Sinister Street

"Go on," she urged. "Don't stop."

"Well, we were rather late. But of course it was the first time, and I hope you won't think you can drive back at eleven o'clock with somebody because I did once--only once."

"Why, was there any harm in it?" asked Stella quickly, and, as if to allay Michael's fear by so direct a question, one hand went trilling in scale towards the airy unrealities of the treble.

"No, of course there was no harm in it," said Michael.

"Then why shouldn't I drive back at eleven o'clock if I wanted to?"

asked Stella, striking elfin discords as she spoke.

"It's a question of what people think," said Michael, falling back upon Mrs. Haden's line of defence.

"Bother people!" cried Stella, and immediately she put them in their place somewhere very far down in the ba.s.s.

"Well, anyway," said Michael, "I understood what Mrs. Haden meant, and I've agreed not to see Lily until after I leave school."

"And then?"

"Well, then I shall see her," said Michael.

"And drive back at eleven o'clock in hansoms?"

"Not unless I can be engaged," Michael surrendered to convention.

"And don't you mind?"

"Of course I mind," he confessed gloomily.

"Why did you agree, then?" Stella asked.

"I had to think about Lily, just as I should have to think about you,"

he challenged.

"Darling Michael, I love you dreadfully, but I really should not pay the least little tiny bit of attention to you--or anybody else, if that's any consolation," she added. "As it happens, I've never yet met anybody with whom I'd care to drive about in a hansom at eleven o'clock, but if I did, three o'clock in the morning would be the same as three o'clock in the afternoon."

"Stella, you ought not to talk like that," Michael said earnestly. "You don't realize what people would suppose. And really I don't think you ought to practise in your nightgown."

"Oh, Michael, if I practised in my chemise, I shouldn't expect you to mind."

"Stella! Really, you know!"

"Listen," she said, swinging away from him back to the keyboard. "This is the Lily Sonata."

Michael listened, and as he listened he could not help owning to himself that in her white nightgown, straight-backed against the s.h.i.+mmering ebony instrument, little indeed would matter very much among those dancing black and white notes.

"Or in nothing at all," said Stella, stopping suddenly.

Then she ran across to Michael and, after kissing him on the top of his head, waltzed very slowly out of the room.

But not even Stella could for long take away from Michael

"Isn't Chopin wonderful?" cried Stella. "Just when the window-boxes are dripping and the earth's warm and damp and the air is all turning into velvet."

"Oh, very wonderful," said Michael bitterly.

And he would go out on the dreaming balcony and, looking down on the motionless lamps, he would hear the murmur and rustle of people. But he was starving amid this rich plenitude of colour and scent; he was idle upon these maddening, these music-haunted, these royal nights that mocked his surrender.

And in the silent heart of the night when the sheets were fibrous and the mattress was jagged, when the pillow seared him and his eyes were like sand, what resolutions he made to carry her away from Kensington; but in the morning how coldly impossible it was to do so at eighteen.

One afternoon coming out of school, Michael met Drake.

"Hullo!" said Drake. "How's the fair Lily? I haven't seen you around lately."

"Haven't you?" said Michael. "No, I haven't been round so much lately."

He spoke as if he had suddenly noticed he had forgotten something.

"I asked her about you--over the garden-wall; so don't get jealous,"

Drake said with his look of wise rakishness. "And she didn't seem particularly keen on helping out the conversation. So I supposed you'd had a quarrel. Funny girl, Lily," Drake went on. "I suppose she's all right when you know her. Why don't you come in to my place?"

"Thanks," said Michael.

He felt that fate had given him this opportunity. He had not sought it.

He might be able to speak to Lily, and if he could, he would ask her to meet him, and promises could go to the devil. He determined that no more of summer's treasure should be wasted.

He had a thrill in Drake's dull drawing-room from the sense of nearness to Lily, and from the looking-gla.s.s room it was back to back with the more vital drawing-room next door.

Michael could hardly bear to look out of the window into the oblong gardens; two months away from Lily made almost unendurable the thought that in one tremulous instant he might be imparadised in the vision of her reality.

"Hullo! She's there," said Drake from the window. "With another chap."

Michael with thudding heart and flaming cheeks stood close to Drake.

"Naughty girl!" said Drake. "She's flirting."

"I don't think she was," said Michael, but, even as he spoke, the knowledge that she was tore him to pieces.

Chapter XIX: _Parents_

The brazen sun lighted savagely the barren streets, as Michael left Trelawny Road behind him. His hopeless footsteps rasped upon the pavement. His humiliation was complete. Not even was his personality strong enough to retain the love of a girl for six weeks. Yet he experienced a morbid sympathy with Lily, so unutterably beneath the rest of mankind was he already inclined to estimate himself. Stella opened wide her grey eyes when she greeted his pale disheartened return.

"Feeling ill?" she asked.

"I'm feeling a worthless brute," said Michael, plunging into a dejected acquiescence in the worst that could be said about him.