UTH^S 
 ENCOUNTER 
 
 COMPTON 
 
 MACKENZIE
 
 • » 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 i
 
 YOUTH'S 
 ENCOUNTER 
 
 BY 
 
 COMPTON MACKENZIE 
 
 author of 
 
 "the passionate elopement," 
 
 "carnival," etc. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
 
 Copyright, 19 13, by 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 
 Printed in the United States of America
 
 
 To 
 
 The Reverend 
 
 E. D. STONE 
 
 LI3RAKf
 
 ^^The imagination of a boy is healthy j 
 and the mature imagination of a man 
 is healthy; but there is a space of life 
 between^ in which the soul is in fer- 
 ment, the character undecided, the way 
 of life uncertain, the ambition thick- 
 sighted.'' — John Keats.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Book One 
 THE PRISON HOUSE 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. The New World 3 
 
 n. Bittersweet 22 
 
 HI. Fears and Fantasies 41 
 
 IV. Unending Childhood 48 
 
 V. The First Fairy Princess 72 
 
 VI. The Enchanted Palace 87 
 
 Vn. Youth's Encounter 99 
 
 Vni. More Encounters 115 
 
 IX. Holidays in France 131 
 
 Book Two 
 
 CLASSIC EDUCATION 
 
 I. The Jacobean 145 
 
 II. The Quadruple Intrigue 163 
 
 III. Pastoral 181 
 
 IV. Boyhood's Glory 193 
 
 V. Incense 214 
 
 VI. Pax 238 
 
 VII. Cloven Hoofmarks 254 
 
 VIII. Mirrors 268
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 IX. The Yellow Age 287 
 
 X. Stella 314 
 
 XI. Action and Reaction 327 
 
 XII. Alan 351 
 
 XIII. Sentiment 360 
 
 XIV. Arabesque 383 
 
 XV. Gray Eyes 402 
 
 XVI. Blue Eyes 421 
 
 XVII. Lily 432 
 
 XVIII. Eighteen Years Old 452 
 
 XIX. Parents 475 
 
 XX. Music 485
 
 BOOK ONE 
 THE PRISON HOUSE
 
 ^^What youth, Goddess — what guest 
 Of Gods or mortals ? ' * 
 
 Matthew Arnold.
 
 CHAPTER I 
 THE NEW WORLD 
 
 FROM a world of daisies as big as moons and of 
 mountainous green hillocks Michael Fane came by- 
 some unrealized method of transport to the thin 
 red house, that as yet for his mind could not claim an 
 individual existence amid the uniformity of a long line of 
 fellows. His arrival coincided with a confusion of furni- 
 ture, with the tramp of men backwards and forwards from 
 a cavernous vehicle very dry and dusty. He found himself 
 continually being lifted out of the way of washstands and 
 skeleton chests of drawers. He was invited to sit down and 
 keep quiet, and almost in the same breath to walk about and 
 avoid hindrance. Finally, Nurse led him up many resonant 
 stairs to the night-nursery, which at present consisted of two 
 square cots that with japanned iron bars stood gauntly in a 
 wilderness of oilcloth surrounded by four walls patterned 
 with a prolific vegetation. Michael was dumped down 
 upon a gray pillow and invited to see how well his sister 
 Stella was behaving. Nurse's observation was true 
 enough: Stella was rosily asleep in an undulation of 
 blankets, and Michael, threatened by many whispers and 
 bony finger-shakes, was not at all inclined to wake her up. 
 Nurse retired in an aura of importance, and Michael set 
 out to establish an intimacy with the various iron bars of 
 his cage. For a grown-up person these would certainly 
 
 3
 
 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 have seemed much more alike than even the houses of 
 Carlington Road, West Kensington; for Michael each bar 
 possessed a personality. Minute scratches unnoticed by the 
 heedless adult world lent variety of expression ; slight irreg- 
 ularities infused certain groups with an air of deliberate 
 consultation. From the four corners royal bars, crowned 
 with brass, dominated their subjects. Passions, intrigues, 
 rumors, ambitions, revenges were perceived by Michael 
 to be seething below the rigid exterior of these iron bars; 
 even military operations were sometimes discernible. This 
 cot was guarded by a romantic population, with one or 
 two of whose units Michael could willingly have dispensed; 
 one bar in particular, set very much askew, seemed sly and 
 malignant. Michael disliked being looked at by anybody or 
 anything, and this bar had a persistent inquisitiveness which 
 already worried him. "Why does he look at me?" Michael 
 would presently ask, and "Nobody wants to look at such an 
 ugly little boy," Nurse would presently reply. So one more 
 intolerable question would overshadow his peace of mind. 
 
 Meanwhile, far below the tramp of men continued, 
 until suddenly an immense roar filled the room. Some of 
 the bars shivered and clinked, and Michael's heart nearly 
 stopped. The roar died away only to be succeeded by 
 another roar from the opposite direction. Stella woke up 
 crying. Michael w^as too deeply frightened so to soothe 
 himself, as he sat clutching the pointed ears of the gray 
 pillow. Stella, feeling that the fretful tears of a sudden 
 awakening were insufficient, set up a bellow of dismay. 
 Michael was motionless, only aware of a gigantic heart 
 that shook him horribly. At last the footsteps of Nurse 
 could be heard, and over them the quick "tut-tut-tuts" 
 that voiced her irritation. 
 
 "You naughty boy, to wake up your little sister." 
 
 "What was that noise?" asked Michael. 
 
 "Your own noise," said Nurse sharply.
 
 THE NEW WORLD 
 
 "It wasn't. It was lions." 
 
 "And if it was lions, what next?" said Nurse. "Lions 
 will always come, when little boys are naughty. Lions 
 don't like naughty boys." 
 
 "Michael doesn't like lions." 
 
 He took refuge in the impersonal speech of earlier days, 
 and with a grave obstinacy of demeanor resisted the unrea- 
 sonableness of his nurse. 
 
 "What was that noise, Nanny? Do tell me." 
 
 "Why a train, of course. There's a mollycoddle. Tut- 
 tut!" 
 
 "A train like we rode in from down in the country?" 
 
 "Yes, a train like we rode in from down in the country!" 
 Nurse mimicked him in an outrageous falsetto. 
 
 "Not lions at all?" 
 
 "Not if you're a good boy." 
 
 "Nor bears — nor tigers — nor wolverines?" 
 
 The last was a dreadful importation of fancy from some 
 zoological gift-book. 
 
 "Now that's enough," Nurse decided. 
 
 "Nor laughing hyenas?" 
 
 "Am I to speak to you again? As if there wasn't 
 enough to do without children why-why-whying morning, 
 noon and night." 
 
 Michael recognized finality of argument. The mention 
 of morning, noon and night with their dreary suggestion of 
 the infinite and unattainable plunged him into silence. 
 Nurse, gratified by her victory and relieved to find that 
 Stella was crooning happy mysteries to a rag doll, announced 
 that she was prepared in return for the very best behavior 
 to push the two cots against the window. This done, she 
 left the children to their first survey of London airs, to 
 silent wonder amid the cheeping of countless sparrows. 
 
 Stella sat blinking at the light and the sailing clouds. 
 She soon began to chant her saga. Primitive and imme-
 
 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 morial sounds flowed from that dewy mouth; melodies and 
 harmonies, akin to the day itself, voiced the progress of the 
 clouds; and while she told her incommunicable delight 
 there was actually no one to say, "Stella, will you stop that 
 'umming!" Michael could not compete with his sister in 
 her interpretation of the clouds' courses. He had, indeed, 
 tried once or twice; but Stella either stopped abruptly, 
 leaving him to lag for a while with a lame tune of his own, 
 or else she would burst into tears. Michael preferred an 
 inspiration more immediately visual to Stella's incompre- 
 hensibly boundless observations. Michael would enjoy 
 holding in his hand a bunch of blue cornflowers; Stella 
 would tear them to pieces, not irritably, but absently in 
 a seclusion of spacious visions. On this occasion Michael 
 paid no attention to Stella's salutation of light; he was 
 merely thankful she showed no sign of wishing to be amused 
 by "peep-bo," or by the pulling of curious faces. Both 
 these diversions were dangerous to Michael's peace of mind, 
 because at some period of the entertainment he was bound, 
 with disastrous results, to cross the line between Stella's 
 joy and Stella's fear. Michael turned to look out of the 
 window, finding the details of the view enthralling. He 
 marked first of all the long row of poplar trees already fresh 
 and vivid with young May's golden green. Those trees, 
 waving with their youthfulness in the wind, extended as far 
 as could be observed on either side. Three in every garden 
 were planted close to the farthest wall. How beautiful 
 they looked, and how the sparrows hopped from branch 
 to branch. Michael let his eyes rove along the pleasant 
 green line whose slightness and evenness caressed the vision, 
 as velvet might have caressed a hand running lightly over 
 the surface. Suddenly, with a sharp emotion of shame, 
 Michael perceived that the middle tree opposite his own 
 window was different from the rest. It was not the same 
 shape; it carried little blobs such as hang from tablecloths
 
 THE NEW WORLD 
 
 and curtains ; it scarcely showed a complete leaf. Here was 
 a subject for speculation indeed; and the more Michael 
 looked at the other trees, the more he grew ashamed for the 
 loiterer. This problem would worry him interminably; he 
 would return to it often and often. But the exquisite 
 pleasure he had taken in the trim and equable row was 
 gone; for as soon as the eye caressed it, there was this 
 intolerably naked tree to affront all regularity. 
 
 After the trees, Michael examined the trellis that 
 extended along the top of a stuccoed wall without inter- 
 ruption on either side. This trellis was a curiosity, for if 
 he looked at it very hard, the lozenges of space came out 
 from their frame and moved about in a blur — an odd 
 business presumably inexplicable forevermore like every- 
 thing else. Beyond the trellis was the railway; and while 
 Michael was looking a signal shot down, a distant roar 
 drew near, and a real train rumbled past which, beheld 
 from Michael's window, looked like a toy train loaded with 
 dolls, one of whom wore a red Tam-o'-shanter. Michael 
 longed to be sitting once again in that moving wonderland 
 and to be looking out of the window, himself wearing just 
 such another red Tam-o'-shanter. Beyond the railway was 
 surely a very extraordinary place indeed, with mountains 
 of coal everywhere and black figures roaming about; and 
 beyond this, far far away, was a very low line of houses 
 with a church steeple against an enormous sky. 
 
 "Dinner-time! Tut-tut," said Nurse, suddenly bustling 
 into the room to interrupt Stella's saga and Michael's 
 growing dread of being left alone in that wilderness beyond 
 the railway lines. 
 
 "Could I be left there?" he asked. 
 
 "Left where?" 
 
 "There." He pointed to the coal-yard. 
 
 "Don't point!" said Nurse. 
 
 "What is that place?"
 
 8 YOUTH^S ENCOUNTER 
 
 "The place where coal comes from." 
 
 "Could I be left there?" he persisted. 
 
 "Not unless one of the coalmen came over the wall and 
 carried you off and left you there, which he will do unless 
 you're a good boy." 
 
 Michael caught his breath. 
 
 "Can coalmen climb?" he asked, choking at the thought. 
 
 "Climb like kittens," said Nurse. 
 
 A new bogey had been created, black and hairy with 
 yellow cats' eyes and horrid prehensile arms. 
 
 Michael and Stella were now lifted out of the cots and 
 dumped on to the cold oilcloth and marched into the adja- 
 cent bathroom, where their faces and hands were sponged 
 with a new sponge that was not only rough in itself, but 
 also had something that scratched buried in one of the 
 pores. During this operation, Nurse blew violent breaths 
 through her tightly closed lips. When it was over, Stella 
 was lifted up into Nurse's arms; Michael was commanded 
 to walk downstairs in front and not to let go of the ban- 
 isters; then down they went, down and down and down — 
 past three doors opening into furniture-heaped rooms, past 
 a door with upper panels of colored glass in a design of red 
 and amber sparrows upon a crude blue vegetation — a beau- 
 tiful door, Michael thought, as he went by. Down and 
 down and down into the hall which was strewn with bits 
 of straw and shavings and had another glass-panelled door 
 very gaudy. Here the floor was patterned with terra-cotta, 
 yellow, black and slate-blue tiles. Two more doors were 
 passed, and a third door was reached, opening apparently 
 on a box into which light was let through windows of such 
 glass as is seen round the bottom of bird-cages. This final 
 staircase v/as even in the fullest daylight very dim and 
 eerie, and was permeated always with a smell of burnt 
 grease and damp cloths. Half-way down Michael shrunk
 
 THE NEW WORLD 
 
 back against Nurse's petticoats, for in front of him yawned 
 a terrible cavern exuding chill. 
 
 "What's that?" he gasped. 
 
 "Bless the boy, he'll have me over!" cried Nurse. 
 
 "Oh, Nanny, w^hat is it — that hole? Michael doesn't 
 like that hole." 
 
 "There's a milksop. Tut-tut! Frightened by a coal- 
 cellar! Get on with you, do." 
 
 Michael, holding tightly to the banisters, achieved the 
 ground and was hustled into the twilight of the morning- 
 room. Stella was fitted into her high chair; the circular 
 tray was brought over from behind and thumped into its 
 place with a click; Michael was lifted up and thumped 
 down into another high chair and pushed close up to the 
 table so that his knees were chafed by the sharp edge and 
 his thighs pinched by a loose strand of cane. Nurse, blow- 
 ing as usual through closed lips, cut up his meat, and 
 dinner was carried through in an atmosphere of greens and 
 fat and warm milk-and-water and threats of Gregory- 
 powder, if every bit were not eaten. 
 
 Presently the tramping of furniture-men was renewed 
 and the morning-room was made darker still by the arrival 
 of a second van which pulled up at right angles to the first. 
 In the course of dinner, Cook entered. She was a fat 
 masculine creature who always kept her arms folded beneath 
 a coarse and spotted apron; and after Cook came Annie 
 the housemaid, tall and thin and anaemic. These two 
 watched the children eating, while they gossiped with 
 Nurse. 
 
 "Isn't Mrs. Fane coming at all, then?" inquired Cook. 
 
 "For a few minutes — for a few minutes," said Nurse 
 quickly, and Michael would not have been so very sus- 
 picious had he not observed the nodding of her head long 
 after there was any need to nod it. 
 
 "Is mother going to stay with us?" he asked. 
 2
 
 10 YOUTH^S ENCOUNTER 
 
 "Stay? Stay? Of course she'll stay. Stay forever," 
 asserted Nurse in her bustling voice. 
 
 "Funny not to be here when the furniture came," said 
 Cook. 
 
 "Yes, wasn't it?" echoed Annie. "It was funny. That's 
 what I thought. How funny, I thought." 
 
 "Not that I suppose things will be what you might call 
 properly arranged just yet?" Cook speculated. 
 
 "Everything arranged. Everything arranged," Nurse 
 snapped. "Nothing to arrange. Nothing to arrange." 
 
 And as if to stifle forever any ability in Michael to ask 
 questions, she proceeded to cram his mouth with a dessert- 
 spoonful of rice pudding from her own plate, jarring his 
 teeth with the spoon when she withdrew it. 
 
 Then Michael's lovely mother in vivid rose silk came 
 into the room, and Cook squeezed herself backwards through 
 the door very humbly and so quietly that Annie found 
 herself alone before she realized the fact; so that in order 
 to cover her confusion and assist her retreat she w^as com- 
 pelled to snatch away Michael's plate of rice pudding 
 before he had finished the last few clotted grains. Michael 
 was grateful to Annie for this, and he regarded her from 
 that moment as an ally. Thenceforth he would often seek 
 her out in what she called "her" pantry, there to nibble 
 biscuits, while Annie dried cups and sw^ung them from 
 brass hooks. 
 
 "How cozy you all look," said mother. "Darling Stella, 
 are you enjoying your rice pudding? And, darling 
 Michael," she added, "I hope you're being very good." 
 
 "Oh, yes," said Nurse. "Good! Yes. He's very good. 
 Oh, yes. Tut-tut! Tut-tut!" 
 
 After this exhalation of approval Nurse blew several 
 breaths, leaned over him, pulled down his blue and white 
 sailor top, and elevated his chin with the back of her hand. 
 
 "There's no need to bother about the drawing-room or
 
 THE NEW WORLD ii 
 
 the dining-room or my bedroom or, in fact, any of the 
 rooms except the night-nursery and the day-nursery. 
 You're quite straight in here. I shall be back by the end 
 of June." 
 
 Nurse shook her head very violently at this, and Michael 
 felt tears of apprehension welling up into his eyes. Mrs. 
 Fane paused a moment doubtfully; then she waved beauti- 
 ful slim gloves and glided from the room. Michael 
 listened to delicate footsteps on the stairs, and the tinkle of 
 small ornaments. A bleak silence followed the banging 
 of the front door. 
 
 "She's gone away. I know she's gone away," he moaned. 
 
 "Who's She?" demanded Nurse. "She's the cat's 
 mother." 
 
 "Mother! Mother!" he wailed. "She always goes 
 away from Michael." 
 
 "And no wonder," said Nurse. "Dear, dear! Yes — 
 tut-tut! — but goodness gracious, she won't be gone long. 
 She'll be back in June." 
 
 "What's June?" Michael asked. 
 
 "If you ask any more silly questions, you'll go to bed, 
 young man; but if you're a good boy, I'll tell you a story.'* 
 
 "A real story? A nice long story?" asked Michael. 
 
 "I'll tell you a story about Jack o' my Nory 
 
 And now my story's begun. 
 I'll tell you another about Jack and his brother 
 
 And now my story's done." 
 
 Nurse twiddled her thumbs with a complacent look, as 
 she smacked her palate upon the final line. 
 
 "That isn't a story," said Michael sullenly. "When 
 will mother be back?" 
 
 "In June. That's enough," said Nurse. 
 
 Michael went to sleep that night, trying to materialize
 
 12 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 this mysterious June. It came to mean a distant warmth 
 of orange light towards which he walked very slowly. He 
 lay awake thinking of June in the luminousness of a night 
 light shielded from his direct vision by a basin. His hands 
 were muffled in fingerless gloves to prevent thumb-sucking. 
 Suddenly upon the quiet came a blaze of light. Had he 
 reached June? His sleepy eyelids uncurled to the scented 
 vision of his beautiful mother. But it was only gaslight 
 playing and fluttering over the figure of anaemic Annie tak- 
 ing hairpin after hairpin from her hair. Yet there was a 
 certain interest in watching Annie undress. Her actions 
 were less familiar than those of Nurse. Her lips were 
 softer to kiss. Then the vision of June, rising and falling 
 with Annie's breath, recurred from distances unattainable, 
 'faded again into the blackness of the night, and after a 
 while came back dazzling and golden. It was morning, 
 and in a chirping of sparrows and depth of quiet sunlight 
 Michael began to wonder why he was sleeping beside 
 Annie in a big bed. It w^as an experience that stood for 
 a long time in his memory as the first adventure of his life. 
 The adventure of Annie was a solitary occasion. By the 
 following night the regular night-nursery w^as ready for 
 occupation, and the pea-green vegetation of the walls was 
 hidden by various furniture. Nurse's bed flanked by the 
 tw^o cots occupied much of its space. Round the fire was a 
 nursery fender on which hung perpetually various cloths 
 and clothes and blankets and sheets which, as it w^as sum- 
 mer at the time, might all have been dried much more 
 easily out of doors. Pictures were hung upon the wall 
 — pictures that with the progress of time became delight- 
 fully intimate experiences. They w^ere mostly framed 
 chromolithographs saved from the Christmas numbers of 
 illustrated papers. There was Cherry Ripe — a delicious 
 and demure girl in a white dress with a pink sash, for whom 
 Michael began to feel a romantic affection. There was the
 
 THE NEW WORLD 13 
 
 picture of a little girl eating a slice of bread-and-butter 
 on a doorstep, watched by a fox terrier and underneath 
 inscribed "Give me a piece, please." Michael did not know 
 whether to feel more sorry for the little girl or the dog; 
 some sort of compassion, he thought, was demanded. It 
 was a problem picture insoluble over many years of specula- 
 tion. The night-nursery seemed always full of Nurse's 
 clothes. Her petticoats were usually checkered or uniform 
 red, preternaturally bright in contrast with the blackness 
 of the exterior apparel. The latter of heavy serge or similar 
 material was often sown with jet bugles which scratched 
 Michael's face when he played "Hide-Oh" among the folds 
 of such obvious concealment. Apart from these petticoats 
 and skirts, the most individual possession of Nurse's ward- 
 robe was a moon-shaped bustle of faded crimson which 
 Michael loved to swing from the bedpost whence out 
 of use it was suspended. There was also in a top drawer, 
 generally unattainable, a collection of caps threaded with 
 many different velvet ribbons and often coquettish with 
 lace flowers. Michael was glad when Nurse put on her 
 best cap, a proceeding which took place just before tea. 
 Her morning cap was so skimpy as scarcely to hide the 
 unpleasant smoothness of her thin hair. In the amber 
 summer afternoons or blue spring twilights. Nurse 
 looked comparatively beautiful under the ample lace, with 
 a softer apron and a face whose wrinkles were smoothed 
 out by the consciousness of leisure and the pleasant brown 
 teapot. Mostly, Michael was inclined to compare her with 
 a monkey, so squab was her nose, so long her upper lip, 
 and such a multitude of deep furrows twisted up her coun- 
 tenance. That Nurse was ever young, Michael could not 
 bring himself to believe, and daguerreotypes framed in tin- 
 foil which she produced as evidence of youth from a square 
 box inlaid w^ith mother-o'-pearl, never convinced him as a 
 chromolithograph might have convinced him. At the same
 
 14 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 time the stories of her childhood, which Nurse was some- 
 times persuaded to tell, were very enthralling; moreover, 
 by the fact of her obvious antiquity, they had the dimness 
 and mystery of old fairy-tales. 
 
