Sinister Street

"I don't suppose so."

"Only suppose?" Michael would echo on a fierce pause.

"Well, no, I won't."

"You promise?"

"Yes, yes, I promise," Lily would pout.

Then the rhythm of their walk would be renewed, and arm-in-arm they would travel on, until the next foolish perplexity demanded solution.

Twilight would often find them still on the road, and when some lofty avenue engulphed their path, the uneasy warmth of the overarching trees would draw them very close, while hushed endearments took them slowly into lamps.h.i.+ne.

When the dripping January rains came down, Michael spent many afternoons in the morning-room of Lily's house. Here, subject only to Doris's exaggerated hesitation to enter, Michael would build up for himself and Lily the indissoluble ties of a childhood that, though actually it was spent in ignorance of each other's existence, possessed many links of sentimental communion.

For instance, on the wall hung Cherry Ripe--the same girl in white frock and pink sash who nearly fourteen years ago had conjured for Michael the first hazy intimations of romance. Here she hung, staring down at them as demurely if not quite so sheerly beautiful as of old. Lily observed that the picture was not unlike Doris at the same age, and Michael felt at once that such a resemblance gave it a permanent value.

Certainly his etchings of Montmartre and views of the Suss.e.x Downs would never be hallowed by the a.s.sociations that made sacred this oleograph of a Christmas Annual.

There were the picture-books of Randolph Caldecott tattered identically with his own, and Michael pointed out to Lily that often they must have sat by the fire reading the same verse at the same moment. Was not this thought almost as fine as the actual knowledge of each other's daily life would have been? There were other books whose pages, scrawled and dog-eared, were softened by innumerable porings to the texture of j.a.panese fairy-books. In a condition practically indistinguishable all of these could be found both in Carlington Road and Trelawny Road.

There were the mutilated games that commemorated Christmas after Christmas of the past. Here was the pack of Happy Families with Mrs.

Chip now a widow, Mr. Block the Barber a widower, and the two young Grits grotesque orphans of the grocery. There were Ludo and Lotto and Tiddledy-Winks whose counters, though terribly depleted, were still eloquent with the undetermined squabbles and favourite colours of childhood.

Michael was glad that Lily should spring like a lovely ghost from the dust of familiar and forgotten relics. It had been romantic to s.n.a.t.c.h her on a dying cadence of Verlaine out of the opalescent vistas of October trees; but his perdurable love for her rested on these immemorial affections whose history they shared.

Lily herself was not so sensitive to this aroma of the past as Michael.

She was indeed apt to consider his enthusiasm a little foolish, and would wonder why he dragged from the depths of untidy cupboards so much rubbish that only owed its preservation to the general carelessness of the household. Lily cared very little either for the past or the future, and though she was inclined to envy Doris her dancing-lessons and likelihood of appearing some time next year on the stage, she did not seem really to desire any activity of career for herself. This was a relief to Michael, who frankly feared what the stage might wreak upon their love.

"But I wish you'd read a little more," he protested. "You like such rotten books."

"I feel lazy when I'm not with you," she explained. "And, anyway, I hate reading."

"Do you think

Lily told him she thought of nothing else, and his pride in her admission led him to excuse her laziness, and even made him encourage it. There was, however, about the atmosphere of Lily's home a laxity which would have overcome more forcible exhortations than Michael's. He was too much in love with Lily's kisses to do more than vaguely criticize her surroundings. He did not like Mrs. Haden's pink powder, but nevertheless the pink powder made him less sensitive than he might have been to Mrs. Haden's opinion of his daily visits and his long unchaperoned expeditions with Lily. The general laxity tended to obscure his own outlook, and he had no desire to state even to himself his intentions. He felt himself tremendously old when he thought of kisses, but when he tried to visualize Lily and himself even four years hence, he felt hopelessly young. Mrs. Haden evidently regarded him as a boy, and since that fact seemed to relieve her of the slightest anxiety, Michael had no desire to impress upon her his precocity. The only bann that Mrs. Haden laid on his intercourse with Lily was her refusal to allow him to take her out alone at night, but she had no objection to him escorting Doris and Lily together to the theatre; nor did she oppose Michael's plan to celebrate the last night of the holidays by inviting Alan to make a quartette for the Drury Lane pantomime. Alan had only just come back from skating in Switzerland with his father, and he could not refuse to join Michael's party, although he said he was "off girls"

at the moment.

