Sinister Street

"I say, I'm awfully sorry that Ronnie Walker should happen to be here to-night," Maurice began. "I have been rather cursing myself for telling you about him and...."

"It doesn't matter at all," Michael interrupted. "I'm not going to marry her."

"Oh, that's splendid!" Maurice exclaimed. "I've been tremendously worried about you."

Michael looked at him; he was wondering if it were possible that Maurice could be "tremendously worried" by anything.

"I want you to arrange matters," said Michael. "I can't go near the place again. She will probably prefer to go away from Ararat House. The rent is paid up to the June quarter. The furniture you can do what you like with. Bring some of it here. Sell the rest, and give her the money.

Get rid of the woman who's there--Miss Harper her name is."

"But I shall feel rather awkward...."

"Oh, don't do it. Don't do it, then!" Michael broke in fretfully. "I'll ask Guy."

"You're getting awfully irascible," Maurice complained. "Of course I'll do anything you want, if you won't always jump down my throat at the first word I utter. What has happened, though?"

"What do you expect to happen when you're engaged to a girl like that?"

Michael asked.

Maurice shrugged his shoulders.

"Oh, well, of course I should expect to be badly let down. But then, you see, I'm not a very great believer in women. What are you going to do yourself?"

"I haven't settled yet. I've got to arrange one or two things in town, and then I shall go abroad. Would you be able to come with me in about a week?"

"I daresay I might," Maurice answered, looking vaguely round the room.

Already, Michael thought, the subject was floating away from his facile comprehension.

The piano had stopped, and conversation became general again.

"This is where you ought to be, if you want to write," Maurice proclaimed to Guy. "It's ridiculous for you to bury yourself in the country. You'll expire of stagnation."

"Just at present I recommend you to stay where you are," said Castleton.

"I'm almost expiring from the violence with which I am being precipitated from one to another of Maurice's energies."

Soon afterward Michael and Guy left the studio and walked home; and next morning Guy went back to Wychford.

Michael was astonished at his own calmness. After the first shock of the betrayal he had gone and talked to a lot of people; he had coldly made financial arrangements; he had even met and rather liked a man whom only yesterday morning he could not have regarded without hatred for the part he had played in Lily's life. Perhaps he had lost the power to feel anything deeply for long; perhaps he was become a sort of Maurice; already Lily seemed a shade of the underworld, merely more clearly remembered than the others. Yet in the moment that he was calling her a shade his present emotion proved that she was much more than that, for the conjured image of her was an icy pang to his heart. Then the indifference returned, but always underneath it the chill remained.

Mrs. Fane asked if he would care to go to the Opera in the evening: and they went to Boheme. Michael used to be wrung by the music, but he sat unmoved to-night. Afterward, at supper, he looked at his mother as if she were a person in a picture; he was saddened by the uselessness of all beauty, and by the number of times he would have to undress at night and dress again in the morning. He had no objection to life itself, but he felt an overwhelming despair at the thought of any activity in the conduct of it. He was sorry for the people sitting here at supper and for their footmen waiting outside. He felt that he was spiritually withered, because he was aware that he was surrendering to

"Michael, have you been bored to-night?" his mother asked, when they had come home and were sitting by the window in the drawing-room, while Michael finished a cigar.

He shook his head.

"You seemed to take no interest in the opera, and you usually enjoy Puccini, don't you? Or was it Wagner you enjoy so much?"

"I think summer in London is always tiring," he said.

She was in that rosy mist of clothes with which his earliest pictures of her were vivid. Suddenly he began to cry.

"Dear child, what is it?" she whispered, with fluttering arms outstretched to comfort him.

"Oh, I've finished with all that! I've finished with all that! You'll be delighted--you mustn't be worried because I seem upset for the moment. I found out that Lily did not care anything about me. I'm not going to marry her or even see her again."

"Michael! My dearest boy! What is it?"

"Finished! Finished! Finished!" he sobbed.

"Nothing is finished at twenty-three," she murmured, leaning over to pet him.

"I do hate myself for having hurt your feelings the other day."

