standing. Michael saw a large photograph album and seized it.

“No, you’re not to look in that,” Lily cried.

“Why not?” he asked, holding it high above his head.

“Because I don’t want you to,” said Lily. “Put it down.”

“I want to see if there are any photographs of you when you were a kid.”

“Well, I don’t want you to see them,” Lily persisted.

In the middle of a struggle for possession of the album, Mrs. Haden and Doris came in, and Michael felt rather foolish.

“What a dreadfully noisy girl you are, Lily,” said Mrs. Haden. “And is this your friend Mr. Fane? How d’ye do?”

“I’m afraid it was my fault,” said Michael. “I was trying to bag the photograph album.”

“Oh, Lily hates anyone to see that picture of her,” Doris interposed. “She’s so conceited, and just because⁠—”

“Shut up, you beast,” cried Lily.

“Her legs⁠—”

“Doris!” interposed Mrs. Haden. “You must remember you’re grown up now.”

“Mother, can’t I burn the photograph?” said Lily.

“No, she’s not to, mother,” Doris interrupted. “She’s not to, is she? You jealous thing. You’d love to burn it because it’s good of me.”

“Well, really,” said Mrs. Haden, “what Mr. Fane can be thinking of you two girls, I shouldn’t like to guess.”

The quarrel over the album died down as easily as it had begun, and the entrance of the tea adjusted the conversation to a less excited plane.

Mrs. Haden was a woman whom Michael could not help liking for her open breezy manner and a certain large-handed toleration which suited her loud deep voice. But he was inclined to deprecate her obviously dyed hair and the plentifulness of pink powder; nor could he at first detect in her any likeness to Lily who, though Mrs. Haden persistently reproached her as a noisy girl, stood for Michael as the slim embodiment of a subtle and easy tranquillity. Gradually, however, during the afternoon he perceived slight resemblances between the mother and daughter that showed them vaguely alike, as much alike at any rate as an elk and a roedeer.

Doris Haden was much less fair than Lily, though she could only have been called dark in comparison with her sister. She had a high complexion, wide almond-shaped eyes of a very mutable hazel, and a ripe, sanguine mouth. She was dressed in a coat and skirt of crushed-strawberry frieze, whose cool folds seemed to enhance her slightly exotic air. Michael could not help doubting whether she and Alan were perfectly suited to one another. He could not imagine that she would not care for him, but he wondered about Alan’s feelings; and Drake’s overnight description stuck unpleasantly in his mind with a sensation of disloyalty to Lily whose sister after all Doris was.

They were not left very long without visitors, for one by one young men came in with a self-possession and an assumption of familiarity that Michael resented very much, and all the more deeply because he felt himself at a disadvantage. He wondered if Lily were despising him, and wished that she would not catch hold of these detestable young men by the lapels of their coats, or submit to their throaty persiflage. Once when the most absolutely self-possessed of all, a tall thin creature with black fuzzy hair and stilted joints, pulled Lily on to his knee to talk to him, Michael nearly dived through the window in a fury of resentment.

All these young men seemed to him to revel in their bad taste, and their conversation, half-theatrical, half-artistic, was of a character that he could not enter into. Mrs. Haden’s loud laugh rang out over the clatter of teacups; Doris walked about the room smoking a cigarette and humming songs; Lily moved from group to group with a nonchalance that seriously perturbed Michael, who retired more and more deeply behind a spreading palm in the darkest corner of the room. Yet he could not tear himself away from the fascination of watching Lily’s grace; he could not surrender her to these marionettes of vulgar fashion; he could not go coldly out into the Sabbath night without the consolation of first hustling these intruders before him.

The afternoon drew on to real dusk; the gas was lighted; songs were sung and music was played. All these young men seemed accomplished performers of insignificant arts. Mrs. Haden recited, and in this drawing-room her heightened air and accentuated voice made Michael blush. Doris went upstairs for a moment and presently came down in a Spanish dancing-dress, in which she swayed about and rattled castanets and banged a tambourine, while the young men sat round and applauded through the smoke of their cigarettes. These cigarettes began to affect Michael’s nerves. Wherever he looked he could see their flattened corpses occupying nooks. They were in the flowerpots; they littered the grate; they were strewn on brass ashtrays; and even here and there on uninflammable and level spots they stood up like little rakish mummies slowly and acridly cremating themselves. Michael wondered uneasily what Lily was going to do to entertain these voracious listeners. He hoped she would not debase her beauty by dancing on the hearthrug like her sister. In the end, Lily was persuaded to sing, and her voice very low and sweet singing some bygone coon song, was tremendously applauded.

Suppertime drew on, and at last the parlourmaid came in and enquired with a martyred air how many she should lay for.

“You must all stay to supper,” cried Mrs. Haden in deafening hospitality. “Everybody. Mr. Fane, you’ll stay, won’t you?”

“Oh, thanks very much,” said Michael shyly, and wished that these confounded young men would not all look at him as if they had perceived him suddenly for the first time. Everybody seemed as a matter of course to help to get supper ready, and Michael found himself being bumped about and handed plates and knives and glasses and salad-bowls. Even at supper he found himself as far as it was possible to be from Lily, and he thought that never in his life had food tasted so absolutely of nothing. But the evening came to an end, and Michael was consoled for his purgatory by Mrs. Haden’s invitation to call whenever he liked. In the hall too Lily came out to see him off, and he besought her anxiously to assure him truthfully that to all these young men she was indifferent.

“Of course, I don’t care for any of them. Why, you silly, they all think I’m still a little girl.”

Then since a friendly draught had closed the drawing-room door, she kissed him; and he forgot all that had happened before, and sailed home on thoughts that carried him high above the iron-bound sadness of the Sunday night.

Some time early in the week came a letter from Stella in answer to his, and when Michael read it he wished that Stella would come home, since only she seemed to appreciate what love meant. Yet Stella was even younger than Lily.