Sinister Street

And Michael was not perfectly sure whether he thought himself a hero or a martyr.

Mrs. Fane was very much diverted by Michael's account of Miss McDonnell's accident, and teazed him gaily about Kathleen. Michael would a.s.sume an expression of mystery, as if indeed he had been entrusted with the dark secrets of a young woman's mind; but the more mysterious he looked the more his mother laughed. In his own heart he cultivated a.s.siduously his devotion, and regretted most poignantly that each new blouse and each chosen evening-dress was not for him. He used to watch Kathleen at dinner, and depress himself with the imagination of her spirit roaming out over the broad Midlands to meet her lover. He never made the effort to conjure up the lover, but preferred to picture him and Kathleen gathering like vague shapes upon the immeasurable territories of the soul.

Then one morning Kathleen took him aside after breakfast to question his steadfastness.

"Were you in earnest about what you said?" she asked.

"Of course I was," Michael affirmed.

"He's come down. He's staying in rooms. Why don't you ask me to go out for a bicycle ride?"

"Well, will you?" Michael dutifully invited.

"I'm so excited," said Kathleen, fluttering off to tell her sister of this engagement to go riding with Michael.

In about half an hour they stood outside the small red-brick house which cabined the bold spirit of Michael's depressed fancies.

"You'll come in and say 'how do you do'?" suggested Kathleen.

"I suppose I'd better," Michael agreed.

They entered together the little efflorescent parlour of the house.

"This is my fiance--Mr. Walter Trimble," Kathleen proudly announced.

"Pleased to meet you," said Mr. Trimble. "Kath tells me you're on to do us a good turn."

Michael looked at Mr. Trimble, resolutely anxious to find in him the creator of Kathleen's n.o.ble destiny. He saw a thick-set young man in a splendidly fitting, but ill-cut blue serge suit; he saw a dark moustache of silky luxuriance growing amid regular features; in fact, he saw someone that might have stepped from one of the grandiose frames of that efflorescent little room. But he was Kathleen's choice, and Michael refused to let himself feel at all disappointed.

"I think it's bad luck not to be able to marry, if one wants to," said Michael deeply.

"You're right," Mr. Trimble agreed. "That's why I want Kath here to marry me first and tell her dad afterwards."

"I only wish I dared," sighed Kathleen. "Well, if we're going to have our walk, we'd better be getting along. Will I meet you by the side-gate into the Winter Garden at a quarter to one?"

"Right-o," said Michael.

"I wonder if you'd lend Mr. Trimble your bicycle?"

"Of course," said Michael.

"Because we could get out of the town a bit," suggested Kathleen. "And that's always pleasanter."

Michael spent a dull morning in wandering about Bournemouth, while Kathleen and her Trimble probably rode along the same road he and she had gone a few days back. He tried to console himself with thoughts of self-sacrifice, and he took a morbid delight in the imagination of the pleasure he had made possible for others. But undeniably his own morning was dreary, and not even could Swinburne's canorous Triumph of Time do much more than echo somewhat sadly through the resonant emptiness of his self-constructed prison, whose windows opened on to a sentimental if circ.u.mscribed view of unattainable sweetness.

Michael sat on a bench in a sophisticated pine-grove and, having lighted a cigarette, put out the match with his sighing exhalation of _'O love, my love,

Never would he hold her hand again; never would he touch those lips at all; never would he even know what dresses she wore in summer. _'O love, my love, and no love for me.'_

When Michael met Kathleen by the side-gate of the Winter Gardens, and received his bicycle back from Trimble, he suddenly wondered whether Kathleen had told her betrothed that another had held her hand. Michael rather hoped she had, and that the news of it had made Trimble jealous.

Trimble, however, seemed particularly pleased with himself, and invited Michael to spend the afternoon with him, which Michael promised to do, if his mother did not want his company.

"Well, did you have a decent morning?" Michael enquired of Kathleen, as together they rode towards their hotel.

"Oh, we had a grand time; we sat down where you and me sat the other day."

Michael nearly mounted the pavement at this news, and looked very gloomy.

"What's the matter?" Kathleen pursued. "You're not put out, are you?"

"Oh, no, not at all," said Michael sardonically. "All the same, I think you might have turned off and gone another road. I sat and thought of you all the morning. But I don't mind really," he added, remembering that at any rate for Kathleen he must remain that chivalrous and selfless being which had been created by the loan of a bicycle. "I'm glad you enjoyed yourself. I always want you to be happy. All my life I shall want that."

Michael was surprized to find how much more eloquent he was in the throes of disappointment than he had ever been through the prompting of pa.s.sion. He wished that the hotel were not already in sight, for he felt that he could easily say much more about his renunciation, and indeed he made up his mind to do so at the first opportunity. In the afternoon he told his mother he was going to pay a visit to Father Moneypenny. He did not tell her about Trimble, because he feared her teazing; although he tried to deceive himself that the lie was due to his loyalty to Kathleen.

"What shall we do?" asked Trimble. "Shall we toddle round to the Shades and have a drink?"

"Just as you like," Michael said.

"Well, I'm on for a drink. It's easier to talk down at the Shades than in here."

Michael wondered why, but he accepted a cigar, and with Trimble sought the speech-compelling Shades.

"It's like this," Trimble began, when they were seated on the worn leather of the corner lounge. "I took a fancy to you right off. Eh, I'm from the North, and I may be a bit blunt, but by gum I liked you, and that's how it is. Yes. I'm going to talk to you the same as I might to my own brother, only I haven't got one."

Michael looked a little apprehensive of the sack of confidences that would presently be emptied over his head, and, seeking perhaps to turn Trimble from his intention, asked him to guess his age.

"Well, I suppose you're anything from twenty-two to twenty-three."

Michael choked over his lemon-and-dash before he announced grimly that he was seventeen.

"Get out," said Trimble sceptically. "You're more than that. Seventeen?

Eh, I wouldn't have thought it. Never mind, I said I was going to tell you. And by gum I will, if you say next you haven't been weaned."

Michael resented the freedom of this expression and knitted his eyebrows in momentary distaste.

"It's like this," Mr. Trimble began again, "I made up my mind to-day that Kath's the la.s.s for me. Now am I right? That's what I want to ask you. Am I right?"

"I suppose if you're in love with her and she's in love with you, yes,"

said Michael.

"Well, she is. Now you wouldn't think she was pa.s.sionate, would you?

You'd say she was a bit of ice, wouldn't you? Well, by gum, I tell you, lad, she's a furnace. Would you believe that?" Mr. Trimble leaned back triumphantly.

Michael did not know what comment to make on this information, and took another sip of his lemon-and-dash.

"Well, now what I say is--and I'm not a chap who's flung round a great deal with the girls--what I say is," Trimble went on, banging the marble table before him, "it's not fair on a la.s.s to play around like this, and so I've made up my mind to marry her. Am I right? By gum, lad, I know I'm right."

"I think you are," said Michael solemnly. "And I think you're awfully lucky."