Volume I Part 53 (1/2)
”Is Daisy the girl you're going to see?”
”You've guessed my secret,” said Meats. ”Come on, I'll introduce you.”
As Michael rose to follow Meats, he felt that he was like Faust with Mephistopheles. But Faust had asked for his youth back again. Michael only demanded the courage not to waste youth while it was his to enjoy.
He felt that his situation was essentially different from the other, and he hesitated no longer.
The next half-hour pa.s.sed in a whirl. Michael was conscious of a slim brunette in black and scarlet, and of a fairy-like figure by her side in a dress of s.h.i.+mmering blue; he was conscious too of a voice insinuating, softly metallic, and of fingers that touched his wrist as lightly as silk. There were whispers and laughters and sudden sweeping embarra.s.sments. There was a horrible sense of publicity, of curious mocking eyes that watched his progress. There was an overwhelming knowledge of money burning in his pocket, of money hard and round and powerful. There were hot waves of remorse and the thought of his heart hammering him on to be brave. A cabman leaned over from his box like a gargoyle. A key clicked.
Then, it seemed a century afterwards, Carlington Road stretched dim, austere, forbidding to Michael's ingress. A policeman's deep salutation sounded portentously reproachful. The bloom of dawn was on the windows.
The flames in the street-lamps were pale as primroses. At his own house Michael saw the red and amber sparrows in their crude blue vegetation horribly garish against the lighted entrance-hall. The Salve printed funereally upon the mat was the utterance of blackest irony. He hastily turned down the gas, and the stairs caught a chill unreality from the creeping dawn. The bal.u.s.trade stuck to his parched hands; the stairs creaked grotesquely to his breathless ascent. His mother stood like a ghost in her doorway.
”Michael, how dreadfully late you are.”
”Am I?” said Michael. ”I suppose it is rather late. I met a fellow I know.”
He spoke petulantly to conceal his agitation, and his one thought was to avoid kissing her before he went up to his own room.
”It's all right about my packing,” he murmured hastily. ”In the morning I shall have time. I'm sorry I woke you. Good night.”
He had pa.s.sed; and he looked back compa.s.sionately, as she faded in her rosy and indefinite loveliness away to her room.
Then, with the patterns of foulard ties crawling like insects before his strained eyes, with collars coiling and uncoiling like mainsprings, with all his clothes in one large intolerable muddle, Michael pressed the cold sheets to his forehead and tried to imagine that to-morrow he would be in the country.
Chapter XV: Grey Eyes
As Michael sat opposite to his mother in the railway-carriage on the following morning, he found it hard indeed to realize that an ocean did not stretch between them. He did not feel ashamed; he had no tremors for the straightforward regard; he had no uneasy sensation that possibly even now his mother was perplexing herself on account of his action. He simply felt that he had suffered a profound change and that his action of yesterday called for a readjustment of his entire standpoint. Or rather, he felt that having since yesterday travelled so far and lived so violently, he could now only meet his mother as a friend from whom one has been long parted and whose mental progress during many years must be gradually apprehended.
”Why do you look at me with such a puzzled expression, Michael?” asked Mrs. Fane. ”Is my hat crooked?”
Michael a.s.sured her that nothing was the matter with her hat.
”Do you want to ask me something?” persisted Mrs. Fane.
Michael shook his head and smiled, wondering whether he did really wish to ask her a question, whether he would be relieved to know what att.i.tude she would adopt towards his adventure. With so stirring a word did he enhance what otherwise would have seemed base. His mother evidently was aware of a tension in this ridiculously circ.u.mscribed railway-carriage. Would it be released if he were to inform her frankly of what had happened, or would such, an admission be an indiscretion from which their relations.h.i.+p would never recover? After all she was his mother, and there must positively exist in her inmost self the power of understanding what he had done. Some part of the impulse which had actuated his behaviour would surely find a root in the heart of the handsome woman who travelled with such becoming repose on the seat opposite to him. He forgot to bother about himself in this sudden new pleasure of observation that seemed to endow him with undreamed-of opportunities of distraction and, what was more important, with a stable sense of his own individuality. How young his mother looked! Until now he had taken her youth for granted, but she must be nearly forty. It was scarcely credible that this tall slim creature with the proud, upcurving mouth and l.u.s.trous grey eyes was his own mother. He thought of his friends' homes that were presided over by dumpy women in black silk with greying hair. Even Alan's mother, astonis.h.i.+ngly pretty though she was, seemed in the picture he conjured of her to look faded beside his own.
