Sinister Street · Book II · Chapter 2 18 (2/3)

“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 lovesickness 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 gods made him a popular, if slightly incomprehensible, figure. Towards all the masters he emanated a compassion 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 class 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 passed 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 passionate 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 grass, 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 sunshine 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 forever?”

“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 forever. Or I wish you could be a cowslip and I could be a plume of grass. 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 god, 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.

“Won’t you sit down? It’s rather late, but do sit down.”

All the time she was speaking the plate-rack above The Cosy Corner was catching the back of her hair, and Michael wondered how long it would be before she noticed this.

“Really, I think it’s very wrong of you to bring my daughter home at this hour,” Mrs. Haden clattered. “I’m sure nobody likes young people to enjoy themselves more than I do. But eleven o’clock! Where is Lily now?”

“Gone to bed,” said Doris, who seized the opportunity to depart also.

“I’m awfully sorry, Mrs. Haden,” said Michael awkwardly. “But as it was my last night, I suggested driving back from Hampton Court. It was all my fault; I do hope you won’t be angry with Lily.”

“But I am angry with Lily,” said Mrs. Haden. “Very angry. She’s old enough to know better, and you’re old enough to know better. How will people think I’m bringing up my daughters, if they return at midnight with young men in hansoms? I never heard of such a thing. You’re presuming on your age. You’ve no business to compromise a girl like this.”

“Compromise?” stammered Michael.

“None of the young people but you has ever ventured to behave like this,” Mrs. Haden went on with sharply metallic voice. “Not one of them. And, goodness knows, every Sunday the house is full of them.”

“But they don’t come to see Lily,” Michael pointed out. “They come to see you.”

“Are you trying to be rude to me?” Mrs. Haden asked.

“No, no,” Michael assured her. “And, honestly, Mrs. Haden, I didn’t think you minded me taking Lily out.”

“But what’s going to happen?” Mrs. Haden demanded.

“Well⁠—I⁠—I suppose I want to marry Lily.”

Michael wondered if this statement sounded as absurd to Mrs. Haden as it sounded to himself.

“What nonsense!” she snapped. “What utter nonsense! A schoolboy talking such nonsense. Marriage indeed! You know as well as I do that you’ve never thought about such a step.”

“But I have,” said Michael. “Very often, as it happens.”

“Then you mustn’t go out with Lily again. Why, it’s worse than I thought. I’m horrified.”

“Do you mean I’m never to come here again?” Michael asked in despair.

“Come occasionally,” said Mrs. Haden. “But only occasionally.”

“All right. Thanks,” said Michael, feeling stunned by this unexpected rebuke. “Good night, Mrs. Haden.”

In the hall he found Doris.

“Well?” she asked.

“Your mother says I’m only to come occasionally.”

“Oh, that won’t last,” said Doris encouragingly.

“Yes, but I’m not sure that she isn’t right,” said Michael. “Oh, Doris, damn. I wish I couldn’t always see other people’s point of view.”

“Mother often has fits of violent morality,” said Doris. “And then we always catch it. But really they don’t last.”

“Doris, you don’t understand. It isn’t your mother’s disapproval I’m worrying over. It’s myself. Lily might have waited to say good night,” Michael murmured miserably.

But straight upon his complaint he saw Lily leaning over from the landing above and blowing kisses, and he felt more calm.

“Don’t worry too much about Lily,” whispered Doris, as she held the door open for him.

“Why?”

“I shouldn’t, that’s all,” she said enigmatically, and closed the door very gently.

At the time Michael was not conscious of any deep impression made by the visit to Oxford for his Matriculation; he was too much worried by the puzzle of his future conduct with regard to Lily. He felt dull in the rooms where he spent two nights alone; he felt shy among the forty or fifty boys from other public-schools; he was glad to go back to London. Vaguely the tall grey tower remained in his mind, and vaguely the cool Gothic seemed to offer a shelter from the problems of behaviour, but that was all.

