Volume I Part 44 (2/2)

_With all my love,_

_Your affectionate_

_Michael._

In bed that night Michael thought what a beast he had made of himself that day, and flung the blankets feverishly away from his burnt-out self. Figures of well-loved people kept trooping through the darkness, and he longed to converse with them, inspired by the limitless eloquence of the night-time. All that he would say to Mr. Viner, to Mrs.

Ross, to Alan, even to good old Chator, splashed the dark with fiery sentences. He longed to be with Stella in a cool woodland. He almost got up to go down and pour his soul out upon his mother's breast; but the fever of fatigue mocked his impulse and he fell tossing into sleep.

Chapter XII: _Alan_

Michael left the house early next day that he might make sure of seeing Alan for a moment before Prayers. A snowy aggregation of c.u.mulus sustained the empyrean upon the volume of its mighty curve and swell.

The road before him stretched s.h.i.+ning in a radiant drench of azure puddles. It was a full-bosomed morning of immense peace.

Michael rather dreaded to see Alan appear in oppressive black, and felt that anything like a costume would embarra.s.s their meeting. But just before the second bell he came quickly up the steps dressed in his ordinary clothes, and Michael in the surging corridor gripped his arm for a moment, saying he would wait for him in the 'quarter.'

”Is your mater fearfully cut up?” he asked when they had met and were strolling together along the 'gravel.'

”I think she was,” said Alan. ”She's going up to Cobble Place this morning to see Aunt Maud.”

”I wrote to her last night,” said Michael.

”I spent nearly all yesterday in writing to her,” said Alan. ”I couldn't think of anything to say. Could you?”

”No, I couldn't think of very much,” Michael agreed. ”It seemed so unnecessary.”

”I know,” Alan said. ”I'd really rather have come to school.”

”I wish you had. I made an awful fool of myself in the morning. I got in a wax with Abercrombie and the chaps, and said I'd never play football again.”

”Whatever for?”

”Oh, because I didn't think they appreciated what it meant for a chap like your Uncle Kenneth to be killed.”

”Do you mean they said something rotten?” asked Alan, flus.h.i.+ng.

”I don't think you would have thought it rotten. In fact, I think the whole row was my fault. But they seemed to take everything for granted.

That's what made me so wild.”

”Look here, we can't start a conversation like this just before school.

Are you going home to dinner?” Alan asked.

”No, I'll have dinner down in the Tuck,” said Michael, ”and we can go for a walk afterwards, if you like. It's the first really decent day we've had this year.”

So after a lunch of buns, cheese-cakes, fruit pastilles, and vanilla biscuits, eaten in the noisy half-light of the Tuckshop, accompanied by the usual storm of pellets, Michael and Alan set out to grapple with the situation Michael had by his own hasty behaviour created.

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