 On the whole Michael w^as happy in his pea-green 
 nursery. He was well guarded by the iron soldiers of his 
 cot. He liked the warmth and the smallness of the 
 room; he liked to be able to climb from his cot on to 
 Nurse's bed, from Nurse's bed into Stella's cot and with 
 this expanse of safe territory he felt sorry for the chilly 
 and desolate and dangerous floor. Michael also liked the 
 day-nursery. To begin with, it possessed a curious and 
 romantic shape due to its nearness to the roof. The ceil- 
 ing sloped on either side of the window almost to the 
 floor. It was not a room that was square and obvious, for 
 round the corner from the door was a fairly large alcove 
 which was not destined to lose its romance for many years. 
 The staircase that led up to the day-nursery was light and 
 cheerful owing to the skylight in the roof. Yet this skylight 
 Michael could have wished away. It w^as a vulnerable 
 spot which made the day-nursery just a little uneasy at 
 dusk — this and the cistern cupboard with its dark boomings 
 and hammerings and clankings and utter inexplicableness. 
 However, the day-nursery was a bright room with a cozy 
 atmosphere of its own. The pleasantest meal of the day 
 was taken there, and in a black cupboard lived the golden 
 syrup and the heraldic mugs and the dumpy teapot and the 
 accessories of tea. What a much pleasanter cupboard 
 this was than the smaller one in the night-nursery which 
 revealed, when opened, slim and ugly ipecacuanha, loath- 
 some Gregory-powder with wooden cap and squat cork, 
 wicked envelopes of gray powders and slippery bottles of 
 castor-oil. There, too, was the liver-colored liquorice- 
 powder, the vile rhubarb and the deceitful senna. In fact, 
 apart from a bag of jaded acid-drops, there were only two
 
 THE NEW WORLD 15 
 
 pleasant inmates of this cupboard — the silvery and lucent 
 syrup of squills and a round box of honey and borax. 
 There were no pills because Nurse objected to pills. She 
 was always telling Michael as he listened, sick at heart, to 
 the stirring-up of the Gregory-powder with a muffled spoon, 
 so different from the light-hearted tinkle and quick fizz of 
 magnesia, to be thankful he was not on the verge of taking 
 a pill. That she represented as something worthy of a 
 struggle. Michael imagined the taking of a pill to be equiv- 
 alent to swallow^ing a large painted ball full of a combina- 
 tion of all the nastiest medicines in the w^orld. Even the 
 omnipotent, omniscient Nanny could not take a pill. 
 
 There were other jolly cupboards in the day-nursery — 
 one in particular pasted over with "scraps" and varnished 
 — a work of art that was always being added to for a 
 treat. There was a patchwork hearthrug very comfortable 
 to lie upon beside the cat and her two black kittens. There 
 was Nanny's work-table in the window, gay with colored 
 silks and wools. There was a piano locked up until 
 Michael's first lesson, but nevertheless wonderful on ac- 
 count of the smooth curve of the lid that allowed one 
 moment's delicious balance and then an equally delicious 
 slide on to the floor. 
 
 Certainly the day-nursery was the best room in the tall 
 thin house, just as the morning-room was the worst. The 
 morning-room was odious. In it were eaten breakfast and 
 dinner, both nasty meals. Near it was the coal-cellar and 
 the area-door with its grinning errand boys. The windows 
 afforded foothold to strange cats that stared abominably 
 with yellow eyes. Tramps and sweeps walked past the 
 area-railings or looked in evilly. Horrid gypsies smirked 
 through the window, and pedlars often tapped. The 
 morning-room was utterly abominable, fit only for the 
 boiled mutton and caper sauce and suet puddings that 
 loaded its table.
 
 1 6 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 The kitchen, although it was next to the morning-room, 
 was a far pleasanter resort. So far as any ground-floor now 
 could be considered safe, the kitchen was safe. It looked 
 out upon its own fortified basement whose perforated iron 
 staircase had a spiked door at the top, which could be 
 securely shut. The kitchen contained a large number of 
 objects of natural interest, among which was a shallow 
 cupboard that included upon an attainable shelf jars of 
 currants, sultanas, and rice much more edible in the raw 
 state than cooked. There was the electric-bell case, re- 
 cording with mysterious discs a far-off summons. There 
 was the drawer in the kitchen table that contained besides 
 knives and forks, a rolling-pin, a tin-opener, a corkscrew, 
 skewers and, most exciting of all, a club-shaped cage for 
 whipping eggs. There was also a deep drawer in the dresser 
 which held many revelations of the private history of Annie 
 and Cook. Michael could easily have spent days in the 
 kitchen without exhausting its treasures, and as for Cook, 
 gross though she was and heavily though she smelt of on- 
 ions and beer, her tales were infinitely superior to anything 
 ever known in the way of narration. 
 
 Towards the end of June, Mrs. Fane came back. Her 
 arrival was heralded by the purchase of several pots of mar- 
 guerites and calceolarias — the latter to Michael a very 
 objectionable flower because, detecting in it some resem- 
 blance to his dearly loved snapdragons, he pressed open the 
 mouth of a flower and, finding inside a small insect, had to 
 drop the whole pot in a shudder. This brought the punish- 
 ment of not being allowed to watch from the steps for his 
 mother's cab rounding the corner into Carlington Road, 
 and made calceolarias forever hateful. However, Mrs. 
 Fane arrived in the richness of a midsummer twilight, and 
 Michael forgot all about calceolarias in his happiness. All 
 day long for many golden days he pattered up and down 
 the house and in and out of all the rooms at his mother's
 
 THE NEW WORLD 17 
 
 heels. He held coils of picture-wire and hooks and ham- 
 mers and nails and balls of wool and reels of silk and 
 strands of art-muslin and spiders of cotton-wool and Jap- 
 anese fans and plumes of pampas grass and all the petty 
 utilities and beauties of house arrangement. By the end 
 of July every room was finally arranged, and Michael and 
 Stella with their mother, accompanied by Nurse and Annie, 
 went down to the seaside to spend two wonderful months. 
 Michael was often allowed to sit up an extra half-hour and 
 even when he went to bed his mother would come to hear 
 him say his prayers. She would sit by him, her lovely face 
 flushed by the rose-red August sunsets that floated in 
 through the open window on a sound of sea-waves. As 
 it grew darker and, over the noise of happy people walk- 
 ing about in the cool evening, a distant band played music, 
 his mother w^ould lean over and kiss him good night. He 
 would be loath to let her go, and just as she was closing 
 the door quietly, he would call her back and whisper, "One 
 more kiss," and because that good-night kiss was the most 
 enchanting moment in his day, he would whisper as he 
 held her to him very close, "Only one more, but much, 
 much, much the longest kiss in all the world." 
 
 They were indeed two very wonderful months. In the 
 morning Michael would sit beside his mother at breakfast, 
 and for a great treat he would be given the segment she 
 so cleverly cut off from the tip of her egg. And for another 
 treat, he would be allowed to turn the finished egg upside 
 down and present it to her as a second untouched, for which 
 she would be very grateful and by whose sudden collapse 
 before the tapping of the spoon, she would be just as tre- 
 mendously surprised. After the egg would always come 
 two delicious triangles of toast, each balancing a single 
 strawberry from the pot of strawberry jam. After break- 
 fast, Michael would walk round the heap of clinkers in 
 the middle of the parched seaside garden while his mother
 
 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 read her letters, and very soon they would set out together 
 to the beach, where in time they would meet Nurse and 
 Stella with the perambulator and the camp-stools and the 
 bag of greengages or William-pears. Sand castles were 
 made and boats were sailed or rather were floated upside 
 down in pools, and just as the morning was getting too 
 good to last, they would have to go home to dinner, join- 
 ing on to the procession of people returning up the cliffs. 
 Michael would be armed with a spade, a boat with very 
 wet sails and sometimes with a pail full of sea-water and 
 diminutive fish that died one by one in the course of the 
 afternoon heat. After dinner Mrs. Fane would lie down 
 for a while, and Michael would lie down for a great treat 
 beside her and keep breathless and still, watching the shad- 
 ows of light made by the bellying of the blind in the 
 breeze. Bluebottles would drone, and once to his bodeful 
 apprehension a large spider migrated to another corner of 
 the ceiling. But he managed to restrain himself from 
 waking his mother. 
 
 One afternoon Michael was astonished to see on the 
 round table by the bed the large photograph in a silver 
 frame of a man in knee-breeches with a sword — a prince 
 evidently by his splendid dress and handsome face. He 
 speculated during his mother's sleep upon this portrait, and 
 the moment Annie had left the cup of tea which she 
 brought in to wake his mother Michael asked w^ho the 
 man was. 
 
 "A friend of mine," said Mrs. Fane. 
 
 "A prince?" 
 
 "No, not a prince." 
 
 "He looks like a prince," said Michael sceptically. 
 
 "Does he, darling?" 
 
 "I think he does look like a prince. Is he good?" 
 
 "Very good."
 
 THE NEW WORLD 19 
 
 ''What's wrote on it?" Michael asked. "Oh, mother, 
 when will I read writing?" 
 
 "When you're older." 
 
 "I wish I was older now. I want to read writing. 
 What's wrote on it?" 
 
 "Always," his mother tcld him. 
 
 "Always?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Always what? Always good?" 
 
 "No, just plain 'always,' " said Mrs. Fane. 
 
 "What a funny writing. Who wrote it?" 
 
 "The man in the picture." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "To please mother." 
 
 "Shall I write 'always' when I can write?" he asked. 
 
 "Of course, darling." 
 
 "But what is that man for?" 
 
 "He's an old friend of mother's." 
 
 "I like him," said Michael confidently. 
 
 "Do you, darling?" said his mother, and then suddenly 
 she kissed him. 
 
 That evening when Michael's prayers were concluded 
 and he was lying very still in his bed, he waited for his 
 mother's tale. 
 
 "Once upon a time," she began, "there was a very large 
 and enormous forest " 
 
 "No, don't tell about a forest," Michael interrupted. 
 "Tell about that man in the picture." 
 
 Mrs. Fane was staring out of the window, and after a 
 moment's hesitation she turned round. 
 
 "Because there are fairy-tales without a prince," said 
 Michael apologetically. 
 
 "Well, once upon a time," said his mother, "there lived 
 in an old old country house three sisters whose mother had 
 died when they were quite small."
 
 20 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 "Why did she die?" 
 
 "She was ill." 
 
 Michael sighed sympathetically. 
 
 "These three sisters," his mother went on, "lived with 
 their father, an old clergyman." 
 
 "Was he kind to them?" 
 
 "According to his own ideas he was very kind. But the 
 youngest sister always wanted to have her own way and 
 one day when she was feeling very cross because her father 
 had told her she was to go and stay with an aunt, who 
 should come riding along a lane but " 
 
 "That man," interrupted Michael, greatly excited. 
 
 "A rider on horseback. And he said 'good morning,' 
 and she said 'good morning,' though she had no business to." 
 
 "Why hadn't she?" 
 
 "Because it isn't right for girls to speak to riders on 
 horseback without being introduced. But the rider was 
 very handsome and brave and after that they met very 
 often, and then one day he said, 'Won't you ride away 
 with me?' and she rode away with him and never saw her 
 father or her sisters or the old house any more." 
 
 Mrs. Fane had turned her face to the sunset again. 
 
 "Is that all?" Michael asked. 
 
 "That's all." 
 
 "Was they happy ever afterwards?" 
 
 "Very happy — too happy." 
 
 "Are they happy now?" 
 
 "Very happy — too happy." 
 
 "Did they live in a castle?" 
 
 "Sometimes, and sometimes they lived in a beautiful 
 ship and went sailing away to the most beautiful cities in 
 the world." 
 
 "Can't Michael go with you?" he asked. 
 
 "Darling boy, it's a fairy-tale." 
 
 "Is it?" he said doubtfully.
 
 THE NEW WORLD 21 
 
 The two wonderful months were over. One long day 
 of packing up was the end of them, and when they got back 
 to London there was more packing up, after a few days 
 of which Mrs. Fane took Michael in her arms and kissed 
 him good-bye and told him to be very good. Michael tried 
 not to cry; but the tears were forced out by a huge lump 
 in his throat, when he saw a cab at the door, pointing the 
 other way from London. He could not bear the heaped-up 
 luggage and Nurse's promises of sitting up late that eve- 
 ning for a great treat. He did not want to sit up late, and 
 when his mother whispered there was a surprise for him in 
 the drawing-room, he did not care at all for a surprise. 
 But nothing could make the minutes stay still. He was 
 allowed to watch the cab going down the road, but he had 
 no heart to wave his handkerchief in farewell, and when 
 presently he went back with Nurse into the thin red house 
 and was triumphantly led into the drawing-room, he was 
 not raised to any particular happiness by the lancer's uni- 
 form displayed on a large square of cardboard. He suffered 
 himself to be dressed up and to have the scarlet breast- 
 plate strapped around him and the plumed helmet to be 
 pushed over his nose and the sabretache to be entangled 
 with his legs; but there was no spirit of hope and adven- 
 ture flaming in his breast — only an empty feeling and a 
 desire to look out of the night-nursery window at the 
 trains going by with happy people inside.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 BITTERSWEET 
 
 HIS mother's absence made very sad for Michael 
 the tall thin house in Carlington Road. He 
 felt enclosed in the restraint from which his 
 mother had flown like a bird. Time stretched before him 
 in unimaginable reckonings. It was now the beginning 
 of autumn, and the leaves of the lime trees, falling to lie 
 stained and unlovely in sodden basements, moved Michael 
 with a sense of the long winter before him, with the un- 
 ending black nights and the dark wet dawns. From the 
 window of the night-nursery he recognized for the first 
 time the beauty of the unsymmetrical plane tree that now, 
 when the poplars were mere swishing bundles of twigs, still 
 defied the October winds with wide green leaves. Soon, 
 however, by a damp frost the plane tree was conquered, 
 and its blobs jigged to November gusts. Fogs began, and 
 the morning-room was always gaslit, even for dinner at one 
 o'clock. Stella was peevish, and games became impossible. 
 The two black kittens were an entertainment an^ took 
 part w^ith Michael in numberless dramas of revenge and 
 punishment, of remorse and exaggerated cherishing. These 
 histrionic pastimes became infused with a terrible reality, 
 when one day the favorite kitten jumped from Michael's 
 arms over the banisters and fell on to the tiled floor of the 
 hall, hurting herself internally so that she had to be 
 poisoned. He stood by her grave in the blackened mould 
 
 22
 
 BITTERSWEET 23 
 
 of the garden, and wished poignantly that he had never 
 spoken harshly to her, had never banished her to a waste- 
 paper basket prison for the length of a long foggy afternoon. 
 
 Christmas arrived with more uniforms, with a fishmon- 
 ger's shop and a mechanical mackerel which when wound 
 up would click in finny progress from one end of the bath 
 to the other and back. It was wound up every Sunday 
 afternoon for a treat, and was afterwards replaced in a 
 high corner-cupboard that always attracted Michael's ex- 
 treme curiosity and was the object of many vows to solve 
 its secret, when he grew bigger. All these presents came 
 from his mother together with half a dozen books. He 
 received no other presents except from the household. 
 Nurse gave him a china house romantic when illuminated 
 by a nightlight; Annie shyly placed before him a crystal 
 globe that when shaken gave a wonderful reproduction 
 of a snow-storm falling upon a weather-worn tin figure 
 with a green face, blue legs and an unpainted coat. Mrs. 
 Frith, the cook, gave him a box of tops, none of which 
 he or she or anyone else could spin. In addition to these 
 presents Santa Claus allowed him on a still December 
 night an orange, an apple, a monkey on a stick, five nuts 
 (three of them bad) and a selection of angular sweets. As 
 Michael with foresight had hung up two of Nurse's stock- 
 ings as well as his own socks, he felt slightly resentful 
 towards Santa Claus for the meager response. 
 
 Christmas passed away in a week of extravagant rain, 
 and a visit was paid to the pantomime of Valentine and 
 Orson at the Surrey Theater that reduced Michael to a 
 state of collapse owing to the fight between the two pro- 
 tagonists, in which Orson's fingers were lacerated by the 
 glittering sword of Valentine. Nurse vainly assured him 
 the blood was so much red paint. He howled the louder 
 and dreamed ghastly dreams for a month afterwards. 
 
 About this time Michael read many books in a strange
 
 24 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 assortment. Nurse had a collection of about a dozen In 
 her trunk from which Michael was allowed to read three 
 to himself. These were The Lamplighter, The Arabian 
 Nights in a small paper-bound volume of diminutive print 
 and a Tale of the Black Rising in Jamaica which included 
 an earthquake. In The Arabian Nights he read over and 
 over again the stories of Aladdin, The Forty Thieves and 
 Sindbad, owing to their familiarity through earlier narra- 
 tives. On Sunday afternoons Nurse always read aloud 
 from Baring-Gould's Lives of the Saints and Mrs. Gatti's 
 Parables from Nature, and told the story of Father Ma- 
 chonochie's death in Argyll and of his faithful Skye ter- 
 riers whose portraits she piously possessed in Oxford frames. 
 Michael's own books included at this period several 
 zoological works, the Swiss Family Robinson, Holiday 
 House, Struwwelpeter, Daddy Darwin's Dovecote, Jacka- 
 napes, The Battles of the British Army and an abbreviated 
 version of Robinson Crusoe. 
 
 The winter and cold wet spring dragged by. Day by 
 day life varied very little. In the morning after breakfast, 
 if it was fairly fine, a visit would be paid to Kensington 
 Gardens, a dull business; for the Round Pond was not 
 visited, and indeed the Gardens were only penetrated as 
 far as the Palace with occasional promenades along the 
 flower-walk for a treat. Treats were important factors in 
 Michael's life. Apparently anything even mildly pleasant 
 came under the category of treats. It was a treat to walk 
 on the grass in the Gardens; it was a treat to help to push 
 Stella's perambulator; it was a treat to have the sponge 
 floating beside him in the bath, to hum, to laugh, to read, 
 to stay up one minute after half-past six, to accompany 
 Nurse on her marketing, and most of all to roll the slabs 
 of unbaked dough down in the kitchen. The great prin- 
 ciple of a treat was its rarity. As anything that had to be 
 asked for became a treat automatically and as the mere
 
 BITTERSWEET 25 
 
 fact of asking was made a reason for refusing to grant a 
 treat, the sacred infrequency of the treat was secured. The 
 result of this was that the visit to Kensington Gardens 
 instead of being the jolly business it seemed to be for other 
 children, became a tantalizing glimpse of an unattainable 
 paradise. Michael would stand enraptured by the March 
 winds, every impulse bidding him run and run eternally 
 through the blowy spring weather; yet if he so much as 
 climbed the lowest rung of the scaly park-railings, if he 
 dallied one moment to watch a kite launched on the air, 
 Nanny would haul him back to the perambulator's side. 
 As for talking to other children, not even could the magic 
 treat effect that. If Nurse was to be believed, conversation 
 with strange children was the lowest depth to which hu- 
 man nature could sink. The enforced solitariness of his 
 life bred in Michael a habit of contemplation. Much of 
 his morning walk was passed in a dream in which he seemed 
 to be standing still while the world of houses and trees 
 and railings and people swam by him unheeded. This 
 method of existence led to several unpleasant shocks, as 
 when he walked into a lamp-post and bruised his nose. 
 Nanny used to jeer at him, calling him Little Johnny 
 Hcad-in-air; but Michael was so much used to her deroga- 
 tory opinions that he cared very little and made no attempt 
 to cure himself of the habit, but even encouraged himself 
 to put himself into these nihilistic trances. 
 
 It was probably owing to this habit that one morning 
 Michael, looking round in Kensington Gardens, could 
 discern no familiar figure. He was by himself in the 
 middle of a broad gravel walk. Nurse and the perambula- 
 tor had vanished. For a moment a sickening horror seized 
 him. He would never see Carlington Road again; he 
 would never see Stella or his mother; he would never go 
 to the seaside; he was lost. Then he recalled to himself 
 the knowledge of his name and address; he reassured him- 
 8
 
 2 6 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 self by repeating both aloud, Charles Michael Saxby Fane, 
 64 Carlington Road, Kensington. A name and address 
 he had often been warned was a talisman to enlist the 
 service of policemen. His heart beat more gently again; 
 his breathing became normal. He looked around him at 
 the world seen for the first time with freedom's eyes. 
 With waves of scent the beds of hyacinths impressed them- 
 selves upon his memory. He w^as free under a great gusty 
 sky, free to climb railings, to pick up shells from the 
 gravel walk, to lie on his back in the grass and brood upon 
 the huge elm-trees that caught the clouds in their net. 
 Michael wandered along to a drinking-fountain to which 
 access had often been forbidden. He drank four cups of 
 water from the captive metal mug; he eyed curiously the 
 many children who, as free as himself, ran up and down 
 the steps of the fountain. He wished for barley-sugar that 
 he might offer it to them and earn their approbation and 
 company. He was particularly attracted to one group 
 consisting of three funny little girls with splashed pinafores 
 and holes in their stockings, and of two little boys with holes 
 in their knickerbockers and half-peeled sticks. The group 
 moved away from the fountain and Michael followed at a 
 distance. The group turned somersaults over the highest 
 railings and Michael watched it hungrily. The group 
 strolled on, the girls nonchalant and enlaced, the boj^s still 
 peeling their sticks with perseverance. Michael squeezed 
 through the railings, and followed in the group's wake. 
 The two boys finished peeling their sticks and pushed over 
 in a heap the three little girls. There were laughter and 
 shouting, and a confusion of pinafores and black stockings 
 and hair and caps. Michael stood close to them, wide- 
 eyed with admiration. Suddenly the group realized his 
 propinquity and flocked together critically to eye him. 
 Michael became self-conscious and turned away; he heard 
 giggling and spluttering. He blushed with shame and
 
 BITTERSWEET 27 
 
 began to run. In a moment he fell over a tuft of grass 
 and the group jeered openly. He picked himself up and 
 fled toward the gate of the Gardens, anxious only to escape 
 ridicule. He ran on with beating heart, with quickening 
 breath and sobs that rose in his throat one after another 
 like bubbles, breaking because he ran so fast. He was in 
 Kensington High Street, among the thickening crowds of 
 people. He seemed to hear pursuing shouts and mocking 
 laughter. At last he saw a policeman whose tunic he 
 clutched desperately. 
 
 'What's all this about?" demanded the constable. 
 
 "Please, my name is Charles Michael Saxby Fane and 
 I live at 64 Carlington Road and I want to go home." 
 
