Sinister Street

"Woman!" said Mrs. Frith. "Woman yourself. Who's a woman? I'm not a woman. No, I'm not. And if I am a woman, you're not the one to say so.

Ah, I know how many bottles have gone out of this house and come in--not by me."

"Hold your impudent tongue," said Nurse.

"I shall not hold my tongue, so now," retorted Mrs. Frith.

Michael had squeezed himself behind the kitchen door fascinated by this duel. It was like Alice in Wonderland, and every minute he expected to see Cook throwing plates at Nanny, who was certainly making faces exactly like the d.u.c.h.ess. The area door slammed, and Michael wondered what was going to happen. Presently there came the sound of a deep tread in the pa.s.sage and a policeman entered.

"What's all this?" he said in a deep voice.

"Constable," said Nurse, "will you please remove this dreadful woman?"

"What's she been doing?" asked the policeman.

"She's drunk."

Mrs. Frith apparently overwhelmed by the enormity of the accusation tottered to her feet and seized a saucepan.

"None of that now," said the policeman roughly, as he caught her by the waist.

"Oh, I'm not afraid of a bluebottle," said Mrs. Frith haughtily. "Not of a bluebottle, I'm not."

"Are you going to charge her?" the policeman asked.

"No, no. Nothing but turn her out. The girl's packing her box. Give her the box and let her go."

"Not without my wages," said Mrs. Frith. "I'm not going to leave my wages behind. Certaintly I'm not."

Nurse fumbled in her purse, and at last produced some money.

"That's the easiest way," said the policeman. "Pay her the month and let her go. Come on, my lady."

He seized Mrs. Frith and began to walk her to the door as if she were a heavy sack. Michael began to cry. He did not want Mrs. Frith to be hurt and he felt frightened. In the pa.s.sage she suddenly broke loose and, turning round, pushed Nurse into the laundry-basket and was so pleased with her successful effort that she almost ran out of the house and could presently be heard singing very cheerfully 'White wings, they never grow weary,' to the policeman. In the end her trunk was pushed down the front-door steps, and after more singing and arguing a four-wheeler arrived and Mrs. Frith vanished for ever from Carlington Road.

The effect of this scene on Nurse was to make her more repressive and secretive. She was also very severe on vulgarity; and all sorts of old words were wrapped up in new words, as when bread and dripping became bread and honey, because dripping was vulgar. The house grew much gloomier with Mrs. Frith's departure. The new cook whose name Michael never found out, because she remained the impersonal official, was very brusque and used to say: "Now then, young man, out of my kitchen or I'll tell Nurse. And don't hang about in the pa.s.sage or in two-twos you'll be sorry you ever came downstairs."

It was autumn again, and the weather was dreary and wet. Michael suffered a severe shock one morning. It was too foggy to go to school and he was sitting alone in the window of the morning-room, staring at the impenetrable and fearful yellowness of the air. Suddenly he heard the cry, 'Remember, remember the Fifth of November, and gunpowder, treason and plot,' and, almost before he had time to realize it was the dreaded Guy Fawkes, a band of loud-voiced boys with blackened faces came surging down the area steps and held close to the window a nodding Guy.

Michael shrieked with fear and ran from the room, only to be told by Nurse that she'd never heard such old-fas.h.i.+oned nonsense in all her life.

During that November the fogs were very bad and, as an epidemic term had compelled the Misses Marrow to close their school, Michael brooded at home in the gaslit rooms that shone dully in the street of footsteps.

The long morning would drag its length out, and dinner would find no appet.i.te in Michael. Stella seemed not to care to play and would mope with round eyes saddened by this eternal gloom. Dusk was merely marked by the drawing down of the blinds at the clock's hour without regard to the transit from day to night. Michael used to wonder if it were possible that this fog would last for ever, if for ever he would live in Carlington Road in this yellow twilight, if his mother had forgotten there ever was such a person as Michael Fane. But, at any rate, he would have to grow up. He could not always be the same size. That was a consolation. It was jolly to dream of being grown-up, to plan one's behaviour and think of freedom. The emanc.i.p.ation of being grown-up seemed to Michael to be a magnificent prospect. To begin with it was no longer possible to be naughty. He realized, indeed, that crimes were a temptation to some grown-ups, that people of a certain cla.s.s committed murders and burglaries, but as he felt no inclination to do either, he looked forward to a life of unbroken virtue.

So far as he could ascertain, grown-up people were exempt from even the necessity to distinguish between good and evil. If Michael examined the Commandments one by one, this became obvious. _Thou shalt have none other G.o.ds than me_. Why should one want to have? One was enough. The Children of Israel must be different from Michael. He could not understand such peculiar people. _Make not to thyself any graven image_.

The only difficulty about this commandment was its length for learning.