When he returned, the torment of Lily’s desired presence became more acute. His mother wrote to say that she would not be back for three days, and the only consolation was the hint that most probably Stella would come back with her.

Meanwhile this was Saturday, and school did not begin until Tuesday. Time after time Michael set out towards Trelawny Road; time after time he checked himself and fought his way home again. Mrs. Haden had been right; he had behaved badly. Lily was too young to bear the burden of their passionate love. And was she happy without him? Was she sighing for him? Or would she forget him and resume an existence undisturbed by him? But the thought of wasted time, of her hours again unoccupied, of her footsteps walking to places ignorant of him was intolerable.

Sunday came round, and Michael thought that he would fling himself into the stream of callers; but the idea of doing so became humiliating, and instead he circled drearily round the neighbouring roads, circled in wide curves, and sometimes even swooped into the forbidden diameter of Trelawny Road. But always before he could bring himself to pass her very door, he would turn back into his circle and the melancholy Sabbath sunlight of May.

Twilight no more entranced him, and the lovers leaning over to one another languorously in their endearments, moving with intertwined arms and measured steps between the wine-dark houses, annoyed him with their fatuous complacency and their bland eyes. He wanted her, his slim and silent Lily, who blossomed in the nighttime like a flower. Her wrists were cool as porcelain and the contact of her form swaying to his progress was light as silk. Everyone else had their contentment, and he must endure wretchedly without the visible expression of his beauty. It was not yet too late to see her; and Michael circled nearer to Trelawny Road. This time he came to Lily’s house; he paused within sound of laughter upon the easeful step; and then again he turned away and walked furiously on through the empty Sabbath streets.

In his room, when it was now too late to think of calling, Michael laughed at himself for being so sensitive to Mrs. Haden’s reproaches. He told himself that all she said was due to the irritation of the moment, that tomorrow he must go again as if nothing had happened, that people had no right to interfere between lovers. But then, in all its florid bulk, St. James’ School rose up, and Michael admitted to himself that to the world he was merely a foolish schoolboy. He, the dauntless lover, must be chained to a desk for five hours every day. A boy and girl affair! Michael ground his teeth with exasperation. He must simply prove by renouncing for a term his part in Lily’s life that he was a schoolboy by an accident of time. A man is as old as he feels! He would see Lily once more, and tell her that for the sake of their ultimate happiness, he would give her up for the term of his bondage. Other great and romantic lovers had done the same; they may not have gone to school, but they had accepted menial tasks for the sake of their love.

Yet in the very middle of the night when the thickest darkness seemed to stifle self-deception, Michael knew that he had bowed to authority so easily because his conscience had already told him what Mrs. Haden so crudely hinted. When he was independent of school it would be different. Michael made up his mind that the utmost magnanimity would be possible, if he could see Lily once to tell her of his resolution. But on the next day Lily was out, and Mrs. Haden talked to him instead.

“I’ve forbidden Lily to go out with you alone,” she said. “And I would prefer that you only came here when I am in the house.”

“I was going to suggest that I shouldn’t come at all until July⁠—until after I had left school, in fact,” answered Michael.

“Perhaps that would be best. Then you and Lily will be more sensible.”

“Goodbye,” said Michael hurriedly, for he felt that he must get out of this stifling room, away from this overwhelming woman with her loud voice and dyed hair and worldly-wise morality. Then he had a sudden conception of himself as part of a scene, perceiving himself in the role of the banished lover nobly renouncing all. “I won’t write to her. I won’t make any attempt to see her,” he offered.

“You’ll understand,” said Mrs. Haden, “that I’m afraid of⁠—that I think,” she corrected, “it is quite likely that Lily is just as bad for you as you are for Lily. But of course the real reason I feel I ought to interfere is on account of what people say. If Mr. Haden were not in Burma⁠ ⁠… it would be different.”

Michael pitied himself profoundly for the rest of that day; but after a long luxury of noble grief the image of Lily came to agitate and disconcert his acquiescence, and the insurgent fevers of love goaded his solitude.