 Michael burst into tears and the policeman bent over 
 and led him by a convulsed hand to the police station. 
 There he was seated in a wooden chair, while various 
 policemen in various states of undress came and talked 
 kindly to him, and in the end, riding on the shoulder of 
 his original rescuer, he arrived at the tall thin house from 
 whose windows Nurse was peering, anxious and monkey- 
 like. 
 
 There seemed to be endless talk about his adventure. 
 All day the affair was discussed, all day he was questioned 
 and worried and scolded and threatened. Treats faded 
 from possible granting for months to come. Restrictions 
 and repressions assumed gigantic proportions, and it was 
 not until Nanny went upstairs to put Stella to bed and left 
 Michael in the kitchen with Mrs. Frith and Annie that his 
 adventure came to seem a less terrible breach' of natural 
 law. Away from Nurse, the cook and the housemaid 
 allowed a splendid laxity to gild their point of view. 
 
 "Well, what a fuss about nothing," said Mrs. Frith 
 comfortably. "I declare. And what was she doing? 
 That's what some people would like to know. You can't
 
 2 8 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 lose a child the same as you might lay down a thimble. I 
 call it very careless." 
 
 "Yes. What a shame!" Annie agreed. "Supposing he'd 
 of been run over." 
 
 "He might of been run over a dozen times," said Mrs. 
 Frith. "It's all very fine to put all the blame on the 
 poor child, but what was she doing?" 
 
 Then Mrs. Frith closed her right eye, tightened her 
 mouth and very slowly nodded her head until the most of 
 her pleated chin was buried in the bib of her apron. 
 
 "That's what I thought," said Annie mysteriously. 
 
 "What did you think, Annie?" Michael asked fretfully. 
 
 "She thought you hadn't no business to be so daring," 
 said Mrs. Frith. "But there! Well! And I was daring 
 mj^self. Very daring / was. Out and about. Hollering 
 after bojs. The slappings I've had. But I enjoyed myself. 
 And if I sat down a bit tender, that's better than a sore 
 heart, I used to think." 
 
 "I expect you enjoyed yourself," said Annie. "I was 
 one of the quiet ones, I was. Any little trip, and I was 
 sick." 
 
 "Couldn't bear the motion, I suppose?" Cook inquired. 
 
 "Oh, it wasn't the traveling as did it. It was the excite- 
 ment. I was dreadfully sick in the crypt of St. Paul's 
 Cathedral." 
 
 "What a grand place it is, though," said Mrs. Frith, 
 nodding. "Oh, beautiful. So solemn. I've sat there with 
 my late husband, eating nuts as peaceful as if we was in a 
 real church. Beautiful. And that whispering gallery! 
 The things you hear. Oh — well. I like a bit of fun, I do. 
 I remember " 
 
 Then Nurse came downstairs, and Michael was taken 
 up to bed away from w^hat he knew would be an enthral- 
 ling conversation between Annie and Cook. It was hateful
 
 BITTERSWEET 29 
 
 to be compelled to march up ail those stairs farther and 
 farther away from the cheerful voices in the basement. 
 
 August arrived without bringing Michael's mother, and 
 he did not care for the days by the sea without her. Stella, 
 to be sure, was beginning to show signs of one day being an 
 intelligent companion, but Nurse under the influence of 
 heat grew more repressive than ever, and the whole seaside 
 ached with his mother's absence. Michael was not allowed 
 to speak to strange children and was still dependent on 
 rare treats to illuminate his dullness. The landlady's hus- 
 band, Mr. Wagland, played the harmonium and made 
 jokes with Nurse, while Mrs. Wagland sang hymns and 
 whispered with Nurse. A gleam of variety came into 
 Michael's life when Mr. Wagland told him he could catch 
 birds by putting salt on their tails, and for many afternoons, 
 always with a little foolscap of salt, Michael walked about 
 the sunburnt grass patch in front of the house, waiting 
 for sparrows to perch and vainly flinging pinches of salt 
 in the direction of their tails. 
 
 Church was more exciting by the seaside than at home, 
 where every Sunday morning during the long sermon 
 Michael subsided slowly from a wooden bench in the gallery 
 on to a disembowelled hassock, or languished through the 
 Litany with a taste of varnish in his mouth caused by an 
 attempt to support his endurance by licking the back of 
 the pew in front. Nurse told him of wonderful churches 
 with music and incense and candles and scarlet and lace, 
 but for some reason of inexplicable contrariness, she took 
 Michael to an old Calvinistic church with a fire-breathing 
 vicar, a sniffling vicar's wife and a curate who sometimes 
 clasped Michael's head with a damp hand that always felt 
 as if it were still there when it had long been rem.oved, 
 like a cold linseed poultice. Now at the seaside, Michael 
 went to a beautiful church and was so much excited by the 
 various events that he pressed forward, peering on tiptoe.
 
 30 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 Luckily the two ladies in front of him were so devout and 
 bobbed up and down so often that he was able to see most 
 of what was happening. How he longed to be the little 
 boy in scarlet who carried a sort of silver sauce-boat and 
 helped to spoon what looked like brown sugar into the 
 censer. Once during a procession, Michael stepped out 
 into the aisle and tried to see what actually was carried 
 in the boat. But the boat-boy put out his tongue very 
 quickly, as he walked piously by, and glared at Michael 
 very haughtily, being about the same size. 
 
 After submitting without pleasure to a farewell kiss 
 from Mrs. Wagland and after enduring much shame on 
 account of Stella's behavior in the crowded railway car- 
 riage, Michael came back to Carlington Road. During the 
 space between arrival and bed-time he was gently happy 
 in w^elcoming his toys and books, in marvelling at the quick 
 growth of the black kitten and in a brief conversation with 
 Mrs. Frith and Annie; but on the next morning, which was 
 wet with a wetness that offered no prospect of ever being 
 dry, he was depressed by the thought of the long time before 
 Christmas, by the foreboding of yellow days of fog and the 
 fact that to-morrow was Sunday. He had been told to sit 
 in the dining-room in order to be out of the w^ay during 
 the unpacking and, because he had been slow in choosing 
 which book should accompany him, he had been called 
 Mr. Particular and compelled to take the one book of all 
 others that he now felt was most impossible even to open. 
 So Michael sat in the bay-window and stared at the rainy 
 street. How it rained, not ferociously as in a summer 
 storm, when the surface of the road was blurred with rain- 
 drops and the water poured along the gutters, carrying 
 t\vigs and paper and orange-peel towards the drain, and 
 when there almost seemed a chance of a second flood, an 
 event Michael did not fear, having made up his mind to 
 float on an omnibus to the top of the Albert Hall which
 
 BITTERSWEET 31 
 
 had once impressed him with its perfect security. Now it 
 was raining with the dreary mediocrity of winter, dripping 
 from the balcony above on to the sill below, trickling down 
 the window-panes, lying in heavy puddles about the road, 
 a long monotonous gray soak. He sighed as he looked out 
 of the window at the piece of waste ground opposite that 
 was bordered in front by a tumbledown fence and sur- 
 rounded on the three other sides by the backs of gray 
 houses. A poor old woman was picking groundsel with a 
 melancholy persistence, and the torn umbrella w^hich wav- 
 ered above her bent form made her look like a scarecrow. 
 Presently round the corner a boy appeared walking very 
 jauntily. He had neither coat nor waistcoat nor shoes nor 
 stockings, his shirt was open in front, and a large piece of 
 it stuck out behind through his breeches; but he did not 
 seem to mind either the rain or his tattered clothes. He 
 whistled as he walked along with one hand stuck in his 
 braces and with the other banging the wooden fence. He 
 went by with tousled hair and dirty face, a glorious figure 
 of freedom in the rain. Michael envied him passionately, 
 this untrammelled fence-banging whistling spirit; and for 
 a long time, this boy walked before Michael's aspirations, 
 leading them to his own merry tune. Michael would often 
 think of this boy and wonder what he was doing and say- 
 ing. He made up his mind in the beeswaxed dining-room 
 that it was better to be a raggle-taggle wanderer than any- 
 thing else. He watched the boy disappear round the farther 
 corner, and wished that he could disappear in such com- 
 pany round corner after corner of the world beyond the 
 gray house-backs. 
 
 The climax of this wet morning's despair was reached, 
 when a chimney-sweep came into sight, whooping and hal- 
 loaing nearer and nearer. Of the many itinerant terrors 
 that haunted polite roads, Michael dreaded sweeps most 
 b£ all. So he hastily climbed down from the chair in the
 
 32 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 window and sat under the dining-room table until the 
 sound had passed, shivering with apprehension lest it should 
 stop by number Sixty-four. It went by, however, without 
 pausing, and Michael breathed more freely, but just as he 
 was cautiously emerging from the table, there was an extra 
 loud postman's knock which drove him back in a panic, 
 so that when Nurse came fussing in to fetch him to wash 
 his hands for dinner, he had to invent a plausible excuse 
 for such a refuge. As he could not find one, he was told 
 that for a punishment he could not be allowed to hear the 
 message his mother had written at the end of what was 
 evidently a very important letter, to judge by the many 
 tut-tuts the reading of it provoked Nurse to click. 
 
 However, under the influence of tea Nanny softened, 
 and the message was read just as the rain stopped and the 
 sun glittered through the day-nursery window right across 
 the room in a wide golden bar. 
 
 COMO. 
 
 Darling Michael: 
 
 You are to go to kindergarten which you will enjoy. 
 You will only go for the mornings and you will have to 
 learn all sorts of jolly things — music and painting and 
 writing. Then you'll be able to write to Mother. I'm 
 sure you'll be good and work hard, so that when Mother 
 comes home at Christmas you'll be able to show her what 
 a clever boy she has. You would like to be in this beautiful 
 place. As I write I can see such lovely hills and fields and 
 lakes and mountains. I hope darling Stella is learning to 
 say all sorts of interesting things. I can't find any nice 
 present to send you from here, so I've told Nanny that 
 you and she can go and buy tw^o canaries, one for you and 
 one for Stella — a boy canary and a girl canary. Won't 
 that be fun? Love and kisses from 
 
 Mother. 
 
 Michael sat in a dream when the letter was finished. 
 It had raised so many subjects for discussion and was so 
 wonderful that he could scarcely speak.
 
 BITTERSWEET 33 
 
 ^'Will mother really come home at Christmas?" he 
 asked. 
 
 "You heard what I said." 
 
 "Christmas!" he sighed happily. 
 
 "Aren't you glad to go to school?" Nurse wanted to 
 know. 
 
 "Yes, but I'd like Christmas to come," he said. 
 
 "Was there ever in this world anyone so hard to please ?'* 
 Nurse apostrophized. 
 
 "When will we go to get these canaries, Nanny?" 
 
 "Plenty of time. Plenty of time." 
 
 "Soon, will we?" 
 
 "One more question and there'll be no canaries at all," 
 said Nurse. 
 
 However, the sun shone so brightly, and the prospect 
 of a visit to Hammersmith Broadway on a Saturday after- 
 noon appealed so strongly to Nurse that she put on her 
 bonnet and trotted off with Michael up Carlington Road, 
 and stopped a red omnibus, and fussed her way into it, and 
 held the tickets in her mouth while she put away her purse, 
 and told Michael not to fidget with his legs and not to look 
 round behind him at w^hat was passing on that side of the 
 road, until at last they arrived. The canary-shop was 
 found, and two canaries and a bird-cage were bought 
 together with packets of seed and a bird's bath and a 
 pennyworth of groundsel and plaintains. Nurse told 
 Michael to wait in the shop while the birds were being 
 prepared for travelling, and while she herself went to the 
 chemist to buy a remedy for the neuralgia which she 
 prophesied was imminent. Michael talked to the canary- 
 man and asked a lot of questions which the canary-man 
 seemed very glad to answer; and finally Nurse, looking 
 much better, came back from the chemist with a large 
 bottle wrapped up in a newspaper. In the omnibus, going 
 home, Michael never took his eyes from the cage, anxious
 
 34 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 to see how the birds bore the jolting. Sometimes the)^ said 
 "sweet," and then Michael would say "sweet," and a 
 pleasant old lady opposite would say "sweet," and soon all 
 the people inside the omnibus were saying "sweet," except 
 Nurse who was chewing her veil and making the most 
 extraordinary faces. 
 
 It was very exciting to stand on tiptoe in the kitchen 
 while Mrs. Frith cut the string and displayed the canaries 
 in all the splendor of their cage. 
 
 "Beautiful things," said Mrs. Frith. "Fm that fond 
 of birds." 
 
 "Don't they hop?" said Annie. "Not a bit frightened 
 they don't seem, do they?" 
 
 "What are their names?" Mrs. Frith inquired. 
 
 Michael thought for a long time. 
 
 "What are their names, Mrs. Frith?" he asked at last. 
 
 "That's your business," said Cook. 
 
 "Why is it?" Michael wanted to know. 
 
 "Because they're your birds, stupid." 
 
 "One's Stella's." 
 
 "Well, Stella isn't old enough to choose for herself. 
 Come along, what are you going to call them?" 
 
 "You call them," said Michael persuasively. 
 
 "Well, if they was mine I should call them " Cook 
 
 paused. 
 
 "What would you?" said Michael, more persuasively 
 than ever. 
 
 "Fm blessed if I know. There, Annie, what does any- 
 one call a canary?" 
 
 "Don't ask me. Fm sure. No," simpered Annie. 
 
 "I shouldn't call them nothing, I shouldn't," Mrs. 
 Frith finally decided. "It isn't like dogs." 
 
 "What's the matter?" said Nurse, bustling into the 
 kitchen. "Has one got out? Has one got out?" 
 
 "I was telling Master Michael here," said Cook, "as
 
 BITTERSWEET 
 
 35 
 
 how I shouldn't call neither of them nothing. Not if I 
 was he." 
 
 ''Call what? Call what?" Nurse asked quickly 
 
 "His new dicky-birds." 
 
 "Must have names. Yes. Yes. Must have names. 
 Dick and Tom. Dick and Tom." 
 
 "But one's a girl," Michael objected. 
 
 "Can't be changed now. Must be Dick and Tom," 
 Nurse settled, blowing rapidly as usual. 
 
 The decision worried Michael considerably, but as they 
 both turned out to be hens and laid twenty-three eggs 
 between them next spring, it ceased to bother him any more. 
 
 The Misses Marrow's School and Kindergarten, kept by 
 Miss Marrow and Miss Caroline Marrow assisted by Miss 
 Hewitt and Miss Hunt, struck Michael as a very solemn 
 establishment indeed. Although its outward appearance 
 was merely that of an ordinary house somewhat larger than 
 others on account of its situation at the corner of Fairfax 
 Terrace, it contained inside a variety of scholastic furniture 
 that was bound to impress the novice. 
 
 At twenty minutes past nine on the first day of the 
 autumn term. Nurse and Michael stood before a brass 
 plate inscribed: 
 
 The Misses Marrow 
 School and Kindergarten 
 
 while a bell still jangled with the news of their arrival. 
 They were immediately shown into a very small and very 
 stuffy room on the right of the front door — a gloomy little 
 room, because blinds of colored beads shut out the un-
 
 36 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 scholastic world. This room was uncomfortably crowded 
 with little girls taking off goloshes and unlacing long brown 
 boots, with little boys squabbling over their indoor shoes, 
 with little girls chatting and giggling and pushing and 
 bumping, with little boys shouting and quarreling and kick- 
 ing and pulling. A huddled and heated knot of nurses and 
 nursemaids tried to help their charges, while every minute 
 more little boys and more little girls and more bigger girls 
 pushed their w^ay in and made the confusion worse. In 
 the middle of the uproar Miss Marrow herself entered 
 and the noise was instantly lulled. 
 
 "The new boys will wait in here and the new girls will 
 quietly follow Helen Hungerford down the passage to 
 Miss Caroline's room. Nurses need not wait any longer." 
 
 Then a bell vibrated shrilly. There was a general 
 scamper as the nurses and the nursemaids and the old boys 
 and the old girls hurried from the room, leaving Michael 
 and two other boys, both about tw^o years older than him- 
 self, to survey each other with suspicion. The other boys 
 finding Michael beneath the dignity of their notice spoke 
 to each other, or rather the larger of the two, a long- 
 bodied boy with a big head and vacant mouth, said to the 
 other, a fidgety boy with a pink face, a frog-like smile and 
 very tight knickerbockers: 
 
 "I say, what's your name?" 
 
 The pink-faced boy gulped, "Edward Ernest Arnott. 
 
 "What is it then?" asked the long-bodied boy. 
 
 "Arnott is my surname. Edward and Ernest," he 
 gulped again, "are my Christian names." 
 
 "Mine's Vernon Brown. I say, what's your father?" 
 
 "A solicitor," said Edward. "What's yours?" 
 
 "A cricket — I mean a critic," said Vernon. 
 
 "What's that?" 
 
 This seemed to upset the long-bodied boy who replied:
 
 BITTERSWEET 37 
 
 "Coo! Don't you know what a cricket is? I mean 
 critic. You must be a kid." 
 
 Michael thought this was the most extraordinary con- 
 versation he had ever heard. Not even Mrs. Frith and 
 Annie could be so incomprehensible. 
 
 "I don't believe you know yourself," said the pink-faced 
 boy, deepening to crimson. 
 
 ''Don't I? I bet I do." 
 
 "I bet you don't." 
 
 "I know better than you anj^way." 
 
 "So do I than you." 
 
 Michael would have found a conversation between two 
 fox-terriers more intelligible. It ended abruptly, however, 
 with the entrance of Miss Marrow who waved them all to 
 follow her to the severity of her own room. Edward 
 Arnott and Vernon Brown were dispatched upstairs to take 
 their places in the class above the Kindergarten for which 
 Michael was destined and whither he followed Miss Mar- 
 row, wondering at the size and ugliness of her. Miss 
 Marrow's base was a black bell, on which was set a black 
 cushion, above which was Miss Marrow's round beetroot- 
 colored face. Miss Caroline w^as like a green curtain 
 through the folds of which seemed to have burst a red face 
 like her sister's but thinner. Miss Caroline was pleasanter 
 than Miss Marrow and never shouted, perhaps because she 
 was never without a cold in the head. 
 
 Michael was handed over to the care of Miss Hewitt, 
 the Kindergarten mistress, who was very kind and very 
 jolly. Michael enjoyed the Kindergarten. There he 
 learned to write pothooks and hangers and very soon to 
 write proper letters. He learned to sew alternate red and 
 blue lines of wool upon a piece of cardboard. He learned 
 to weave bookmarkers with shining slips of chocolate and 
 yellow paper, and to pleat checkered mats of the same 
 material; these, when term was over, appeared at the prize-
 
 38 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 giving, beautifully enhanced with paper frills cut by the 
 clever Miss Hewitt. He learned to paint texts and to 
 keep his pencil-box tidy and to play the treble of a very 
 unmelodious duet with Miss Hunt, in whose bony fingers 
 his own fingers would from time to time get entangled. He 
 tried the treble without the bass accompaniment at home 
 on Stella, but she cried and seemed as Annie, who was in 
 charge, said "to regular shudder." Altogether Kindergarten 
 was a pleasure to Michael, and he found the days went by 
 more quickly, though still far too slowly. 
 
 About a week before Christmas his mother came back, 
 and Michael was happy. All the rooms that were only 
 used when she w^as at home changed from bare beeswaxed 
 deserts to places of perfect comfort, so rosy were the lamp- 
 shades, so sweet was the smell of flowers and so soft and 
 lovely were his mother's scattered belongings. Christmas 
 Day brought presents — a box of stone bricks, a rocking- 
 horse, a doll's house for Stella, boxes of soldiers, a wooden 
 battleship, and books — Hans Andersen and Grimm and the 
 Old French Fairy-tales. As for the stockings that year, it 
 was amazing how much managed to get into one stocking 
 and how deliciously heavy it felt, as it was unhooked from 
 the end of the cot and plumped down upon the bed in the 
 gaslight of Christmas morning. There was only one sad- 
 ness that hung over the festivities — the thought that his 
 mother would be going away in two days. Boxing Day 
 arrived and there were ominous open trunks and the scat- 
 tered contents of drawers. To-morrow she was going. It 
 was dreadful to think of. Michael w^as allowed the bitter 
 joy of helping his mother to pack, and as he stood seriously 
 holding various articles preparatory to their entombment, 
 he talked of the summer and heard promises that mother 
 would spend a long, long time with Michael. 
 
 "Mother," he said suddenly, "what is my father?" 
 
 "What makes you ask that?"
 
 BITTERSWEET 39 
 
 "The boys at Miss Marrow's all ask me that. Have I 
 got a father? Must boys have fathers? Oh, mother, do 
 tell me," pleaded Michael. 
 
 Mrs. Fane seemed worried by this question. 
 
 "Your father was a gentleman," she said at last. 
 
 "What is a gentleman?" 
 
 "A good man, always thoughtful and considerate to 
 others." 
 
 "Was that man in the photograph my father?" 
 
 "What photograph?" Mrs. Fane parried. 
 
 "By your bed at the seaside?" 
 
 "I don't remember," she said. "Anyway, your father's 
 dead." 
 
 "Is he? Poor man!" said sympathetic Michael. 
 
 "And now run to Nanny and ask her if she remembers 
 where mother put her large muff." 
 
 "Nanny," said Michael, when he had received Nurse's 
 information, "why did my father die?" 
 
 "Die? Die? What questions. Tut-tut! Whatever 
 next?" And Nurse blew very violently to show how 
 deeply she disapproved of Michael's inquisitiveness. 
 
 That evening just when Michael was going to bed, there 
 came a knock at the door, and a tall fair man w^as shown 
 into the drawing-room. 
 
 "How d'ye do, Mrs. Fane? I've come to ask you if 
 you'll go to the theater to-night. Saxby is coming on 
 later." 
 
 "Oh, thank you very much, Mr. Prescott, but I really 
 think I must stay in. You see," she said smilingly, "it's 
 Michael's last night of me for a long time." 
 
 Michael stood gazing at Mr. Prescott, hating him with 
 all his might and sighing relief at his mother's refusal to 
 go out. 
 
 "Oh, Michael won't mind; will you, Michael?"
 
 40 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 Nurse came in saying, "Bed-time! Tut-tut-tut! Bed- 
 time!" and Michael's heart sank. 
 
