Sinister Street

"And do you like Miss Harper?" he inquired.

"Yes, she seems all right."

They went out to dine in town, and came back about eleven to find the flat looking wonderfully settled. Michael confessed how much he had forgotten to order, but Lily talked of her dresses and took no interest in household affairs.

"I think I ought to go now," said Michael.

"Oh, no, stay a little longer."

But he would not, feeling the violent necessity to impress upon her as much as possible, during this fortnight before they were married, how important were the conventions of life, even when it was going to be lived in so strange a place as Ararat House.

"Oh, you're going now?" said Miss Harper, looking at him rather curiously.

"I shall be round in the morning. You'll finish making the lists of what you still want?"

Michael felt very deeply plunged into domestic arrangements, as he drove to Grosvenor Road.

Maurice was sitting up for him, but Castleton had gone to bed.

"Look here, old chap," Maurice began at once, "you can't possibly marry that girl."

Michael frowned.

"You too?"

"I know all about her," Maurice went on. "I've never actually met her, but I recognized her at once. Even if you did know her people five years ago, you ought to have taken care to find out what had happened in between. As a matter of fact, I happen to know a man who's had an affair with her--a painter called Walker. Ronnie Walker. He's often up here.

You're bound to meet him some time."

"Not at all, if I never come here again," said Michael, in a cold rage.

"It's no use for you to be angry with me," said Maurice. "I should be a rotten friend, if I didn't warn you."

"Oh, go to h.e.l.l!" said Michael, and he marched out of the studio.

"I'll die first," retorted Maurice, grinning.

Maurice came on the landing and called, begging him to come up and not to be so hasty, but Michael paid no attention.

"So much for 422 Grosvenor Road," he said, slamming the big front door behind him. He heard Maurice calling to him from the window, but he walked on without turning his head.

It was a miserable coincidence that one of his friends should know about her. It was a disappointment, but it could not be helped. If Maurice chattered about a disastrous marriage, why, other friends would have to be dropped in the same way. After all, he had been aware from the first moment of his resolve that this sort of thing was bound to happen. It left him curiously indifferent.

A week pa.s.sed. There were hundreds of daffodils blooming in the garden round Ararat House; and April bringing an unexpected halcyon was the very April of the poets whose verses haunted that great rococo room.

Every day Michael went with Lily to dressmakers and wors.h.i.+ped her taste.

Every day he bought her old pieces of jewelry, old fans, or old silver, or pots of purple hyacinths. He was just conscious that it was London and the prime of the Spring; but mostly he lived in the enchantment of her presence. Often they walked up and down the still deserted garden, by the edge of the ca.n.a.l. The swans used to glide nearer to them, waiting for bread to be thrown; and Lily would stand with her hair in a stream of sunlight and her arms moving languidly like the necks of the birds she was feeding. Nor was she less graceful in the long luminous dusks under the young moon and the yellow evening star that were s.h.i.+ning upon them as they walked by the edge of the water.

For a week Michael lived in a city that was become a mere background to the swoons and fevers of love. He knew that round him houses blinked in the night and that chimney-smoke curled upward in the morning; that people paced the streets; that there was a thunder of far-off traffic; that London was possessed by April. But the heart of life

The weather veered back in the second week of the fortnight to rawness and wet. Yet it made no difference to Michael; for he was finding these days spent with Lily so full of romance that weather was forgotten. They could not walk in the garden and watch the swans: of nothing else did the weather deprive him.

Two days before the marriage was to take place, Mrs. Fane arrived back from the South of France. Michael was glad to see her, for he was so deeply infatuated with Lily that his first emotion was of pleasure in the thought of being able now to bring her to see his mother, and of taking his mother to see her in Ararat House among those chandeliers and mirrors.

"Why didn't you wire me to say you were coming?" he asked.

"I came because Stella wrote to me."

Michael frowned, and his mother went on:

"It wasn't very thoughtful of you to let me know about your marriage through her. I think you might have managed to write to me about it yourself."

Michael had been so much wrapped up in his arrangements, and apart from them so utterly engrossed in his secluded life with Lily during the past ten days, that it came upon him with a shock to realize that his mother might be justified in thinking that he had treated her very inconsiderately.

"I'm sorry. It was wrong of me," he admitted. "But life has been such a whirl lately that I've somehow taken for granted the obvious courtesies.

Besides, Stella was so very unfair to Lily that it rather choked me off taking anybody else into my confidence. And, mother, why do you begin on the subject at once, before you've even taken your things off?"

She flung back her furs and regarded him tragically.

"Michael, how can you dare to think of such trivialities when you are standing at the edge of this terrible step?"

"Oh, I think I'm perfectly level-headed," he said, "even on the brink of disaster."

"Such a dreadful journey from Cannes! I wish I'd come back in March as I meant to. But Mrs. Carruthers was ill, and I couldn't very well leave her. She's always nervous in lifts, and hates the central-heating. I did not sleep a moment, and a most objectionable couple of Germans in the next compartment of the wagons-lits used all the water in the was.h.i.+ng-place. So very annoying, for one never expects foreigners to think about was.h.i.+ng. Oh, yes, a dreadful night and all because of you, and now you ask most cruelly why I don't take my things off."

"There wasn't any need for you to worry yourself," he said hotly.

"Stella had no business to scare you with her prejudices."

"Prejudices!" his mother repeated. "Prejudice is a very mild word for what she feels about this dreadful girl you want to marry."

"But it is prejudice," Michael insisted. "She knows nothing against her."

"She knows a great deal."

"How?" he demanded incredulously.

"You'd better read her letter to me. And I really must go and take off these furs. It's stifling in London. So very much hotter than the Riviera."

Mrs. Fane left him with Stella's letter.

LONG'S HOTEL,

April 9.

Darling Mother,

When you get this you must come _at once_ to London. You are the only person who can save Michael from marrying the most impossible creature imaginable. He had a stupid love-affair with her, when he was eighteen, and I think she treated him badly even then--I remember his being very upset about it in the summer before my first concert. Apparently he rediscovered her this winter, and for some reason or other wants to _marry_ her now. He brought her down to Hardingham, and I saw then that she was a minx. Alan remembers her mother as a dreadful woman who tried to make love to him.

Imagine Alan at eighteen being pursued!

Of course, I tackled Michael about her, and we had rather a row about it. We kept her at Hardingham for a month (a fortnight by herself), and we were bored to death by her. She had nothing to say, and nothing to do except look at herself in the gla.s.s. I had declared war on the marriage from the moment she left, but I had only a fortnight to stop it. I was rather in a difficulty because I knew nothing definite against her, though I was sure that if she wasn't a bad lot already, she would be later on. I wrote first of all to Maurice Avery, who told me that she'd had a not at all reputable affair with a painter friend of his. It seems, however, that he had already spoken to Michael about this and that Michael walked out of the house in a rage. Then I came up to town with Alan and saw Wedderburn, who knew nothing about her and hadn't seen Michael for months. Then we got hold of Lonsdale. He has apparently met her at Covent Garden, and _I'm perfectly sure_ that he has actually been away with her himself. Though, of course, he was much too polite to tell me so. He was absolutely horrified when he heard about her and Michael. I asked him to tell Michael anything he knew against her, but he didn't see how he could. He said he wouldn't have the heart. I told him it was his duty, but he said he wouldn't be able to bear the sight of Michael's face when he told him. Of course, the poor darling knows nothing about her. You must come at once to London and talk to him yourself. You've no time to lose.