Otherwise it did not seem to bear on present-day life. _Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy G.o.d in vain_. This was another vague injunction. Who wanted to? _Remember thou keep holy the Sabbath Day_. It was obviously a simple matter for grown-up people, who no longer enjoyed playing with toys, to keep this commandment. At present it was difficult to learn and difficult to keep. _Honour thy father and thy mother_. He loved his mother. He would always love her, even if she forgot him. He might not love her so much as formerly, but he would always love her. _Thou shalt do no murder_. Michael had no intention of doing murder. Since the Hangman in Punch and Judy he was

_Thou shalt not bear false witness_. It would not be necessary to lie when grown up, because one could not then be punished. _Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's ox_. He would covet nothing, for when he was grown up he would be able to obtain whatever he wanted.

This desire to be grown up sustained him through much, even through the long foggy nights which made his bedroom more fearfully still than before. The room would hardly seem any longer to exist in the murk which crept through it. The crocus-shaped jet of the gas burned in the vaporous midnight with an unholy flame somehow, thought Michael, as candles must look, when at the approach of ghosts they burn blue. How favourable to crime was fog, how cleverly the thief might steal over the coal-yard at the back of the house and with powerful tools compel the back-door to open. And the murderers, how they must rejoice in the impenetrable air as with long knives they stole out from distant streets in search of victims. Michael's nerves were so wrought upon by the unchanging gloom of these wintry days that even to be sent by Nurse to fetch her thimble or work-bag before tea was a racking experience.

"Now then, Michael, run downstairs like a good boy and fetch my needle and cotton which I left in the morning-room," Nurse would command. And in the gathering dusk Michael would practically slide downstairs until he reached the bas.e.m.e.nt. Then, clutching the object of his errand, he would brace himself for the slower ascent. Suppose that when he reached the hall there were two skeletons sitting on the hall chest? Suppose that on the landing above a number of rats rushed out from the housemaid's closet to bite his legs and climb over him and gnaw his face? Suppose that from the landing outside his own room a masked burglar were stealing into his room to hide himself under the bed?

Suppose that when he arrived back at the day-nursery, Stella and Nurse were lying with their heads chopped off, as he had once seen a family represented by a pink newspaper in the window of a little shop near Hammersmith Broadway? Michael used to reach his goal, white and shaking, and slam the door against the unseen follower who had dogged his footsteps from the coal-cellar. The cries of a London twilight used to oppress him. From the darkening streets and from the twinkling houses inexplicable sounds floated about the air. They had the sadness of church-bells, and like church-bells they could not be located exactly.

Michael thought that London was the most melancholy city in the world.

Even at Christmas-time, behind all the gaiety and gold of a main road lay the trackless streets that were lit, it seemed, merely by pin-points of gas, so far apart were the lamp-posts, such a small sad circle of pavement did they illuminate. The rest was shadows and glooms and whispers. Even in the jollity of the pantomime and comfortable smell of well-dressed people the thought of the journey home through the rainy evening brooded upon the gayest scene. The going home was sad indeed, as in the farthest corner of the jolting omnibus they jogged through the darkness. The painted board of places and fares used to depress Michael. He could not bear to think of the possibilities opened up by the unknown names beyond Piccadilly Circus. Once in a list of fares he read the word Whitechapel and s.h.i.+vered at the thought that an omnibus could from Whitechapel pa.s.s the corner of Carlington Road. This very omnibus had actually come from the place where murders were done.

Murderers might at this moment be travelling in his company. Michael looked askance at the six nodding travellers who sat opposite, at the fumes of their breath, at their hands clasped round the handles of their umbrellas. There, for all he knew, sat Jack the Ripper. It happened that night that one of the travellers, an old gentleman with gold-rimmed eye-gla.s.ses, alighted at the corner and actually turned down Carlington Road. Michael was horrified and tugged at Nanny's arm to make her go faster.

"Whyever on earth are you dancing along like a bear for? Do you want to go somewhere, you fidgety boy?" said Nurse, pulling Michael to her side with a jerk.

"Oh, Nanny, there's a man following us, who got out of our bus."

"Well, why shouldn't he get out? Tut-tut. Other people besides you want to get out of buses. I shan't ever take you to the pantomime again, if you aren't careful."

"Well, I will be careful," said Michael, who, perceiving the lamp in their front hall, recovered from his fright and became anxious to propitiate Nanny.

"So I should think," muttered Nurse. "Tut-tut-tut-tut-tut." Michael thought she would never stop clicking her tongue.