 "There you are," said Mr. Prescott. "Here's Nurse 
 to say it's bed-time. Now do come, Mrs. Fane." 
 
 "Oh, I really think I ought to stay." 
 
 "Now what nonsense. Saxby will be furiously disap- 
 pointed. You must. Come along, Michael, be a brave 
 chap and tell your mother she's got to go out; and here's 
 something to square our account." 
 
 He pressed a little gold coin into Michael's unwilling 
 hand. 
 
 "Would you mind very much, if I went?" his mother 
 asked. 
 
 "No," said Michael tonelessly. The room was swim- 
 ming round him in sickening waves of disappointment. 
 
 "Of course he won't," decided Mr. Prescott boisterously. 
 
 While he was being undressed, Nurse asked what he was 
 holding. Michael showed the half-sovereign. 
 
 "Spoiling children," muttered Nanny. "That's for your 
 money-box." 
 
 Michael did not care what it was for. He was listening 
 for his mother's step. She came in, while he lay round- 
 eyed in his cot, and leaned over to kiss him. He held her 
 to him passionately; then he buried his face in the bed- 
 clothes and, while she rustled away from him, sobbed 
 soundlessly for a long while. 
 
 In the morning he watched her go away until the warm 
 summer-time and felt abandoned as he walked through the 
 wintry rooms, where lately he and his mother had sat by 
 the fire. As for the ten-shilling piece, he thought no more 
 about it. Soon afterwards he fell ill with whooping-cough, 
 he and Stella together, and the days dragged unendurably 
 in the stuffy nursery away from school.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 FEARS AND FANTASIES 
 
 DURING whooping-cough Michael was sometimes 
 allowed to sit in a room called the library, which 
 w^as next to his mother's bedroom on the first 
 floor and was therefore a dearly loved resort. Here he 
 discovered the large volume of Don Quixote illustrated 
 by Dore that influenced his whole life. He would pore 
 over this work for hours, forgetting everything under a 
 spell of chivalry. He read the tale seriously and thought 
 it the saddest tale ever known. He wept over the knight's 
 adventures, and big teardrops would spatter the page. He 
 had not yet encountered much more than mild teasing at 
 the Kindergarten, that with the unreasonableness of Nurse 
 and his mother's absence made up the sum of the incom- 
 prehensible crosses which he had to bear. But even these 
 were enough to make him sympathize with Don Quixote. 
 He perceived that here was a man intent upon something 
 — he could not understand exactly what — thwarted always 
 by other people, thwarted and jeered at and even physically 
 maltreated. Yet he was a man whose room was full of 
 dragons and fairies, whose counterpane was the adventur- 
 ous field of little knights-at-arms, whose curtains were 
 rufliled by dwarfs, whose cupboards held enchanters. 
 Michael loved the tall thin knight and envied Sancho 
 Panza. 
 
 When whooping-cough was over, and Michael went back 
 
 41
 
 42 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 to Kindergarten, Nurse decided that he should sleep by 
 himself in the room next to the night-nursery. She never 
 explained to Michael her reasons for this step, and he sup- 
 posed it to be because lately he had always waked up when 
 she came to bed. This was not his fault, because Nurse 
 always bumped into his cot, as she came into the room, 
 shaking it so violently that no one could have stayed asleep. 
 She used to look at him in a funny way with angry staring 
 eyes, and when he sometimes spoke she would blow cheese- 
 scented breath at him and turn aw^ay and bump into the 
 washstand. 
 
 Everything in this new room was by Michael anticipated 
 with dread. He would go to bed at half-past six : he would 
 settle down in the wide white bed that stretched a long w^ay 
 on either side of him: the gas would be turned down: the 
 door would be left ajar: Nurse's footsteps would gradually 
 die away and he would be left alone. 
 
 The night was divided into two portions of equal horror. 
 First of all he had to concentrate on closing his mouth when 
 asleep, because Annie had told him a tale about a woman 
 who slept with her mouth open, the result of which bad 
 habit was that one night a mouse ran down it and choked 
 her. Then he had to explore cautiously with his feet the 
 ice-cold end of the bed, in case he should touch a nest of 
 mice — another likely occurrence vouched for by Annie. 
 Then outside, various sounds would frighten him. A dog 
 would howl in the distance : cats would spit and wail, mak- 
 ing Michael w^onder whether they were coming through his 
 window to claw his face. Presently, far up the street, news- 
 boys would cry hoarsely the details of a murder or suicide. 
 As they passed beneath his bedroom window, their voices 
 would swell to a paralyzing roar, and as the voices died 
 away round the corner, Michael would be left shaking with 
 fear. Once he w^as so frightened by a succession of these 
 murder-shouts that he got out of bed and crept forth on to
 
 FEARS AND FANTASIES 43 
 
 the landing whence he peered down between the banisters 
 into the quiet red light burning in the hall far below. 
 While he was leaning over, a door banged suddenly on the 
 top floor, and Michael fled barefooted down the stairs, until 
 he reached the cold tiles of the front hall. Should he dare 
 to descend still lower and disturb Nurse at her supper in 
 the kitchen ? Or were they all lying there. Cook and Annie 
 and Nurse, with their throats cut? The door leading to 
 the basement stairs was open; and he stole down over the 
 oilcloth, past the yawning cellar, past the laundry-basket 
 in the passage, past the cupboard under the stairs, to listen 
 by the kitchen door. There was a murmur of voices, famil- 
 iar yet unfamiliar: the kitchen door was ajar and he peered 
 round stealthily. There w^as Nurse with a very red face 
 in a heap on a chair, shaking her forefinger at Mrs. Frith, 
 who with an equally red face was talking very indistinctly 
 to Nurse; w^hile between them, bolt upright and very pale, 
 sat Annie nervously shaving from the cheese very thin seg- 
 ments w^hich she ate from the knife's edge. They seemed 
 to Michael, as he watched them, like people in a nightmare, 
 so unreal and horrible were they : they frightened him more 
 than ever, sitting there nodding at each other in the kitchen 
 where the black-beetles ran slyly in and out beneath the 
 fender. Suddenly Annie saw Michael and waved him back; 
 he turned at her gesture and withdrew from sight. While 
 he stood shivering in the dark passage, Annie came out and, 
 picking him up, carried him out of hearing. 
 
 "Whatever made you come downstairs?" she panted on 
 the first-floor landing. 
 
 **I was frightened." 
 
 "You frightened me!' 
 
 "Who are they murdering?" 
 
 "YouVe been having a bad dream," said Annie. 
 
 She led him upstairs again to his room and tucked him 
 up and at his earnest request turned the gas a trifle higher.
 
 44 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 "Why did Nanny and Mrs. Frith look like that?" he 
 asked. 
 
 "They're tired," said Annie. 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "They have to work so hard to look after you." 
 
 Then she left him alone, and he fell asleep before they 
 all came up to bed. 
 
 Generally speaking the first part of the night, however 
 bad the outside noises, was not so fearful as the second part. 
 Mostly the second portion of the night was preceded by a 
 bad dream in which Michael's nerves were so much shaken 
 that he had no courage or common sense left to grapple w4th 
 the long hours in the ghastly stillness of his room. There 
 was one dream in particular which he dreaded, and indeed 
 it was the only one that repeated itself at regular intervals 
 without any essential change. He would find himself alone 
 in a long street in the middle of the night. Usually it 
 would be shining w^ith wet, but sometimes it would be dry 
 and airless. This street stretched as far as one could see. 
 It had on either side lamp-posts which burned w^ith a steady 
 staring illumination, long rows of lamp-posts that converged 
 in the farthest distance. The houses all seemed empty, yet 
 everyone was in some way a malignant personality. Down 
 this street Michael would have to walk on and on. He 
 would meet nobody, and the only living thing was a bony 
 hound that pattered behind him at whatever pace he went, 
 whether he ran or whether he loitered. He would in his 
 dream be filled with a desire to enter one of these houses, 
 and often he would mount the steps and knock a summons 
 on the door — a knock that echoed all over the gloom w^ithin. 
 While he knocked, the bony hound would howl in the 
 shadows of the basement. Every house at which he knocked 
 Michael would be more and more anxious to pass, more 
 and more fearful to disturb. Yet however much he strug- 
 gled against it, he would ultimately be compelled to knock
 
 FEARS AND FANTASIES 45 
 
 his loud challenge. The street would now stretch for miles 
 of lighted lamps before and behind him, and the knowledge 
 would gradually be borne in upon Michael that sooner or 
 later in one of these gray houses the door would open. He 
 would hurry along, but however fast he travelled, some 
 house would draw him inexorably to its threshold and he 
 would wait in agony lest slowly the great door should swing 
 back to a dim hall. The climax of the dream would now 
 be reached. One house would simultaneously repe) and 
 draw him more than any of those left behind. He would 
 struggle to go by, but he would find himself on the steps 
 with legs that refused to carry him away. He would knock : 
 very slowly the door would swing back and, convulsed and 
 choking and warding off horror, Michael w^ould wake in a 
 frenzy of fear to his own real house of ghastly stillness, 
 where no longer did even a belated luggage-train or jingling 
 hansom assure him of life's continuity. 
 
 He did not always wake up suddenly: sometimes he 
 would be aware that he was slowly waking and would 
 struggle to keep asleep, lying for a long time without moving 
 a muscle, in order to cheat himself into the belief that he 
 was not aw^ake. But gradually the strain would be too much 
 and he would have to become conscious of the room. First 
 of all, he would turn on to his left side and view apprehen- 
 sively the door ajar. This would seem to tremble, as he 
 looked, to some invisible hand trying it. Then along the 
 wall the wardrobe would creak, and every knot of its var- 
 nished surface would take on a fantastic countenance. He 
 would wonder what was inside, and try to gain comfort 
 and the sense of commonplace daytime existence by counting 
 the cats swinging on a roundabout in one of Louis Wain's 
 Christmas pictures. In the corner beyond the wardrobe was 
 a large clothes-basket that crackled and snapped and must 
 surely hold somebody inside, hidden as the Forty Thieves 
 were hidden in the oil-jars. The fire-place, opposite the
 
 46 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 foot of the bed, seemed a center for the noise of mice. How- 
 he hoped the)^ would be content to play upon the hearth and 
 not venture to leap over the fender and scuttle about the 
 room. Then the door would begin to frighten him again, 
 and Michael w^ould turn very quietly on to his back, staring 
 at the luminous ceiling where the gas-jet made a huge moon 
 whose edges w^avered perpetually. But the gas-jet itself 
 became terrifying, w^hen looked at too long, \vith its queer 
 blue base and slim solemn shape, so melancholy, so desolate, 
 so changeless. The ceiling would very soon become unen- 
 durable because various black marks would seem with in- 
 tensest contemplation more and more like spiders and beetles. 
 Michael would have to give up lying on his back and turn 
 upon his right side. He would count each slat of the 
 Venetian blinds and long passionately and sadly for the 
 gray streaks to appear at the sides in proclamation of the 
 approach of day. Without these gray streaks, the windows 
 were unbearable, so menacing were they w'ith the unknow^n 
 infinite night behind them. The curtains, too, would quiver, 
 and even Michael's clothes, heaped upon a chair, w^ould 
 assume a w^orm-like vitality. The washstand made him feel 
 oppressed, so silent and white were the jug and basin and 
 soap-dish, so cold and chill were they. There was nothing 
 to be done but to bury his head beneath the clothes and, 
 trembling, try to believe in the reality of guardian angels. 
 He would shut his eyes very tightly until the w^heels of 
 colored lights thus evoked would circle and revolve, chang- 
 ing their colors in some mj'sterious w'ay. These dissolving 
 spots w^ere a great consolation and passed the time for a 
 little w^hile, until the dread of fire began to come. He 
 w^ould fling back the clothes in a paroxysm and, heedless of 
 any other danger, sit up w^th staring eyes and listening ears 
 and keen nostrils, dreading and imagining and doubting. 
 Surely he could hear a crackle ; he could smell smoke. The 
 house was on fire; yet not for anything could he have got
 
 FEARS AND FANTASIES 47 
 
 out of bed to reassure himself. What might not be under- 
 neath, a burglar, a dead body, a murderer, a skeleton, a 
 mad dog? 
 
 Underneath the clothes he would plunge, and then he 
 would be sure that someone was coming into the room to 
 smother him. He held his breath, waiting, with an effort 
 he flung back the clothes again. There was nothing but 
 the ghastly stillness and the solemn gaslight and the view- 
 less blinds and the expectant door ajar. The bedposts would 
 now take on a sort of humanity. They would look at him 
 and wink and shiver. The wall-paper, normally a pattern 
 of rosebuds and roses, began to move, to swim with un- 
 natural life. The cistern upstairs began to clank; the bath 
 began to drip. It must be blood — Nanny had been mur- 
 dered. The blood was dripping slowly. Michael choked 
 with horror. Somebody was tapping at the window-pane, 
 yes, somebody was tapping. It was horrible this endless 
 tapping. Cats must be coming in. The wardrobe creaked 
 and rapped and groaned. Some of his clothes slid off the 
 chair on to the floor with a soft plump; Michael tried to 
 shriek his dism.ay; but his tongue was dry. Underneath 
 him a knife was being pushed through the bed. A death- 
 w^atch was ticking in the fastness of the wall at his head. 
 A rat was gnawing his way into the room. Black-beetles 
 were coming up the stairs. 
 
 Then along the edge of the Venetian blinds appeared a 
 blue streak. It widened. It became more luminous. It 
 turned from blue to gray. It turned from gray to dimmest 
 silver. Hark! "Cheep, cheep, cheep, cheep!" The spar- 
 rows were beginning. Their chorus rose. Their noise was 
 cool as water to Michael's fever. An early cart rattled 
 cheerfully down the road. It was morning.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 UNENDING CHILDHOOD 
 
 AFTER whoopfng-cough came chicken-pox, and it was 
 settled that Michael should leave the Kindergarten 
 where these illnesses were caught. A French gov- 
 erness was to teach him every morning and to walk with 
 him every afternoon. Mrs. Fane wrote to Nurse to tell 
 her of this decision and to announce that a Madame Flauve 
 would on Monday next arrive at 64 Carlington Road to 
 superintend the education of Michael. This news reached 
 Nurse on the preceding Friday and threw her into an agi- 
 tation. The whole house was turned upside down : curtains 
 were changed; floors were beeswaxed; furniture was pol- 
 ished; pictures were dusted. All Saturday and Friday a 
 great cleaning took place, and on Sunday every cushion was 
 smoothed and patted; chairs were adjusted; mats were 
 shaken ; flowers were distributed, until in the evening Nurse 
 and Cook and Annie, followed by Michael, marched over 
 the house and examined their handiwork. 
 
 "Well, I hope we shall see something worth looking at," 
 said Mrs. Frith. "I never worked so hard in all my nat- 
 ural." 
 
 "Oh, yes. Must get the place nice. Not going to have 
 strange people come here and grumble," said Nurse. 
 
 "What is this Madame Flauve? Is she a lady?" Cook 
 asked. 
 
 "Oh, yes. Yes. A lady. French. Very particular," 
 Nurse replied. 
 
 48
 
 UNENDING CHILDHOOD 49 
 
 Michael wondered what his governess would be like. He 
 never remembered to have seen Nanny so reverently excited 
 before. 
 
 'Tve heard a lot about these French women," said Mrs. 
 Frith. "A lot about them, I have. They live very gay, 
 don't they?" 
 
 "Doesn't matter how they live. No. No. Must have 
 everything at its best," Nurse insisted. 
 
 By the time the scouring of the house was done, Michael 
 was prepared for the advent of a creature so lovely that he 
 made up his mind the mere sight of her would fill him with 
 joy. He had not settled exactly w^hich princess she would 
 most nearly resemble. As he turned over the pages of his 
 fairy books, he would fancy with every illustration that 
 here was to be seen the image of his beautiful French gov- 
 erness. As he lay awake in his bed on a quiet Sunday eve- 
 ning, so pleasant was the imagination of her radiancy that 
 fears and horrors were driven away by the power of her 
 beauty's spell. The night acquired something of the peace 
 and sanctity of Christmas Eve, when the air was hallowed 
 by Santa Claus on his jovial pilgrimage. He had never felt 
 so little oppressed by the night, so confident in the might of 
 good. 
 
 On Monday morning Michael jigged through his dress- 
 ing, jigged downstairs to breakfast, jigged through the meal 
 itself and jigged upstairs to the dining-room to watch for 
 the splendid arrival. He tambourinated upon the window- 
 pane a gay little tune, jigging the while from foot to foot 
 in an ecstasy of anticipation. 
 
 Nurse had decided that the morning-room was not a fit 
 place for such a paragon to perform her duties. Nor did 
 she feel that the day-nursery w^as worthy of her. So, even 
 while Michael jigged at his vigil. Nurse was arming the 
 dining-room table for an encounter with greatness. Inkpots 
 were dusted and displayed; blotting-pads, including one
 
 '50 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 poker-worked with a view of Antwerp Cathedral, were 
 unfolded. Pens and pencils and pieces of india-rubber and 
 pen-wipers and boxes of nibs and drawing-pins w^re lavishly 
 scattered about the green tablecloth. Various blue exercise- 
 books gleamed in the April sunlight and, to set the seal 
 upon the whole business, a calendar of Great Thoughts was 
 roughly divested of ninety-eight great thoughts at once, in 
 order that for this rare female a correct announcement 
 should celebrate the ninth of April, her famous date. At 
 five minutes to ten Nurse and Michael were both in a state 
 of excitement; Cook w^as saying that she had never re- 
 gretted the inadequacy of the kitchen arrangements of 
 Sixty-four until this moment; and Annie was bracing her- 
 self for the real effort, the opening of the door to Madame 
 Flauve. The only calm person was Stella who, clasping a 
 rubber doll with tight curly rubber hair and a stomachic 
 squeak, chanted to herself the saga of Madame Flauve's 
 arrival. 
 
 At two minutes past ten, Michael said somebody was 
 coming up the steps, and a ring confirmed his assertion. 
 The door was opened. Madame Flauve was heard rubbing 
 her boots on the salve of the mat, w^as heard putting away 
 her umbrella in the peacock-blue china umbrella-stand, was 
 heard inquiring for Mrs. Fane and was announced inaudibly 
 by Annie. 
 
 Michael's heart sank when he beheld a fat young French- 
 woman with a bilious complexion and little pigs' eyes and a 
 dowdy black mantle and a common black hat. As for 
 Nurse, she sniffed quite audibly and muttered an insincere 
 hope that Madame Flauve would find everything to her 
 liking. The governess answered in the thick voice of one 
 who is always swallowing jujubes that without a doubt she 
 would find everything, and presently Nurse left the room 
 with many a backward glance of contempt towards Madame 
 Flauve.
 
 UNENDING CHILDHOOD 
 
 51 
 
 Monday 
 
 Tuesday 
 
 Wednesday-! n — 12 
 
 1 12 — I 
 10 — II 
 
 Thursday 
 
 Friday 
 
 2.30 — 4 Walk 
 
 2.30 — 4 Walk 
 
 2.30 — 4 Walk 
 
 2.30 — 4 Walk 
 
 2.30—4 
 
 Walk 
 
 When the lessons began (or rather before they began) a 
 time-table was drawn up by Madame Flauve: 
 
 French 
 
 Geography 
 
 History 
 
 Geography 
 
 History 
 
 French 
 
 History 
 
 Geography 
 
 French 
 
 French 
 
 History 
 
 Geography 
 
 Geography 
 
 French 
 
 History 
 
 Michael, when he saw the programme of his work, felt 
 much depressed. It seemed to lack variety, and he was not 
 very much cheered up to hear that at meals only French 
 would be spoken. Those meals were dreadful. At first 
 Nurse and Stella were present, but when Nanny found that 
 Madame wanted to teach Stella the French for knife and 
 fork, she declined to have dinner downstairs any longer, 
 and Michael and Madame Flauve were left to dine tete-a- 
 tete on dull food and a languishing conversation. 
 
 "Madam indeed," Nurse would snifi, when the governess 
 had left after tea, "I never heard of such a thing in all my 
 life. Madam! A fine Madam!" 
 
 "What an imperence," agreed Mrs. Frith. "Fancy, a 
 ordinary volgar thing like that to go calling herself Madam, 
 whatever shall we come to?" 
 
 "It does seem a cheek, don't it?" said Annie. 
 
 "I never!" Cook gasped. "I never! Madam! Well, I
 
 52 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 could almost laugh at the sauce of it. And all that cleaning 
 as you might say for a person as isn't a scrap better than 
 you and me." 
 
 "Oh, I've written to Mrs. Fane," said Nurse. "I said 
 there must be some mistake been made. Oh, yes, a mistake 
 — must be a mistake." 
 
 Michael did not much enjoy the walks w^ith his governess. 
 He was always taken to a second-hand furniture-shop in 
 the Hammersmith Road, not a pleasant old furniture-shop 
 with Toby mugs and stuffed birds and coins; but a barrack 
 full of red washing-stands and white-handled chests of 
 drawers. Madame Flauve informed him that she w^as en- 
 gaged in furnishing at that moment, and would immediately 
 show him a locket with the portrait of her husband inset. 
 Michael could not gain any clear idea of what M. Flauve 
 was like, since all that remained was a nebulous profile 
 smothered by a very black moustache. Madame Flauve 
 told him that M. Flauve was "tout-a-fait charmant, mais 
 charmant, mon petit. II etait si aimable, si gentil et d'un 
 cceur tres, tres bon." Michael grew very tired of being 
 jostled outside the furniture-shop every afternoon, while his 
 governess grubbed around the ugly furniture and argued 
 with the man about the prices. The only article she ever 
 bought was a commode, which so violently embarrassed 
 Michael that he blushed the whole way home. But 
 Madame Flauve often made him blush and would comment 
 upon subjects not generally mentioned except by Mrs. Frith, 
 and even by her only in a spirit of hearty coarseness that did 
 not make Michael feel ashamed like this Frenchwoman's 
 suggestion of the nasty. He was on one occasion very much 
 disgusted by her remarks on the inside of an egg that was 
 slightly set. Yet while he was disgusted, his curiosity was 
 stimulated by the information imparted, and he made further 
 inquiries from Nurse that evening. Nanny was horrified, 
 and said plainly that she considered this governess no better
 
 UNENDING CHILDHOOD 53 
 
 than a low beast, and that she should write accordingly to 
 Mrs. Fane. 
 