"You always are," Michael protested.

"And I'm not going to fall in love, even to please you," Alan added.

"All right," Michael protested. "Just because you've been freezing yourself to death all the holidays, you needn't come back and throw cold water over me."

They all dined with Mrs. Haden, and Michael could not help laughing to see how seriously and how shyly Alan took the harum-scarum feast at which, between every course, one of the girls would rush upstairs to fetch down a fan or a handkerchief or a ribbon.

"I think your friend is charming," said Mrs. Haden loudly, when she and Michael were alone for a minute in the final confusion of not being late. Michael wondered why something in her tone made him resent this compliment. But there was no opportunity to puzzle over his momentary distaste, because it was time to start for the occupation of the box which Mrs. Haden had been given by one of her friends.

"I vote we drive home in two hansoms," suggested Michael as they stood in the vestibule when the pantomime was over.

Alan looked at him quickly and made a grimace. But Michael was determined to enjoy Lily's company during a long uninterrupted drive, and at the same time to give Alan the opportunity of finding out whether he could possibly attach himself to Doris.

Michael's own drive enthralled him. The hot theatre and the glittering performance had made Lily exquisitely tired and languorous, and Michael thought she had never surrendered herself so breathlessly before, that never before had her flowerlike kisses been so intangible and her eyes so drowsily pa.s.sionate. Lulled by the regularity of the motion, Lily lay along his bended arm as if asleep, and, as he held her, Michael's sense of responsibility became more and more dreamily indistinct. The sensuousness of her abandonment drugged all but the sweet present and the poignant ecstasy of possession.

"I adore you," he whispered. "Lily, are you asleep? Lily! Lily, you are asleep, asleep in my arms, you lovely girl. Can you hear me talking to you?"

She stirred in his embrace like a ruffling bird; she sighed and threw a fevered hand upon his shoulder.

"Michael, why do you make me love you so?" she murmured, and fell again into her warm trance.

"Are you speaking to me from dreams?" he whispered. "Lily, you almost frighten me. I don't think I knew I loved you so much. The whole world seems to be galloping past. Wake up, wake up. We're nearly home."

She stretched herself in a rebellious shudder against consciousness and looked at Michael wide-eyed.

"I thought you were going to faint or something," he said.

Hardly another word they spoke, but sat upright staring before them at the oncoming lamp-posts. Soon Trelawny Road was reached, and in that last good night was a sense of nearness that never before had Michael imagined.

By her house they waited for a minute in the empty street, silent, hand-in-hand, until the other cab swung round the corner. Alan and Michael watched the two girls disappear through the flickering doorway, and then they strolled back towards Carlington Road, where Alan was spending the night.

"Well?" asked Michael. "What do you think of Lily?"

"I think she's very pretty."

"And Doris?"

"I didn't care very much for her really," said Alan apologetically, "She's pretty, not so pretty as Lily, of course; but, I say, Michael, I suppose you'll be offended, but I'd better ask right out... who are they?"

"The Hadens?"

"Yes. I thought Mrs. Haden rather awful. What's Mr. Haden? or isn't there a Mr. Haden?"

"I believe he's in Burmah," said Michael.

"Burmah?"

"Why shouldn't he be?"

"No reason at all," Alan admitted, "but... well... I thought there was something funny about that family."

"You think everything's funny that's just a little bit different from the deadly average," said Michael. "What exactly was funny, may I ask?"

"I don't think Mrs. Haden is a lady, for one thing," Alan blurted out.

"I do," said Michael shortly, "And, anyway, if she weren't, I don't see that that makes any difference to me and Lily."

"But what are you going to do?" Alan asked. "Do you think you're going to marry her?"

"Some day. Life isn't a cricket-match, you know," said Michael sententiously. "You can't set your field just as you would like to have it at the moment."

"You know best what's good for you," Alan sighed.