And while he was pondering his mother's beauty, the train reached the station at which they must alight for Basingstead. There was Alan in white flannels on the platform, there too was Mrs. Ross; and as she greeted his mother Michael's thoughts went back to the day he saw these two come together at Carlington Road, and by their gracious encounter drive away the shadow of Nurse.
”I vote we walk,” said Alan. ”Mrs. Fane and Aunt Maud can drive in the pony-chaise, and then your luggage can all come up at once in the cart.”
So it was arranged, and as Michael watched his mother and Mrs. Ross drive off, he was strangely reminded of a picture that he had once dearly loved, a picture by Flaxman of Hera and Athene driving down from Olympus to help the Greeks. ?e????e??? ???--that was his mother, and ??a???p?? ?????--that was Mrs. Ross. He could actually remember the line in the Iliad that told of the gates of heaven, where the Hours keep watch, opening for the G.o.ddesses' descent--a?t?ata? d? p??a? ?????
???a??? ?? ???? ??a?. At the same time for all his high quotations, Michael could not help smiling at the dolefully senescent dun pony being compared to the golden steeds of Hera or at the pleasant old porter who hastened to throw open the white gate of the station-drive serving as a subst.i.tute for the Hours.
The country air was still sweet between the hazel hedgerows, although the gra.s.s was drouthy and the scabious blooms were already grey with dust. Nothing for Michael could have been more charged with immemorial perfume than this long walk at July's end. It held the very quintessence of holiday airs through all the marching years of boyhood. It was haunted by the memory of all the glad antic.i.p.ations of six weeks'
freedom that time after time had succeeded the turmoil of breaking up for the August holidays. The yellow amoret swinging from the tallest shoot of the hedge was the companion of how many summer walks. The acrid smell of nettles by the roadside was prophetic of how many pastoral days. The b.u.t.terflies, brown and white and tortoisesh.e.l.l, that danced away to right and left over the green bushes, to what winding paths did they not summon. And surely Alan gave a final grace to this first walk of the holidays. Surely he crystallized all hopes, all memories, all delights of the past in a perfection of present joy.
Yet Michael, as he walked beside him, could only think of Alan as a beautiful inanimate object for whom perception did not exist. Inanimate, however, was scarcely the word to describe one who was so very definitely alive: Michael racked his invention to discover a suitable label for Alan, but he could not find the word. With a shock of misgiving he asked himself whether he had outgrown their friends.h.i.+p, and partly to test, but chiefly to allay his dread, he took Alan's arm with a gesture of almost fierce possession. He was relieved to find that Alan's touch was still primed with consolation, that companions.h.i.+p with him still soothed the turbulence of his own spirit reaching out to grasp what could never be expressed in words, and therefore could never be grasped. Michael was seized with a longing to urge Alan to grow up more quickly, to make haste lest he should be left behind by his adventurous friend. Michael remembered how he used to dread being moved up, hating to leave Alan in a cla.s.s below him, how he had deliberately dallied to allow Alan to overtake him. But idleness in school-work was not the same as idleness in experience of life, and unless Alan would quickly grow up, he knew that he must soon leave him irremediably behind. It was distressing to reflect that Alan would be shocked by the confidence which he longed to impose upon him, and it was disquieting to realize that these last summer holidays of school, however complete with the quiet contentment of familiar pleasures, would for himself grow slowly irksome with deferred excitement.