 After a month or two, Michael was sent back to school 
 in the morning, though the afternoon walks still continued 
 for a time. When Michael returned to the Misses Marrow, 
 he was promoted to the class above the Kindergarten and 
 was set to learn the elements of Latin in a desultory and 
 unpractical way, that is to say he was made to learn — 
 
 Nominative, mensa, a table 
 Vocative, mensa, O table 
 Accusative, mensam, a table 
 
 and the rest of the unintelligible rigmarole. He had no 
 clear notion what Latin was, and so far as he could make 
 out nobody else at the Misses Marrow's school had any 
 clearer notion. Indeed, the only distinct addition to his 
 knowledge of life was gained from Vernon Brown who, 
 with great ingenuity, had hollowed out a cork and by the 
 insertion of several pins in the front had made of it a minia- 
 ture cage in which he kept a fly. All the other boys w^ere 
 much impressed by Vernon Brown's achievement, and very 
 soon they all came to school with flies captive in excavated 
 corks. Michael longed to be like these bigger boys and 
 pined for a cage. One day Edward Arnott gave him one, 
 and all the rest of that day Michael watched the fly trying 
 to escape. When he showed it to Madame Flauve, she pro- 
 fessed herself shocked by the cruelty of it and begged him 
 to release the fly, asserting that she would find him a sub- 
 stitute which would deceive all the other boys. Michael 
 agreed to release his captive and the long-imprisoned fly 
 walked painfully out of his cell. Then Madame Flauve 
 chipped off a little piece of coal and tied it round w^ith one 
 of her own hairs and showed Michael how by cunningly 
 twisting this hair, the coal would gain the appearance of
 
 '54 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 mobility. Michael was doubtful at first, but Madame's 
 exaggerated encouragement led him to suppose that it was 
 safe to practise the deception on his companions. So on the 
 next day he proceeded to exhibit his "fly." But everybody 
 knew it was coal and jeered at Michael and made him very 
 unhappy and anxious never again to attempt to differentiate 
 himself or his actions from the rest of mankind. 
 
 Michael's mother came home towards the end of July, 
 and Madame Flauve vanished to her husband and house 
 and furniture. Michael did not regret her. Mrs. Fane 
 asked him many questions and particularly she wanted to 
 know if he was perfectly happy. Michael said ''yes," and 
 his mother seemed satisfied. She was now very much taken 
 up with Stella, who was a lovely little girl with gray eyes 
 and light brown glinting hair. Michael did not exactly 
 feel jealous of his sister, but he had an emotion of disap- 
 pointment that no longer could he be alone with his mother 
 in a fragrant intimacy from which the perpetually sleeping 
 Stella was excluded. Now Stella no longer slept all the 
 time, but, on the contrary, was very much awake and very 
 eager to be entertained. Michael also felt a twinge of 
 regret that Stella should be able out of her own self to 
 entertain grown-up people. He wished that he could com- 
 pose these wonderful, endless songs of hers. He could not 
 but admit that they were wonderful, and exactly like real 
 poetry. To be sure their subjects w^re ordinary enough. 
 There was no magic in them. Stella would simply sing of 
 getting up in the morning and of the morning bath and the 
 towel and the bread and milk for breakfast. She would 
 sing, too, of the ride in the perambulator and of the ladies 
 who paid her compliments as she passed. It was a little 
 galling to Michael that he, so long his mother's only com- 
 panion, should have to share her love with such an insidious 
 rival. Curious men with long hair came to the house, ap- 
 parently just to see Stella; for they took no notice at all
 
 UNENDING CHILDHOOD 55, 
 
 of Michael. These long-haired visitors would sit round in 
 the drawing-room, while Stella played at the piano pieces 
 that were not half so hummable as those which Michael had 
 already learned to play in violent allegretto. Stella would 
 sit upright in her starchiest frock and widest sash and play 
 without any music a long and boring noise that made 
 Michael feel very fidgety. He would endure it for a while 
 and then he would have to go out of the room. The first 
 time he had done this, he had expected somehow that people 
 would run after him to bring him back. But nobody moved. 
 Everyone was intent upon Stella and her noise. They were 
 all grunting and clearing their throats and making unin- 
 telligible exclamations. Michael was glad that they had 
 begun to build houses in the waste ground opposite. It was 
 better to watch men climbing up ladders and walking over 
 planks and messing with lumps of mortar than to sit there 
 among those guttural men in an atmosphere of Stella wor- 
 ship. He felt sometimes that he would like to pinch Stella's 
 legs — they looked so sleek and well-behaved, as she sat there 
 playing the piano. Michael w^as never invited to play on 
 the drawing-room piano. He was only allowed to play up 
 in the day-nursery with merely the ambition of one day 
 being able to reach the pedals to stir him on. 
 
 "Ach, Mrs. Vane," he heard these long-haired men de- 
 clare. "Your daughter is wonderful. Ach! Ach! Ach! 
 She is a genius. She will be the great bianist of the new 
 generation. Ach! Ach! Ach!" 
 
 Michael began to feel that his love for his mother or her 
 love for him did not matter. He began to feel that only 
 what he himself thought and wanted did matter ; and when 
 she went away again, he was sorry, but not so sorry as he 
 used to be. One of these long-haired men now began to 
 come every day to give Stella lessons on the drawing-room 
 piano. He would give a very loud knock and hang up a 
 wide-brimmed black hat in the hall and clear his throat and
 
 S6 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 button up his coat very tightly and march into the drawing- 
 room to wait for Stella to be brought down. Stella would 
 come down the stairs with her gray eyes shining and her 
 hair all fuzzy and her hands smelling of pink soap, while 
 Nurse would blow very importantly and tell Michael not 
 to peep round corners. Stella's music lessons were much 
 grander than Michael's in the stuffy back-room of Miss 
 Marrow's. Besides, Michael's music lessons were now par- 
 ticularly unpleasant, because Miss Hunt, his mistress, had 
 grown two warts on her first finger during the summer 
 holidays, which made him feel sick during their eternal 
 duets. 
 
 The withdrawal of Madame Flauve from the superin- 
 tendence of Michael's afternoon walks was apparently a 
 great blow to Nurse. She had acquired a habit either of 
 retiring to the night-nursery or of popping out of the back- 
 door on secret errands. Stella, in the charge of Annie, was 
 perfectly happy upstairs, and Nurse resented very strongly 
 Michael's inquiries as to where she was going. Michael 
 had no ulterior reasons for his questions. He was sincerely 
 interested by these afternoon walks of Nurse, and specu- 
 lated often upon her destination. She would always return 
 very cheerful and would often bring him home small pres- 
 ents — a dark-blue bird on a pin at boat-race time (for 
 Nurse was staunchly Oxford), a penny packet of stamps 
 most of which were duplicates inside, penny illustrated 
 books of Cock Robin or Tom Thumb ; and once she brought 
 him home a Night Companion. This Night Companion 
 was a club-headed stick, very powerful and warranted to 
 secure the owner from a murderous attack. It was one of 
 a row in the window of a neighboring umbrella-shop, a 
 long row of Night Companions that cost one shilling each. 
 Michael liked his stick and took it to bed with him and 
 was comforted, when he woke up, by the sight of its knotted 
 head upon the bolster. He grew very intimate with the
 
 UNENDING CHILDHOOD 57 
 
 stick and endowed it with character and temperament and 
 humanity. He would often stare at the still unpurchased 
 Night Companions in the shop, trying to discover if any 
 other of them were so beneficent and so pleasant a com- 
 panion as his own. In time he took a fancy to another, 
 and begged Nurse to be allowed to buy this for Stella. 
 Nurse was gratified by his appreciation of her present and 
 gave him leave to break into the ten-shilling piece to endow 
 Stella with a companion. Michael himself carried it home, 
 wrapped in a flimsy brown paper and tied up as he thought 
 unnecessarily with a flimsy string. Stella was told to take 
 it to bed with her and did so, but by some accident grazed 
 her forehead on the Night Companion's knotty head and 
 cried so much that it was taken away from her. This was 
 all the better for Michael who thenceforth had two Night 
 Companions— one on either side of him to guard him from 
 the door and the window. 
 
 Still, notwithstanding these presents, Nurse grew more 
 and more irritable to find Michael watching her exits from 
 and entrances into 64 Carlington Road. Once, she was so 
 much annoyed to see Michael's face pressed against the pane 
 of the morning-room window that she slid all the way down 
 the area-steps and sent Michael to bed as a punishment for 
 peeping. At last she decided that Michael must go for 
 walks by himself and, lest he should be lost or get into 
 mischief, every walk must be in the same direction, along 
 the same road to the same place and back. He was to walk 
 up Carlington Road into the Hammersmith Road and along 
 the Kensington Road as far as the Earl's Court Road. 
 Here he was to stop and turn round and walk back to 
 Carlington Road on his traces. 
 
 Michael detested this walk. He would stump up the 
 
 area-steps, watched by Nurse, and he would walk steadily, 
 
 looking neither to the right nor to the left according to 
 
 orders, as far as 44 Carlington Road. Here in the morn- 
 
 5
 
 58 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 ing-room window was a small aquarium, sadly mobile with 
 half a dozen pale goldfish, that Michael would be compelled 
 to watch for a few seconds before he turned round and 
 acknowledged the fact that Nurse was flicking him on with 
 her hand. Michael would proceed past the other houses 
 until he came to 22 Carlington Road, where a break oc- 
 curred, caused by a house entirely different from any of the 
 others, at the side of which was a huge double door. This 
 was sometimes open, and inside could be seen men hammer- 
 ing with chisels at enormous statues including representa- 
 tions of Queen Victoria and of a benignant lion. Next to 
 this house was a post office, not an ordinary post office 
 where stamps could be bought, but a harum-scarum place, 
 full of postmen running up and down and emptying bags 
 and hammering on letters and talking very loudly and very 
 quickly. By this office Carlington Road made an abrupt 
 rectangular turn past a tumble-down tarred fence, through 
 whose interstices could be seen a shadowy garden full of 
 very long pale grass and of trees with jet-black trunks. 
 Beyond the trees was a tumble-down house with big bare 
 windows glinting amongst the ivy. After this Carlington 
 Road went on again with smaller houses of a deeper red 
 brick than those in the part where Michael lived. They 
 had no basements, and one could see into their dining-rooms, 
 so close were they to the road. When 2 Carlington Road 
 was reached, a tall advertisement hoarding began, and for a 
 hundred yards the walk became absolutely interesting. 
 Then Carlington Mansions rose majestic, and Michael, who 
 had been told that they were flats and had heard people 
 wondering at this strange new method of existence, loitered 
 for a moment in order to watch a man in a uniform, sitting 
 on a wooden chair and reading a pink newspaper. He also 
 read the names of people who were either out or in, and 
 settled, when he was older, to live in a flat in the security 
 of many other families and a man in a green uniform. The
 
 UNENDING CHILDHOOD 59 
 
 roar of the Hammersmith Road burst upon him, and dreams 
 were over for a while, as he hurried along past eight shops, 
 at none of which he would dare to look since he read in a 
 book of a boy who had been taken off to the police station 
 on a charge of theft, though he was actually as innocent as 
 Michael himself, and was merely interested by the contents 
 of a shop window. The next turning to Carlington Road 
 was a queer terrace, very quiet except that it overlooked 
 the railway, very quiet and melancholy and somehow wicked. 
 Nothing ever turned down here except an occasional dog or 
 cat; no servants stood gossiping by area-gates, and at the 
 end of it loomed the tumble-down house, whose garden 
 Michael had already seen near the post office. He used to 
 think as he left Padua Terrace behind him that one day for 
 a great adventure he would like to walk along under its 
 elm-trees to discover if anyone did live in those dark houses ; 
 but he never managed to be brave enough to do so. Michael 
 now crossed the railway bridge and looked at the advertise- 
 ments: then followed a dull line of iron railings with rusty 
 pine-apples on top of each of them. These were bounded 
 at each end by gates that were marked "Private. No Thor- 
 oughfare," and after the second gate came the first crossing. 
 Michael had been told to be very careful of crossings, and 
 he used to poise himself on the curb for a moment to see 
 if any carts were near. If none were even in sight, he used 
 to run across as quickly as he could. There were three 
 other crossings before Earl's Court Road was reached, and 
 one of them was so wide that he was very glad indeed when 
 it was put behind him. All the way, terrace after terrace 
 of grim houses set back from the high road behind shrub- 
 beries, had to be passed, and all the way Michael used to 
 hum to himself for company and diversion and encourage- 
 ment. The only interesting event was a pavement-artist, 
 and he was very often not there. It was an exasperating
 
 6o YOUTH^S ENCOUNTER 
 
 and monotonous walk, and he hated it for the gloom it 
 shed upon all his afternoons. 
 
 Sometimes Michael would arrive home before Nanny, 
 and then he would have to endure a long cross-examination 
 upon his route. The walk was not sufficiently interesting 
 to invent tales about, and he resented Nurse's incredulous 
 attitude and wrinkled obstinate face. Indeed, Michael be- 
 gan to resent Nurse altogether, and so far as he was able 
 he avoided her. His scheme of things was logical: he had 
 already a philosophy, and his conception of the wonder 
 inherent in everything was evidently not unique, because 
 the pictures in Don Quixote proved conclusively that what 
 Michael thought, other people besides himself thought. He 
 might be old-fashioned, as Nurse assured him he was; but 
 if to be old-fashioned was to live in the world of Don 
 Quixote, he certainly preferred it to the world in which 
 Nanny lived. That seemed to him a circumscribed and 
 close existence for which he had no sympathy. It was a 
 world of poking about in medicine-cupboards, of blind un- 
 reasonableness, of stupidity and malice and blank ugliness. 
 He would sit watching Nanny nibbling with her front teeth 
 the capers of the caper sauce, and he would hate her. She 
 interfered with him, with his day-dreams and toys and 
 meals ; and the only time when he wanted her presence was 
 in the middle of the night, when she was either drinking 
 her glass of ale in the kitchen or snoring heavily in the next 
 room. Michael's only ambition was to live in his own 
 world. This he would have shared with his mother, but 
 her visits were now so rare that it was unwise to rely on 
 her presence for happiness. He was learning to do without 
 her : Nurse he had never yet learnt to endure. She charged 
 ferociously into his fancies, shattering them with her fussy 
 interference, just as she would snatch away his clay pipe, 
 when the most perfect bubble was trembling on the edge of 
 the bowl.
 
 UNENDING CHILDHOOD 6i 
 
 "Time for tea," she would mutter. "Time for bed," she 
 would chatter. Always it was time for something un- 
 pleasant. 
 
 Mrs. Frith, on the other hand, was a person whose 
 attractions grew with longer friendship, as Nurse's decreased 
 even from the small quantity she originally possessed. As 
 Michael month by month grew older, Mrs. Frith expanded 
 towards him. She found him an attentive, even a breath- 
 less listener to her rollicking tales. Her life Michael plainly 
 perceived to have been crammed with exciting adventures. 
 In earliest youth she had been forced by cunning to outwit 
 a brutal father with the frightening habit of coming home 
 in the evening and taking off his belt to her and her brothers 
 and her sisters. The house in which she lived had been full 
 of hiding-places, and Mrs. Frith, picturing herself to 
 Michael of less ample girth, described wonderfully how her 
 father had actually routed for her with a broom-handle 
 while her mother sat weeping into an apron. Then it ap- 
 peared that it was the custom of small boys in the street 
 of her youth to sell liquorice-water in exchange for pins. 
 
 "But was it nice?" asked Michael, remembering liquorice- 
 powder. 
 
 "Lovely stuff," Mrs. Frith affirmed. "They used to go 
 calling up and down. Tine liquorice-water ! Fine liquorice- 
 water! Bring out your pins and have a bottle of liquorice- 
 water.' " 
 
 **And did you?" asked Michael. 
 
 "Did we? Of course we did — every pin in the place. 
 There wasn't a pin in the whole street after those boys had 
 gone by." 
 
 "What else did you do when you were little, Mrs. 
 Frith?" 
 
 "What else? Why everything." 
 
 "Yes, but tell me what," Michael begged, clasping his 
 knees and looking earnestly at Cook.
 
 62 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 "Why once I went to a Sunday-school treat and got 
 thrown off of a donkey and showed more than I meant, and 
 the boys all hollered after me going to Sunday-school and I 
 used to stand behind a corner and dodge them. The saucy 
 demons!" 
 
 These tales were endless, and Michael thought how jolly 
 it would be to set out early one summer morning with Mrs. 
 Frith and look for adventures like Don Quixote. This 
 became a favorite day-dream, and he used to fancy Mrs, 
 Frith tossed in a blanket like Sancho Panza. What com- 
 pany she would be, and it would be possible with two don- 
 keys. He had seen women as fat as her riding on donkeys 
 by the seaside. 
 
 One day Mrs. Frith told him she was thinking of getting 
 married again, and on a Sunday afternoon Michael was 
 introduced to her future husband, a certain Mr. Hopkins 
 who had a shining red head and an enormous colored 
 handkerchief into which he trumpeted continuously. Mr. 
 Hopkins also had a daughter three or four years older than 
 Michael — a wizened little girl called Flossie who spoke in 
 a sort of hiss and wore very conspicuous underclothing of 
 red flannelette. Michael and Flossie played together shyly 
 under the admiring patronage of Mrs. Frith and Mr. Hop- 
 kins, and were just beginning to be friendly when Nurse 
 came in and said: 
 
 "Can't be allowed. No, no. Never heard of such a 
 thing. Tut-tut." 
 
 After this Nurse and Mrs. Frith did not seem to get on 
 very well, and Mrs. Frith used to talk about "people as 
 gave theirselves airs which they had no business to of done." 
 She was kinder than ever to Michael and gave him as many 
 sultanas as he wanted and told him all about the house into 
 w^hich she and Mr. Hopkins and Flossie would presently 
 depart from Carlington Road. 
 
 "Are you going away?" Michael asked aghast.
 
 UNENDING CHILDHOOD 63 
 
 "Going to be married," said Mrs. Frith. 
 
 ''But I don't want you to go." 
 
 "There, bless your heart. I've a good mind to stay. I 
 believe you'll miss your poor old Mrs. Frith, eh, ducky?'* 
 
 Everybody nice w^ent away, Michael thought. It was 
 extraordinary how only nasty food and nasty people were 
 wholesome. 
 
 Mrs. Frith's departure was even more exciting than her 
 stories. One afternoon Michael found her in the kitchen, 
 dancing about with her skirts kilted above her knees. He 
 was a little embarrassed at first, but very soon he had to 
 laugh because she was evidently not behaving like this in 
 order to show off, but because she enjoyed dancing about 
 the kitchen. 
 
 "Why are you dancing, Mrs. Frith?" he asked. 
 
 "Happy as a lark, lovey," she answered in an odd voice. 
 "Happy as a lark, for w^e won't go home till morning, we 
 won't go home till morning," and singing, she twirled round 
 and round until she sank into a wicker arm-chair. At this 
 moment Annie came running downstairs with Nurse, and 
 both of them glared at Mrs. Frith with shocked expressions. 
 
 "What ever are you doing, Cook?" said Nurse. 
 
 "That's all right, lovey. That's All Sir Garnet, and 
 don't you make no mistake. Don't you — make no mistake." 
 
 Here Mrs. Frith gave a very loud hiccup and waved her 
 arms and did not even say "beg pardon" for the offensive 
 noise. 
 
 "Michael," said Nurse, "go upstairs at once. Mrs. Frith, 
 get up. You ignorant and vulgar woman. Get up." 
 
 "And you ought to be ashamed of yourself," said Cook 
 to Nurse. "You old performing monkey, that's what you 
 are." 
 
 "Annie," said Nurse, "fetch a policeman in, and go and 
 get this woman's box." 
 
 "Woman!" said Mrs. Frith. "Woman yourself. Who's
 
 64 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 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 
 Duchess. The area door slammed, and Michael wondered 
 what was going to happen. Presently there came the sound 
 of a deep tread in the passage 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. Certainly 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
 
 UNENDING CHILDHOOD 65 
 
 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 passage, 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 forever from Carlington Road. 
 
 The effect of this scene on Nurse was to make her more 
 repressive and secretive. She was also very severe on vul- 
 garity ; 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 gloom- 
 ier 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 passage or in two-twos 
 you'll be sorry you ever came downstairs." 
 
 It was autumn again, and the warmth 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-fash- 
 ioned nonsense in all her life. 
 
 During that November the fogs were very bad and, as
 
 66 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 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 streets of footsteps. The long 
 morning would drag its length out, and dinner would find 
 no appetite 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 pos- 
 sible that this fog would last forever, if forever 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 behavior 
 and think of freedom. The emancipation 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 class 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, grow^n-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 gods 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 God in vain. This was 
 another vague injunction. Who wanted to? Remember 
 thou keep holy the Sabbath Day. It was obviously a simple
 
 UNENDING CHILDHOOD 67 
 
 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. Honor 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 
 cured of any inclination towards murder. Thou shalt not 
 commit adultery. Why should he ever want to marry an- 
 other man's wife? At present he could not imagine him- 
 self married to anybody. He supposed that as one result 
 of growing up he would get married. But, forewarned, 
 he would take care not to choose somebody else's wife. 
 Thou shalt not steal. With perfect freedom to eat when 
 and where and what one liked, why should one steal ? Thou 
 shalt not bear false witness. It w^ould not be necessary to 
 lie when grown up, because one could not then be punished. 
 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor 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 bed- 
 room 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 favorable 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
 
 68 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 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 basement. 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? Sup- 
 pose 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 Ham- 
 mersmith 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 mel- 
 ancholy city in the world. Even at Christmas-time, behind 
 all the gaiety and gold of a main road were the trackless 
 streets behind, 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,
 
 UNENDING CHILDHOOD 69 
 
 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 shivered at the thought that an omnibus 
 could from Whitechapel pass 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 gentle- 
 man with gold-rimmed eyeglasses, alighted at the corner and 
 actually turned down Carlington Road. Michael was hor- 
 rified 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 peo- 
 ple 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 loneli- 
 ness 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 luster and
 
 70 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 became drab and dark and skimpy. His cheeks lost their 
 rose-red, and black lines ringed his large and somber 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 be- 
 havior 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 Car- 
 lington 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 Bot- 
 any, 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 
 w^indow-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, Vir- 
 ginia 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 pro- 
 tection. He liked to lie in bed during the sparrow-thronged 
 mornings of spring and fancy how the birds must enjoy
 
 UNENDING CHILDHOOD 71 
 
 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 tortoiseshell against the light, his 
 mother came home suddenly for a surprise, 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 consider- 
 ably 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 gro- 
 tesque and the macabre, and even on the sunniest morning 
 his imagination would turn to twilight and foggy eves, to 
 basements 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 association 
 with thrills of horror, the newspapers themselves had grad- 
 ually acquired a definitely sinister personality. If at dusk 
 Michael found a newspaper by Nurse's armchair, 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 
 
 '72
 
 THE FIRST FAIRY PRINCESS 73 
 
 and good nights, the gay shopping walks and all the joys 
 which belonged to him and her, stood threatening and in- 
 evitable 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 Misses Mar- 
 row's 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." 
 