It was as if he seized upon a justification for grief so manifest. It seemed to him exquisitely sad that he should have wounded his mother on account of that broken toy of a girl. Soon he could control himself again; and he went off to bed.

Next day Michael's depression was profound because he could perceive no reaction from himself on Lily. The sense of personal loss was merged in the reproach of failure; he had simply been unable to influence her. She was the consummation of many minor failures. And what was to happen to her now? What was to happen to all the people with whose lives he had lately been involved? Must he withdraw entirely and confess defeat? No doubt a cynic would argue that Lily was hopeless, and indeed he knew that from any point of view where marriage was concerned she was hopeless. He must leave her where he had found her, in that pretty paradise of evil which now she well adorned. If her destiny was to whirl downward through the labyrinths of the underworld, he could do no more.

That himself had issued with the false dreams through the ivory gate was her fault, and she must pay the penalty of her misdirection. He would revisit Leppard Street, and from the innermost circle where he had beheld Mrs. Smith he would seek a way out through the gate of true dreams. He would be glad to see if the amount of security he had been able to guarantee to Barnes had helped him at all. He had money and he could leave money behind in Leppard Street, money that might preserve the people in the house where he had lived. Was this a quixotic notion, to leave one set of people free from the necessity to hand themselves over to evil? Michael's spirits began to rise as he looked forward to what he could still effect in Leppard Street. And for Lily what could he still do? He would visit Sylvia and consult with her. She was strong, and if she had chosen harlotry, she was still strong. She was not lazy nor languid. Lazy, laughing, languid Lily! Lily did not laugh much; she was too lazy even for that. How beautiful she had been! Her beauty stabbed him with the poignancy of what was past. How beautiful she had been! When Maurice went to tell her of the final ending of it all, she would pout and shrug her shoulders. That was all she would do; and she would be faintly resentful at having been disturbed in her lazy life.

Perhaps Maurice would fall in love with her, and it would be ironical and just that she should fall violently in love with Maurice and be cast off by him. Maurice would never suffer; as soon as a woman showed a sign of upsetting his theories about feminine behavior he would be done with her. He would jilt her as easily as he jilted one Muse for another. Why was he being so hard on Maurice?

"I believe that down in my heart I still don't really like him," Michael said to himself. "Right back from the time I met him in Macrae's form at Randell's I've never really liked him."

It was curious how one could grow more and more intimate with a person, and all the time never really like him; so intimate with him as to intrust him with the disposal of a wrecked love-affair, and all the while never really like him. Why, then, had he invited Maurice to go abroad? Perhaps he wanted the company of someone he could faintly despise. Even friends.h.i.+p must pay tribute to human vanity. Life became a merciless business when one ceased to stand alone. The herding instinct of man was responsible for the corruption of civilization, and Michael thought of the b.e.s.t.i.a.lity of a crowd. How loathsome humanity was in the aggregate, but individually how rare, how wonderful.

Michael walked boldly enough toward Tinderbox Lane; and when he rang the bell of Mulberry Cottage not a qualm of sentiment a.s.sailed him. He was definitely pleased with himself, as he stood outside the door in the wall, to think with what a serenity of indifference he was able to visit a place so much endeared to him a little time ago.

Mrs. Gainsborough answered the door and nearly fell upon Michael's neck.

"Good Land! Here's a surprise."

"It's almost more of a surprise for me to see you, Mrs. Gainsborough."

"Why, who else should you see?"

"I was beginning to think you never existed. Can I come in?"

"Sylvia's indoors," she said warningly.

"I rather wanted to see her."

"She's been carrying on alarming about you ever since you stole her Lily. And she didn't take me on her knee and cuddle me, when she found you were gone off. How do you like me new frock?"

Michael thought that in her checkered black and green gingham she looked like an old Summer number of an ill.u.s.trated magazine, and he told her so.

"Well, there! Did you ever? I never did. There's a bouquet to hand a lady! Back number! Whatever next? I wonder you hadn't the liberty to say I'd rose from the grave."

"Aren't I to see Sylvia?" Michael asked, laughing.

"Well, don't blame me if she packs you off with a flea in your ear, as they say--well, she is a Miss Temper, and no mistake. How do you like me garden?"