About this time with the fogs and the rain and the loneliness and constant fear that surrounded him, Michael began to feel ill. He worried over his thin arms, comparing them with the sleek Stella's. His golden hair lost its l.u.s.tre and became drab and dark and skimpy. His cheeks lost their rose-red, and black lines ringed his large and sombre blue eyes. He cared for little else but reading, and even reading tired him very much, so that once he actually fell asleep over the big Don Quixote. About two hundred pages were bent underneath the weight of his body, and the book was taken away from him as a punishment for his carelessness. It was placed out of his reach on top of the bookcase and Michael used to stand below and wish for it. No entreaties were well enough expressed to move Nurse; and Don Quixote remained high out of reach in the dust and shadows of the ceiling. Nurse grew more and more irrational in her behaviour and complained more and more of the neuralgia to which she declared she was a positive martyr. Annie went away into the country because she was ill and a withered housemaid took her place, while the tall thin house in Carlington Road became more grim every day.

Then a lucky event gave Michael a new interest. Miss Caroline Marrow began to teach him the elements of Botany, and recommended all the boys to procure window-boxes for themselves. Michael told Nurse about this; and, though she muttered and clicked and blew a great deal, one day a bandy-legged man actually came and fitted Michael's window-sills with two green window-boxes. He spent the whole of his spare time in prodding the sweet new mould, in levelling it and patting it, and filling in unhappy little crevices which had been overlooked. Then on a fine spring morning he paid a visit to the old woman who sold penny packets of seeds, and bought nasturtiums, mignonette, Virginia stocks and candytuft, twelve pansy roots and twelve daisy roots. Michael's flowers grew and flourished and he loved his window-boxes. He liked to turn towards his window at night now. Somehow those flowers were a protection. He liked to lie in bed during the sparrow-thronged mornings of spring and fancy how the birds must enjoy hopping about in his window-boxes. He was always careful to scatter plenty of crumbs, so that they should not be tempted to peck up his seeds or pull to pieces the pansy buds. He was disappointed that neither the daisies nor the pansies smelt sweet, and when the mignonette bloomed, he almost sniffed it away, so lovely was the perfume of it during the blue days of June. He had a set of gardening tools, so small and suitable to the size of his garden that rake and hoe and spade and fork were all originally fastened to one small square of cardboard.

But, best of all, when the pansies were still a-blowing and the Virginia stocks were fragrant, and when from his mother's window below he could see his nasturtium flowers, golden and red and even tortoisesh.e.l.l against the light, his mother came home suddenly for a surprize, and the house woke up.

"But you're not looking well, darling," she said.

"Oh, yes, quite well. Quite well," muttered Nurse, "Quite well. Mustn't be a molly-coddle. No. No."

"I really must see about a nice governess for you," said Mrs. Fane.

Nurse sniffed ominously.

Chapter V: _The First Fairy Princess_

Miss Carthew's arrival widened very considerably Michael's view of life.

Nurse's crabbed face and stunted figure had hitherto appropriately enough dominated such realities of existence as escaped from the glooms and shadows of his solitary childhood. Michael had for so long been familiar with ugliness that he was dangerously near to an eternal imprisonment in a maze of black fancies. He had come to take pleasure in the grotesque and the macabre, and even on the sunniest morning his imagination would turn to twilight and foggy eves, to bas.e.m.e.nts and empty houses and loneliness and dust. Michael would read furtively the forbidden newspapers that Nurse occasionally left lying about. In these he would search for murders and crimes, and from their a.s.sociation with thrills of horror, the newspapers themselves had gradually acquired a definitely sinister personality. If at dusk Michael found a newspaper by Nurse's arm-chair, he would approach it with beating heart, and before he went over to read it where close to the window the light of day lingered, he would brood upon his own daring, as if some Bluebeard's revenge might follow.

When Michael's mother was at home, he was able to resume the cheerfulness of the last occasion on which her company had temporarily relieved his solitude; but always behind the firelit confidences, the scented good mornings and good nights, the gay shopping walks and all the joys which belonged to him and her, stood threatening and inevitable the normal existence with Nurse in which these rosy hours must be remembered as only hours, fugitive and insecure and rare. Now came Miss Carthew's brisk and lively presence to make many alterations in the life of 64 Carlington Road, Kensington.

Michael's introduction to his governess took place in the presence of his mother and, as he stood watching the two women in conversation, he was aware of a tight-throated feeling of pleasure. They were both so tall and slim and beautiful: they were both so straight and clean that they gave him the glad sensation of blinds pulled up to admit the sun.

"I think we're going to be rather good friends," said Miss Carthew.

Michael could only stare his agreement, but he managed to run before Miss Carthew in order to open the door politely, when she was going out.

In bed that night he whispered to his mother how much he liked Miss Carthew and how glad he was that he could leave the Miss Marrows' for the company of Miss Carthew all day long.

"And all night?" he asked wistfully.

"No, not at present, darling," she answered. "Nanny will still look after you at night."