 "Will she?" Michael questioned somewhat doubtfully. 
 
 After Mrs. Fane went away, there was a short interval 
 before the newcomer assumed her duties. During this time 
 Michael hummed incessantly and asked Nurse a thousand 
 questions about Miss Carthew. 
 
 "Goodness gracious, what a fuss about a governess," com- 
 mented Nanny. "Tut-tut. It might be the Queen of Eng- 
 land. She'll be here quite soon enough for everyone, I 
 daresay." 
 
 It fell out that Miss Carthew was to arrive on Valentine's 
 6
 
 74 
 
 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 Day, and Michael with a delicious breathlessness thought 
 how wonderful it would be to present her with a Valentine. 
 He did not dare tell Nurse of his intention; but he hoped 
 that by sending Valentines to every inmate of the house he 
 might be allowed to include Miss Carthew. Nurse was 
 agreeable to the notion of receiving a token, and in her com- 
 pany Michael set out to a neighboring stationer's shop to 
 make his purchases. A Valentine for Cook was bought, and 
 one of precisely the same design for Gladys the withered 
 housemaid, and a rather better one for Stella, and a better 
 one still for Nurse. 
 
 ''Come along now," said Nanny. 
 
 *'Oh, but can't I get one for Miss Carthew? Do let me." 
 
 *'Tut-tut-tut. What nonsense. I do declare. Whatever 
 do you want to give her a Valentine for?" Nurse demanded, 
 as she tried to hustle Michael from the shop. 
 
 "Oh, do let me, Nanny." 
 
 "Well, come along, and don't be all day choosing. Here, 
 this will do," said Nurse, as she picked one from the penny 
 tray. 
 
 But Michael had other ideas. He had noticed an exquis- 
 ite Valentine of apple-green satin painted with the rosiest 
 of Cupids, the most crimson of pierced hearts, a Valentine 
 that was almost a sachet so thick was it, so daintily fringed 
 with fretted silver-paper. 
 
 "That one," he declared, pointing. 
 
 "Now what have I told you about pointing?" 
 
 "That large one's a shilling," said the stationer. 
 
 "Come along, come along," grumbled Nurse. "Wasting 
 good money." 
 
 "But I want to have that one," said Michael. 
 
 For the first time in his life he did not feel at all afraid 
 of Nurse, so absolutely determined was he to present Miss 
 Carthew w^ith the Valentine of his own free choice. 
 
 "I will have that one," he added. "It's my money."
 
 THE FIRST FAIRY PRINCESS 75 
 
 "You will, will you, you naughty boy? You won't, then. 
 So now! You dare defy me. I never heard of such a 
 thing. No, nothing more this morning, thank you," Nurse 
 added, turning to the stationer. **The little boy has got all 
 he wants. Say 'thank you' to the gentleman and 'good 
 morning,' " Nurse commanded Michael. 
 
 ""I won't," he declared. "I won't." Scowling so that 
 his nose nearly vanished into his forehead, and beating back 
 the tears that were surging to his eyes, Michael followed 
 Nurse from the shop. As he walked home, he dug his nails 
 wrathfully into the envelope of Valentines, and then sud- 
 denly he saw a drain in the gutter. He hastily stooped and 
 pushed the packet between the bars of the grating, and let 
 it fall beyond the chance of recovery. When they reached 
 their house, Nurse told him to give her the cards, so that 
 they might not be soiled before presentation. 
 
 "I've dropped them," said Michael sullenly. 
 
 "Dropped them? Dropped them? What do you mean — 
 dropped them?" 
 
 "I threw them away," said Michael. 
 
 "On purpose?" 
 
 "Yes. I can do what I like with my own things." 
 
 "You ungrateful wicked boy," said Nurse, horrified by 
 such a claim. 
 
 "I don't care if I am," Michael answered. "I wanted to 
 give Miss Carthew a Valentine. Mother would have let 
 me." 
 
 "Your mother isn't here. And when she isn't here, I'm 
 your mother," said Nurse, looking more old and wrinkled 
 and monkey-like than ever. 
 
 "How dare you say you're my mother?" gasped the out- 
 raged son. "You're not. You're not. Why, you're not a 
 lady, so you couldn't ever be my mother," 
 
 Hereupon Nurse disconcerted Michael by bursting into 
 tears, and he presently found himself almost petting her
 
 76 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 and declaring that he was very sorry for having been so 
 unkind. He found a certain luxury in this penitence just 
 as he used to enjoy a reconciliation with the black kittens. 
 Perhaps it was this scene with Nurse that prompted him 
 soon afterwards to the creation of another with his sister. 
 The second scene was brought about by Stella's objection 
 to the humming with which Michael was somewhat insist- 
 ently celebrating the advent of Miss Carthew. 
 
 "Don't hum, Michael. Don't hum. Please don't hum," 
 Stella begged very solemnly. "Please don't hum, because 
 it makes my head hurt." 
 
 "I will hum, and every time you ask me not to hum, I'll 
 hum more louder," said Michael. 
 
 Stella at once went to the piano in the day-nursery and 
 began to play her most unmelodious tune. Michael ran to 
 the cupboard and produced a drum which he banged defi- 
 antly. He banged it so violently that presently the drum, 
 already worn very thin, burst. Michael was furious and 
 immediately proceeded to twang an overvarnished zither. 
 So furiously did he twang the zither that finally he caught 
 one of his nails in a sharp string of the treble, and in great 
 pain hurled the instrument across the room. Meanwhile, 
 Stella continued to play, and when Michael commanded 
 her to stop, answered annoyingly that she had been told to 
 practise. 
 
 "Don't say pwactise, you silly. Say practise," Michael 
 contemptuously exclaimed. 
 
 "Shan't," Stella answered with that cold and fat stolidity 
 of demeanor and voice which disgusted Michael like the 
 fat of cold mutton. 
 
 "I'm older than you," Michael asserted. 
 
 Stella made no observation, but continued to play, and 
 Michael, now acutely irritated, rushed to the piano and 
 slammed dow^n the lid. Stella must have withdrawn her 
 fingers in time, for there was no sign of any pinch or bruise
 
 THE FIRST FAIRY PRINCESS 77 
 
 upon them. However, she began to cry, while Michael 
 addressed to her the oration which for a long time he had 
 wished to utter. 
 
 "You are silly. You are a cry-baby. Fancy crying about 
 nothing. I wouldn't. Everybody doesn't want to hear your 
 stupid piano-playing. Boys at school think pianos are stupid. 
 You alwaj^s grumble about my humming. You ar^ a cry- 
 baby. 
 
 "What are little boys made of? 
 Sugar and spice and all that's nice, 
 That's what little boys are made of. 
 What are little girls made of? 
 Slugs and snails and puppy-dogs' tails, 
 Ugh! That's what little girls are made of." 
 
 "They're not," Stella screamed. "They're not!" 
 Michael's perversion of the original rhyme made her in- 
 articulate with grief and rage. "They're not, you naughty 
 boy!" 
 
 Michael, contented with his victory, left Stella to herself 
 and her tears. As he hummed his way downstairs, he 
 thought sensuously of the imminent reconciliation, and in 
 about ten minutes, having found some barley-sugar buried 
 against an empty day, Michael came back to Stella with 
 peace-offerings and w^ords of comfort. 
 
 Miss Carthew arrived on the next morning and the 
 nervous excitement of waiting was lulled. Miss Carthew 
 came through the rain of Valentine's Day, and Michael 
 hugged himself with the thought of her taking off the mack- 
 intosh and handing it to Gladys to be dried. With the 
 removal of her wet outdoor clothes. Miss Carthew seemed 
 to come nearer to Michael and, as they faced each other 
 over the schoolroom table (for the day-nursery in one 
 moment had become the schoolroom), Michael felt that he 
 could bear not being grown up just for the pleasure of sit- 
 ting opposite to his new governess.
 
 78 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 It was not so much by these lessons that Michael's out- 
 look was widened as by the conversations he enjoyed with 
 Miss Carthew^ during their afternoon w^alks. She told him, 
 so far as she could, everything that he desired to know. She 
 never accused him of being old-fashioned or inquisitive, and 
 indeed as good as made him feel that the more questions he 
 asked the better she would like it. Miss Carthew had all 
 the mental and imaginative charm of the late Mrs. Frith in 
 combination with an outward attractiveness that made her 
 more dearly beloved. Indeed Miss Carthew had number- 
 less pleasant qualities. If she promised anything, the prom- 
 ise was always kept to the letter. If Michael did not know 
 his lesson or omitted the performance of an ordained task. 
 Miss Carthew was willing to hear the explanation of his 
 failure and was never unreasonable in her judgment. One 
 morning very soon after her arrival, Michael was unable to 
 repeat satisfactorily the verse of the psalm Venite Adoremus 
 set for him to learn. 
 
 "Why don't you know it, Michael?" Miss Carthew asked. 
 
 "I had to go to bed." 
 
 "But surely you had plenty of time before you went to 
 bed?" Miss Carthew persisted. 
 
 "Nanny wanted to go out, and I went to bed early," 
 Michael explained. 
 
 For a moment or two Miss Carthew considered the prob- 
 lem silently. Then she rang the bell and told withered 
 Gladys that she wished to speak to Nurse. Presently Nurse 
 came in, very aggressive and puckered. 
 
 "Did Michael have to go to bed very early last night?" 
 Miss Carthew inquired. 
 
 "Oh, yes. Yes," Nurse blew out. "Early last night. 
 Wednesday night. Yes. I had to go out. Yes." 
 
 "What time did he go to bed?" Miss Carthew went on. 
 
 "What time?" repeated Nurse. "Why, the proper time, 
 of course."
 
 THE FIRST FAIRY PRINCESS 79 
 
 ''Don't be insolent," said Miss Carthew very tranquilly. 
 
 Nurse blustered and wrinkled her nose and frowned and 
 came very close to Miss Carthew and peered up into her 
 face, blowing harder than ever. 
 
 "The arrangements can't be altered for governesses," said 
 Nurse. *'No. Tut-tut. Never heard of such a thing." 
 
 **The arrangements will be altered. In future Michael 
 will go to bed at half-past seven. It's not good for him to 
 go to bed earlier. Do you understand?" 
 
 "Do I understand? No, I don't understand," Nurse 
 snapped. 
 
 "Very well," said Miss Carthew. "You need not wait, 
 Nurse." 
 
 Nurse blinked and peered and fumed, but Miss Carthew 
 paid so little attention that Michael felt himself blushing 
 for her humiliation. However, he did not go to bed that 
 night till half-past seven, and at the end of the week could 
 rattle off the Venite in two breaths. It w^as extraordinary 
 how Nurse shrank into nothing at Miss Carthew's approach 
 like a witch in the presence of a good fairy. 
 
 The nights were still a trial to Michael, but gradually 
 they became less terrible, as Miss Carthew's conversation 
 gave him something better to meditate upon than the possi- 
 bilities of disaster and crime. On the afternoon walks 
 would be told stories of Miss Carthew's youth in the West 
 Country, of cliffs and sea-birds and wrecks, of yachting 
 cruises and swimming, of golden sands and magical coves 
 and green islands. Miss Carthew's own father had been a 
 captain in the Royal Navy and she had had one brother, a 
 midshipman, who was drowned in trying to save the life 
 of his friend. By all accounts the Carthews must have lived 
 in as wonderful a house as was ever known. From the 
 windows it was possible to look down into the very sea itself, 
 and from the front door, all wreathed in roses, ran a wind- 
 ing path edged with white stones down to the foot of the
 
 8o YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 cliff. Day and night great ships used to sail from the 
 harbor, some outward bound with the crew singing in the 
 cool airs of a summer morning, some homeward bound, bat- 
 tered by storms. Miss Carthew, when a little girl, had 
 been the intimate friend of many coastguards, had been 
 allowed to peep through their long telescopes, had actually 
 seen a cannon fired at close quarters. Before her own eyes 
 the lifeboat had plunged forth to rescue ships, and with her 
 own hands she had caught fish on quiet sunny mornings and 
 on windless nights under the moon. Her most valuable 
 possession, how^ever, must have been that father w^ho could 
 sit for hours and never tell the same tale twice, but hold all 
 who heard him entranced with a narrative of hostile In- 
 dians, of Chinese junks, of cannibals and wrecks and mu- 
 tinies and bombardments. It was sad to hear that Captain 
 Carthew was now dead : Michael would have been glad to 
 make his acquaintance. It was sad to hear that the Car- 
 thews no longer lived in the West within the sound of 
 waves and winds; but it was consoling to learn that they 
 still lived in the depth of the country and that some time,, 
 perhaps during this very next summer, Michael should cer- 
 tainly pay Mrs. Carthew a visit. He w^ould meet other 
 Miss Carthews, one of whom was only fourteen and could 
 obviously without ceremony be hailed immediately as Nancy. 
 Of Joan and May, who were older, Michael spoke in terms 
 of the familiar Christian name with embarrassment, and he 
 was much perplexed in his own mind how he should address 
 them when actually they met. 
 
 "I wish you were going to take us away for our holidays 
 to the seaside," Michael said. 
 
 "Perhaps I will another time," Miss Carthew replied. 
 "But this year you and Stella are going with Nurse, because 
 Stella isn't going to begin lessons with me till you go to 
 school." 
 
 "Am I really going to school?"
 
 THE FIRST FAIRY PRINCESS 8i 
 
 "Yes, to St. James' Preparatory School," Miss Carthew 
 assured him. 
 
 In consideration of Michael's swiftly approaching adven- 
 ture, he was allowed to take in the Boy's Own Paper 
 monthly, and as an even greater concession to age he was 
 allowed to make friends with several boys in Carlington 
 Road, some of whom were already scholars of St. James' 
 Preparatory School and one of whom actually had a brother 
 at St. James' School itself, that gigantic red building whose 
 gates Michael himself would enter of right one day, how- 
 ever difficult at present this was to believe. 
 
 What with the prospect of going to school in the autumn 
 and Miss Carthew's tales of freedom and naval life, Michael 
 began to disapprove more than ever of Nurse's manners 
 and appearance. He did not at all relish the notion of pass- 
 ing away the summer holidays in her society. To be sure, 
 for the end of the time he had been invited by Mrs. Car- 
 thew's own thin writing to spend a week with her in Hamp- 
 shire; but that was at least a month away, and meanwhile 
 there was this month to be endured with Nurse at Mr. and 
 Mrs. Wagland's lodgings, where the harmonium was played 
 and conversation was carried on by whispers and the 
 mysterious nods of three heads. However, the beginning 
 of August arrived, and Miss Carthew said good-bye for a 
 month. Wooden spades, still gritty with last year's sand, 
 were produced from the farthest corners of cupboards; 
 mouldy shrimping nets and dirtied buckets and canvas shoes 
 lay about on the bed, and at last, huddled in paraphernalia. 
 Nurse and Stella and Michael jogged along to the railway 
 station, a miserable hour for Michael, who all the time 
 was dreading many unfortunate events, as for the cabman 
 to get down from his box and quarrel about the fare, or 
 for the train to be full, or for Stella to be sick during the 
 journey, or for him and her to lose Nurse, or for all of them 
 to get into the wrong train, or for a railway accident to
 
 82 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 happen, or for any of the uncomfortable contingencies to 
 which seaside travelers were liable. 
 
 During these holidays Michael grew more and more deeply 
 ashamed of Nurse, and more and more acutely sensitive 
 to her manners and appearance. He was afraid that people 
 on the front would mistake him and Stella for her children. 
 He grew hot with shame when he fancied that people looked 
 at him. He used to loiter behind on their walks and 
 pretended that he did not belong to Nurse and hope sin- 
 cerely that nobody would think of connecting him with such 
 an ugly old woman. He had heard much talk of "ladies 
 and gentlemen" at the Kindergarten, and since then Miss 
 Carthew had indirectly confirmed his supposition that it 
 was a terrible thing not to be a gentleman and the son of 
 a gentleman. He grew very critical of his own dress and 
 wished that he w^ere not compelled to wear a sailor-top 
 that was slightly shabby. Once Mr. and Mrs. Wagland 
 accompanied them to church on a Sunday morning, and 
 Michael was horrified. People would inevitably think that 
 he was the son of Mr. Wagland. What a terrible thing that 
 would be. He loitered farther behind than ever, and would 
 like to have killed Mr. Wagland, when he offered him the 
 half of his h5'mn-book. This incident seemed to compromise 
 him finally, to drag him down from the society of Miss 
 Carthew to a degraded status of unutterable commonness. 
 Mr. Wagland would persist in digging him with his elbow 
 and urging him to sing up. Worse even, he once said quite 
 audibly, "Spit it out, sonny." Michael reeled with shame. 
 
 September arrived at last, and then Michael realized 
 suddenly that he would have to make the journey to Hamp- 
 shire alone. This seemed to him the most astonishing adven- 
 ture of his life. He surveyed his existence from the earliest 
 daw^n of consciousness to the last blush caused by Nurse's 
 abominable habits, and could see no parallel of daring. 
 He was about to enter upon a direct relationship with the
 
 THE FIRST FAIRY PRINCESS 83 
 
 world of men. He would have to inquire of porters and 
 guards; he would have to be polite without being prodded 
 to ladies sitting opposite. No doubt they would ask ques- 
 tions of him and he would have to answer distinctly. And 
 beyond this immediate encounter with reality was School. 
 He had not grasped how near he was to the first morning. 
 A feeling of hopelessness, of inability to grapple with the 
 facts of life seized him. Growing old was a very desperate 
 business after all. How remote he was getting from 
 Nurse, how far away from the dingy solitude which had so 
 long oppressed his spirit. Already she seemed unimportant 
 and already he could almost laugh at the absurdity of being 
 mistaken for a relation of hers. The world was opening 
 her arms and calling to him. 
 
 On the day before he was to set out to Hampshire, he 
 and Nurse and Stella and Mr. Wagland and Mrs. Wagland 
 drove in a wagonette to picnic somewhere in the country 
 behind the sea. It had been a dry August and the rolling 
 chalk downs over which they walked were uniformly brown. 
 The knapweed was stunted and the scabious blooms drooped 
 towards the dusty pasture. Only the flamy ladies' slippers 
 seemed appropriate to the miles of heat that flickered against 
 the landscape. Michael ran off alone, sliding as he went 
 where the drought had singed the close-cropped grass. The 
 rabbits ran to right and left of him, throwing distorted 
 shadows on the long slopes, and once a field-mouse skipped 
 anxiously across his path. On the rounded summit of the 
 highest hill within reach he sat down near a clump of 
 tremulous harebells. The sky was on every side of him, 
 the largest sky ever imagined. Far away in front was the 
 shining sea, above whose nebulous horizon ships hung 
 motionless. Up here was the sound of summer airs, the 
 faint lisp of wind in parched herbage, the twitter of desolate 
 birds, and in some unseen vale below the bleating of a flock 
 of sheep. Bumblebees droned from flower to flower of
 
 84 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 the harebells and a church clock struck the hour of four. 
 The world was opening her arms and calling to Michael. 
 He felt up there in the silver weather as the ugly duckling 
 must have felt when he saw himself to be a radiant swan. 
 Michael almost believed, in this bewitching meditation, that 
 he was in a story by Hans Christian Andersen. Always 
 in those tales the people flew above the world whether in 
 snow-time or in spring-time. It was really like flying to 
 sit up here. For the first time Michael flung w^ide his 
 arms to grasp the unattainable; and, as he presently charged 
 down the hillside in answer to distant holloas from the 
 picnic party, he saw before him a flock of sheep manoeuver- 
 ing before his advance. Michael shouted and kept a swift 
 course, remembering Don Quixote and laughing w^hen he 
 saw the flock break into units and gallop up the opposite 
 slope. 
 
 "Tut-tut," clicked Nurse. "What a mess you do get 
 yourself into, I'm sure. Can't you sit down and enjoy 
 yourself quietly?" 
 
 "Did you see me make those silly old sheep run away, 
 Nanny?" Michael asked. 
 
 "Yes, I did. And I should be ashamed to frighten poor 
 animals so. You'll get the policeman on your tracks." 
 
 "I shouldn't care," said Michael boastfully. "He 
 wouldn't be able to catch me." 
 
 "Wouldn't he?" said Nurse very knowingly, as she laid 
 out the tea-cups on a red rug. 
 
 "Oh, Michael," Stella begged, "don't make a policeman 
 come after you." 
 
 Michael was intoxicated by the thought of his future. 
 He could not recognize the ability of any policeman to 
 check his desires, and because it was impossible to voice 
 in any other way the impulses and ambitions and hopes 
 that were surging in his soul, he went on boasting. 
 
 "Ha, I'd like to see an old policeman run after me. I'd
 
 THE FIRST FAIRY PRINCESS 85 
 
 trip him up and roll him down the hill, I would. I'd 
 put his head in a rabbit hole. I would. I can run faster 
 than a policeman. I can." 
 
 Michael was swaggering round and round the spread-out 
 cups and saucers and plates. 
 
 "If you put your foot on those jam sandwiches, you'll 
 go straight back to the carriage and wait there till we've 
 finished tea. Do you hear?" 
 
 Michael considered for a moment the possibility that 
 Nanny might execute this threat. He decided that she 
 might and temporarily sobered down. But the air was in 
 his veins and all tea-time he could not chatter fast enough 
 to keep pace with the new power which was inspiring him 
 with inexpressible energy. He talked of what he was 
 going to do in Hampshire; he talked of what he was going 
 to do on the journey; he talked of what he was going to 
 do at school and when he was grown up. He arranged 
 Stella's future and bragged and boasted and fidgeted and 
 shouted, so that Nurse looked at him in amazement. 
 
 "Whatever's the matter with you?" she asked. 
 
 Just then a Tortoiseshell butterfly came soaring past and 
 Michael, swinging round on both his legs to watch the flight, 
 swept half the tea-cups with him. For a moment he was 
 abashed; but after a long sermon of reproof from Nurse 
 he was much nearer to laughter than tears. 
 
 A gloomy reaction succeeded, as the party drove home 
 through the gray evening that was falling sadly over the 
 countryside. A chilly wind rustled in the hedgerows 
 and blew the white dust in clouds behind the wagonette. 
 Michael became his silent self again and was now filled with 
 apprehensions. All that had seemed so easy to attain was 
 now complicated by the unknown. He would have been 
 glad of Miss Carthew's company. The green-shaded lamp 
 and creaking harmonium of the seaside lodgings were a 
 dismal end to all that loveliness of wind and silver so soon
 
 86 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 finished. Nevertheless It had made him ver\- sleepy and he 
 was secretly glad to get to bed. 
 
 The next day was a dream from which he woke to find 
 himself clinging affectionately to Miss Carthew's arm 
 and talking shyly to Nancy Carthew and a sidling spaniel 
 alternately, as they walked from the still country station 
 and packed themselves into a pony-chaise that was waiting 
 outside behind a dun pony.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 THE ENCHANTED PALACE 
 
 THE dun pony ambled through the lanes to the 
 village of Basfngstead Minor where Mrs. Carthew 
 and her four daughters lived in a house called 
 Cobble Place. It stood close to the road and was two 
 stories high, very trim and covered with cotoneaster. On 
 either side of the door were two windows and above it 
 in a level row five more windows; the roof was thatched. 
 On the left of the house were double doors which led into 
 the stable-yard, a large stable-yard overlooked by a number 
 of irregular gables in the side of the house and continually 
 fluttered by white fantail pigeons. Into the stable-yard 
 the dun pony turned, where, clustered in the side entrance 
 of Cobble Place under a clematis-wreathed porch, stood 
 Mrs. Carthew and Miss May Carthew and Miss Joan 
 Carthew, all smiling very pleasantly at Michael and all 
 evidently very glad to see him safely arrived. Michael 
 climbed out of the chaise and politely shook hands with 
 Mrs. Carthew and said he was very well and had had a 
 comfortable journey and would like some tea very much, 
 although if Nancy thought it was best he was quite ready 
 to see her donkey before doing anything else. However, 
 Nancy was told that she must wait, and soon Michael was 
 sitting at a large round table in a shady dining-room, eating 
 hot buttered tea-cake and chocolate cake and macaroons 
 
 87
 
 88 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 with bread-and-butter as an afterthought of duty. He 
 enjoyed drinking his tea out of a thin teacup and he liked 
 the silver and the satin tea-cozy and the yellow Persian cat 
 purring on the hearthrug and the bullfinch flitting from 
 perch to perch of his bright cage. He noticed with pleasure 
 that the pictures on the wall w^ere full of interest and detail, 
 and was particularly impressed by two very long steel 
 engravings of the Death of Nelson and the Meeting of 
 Wellington and Bliicher on the field of Waterloo. The only 
 flaw in his pleasure was the difficulty of addressing Miss 
 May Carthew and Miss Joan Carthew, and he wished that 
 his own real Miss Carthew would suggest a solution. As 
 for the bedroom to which he was taken after tea, Michael 
 thought there never could have been such a jolly room 
 before. It was just the right size, as snug as possible with its 
 gay w^all-paper and crackling chintzes and ribboned bed. 
 The counterpane was patchwork and therefore held the 
 promise of perpetual entertainment. The dressing-table 
 was neatly set with china toilet articles whose individual 
 importance Michael could not discover. One in particular 
 like the antler of a stag stuck upright in a china tray he was. 
 very anxious to understand, and when he was told it was 
 intended for rings to hang upon, he wished he had a dozen 
 rings to adorn so neat a device. 
 
 After he had with Miss Carthew 's help unpacked and put 
 his clothes away, Michael joined Nancy in the stable-yard. 
 He stroked the donkey and the dun-colored pony and 
 watched the fantail pigeons in snowy circles against the pale 
 blue sky. He watched the gardener stirring up some strange 
 stuff for the pig that grunted impatiently. He watched 
 the pleasant Carthew cook shelling peas in the slanting 
 sunlight by the kitchen door. The air was very peaceful, 
 full of soft sounds of lowing cows, of ducks and hens and 
 sheep. The air was spangled with glittering insects; over 
 a red wall hung down the branch of a plum tree, loaded
 
 THE ENCHANTED PALACE 89 
 
 with creamy ovals of fruit, already rose-flushed with sum- 
 mer. Nancy said they must soon go into the garden. 
 
 ''Is there a garden more than this?" Michael asked. 
 His bedroom window had looked out on to the stable-yard. 
 
 "Through here," said Nancy. She led the way to a door 
 set in the wall, which when open showed a green glowing 
 oblong of light that made Michael catch his breath in 
 wonder. 
 
 Then together he and Nancy sauntered through what was 
 surely the loveliest garden in the world. Michael could 
 scarcely bear to speak, so completely did it fulfil every 
 faintest hope. All along the red walls were apples and pears 
 and plums and peaches; all along the paths were masses 
 of flowers, phloxes and early Michaelmas daisies and Japa- 
 nese anemones and sunflowers and red-hot pokers and 
 dahlias. The air was so golden and balmy that it seemed as 
 though the sunlight must have been locked up in this garden 
 for years. At the bottom of the vivid path was a stream 
 with real fish swimming backward and forward, and 
 beyond the stream, safely guarded and therefore perfectly 
 beautiful, were cows stalking through a field beyond which 
 was a dark wood beyond which was a high hill with a gray 
 tower on the top of it. Some princess must have made this 
 garden. He and Nancy turned and walked by the stream 
 on which was actually moored a punt, a joy for to-morrow, 
 since, explained Nancy, Maud had said they were not to 
 go on the river this afternoon. How wonderful it was, 
 Michael thought, to hear his dearest Miss Carthew called 
 Maud. Never was spoken so sweet a name as Maud. He 
 would say it to himself in bed that night, and in the morning 
 he would wake with Maud calling to him from sleep. Then 
 he and Nancy turned from the tempting stream and walked 
 up a pleached alley of withies woven and interarched. 
 Over them September roses bloomed with fawn and ivory 
 and copper and salmon-pink buds and blossoms. At the 
 7
 
 90 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 end of the pleached alley was a mulberry tree with a seat 
 round its trunk and a thick lawn that ran right up to the 
 house itself. On the lawn Nancy and Michael played quoits 
 and bowls and chased Ambrose the spaniel, until the sun 
 sent still more slanting shadows across the garden and it was 
 possible to feel that night was just behind the hill beyond 
 the stream. The sun went down. The air grew chilly 
 and Miss Carthew appeared from the door, beckoning to 
 Michael. She sat with him in the dusky dining-room 
 while he ate his bread and milk, and told him of her brother 
 the midshipman, while he looked pensively at the picture 
 of the Death of Nelson. Then Michael went to the draw- 
 ing-room where all the sisters and Mrs. Carthew herself 
 were sitting. He kissed everybody good-night in turn, and 
 Mrs. Carthew put on a pair of spectacles in order to follow 
 his exit from the room with a kindly smile. Miss Carthew 
 sat with him while he undressed, and when he was in bed 
 she told him another story and kissed him good-night and 
 blew out the candle, and before the sound of pleasant voices 
 coming upstairs from the supper-table had ceased Michael 
 was fast asleep. 
 
 In the morning while he was lying watching the shadows 
 on the ceiling, Nancy's freckled face appeared round the 
 door. 
 
 "Hurry up and dress," she cried. "Fishing!" 
 
 Michael had never dressed so quickly before. In fact 
 when he was ready, he had to wait for Nancy who had called 
 him before she had dressed herself. Nancy and Michael 
 lived a lifetime of delight in that golden hour of waiting 
 for breakfast. 
 
 However, at Cobble Place every minute was a lifetime of 
 delight to Michael. He forgot all about everything except 
 being happy. His embarrassment with regard to the correct 
 way of addressing May and Joan was terminated by being 
 told to call them May and Joan. He was shown the treas-
 
 THE ENCHANTED PALACE, 91 
 
 ures of their bedrooms, the butterfly collections, the sword 
 of Captain Carthew, the dirk of their brother the midship- 
 man, the birds' eggs, the fossils, the bones, the dried flowers, 
 the photographs, the autographs, in fact everything that 
 was most absorbing to look at. With Mrs. Carthew he took 
 sedate walks into the village, and held the flowers while she 
 decorated the altar in church, and sat with her while she 
 talked to bedridden old women. With Nancy on one 
 memorable day he crossed the river and disembarked on the 
 other side and walked through the field of cows, through the 
 meadowsweet and purple loosestrife and spearmint. Then 
 they picked blackberries and dewberries by the edge of 
 the wood and walked on beneath the trees without caring 
 about trespassing or tramps or anything else. On the other 
 side they came out at the foot of the high hill. Up they 
 walked, up and up until they reached the gray tower at 
 the top, and then, to Michael's amazement, Nancy produced 
 the key of the tower and opened the door. 
 
 ''Can we really go in?" asked Michael, staggered by the 
 adventure. 
 
 "Of course. We can always get the key," said Nancy. 
 
 They walked up some winding stone steps that smelt 
 very damp, and at the top they pushed open a trap-door 
 and walked out on top of the tower. Michael leaned over 
 the parapet and for the second time beheld the world. 
 
 There was no sea, but there were woods and streams 
 and spires and fields and villages and smoke from farms. 
 There were blue distances on every side and great white 
 clouds moving across the sky. The winds battled against 
 the tower and sang in Michael's ears and ruflied his hair 
 and crimsoned his cheeks. He could see the fantail pigeons 
 of Cobble Place circling below. He could look dow^n on 
 the wood and the river they had just crossed. He could 
 see the garden and his dearest Miss Carthew walking on the 
 lawn.
 
 92 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 "Oh, Nancy," he said, "it's glorious." 
 
 "Yes, it is rather decent," Nancy agreed. 
 
 "I suppose that's almost all of England you can see." 
 
 "Only four counties," said Nancy carelessly. "Berkshire, 
 and I forget the other three. We toboggan down this hill 
 in winter. That's rather decent too." 
 
 "I'd like to come here every day," sighed Michael. "I'd 
 like to have this tower for my very own. What castle is 
 it called?" 
 
 "Grogg's Folly," said Nancy abruptly. 
 
 Michael wished the tow^er were not called Grogg's Folly, 
 and very soon Nancy and he, shouting and laughing, were 
 running at full speed down the hill toward Cobble Place, 
 while the stalks of the plantains whipped his bare legs and 
 larks flew up in alarm before his advance. 
 
 The time of his stay at Cobble Place was drawing to a 
 close; the hour of his greatest adventure was near. It 
 had been a visit of unspoiled enjoj^ment; and, on his last 
 night, Michael was allowed for a treat to stay up to supper, 
 to sit at the round table rose-stained by the brooding lamp, 
 while the rest of the room was a comfortable mystery in 
 which the parlormaid's cap and apron flitted whitely to 
 and fro. Nor did Michael go to bed immediately after 
 supper, for he actually sat grandly in the drawing-room, 
 one of a semicircle round the autumnal fire of logs crackling 
 and leaping with blue flames. He sat silent, listening to the 
 pitter-pat of Mrs. Carthew's Patience and watching the 
 Halma board waiting for May to encounter Joan, while in 
 a low voice Nancy read to him one of Fifty-two Stories 
 of Adventure for Girls. Bedtime came at the end of the 
 story and Michael was sad to say good-night for the last 
 time and sad to think, when he got into his ribboned bed, 
 that to-morrow night he would be in Carlington Road 
 among brass knobs and Venetian blinds and lamp-posts and 
 sounds of London. Then came a great surprise that took
 
 THE ENCHANTED PALACE 93 
 
 away nearly all the regrets he felt at leaving Cobble Place, 
 for Miss Carthew leaned over and whispered that she was 
 coming to live at Sixty-four. 
 
 "Oh!" Michael gasped. "With us— with Stella and 
 me?" 
 
 Miss Carthew nodded. 
 
 "I say!" Michael whispered. "And will Stella have 
 lessons when I'm going to school?" 
 
 "Every morning," said Miss Carthew. 
 
 "I expect you'll find her rather bad at lessons," said 
 Michael doubtfully. 
 
 He was almost afraid that Miss Carthew might leave in 
 despair at Stella's ineptitude. 
 
 "Lots of people are stupid at first," said Miss Carthew. 
 
 Michael blushed ; he remembered a certain morning when 
 capes and promontories got inextricably mixed in his mind 
 and w^hen Miss Carthew seemed to grow quite tired of 
 trying to explain the difference. 
 
 "Will you teach her the piano now?" he inquired. 
 
 "Oh dear, no. I'm not clever enough to do that." 
 
 "But you teach me." 
 
 "That's dififerent. Stella will be a great pianist one day," 
 said Miss Carthew earnestly. 
 
 "Will she?" asked Michael incredulously. "But I don't 
 like her to play a bit — not a bit." 
 
 "You will one day. Great musicians think she is wonder- 
 ful." 
 
 Michael gave up this problem. It was another instance 
 of the chasm between youth and age. He supposed that 
 one day he would like Stella's playing. One day, so he had 
 been led to suppose, he would also like fat and cabbage and 
 going to bed. At present such a condition of mind was 
 incomprehensible. However, Stella and the piano mattered 
 very little in comparison with the solid fact that Miss 
 Carthew was going to live in Carlington Road.
 
 94 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 On the next morning before they left, Michael and Mrs. 
 Carthew walked round the garden together, while Mrs. 
 Carthew talked to him of the new life on which he was 
 shortly going to enter. 
 
 ''Well, Michael," she said, "in a week, so my daughter 
 tells me, you will be going to school." 
 
 "Yes," corroborated Michael. 
 
 "Dear me," Mrs. Carthew went on. "I'm glad Fm not 
 going to school for the first time; you won't like it at all 
 at first, and then you'll like it very much indeed, and then 
 you'll either go on liking it very much or you'll hate it. 
 If you go on liking — I mean when you're quite old — 
 sixteen or seventeen — you'll never do anything, but if you 
 hate it then, you'll have a chance of doing something. 
 I'm glad my daughter Maud is going to look after you. 
 She's a good girl." 
 
 Michael thought how extraordinary it w^as to hear Miss 
 Carthew spoken of in this manner and felt shy at the 
 prospect of having to agree verbally with Mrs. Carthew. 
 
 "Take my advice — never ask questions. Be content to 
 make a fool of yourself once or twice, but don't ask ques- 
 tions. Don't answer questions either. That's worse than 
 asking. But, after all, now I'm giving advice, and worst of 
 anything is listening to other people's advice. So pick 
 yourself some plums and get ready, for the chaise will soon 
 be at the door." 
 
 Nurse was very grumpy, when he and Miss Carthew 
 arrived. She did not seem at all pleased by the idea of 
 Miss Carthew living in the house, and muttered to herself 
 all the time. Michael did no more lessons in the week that 
 remained before the autumn term began; but he had to go 
 with Miss Carthew to various outfitters and try on coats 
 and suits and generally be equipped for school. The after- 
 noons he spent in Carlington Road, trying to pick up infor- 
 mation about St. James' Preparatory School from the boys
 
 THE ENCHANTED PALACE 95 
 
 already there. One of these boys was Rodber, the son of 
 a doctor, and probably by his manner and age and appearance 
 the most important boy in the school. At any rate Michael 
 found it difficult to believe that there could exist a boy with 
 more right to rule than this Rodber with his haughty eye 
 and Eton suit and prominent ears and quick authoritative 
 voice. 
 
 "Look here," said Rodber one evening, "can you borrow 
 your mail-cart? I saw your sister being wheeled in one 
 this morning. We've got three mail-carts and we want a 
 fourth for trains." 
 
 Michael ran as fast as he could back to Sixty-four, 
 rushed down the area steps, rang the bell half a dozen 
 times and tapped continuously on the ground glass of the 
 back door until Cook opened it. 
 
 "Whatever's the matter?" said Cook. 
 
 Michael did not stop to answer, but ran upstairs, until 
 breathless he reached the schoolroom. 
 
 "Please, Miss Carthew, may we have Stella's mail-cart? 
 Rodber wants it — for trains. Do let me. Rodber's the 
 boy I told you about who's at school. Oh, do let us have 
 the cart. Rodber's got three, but he wants ours. May I, 
 Miss Carthew?" 
 
 She nodded. 
 
 Michael rushed downstairs in a helter-skelter of joy and 
 presently, with Cook's assistance in getting it up the steps, 
 Michael stood proudly by the mail-cart which was of the 
 dogcart pattern, very light and swift when harnessed to a 
 good runner. Rodber examined it critically. 
 
 "Yes, that's a fairly decent one," he decided. 
 
 Michael was greatly relieved by his approval. 
 
 "Look here," said Rodber, "I don't mind telling you, 
 as you'll be a new kid, one or two tips about school. Look 
 here, don't tell anybody your Christian name and don't be 
 cocky."
 
 96 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 "Oh, no, I won't," Michael earnestly promised. 
 
 "And don't, for goodness' sake, look like that when chaps 
 speak to you, or you'll get your head smacked." 
 
 This w^as the sum of Rodber's advice, and presently 
 Michael was stationed as signalman by the junction, which 
 w^as a pillar-box, while Rodber went off at express speed, 
 bound for the next station, which was a lamp-post. A 
 signalman's life on the Carlington Road line was a lonely 
 one, and it was also a very tiring one, when any obstruction 
 caused the signals to be up. Michael's arm ached excru- 
 ciatingly when Rodber's train got entangled with Garrod's 
 train and Macalister's train had to be kept from running 
 into them. Moreover, the signalman's life had none of 
 the glories of controlling other people; a signalman on the 
 Carlington Road line was dependent on the train for his 
 behavior. He was not allowed to interfere with the free 
 running of any freight, but if the engine-driver insisted, 
 he had to let him go past, and if there was an accident he 
 was blamed. A signalman's life was lonely, tiring, humiliat- 
 ing and dangerous. 
 
 These few fine days of mid-September went quickly by 
 and one evening Rodber said casually, almost cruelly it 
 seemed to Michael: 
 
 "Well, see you to-morrow in the break, young Fane." 
 
 Michael wondered what on earth a "break" was; he 
 longed to ask Rodber, but he dared not display at the very 
 beginning of his career what would evidently be disgraceful 
 ignorance, and so he said that he would see Rodber in the 
 "break" to-morrow. He asked Miss Carthew w^hen he got 
 home what a "break" was, and she told him it was a large 
 wagonette sometimes driven by four horses. Michael was 
 very much puzzled, but thought school would be fun if large 
 wagonettes were commonplace objects of school life, and 
 dreamed that night of driving furiously with Rodber in 
 a gigantic mail-cart along the Hammersmith Road.
 
 THE ENCHANTED PALACE 97 
 
 At breakfast Miss Carthew asked Michael if he would 
 like her to come with him. He thought for a moment, and 
 wished that Rodber had invited him to accompany him that 
 first morning. 
 
 "You know, it's for you to choose, Michael," said Miss 
 Carthew. 
 
 "Well, I would like you to come," said Michael at last. 
 
 So at ten minutes past nine they set out. All sorts of 
 boys were going to school along the Hammersmith Road, 
 boys of every size carrying satchels or bags or loose bundles 
 of books. Most of them wore the Jacobean cap, and 
 Michael eyed them with awe; but many wore the cap of 
 St. James' Preparatory School, and these Michael eyed with 
 curiosity as well as awe. He spoke very little during the 
 walk and felt all the way a sinking of the heart. When 
 actually he reached the gate of Randell House, the less 
 formal appellation of St. James' Preparatory School, he 
 longed to turn back with Miss Carthew, as he thought with 
 sentimental pangs of the pleasant schoolroom and of Stella 
 sitting by Miss Carthew, learning to read through a sunlit 
 morning. 
 
 "Don't come in with me," he whispered. 
 
 "Quite right," said Miss Carthew approvingly. "Much 
 better without me." 
 
 "And don't wave, will you?" he begged. Then with 
 an effort he joined the stream of boys walking confidently 
 through the big gate. 
 
 In the entrance hall, a ginger-haired foxy-faced man in 
 a green uniform said sharply : 
 
 "New boy?" 
 
 Michael nodded. 
 
 "Stand on one side, please. Mr. Randell will see you 
 presently." 
 
 Michael waited. He noticed with pride that the boy 
 next to him had brought with him either his mother or his
 
 98 YOUTH^S ENCOUNTER 
 
 sister or his governess. Michael felt very superior and was 
 glad he had resisted the temptation to ask Miss Carthew 
 to come in with him. He noticed how curiously the other 
 boys eyed this lady and fancied that they threw contemp- 
 tuous glances at the boy who had introduced her. Michael 
 was very glad indeed that he had let Miss Carthew turn 
 back.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 THE preliminaries of Michael's career at St. James' 
 Preparatory School passed in a dream-like confusion 
 of thought and action. First of all he waited 
 anxiously in the Headmaster's study in an atmosphere of 
 morocco-leather and large waste-paper baskets. Like every 
 other room in which Michael had waited, whether of den- 
 tist or doctor, the outlook from the window was gloomy 
 and the prospect within was depressing. He was glad when 
 Mr. Randell led him and several other boys toward the 
 First Form, where in a dream, peopled by the swinging 
 legs of many boys, he learnt from a scarlet book that, while 
 Cornelia loved Julia, Julia returned Cornelia's affection. 
 When this fact was established in both English and Latin, 
 all the boys shuffled to their desks and the record of a great 
 affection was set down largely and painfully. 
 
 1. Cornelia Juliam amat. 
 
 2. Julia Corneliam amat. 
 
 Blotted and smudged and sprawling though it ultimately 
 appeared, Michael felt a great satisfaction in having dealt 
 successfully with two nominatives, two accusatives and a 
 verb. The first part of the morning passed away quickly 
 in the history of this simple love. At eleven o'clock a shrill 
 electric bell throbbed through the school, and Michael, 
 
 99
 
 100 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 almost before he knew what was happening, was carried 
 in a torrent of boys toward the playground. Michael had 
 never felt supreme loneliness, even at night, until he stood 
 in the middle of that green prairie of recreation, distinguish- 
 ing nobody, a very small creature in a throng of chattering 
 giants. Some of these giants, who usually walked about 
 arm in arm, approached him. 
 
 "Hullo, are you a new kid?" 
 
 Michael breathed his "yes." 
 
 "What's your name?" 
 
 With an effort Michael remembered Rodber's warning 
 and replied simply: 
 
 "Fane." 
 
 "What's your Christian name?" 
 
 This was a terribly direct attack, and Michael was won- 
 dering whether it would be best to run quickly out of the 
 playground, to keep silence or to surrender the information, 
 when the quick and authoritative voice of Rodber flashed 
 from behind him. 
 
 "Fish and find out, young Biden." 
 
 "Who are you calling young, young Rodber?" 
 
 "You," said Rodber. "So you'd jolly well better scoot 
 off and leave this kid alone." 
 
 "Church said I was to collar all the new kids for his 
 army," Biden explained. 
 
 "Did he? Well, this kid's in our army, so sucks! And 
 you can tell young Church that Pearson and me are going 
 to jolly well lam him at four o'clock," announced Rodber 
 very fiercely. 
 
 "Why don't you tell him yourself?" asked Biden whose 
 teeth seemed to project farther and farther from his mouth, 
 as his indignation grew. 
 
 "All right, Toothy Biden," jeered Rodber. "We'll tell 
 the whole of your rotten army at four o'clock, when we 
 give you the biggest lamming you've ever had. Come on,
 
 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER loi 
 
 young Fane," he went on, and Michael, somewhat per- 
 turbed by the prospect of being involved in these encounters, 
 followed at his heels. 
 
 ''Look here," said Rodber presently, "you'd better come 
 and show yourself to Pearson. He's the captain of our 
 army; and for goodness' sake look a bit cheerful." 
 
 Michael forced an uncomfortable grin such as photog- 
 raphers conjure. 
 
 Under the shade of a gigantic tree stood Pearson the 
 leader, languidly eating a very small and very unripe pear. 
 
 "Hullo, Pinky," he drawled. 
 
 "I say, Pearson," said Rodber in a reverent voice, "I 
 know this kid at home. He's awfully keen to be allowed to 
 join your army." 
 
 Pearson scarcely glanced at Michael. 
 
 "All right. Swear him in. I've got a new oath written 
 down in a book at home, but he can take the old one." 
 
 Pearson yawned and threw away the core of the pear. 
 
 "He's awfully glad he's going to join your army, Pearson. 
 Aren't you, young Fane?" 
 
 "Yes, awfully glad," Michael echoed. 
 
 "It's the best army," said Pearson simply. 
 
 "Oh, easily," Rodber agreed. "I say, Pearson, that kid 
 Biden said Church was going to lam you at four o'clock." 
 
 The offended Pearson swallowed a large piece of a second 
 unripe pear and scowled. 
 
 "Did he? Tell the army to line up behind the lav at 
 four o'clock." 
 
 Rodber's eyes gleamed. 
 
 "I say, Pearson, I've got an awfully ripping plan. Sup- 
 posing we ambush them." 
 
 "How?" inquired the commander. 
 
 "Why, supposing w^e put young Fane and two or three 
 more new kids by the tuckshop door and tell them to run
 
 102 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 toward the haunted house, we could cop them simply 
 rippingly." 
 
 "Give the orders before afternoon school," said Pearson 
 curtly, and just then the bell for ''second hour" sounded. 
 
 *'Wait for me at half -past twelve," Rodber shouted to 
 Michael as he ran to get into school. 
 
 Michael grew quite feverish during "second hour" and 
 his brain whirled with the imagination of battles, so that 
 the landing of Julius Caesar seemed of minor importance. 
 Tuckshops and haunted houses and doors and ambushes 
 and the languid pale-faced Pearson occupied his thoughts 
 fully enough. At a quarter past twelve Mr. Whichelo the 
 First Form master told Michael and the other new boys 
 to go to the book-room and get their school caps, and at 
 half-past twelve Michael waited outside on the yellow gravel 
 for Rodber, splendidly proud of himself in a blue cap 
 crested with a cockleshell worked in silver wire. He was 
 longing to look at himself in the glass at home and to show 
 Miss Carthew and Stella and Nanny and Cook and Gladys 
 his school cap. 
 
 However, before he could go home Rodber took him round 
 to where the tuckshop ambush would ensue at four o'clock. 
 He showed him a door in a wall which led apparently into 
 the narrow shady garden of an empty house next to the 
 school. He explained how Michael was to hang about 
 outside this door and when the Churchites demanded his 
 presence, he told him that he was to run as hard as he could 
 down the garden toward the house. 
 
 "We'll do the rest," said Rodber. "And now cut off 
 home." 
 
 As soon as Michael was inside Number 64, he rushed 
 upstairs to his bedroom and examined himself critically 
 in the looking-glass. Really the new cap made a great 
 difference. He seemed older somehow and more important. 
 He wished that his arms and legs were not so thin, and he
 
 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 103 
 
 looked forward to the time when like Rodber he would 
 wear Etons. However, his hair was now pleasantly and 
 inconspicuously straight; he had already seen boys woefully 
 teased on account of their curls, and Michael congratulated 
 himself that generally his dress and appearance conformed 
 with the fashion of the younger boys' dress at Randell's. 
 It would be terrible to excite notice. In fact, Michael 
 supposed that to excite notice was the worst sin anybody 
 could possibly commit. He hoped he would never excite 
 notice. He w^ould like to remain perfectly ordinary, and 
 very slowly by an inconspicuous and gradual growth he 
 would thus arrive in time at the dignity and honor enjoyed 
 by Rodber, and perhaps even to the sacred majesty that 
 clung to Pearson. Already he was going to take an active 
 part in the adventures of school; and he felt sorry for the 
 boys who without Rodber's influence would mildly go 
 straight home at four o'clock. 
 
 Indeed, Michael set out to afternoon school in a somewhat 
 elated frame of mind, and when he turned into the school- 
 yard, wearing the school cap, he felt bold enough to watch 
 a game of Conquerors that was proceeding between two 
 solemn-faced boys. He thought that to try to crack a 
 chestnut hanging on a piece of string with another chest- 
 nut similarly suspended was a very enthralling pastime, 
 and he was much upset when one of the solemn-faced 
 antagonists suddenly grabbed his new school-cap and put 
 it in his pocket and, without paying any attention to Michael, 
 went on with the game as if nothing had happened. Michael 
 had no idea how to grapple with the situation and felt 
 inclined to cry. 
 
 "I say, give me my cap," he said at last. 
 
 The solemn-faced boys went on in silence with the game. 
 
 "I say, please give me my cap," Michael asked again. 
 
 No notice was taken of his appeal and Michael, looking 
 round in despair, saw Rodber. He ran up to him.
 
 '104 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 "I say, Rodber, that boy over there has got my cap," 
 he said. 
 
 ''Well, don't come sneaking to me, you young ass. Go 
 and smack his head." 
 
 "Am I to really?" asked Michael. 
 
 "Of course." 
 
 Michael was not prepared to withstand Rodber's advice, 
 so he went up to the solemn-faced boy and hit him as hard 
 as he could. The solemn-faced boy was so much surprised 
 by this attack that he did not for a moment retaliate, and 
 it was only his friend's gasp "I say, what fearful cheek," 
 that restored him to a sense of what had happened. 
 
 In a moment Michael found himself lying on his back 
 and almost smothered by the solemn-faced boy's whole 
 body and presently suffering agony from the pressure of 
 the solemn-faced boy's knees upon his arms pinioned cross- 
 wise. Excited voices chattered about him from an increasing 
 circle. He heard the solemn-faced boy telling his horrified 
 auditors that a new kid had smacked his head. He heard 
 various punishments strongly recommended, and at last 
 with a sense of relief he heard the quick authoritative voice 
 of the ubiquitous Rodber. 
 
 "Let him get up, young Plummer. A fight! A fight!" 
 
 Plummer got up, as he was told, and Michael in a circle 
 of eager faces found himself confronted by Plummer. 
 
 "Go on," shouted Rodber. "I'm backing you, young 
 Fane." 
 
 Michael lowered his head and charged desperately for- 
 ward for the honor of Rodber; but a terrible pain in his 
 nose and another in his arm and a third in his chin brought 
 tears and blood together in such quantity that Michael 
 would have liked to throw himself onto the grass and weep 
 his life out, too weak to contend with solemn-faced boys 
 who snatched caps. 
 
 Then over his misery he heard Rodber cry, "That's
 
 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER lo; 
 
 enough. It's not fair. Give him back his cap." The crowd 
 broke up except for a few admirers of Rodber, who was 
 telling Michael that he had done tolerably well for a new 
 kid. Michael felt encouraged and ventured to point out 
 that he had not really blabbed. 
 
 "You cocky young ass," said Rodber crushingly. "I sup- 
 pose you mean 'blubbed.' " 
 
 Michael was overwhelmed by this rebuke and, wishing 
 to hide his shame in a far corner of the field, turned away. 
 But Rodber called him back and spoke pleasantly, so that 
 Michael forgot the snub and wandered for the rest of the 
 dinner-hour in Rodber's wake, with aching nose, but with 
 a heart beating in admiration and affection. 
 
 Within a fortnight Michael had become a schoolboy, 
 sharing in the general ambitions and factions and preju- 
 dices and ideals of schoolboyhood. He was a member of 
 Pearson's victorious army; he supported the London Road 
 Car Company against the London General Omnibus Com- 
 pany, the District Railway against the Metropolitan Rail- 
 way ; he was always ready to lam young boarders who were 
 cheeky, and when an older boarder called him a "day-bug" 
 Michael was discreetly silent, merely registering a vow 
 to take it out of the young boarders at the first opportunity. 
 He also learnt to speak without blushing of the gym and 
 the lav and arith and hols and "Bobbie" Randell and 
 "my people" and "my kiddy sister." He was often first 
 with the claimant "ego" when someone shouted "quis?" 
 over a broken pocket-knife found. He could shout "fain 
 I" to be rid of an obligation and "bags I" to secure an 
 advantage. He was a rigid upholder of the inviolableness 
 of Christian names as postulated by Randellite convention. 
 He laid out threepence a week in the purchase of sweets 
 usually at four ounces a penny; while during the beggary 
 that succeeded he was one of the most persistent criers of 
 "donnez," when richer boys emerged from the tuckshop, 
 8
 
 io6 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 sucking gelatines and satin pralines and chocolate creams 
 and raspberry noyau. As for the masters, he was always 
 ready to hear scandalous rumors about their unofficial lives, 
 and he was one of the first to fly round the playground 
 with the news that "Squeaky'* Mordaunt had distinctly 
 muttered "damn" beneath his breath, when Featherstone 
 Minor trod on his toe toward the close of first hour. Soon 
 also with one of the four hundred odd boys who made 
 up the population of this very large private school Michael 
 formed a great friendship. He and Buckley were inseparable 
 for sixteen whole weeks. During that time they exchanged 
 the most intimate confidences. Buckley told Michael that 
 his Christian names were Claude Arnold Eustace, and 
 Michael told Buckley that he was called Charles Michael 
 Saxby, and also that his mother was generally away from 
 home, that his father was dead, that his governess was 
 called Miss Carthew, that he had a sister who played the 
 piano and that one day when he grew up he hoped to be 
 an explorer and search for orchids in Borneo. Sometimes 
 on Saturday or Wednesday half-holidays Buckley came 
 to tea with Michael and sometimes Michael went to tea 
 with Buckley, and observed how well Buckley kept in order 
 his young brothers and kiddy sisters. Buckley lived close 
 to Kensington Gardens and rode to school every morning 
 on a London Road Car, which was the reason of Michael's 
 keen partisanship of that company. In the eleven o'clock 
 break between first and second hours, Michael and Buckley 
 walked arm in arm round the field, and in the dinner-hour 
 Michael and Buckley shared a rope on the Giant Stride 
 and talked intimately on the top of the horizontal ladder 
 in the outdoor gymnasium. During the Christmas holidays 
 they haunted the banks of the Round Pond and fished 
 for minnows and sailed capsizable yachts and cheeked 
 keepers. Every night Michael thought of Buckley and every 
 night Michael hoped that Buckley thought of him. Even
 
 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 107 
 
 in scholarship they were scarcely distinguishable; for when 
 at the end of the autumn term Michael was top of the 
 class in Divinity and English, Buckley headed the Latin 
 list. As for Drawing they were bracketed equal at the very 
 bottom of the form. 
 
 Then, toward the middle of the Lent term, Randell 
 House was divided against itself; for one half of the school 
 became Oxford and the other half Cambridge, in celebra- 
 tion of the boat-race which would be rowed at the end of 
 March. When one morning Michael saw Buckley coming 
 into school with a light blue swallow pinned to the left 
 of his sailor-knot and when Buckley perceived attached to 
 Michael's sailor-top a medal dependent from a dark blue 
 ribbon, they eyed each other as strangers. This difference 
 of opinion was irremediable. Neither romance nor senti- 
 ment could ever restore to Michael and Buckley their 
 pristine cordiality, because Michael was now a despised 
 Oxtail and Buckley was a loathed Cabbage-stalk. 
 
 They shouted to one another from the heart of massed 
 factions mocking rhymes. Michael would chant: 
 
 "Oxford upstairs eating all the cakes; 
 Cambridge downstairs licking up the plates." 
 
 To which Buckley would retort: 
 
 "Cambridge, rowing on and on forever; 
 Oxford in a matchbox floating down the river." 
 
 Snow fell in February, and great snow-ball fights took 
 place between the Oxtails and the Cabbage-stalks in which 
 the fortunes of both sides varied from day to day. During 
 one of these fights Michael hit Buckley full in the eye 
 with a snow-ball alleged to contain a stone, and the bitter- 
 ness between them grew sharper. Then Oxford won the 
 boat-race, and Buckley cut Michael publicly. Finally,
 
 io8 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 owning to some alteration in the Buckley home, Buckley 
 became a boarder, and was able with sneering voice to call 
 Michael a beastly *'day-bug." Such was the friendship of 
 Michael and Buckley, which lasted for sixteen weeks and 
 might not indeed have so much wounded Michael, when the 
 rupture was made final, if Buckley had proved loyal to that 
 friendship. Unfortunately for Michael's belief in human 
 nature Buckley one day, stung perhaps by some trifling 
 advantage gained by day-boys at the expense of boarders, 
 divulged Michael's Christian names. He called out dis- 
 tinctly, "Ha! ha! Charles Michael Saxby Fane! Oh, 
 what a name! Kiddy Michael Sacks-of-coals Fane!" 
 
 Michael regretted his intimacy with one who was not 
 within the circle of Carlington Road. In future, he would 
 not seek friends outside Carlington Road and the six roads 
 of the alliance. There all secrets must be kept, and all 
 quarrels locally adjusted, for there Christian names were 
 known and every household had its skeleton of nurse or 
 governess. 
 
 Meanwhile, Mrs. Fane did not come home and Miss 
 Carthew assumed more and more complete control of 
 Number 64, until, one day in spring. Nurse suddenly told 
 Michael that she was leaving next day. Somehow, Nurse 
 had ceased to influence Michael's life one way or the other 
 and he could only feel vaguely uncomfortable over her 
 departure. Nurse cried a good deal particularly at saying 
 good-bye to Stella, whom she called her own girl whatever 
 anybody might say. When Michael perceived Nurse's 
 tears, he tried hard to drag up from the depths of his nature 
 a dutiful sentimentality. For the last time he kissed that 
 puckered monkey-like face, and in a four-wheeler Nurse 
 vanished w^ithout making any difference in the life of Sixty- 
 four, save by a convenient shifting about of the upstairs 
 rooms. The old night-nursery was redecorated and became 
 for many years Michael's bedroom. Miss Carthew slept in
 
 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 109 
 
 Michael's old big lonely front room, and Stella slept in a 
 little dressing-room opening out of it. Down in the kitchen, 
 whence withered Gladys and the impersonal cook had also 
 vanished, Michael gleaned a certain amount of gossip and 
 found that the immediate cause of Nurse's departure was 
 due to Miss Carthew's discovery of her dead drunk in a 
 kitchen chair. It seemed that Miss Carthew, slim and strong 
 and beautiful, had had to carry the old woman up to her 
 bedroom, while Michael lay sleeping, had had to undress 
 and put her to bed and on the next day to contend with her 
 asseverations that the collapse was due to violent neuralgia. 
 It seemed also that for years the neighborhood had known 
 of Nurse's habits, had even seen her on two occasions upset 
 Stella's perambulator. Indeed, so far as Michael could 
 gather, he and Stella had lived until Miss Carthew's arrival 
 in a state of considerable insecurity. 
 
 However, Nurse w^as now a goblin of the past, and the 
 past could be easily forgotten. In these golden evenings of 
 the summer-term, there was too much going forward in 
 Carlington Road to let old glooms overshadow the gaiety 
 of present life. As Mrs. Carthew had prophesied, Michael 
 enjoyed being at school very much, and having already 
 won a prize for being top of his class in Divinity and Eng- 
 lish at Christmas, with every prospect of being top of his class 
 again in the summer, he was anxious to achieve the still 
 greater distinction of winning a prize in the school sports 
 which were to be held in July. All the boys who lived in 
 the Carlington Confederate Roads determined to win 
 prizes, and Rodber was very much to the fore in training 
 them all to do him credit. It was the fashion to choose 
 colors in which to run, and Michael after a week's debate 
 elected to appear in violet running-drawers and primrose- 
 bordered vest. The twin Macalisters, contemporaries of 
 Michael, ran in cerise and eau-de-nil, while the older 
 Macalister wore ultramarine and mauve. Garrod chose
 
 no YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 dark green and Rodber looked dangerously swift in black 
 and yellow. Every evening there was steady practice under 
 Rodber, either in canvas shoes from lamp-post to lamp- 
 post or, during the actual week before the sports, in spiked 
 running-shoes on the grass-track, with corks to grip and 
 a temperamental stop-watch to cause many disputes. 
 It was a great humiliation for the Confederate Roads 
 when Rodber himself failed to last the half-mile (under 
 14) on the day itself. However, the Macalister twins won 
 the sack race (under 11) and in the same class Michael won 
 the hundred yards Consolation Race and an octagonal 
 napkin-ring, so Carlington Road congratulated itself. In 
 addition to athletic practice, there were several good fights 
 with "cads" and a disagreeable Colonel had his dining-room 
 window starred by a catapult. Other notable events in- 
 cluded a gas explosion at Number 78, when the front door 
 was blown across the street and flattened a passer-by against 
 the opposite wall. There was a burglary at Number 33 
 and the housemaid at Number 56 fell backward from the 
 dining-room w^indow-sill and bruised her back on the lid 
 of the dustbin in the area. 
 
 With all these excitements to sustain the joy of life 
 Michael was very happy and, when school broke up for the 
 summer holidays, he had never yet looked forward so eagerly 
 to the jolly weeks by the sea. Miss Carthew and Michael 
 and Stella went to Folkestone that year, and Michael en- 
 joyed himself enormously. Miss Carthew, provided that she 
 was allowed a prior inspection, offered no opposition to 
 friendship with strange children, and Michael joined an 
 association for asking everybody on the Leas w^hat the time 
 was. The association would not have been disbanded all the 
 holidays, if one of the members had not asked the time 
 from the same old gentleman twice in one minute. The old 
 gentleman was so acutely irritated by this that he w^alked 
 about the Leas warning people against the association, until
 
 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER in 
 
 it became impossible to find out the time, when one really 
 wanted to know. Michael moved inland for a while after 
 this and fell into Radnor Park pond, when he returned to 
 the sea and got stung by a jelly-fish while he was paddling, 
 and read Treasure Island in the depths of his own par- 
 ticular cave among the tamarisks of the lower Sandgate 
 Road. 
 
 After about a fortnight of complete rest, a slight cloud 
 was cast over the future by the announcement at breakfast 
 one morning that he was to do a couple of hours' work at 
 French every day with a French governess; remembering 
 Madame Flauve, he felt depressed by the prospect. But 
 Miss Carthew found a charming and youthful French 
 governess at a girls' school, where about half a dozen girls 
 were remaining during the holidays, and Michael did not 
 mind so much. He rather liked the atmosphere of the girls* 
 school, although when he returned to Randell's he gave a 
 very contemptuous account of female education to his mas- 
 culine peers. An incident happened at this girls' school, 
 which he never told, although it made a great impression 
 on his imagination. 
 
 One afternoon, he had been invited to take tea with the 
 six girls and Mademoiselle, and after tea, the weather being 
 wet, they all played games in the recreation-room. One of 
 the smaller girls happened to swing higher than decorum 
 allowed, and caused Michael to blush and to turn his head 
 quickly and look intently at houses opposite. He knew 
 that the girl was unaware of the scandal she had created,, 
 and therefore blushed the deeper and hoped that the matter 
 would pass off quietly. But very soon he heard a chatter of 
 reproof, and the poor little girl was banished from the room 
 in disgrace, while all the other girls discussed the shameful 
 business from every point of view, calling upon Mademoiselle 
 and Michael to endorse their censure. Michael felt very 
 sorry for the poor little girl and wished very much that the
 
 112 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 others would let the matter drop, but the discussion went 
 on endlessly and as, just before he went home, he happened 
 to see the offending girl sitting by a window w^ith tear- 
 stained face, Michael felt more sorry than ever and wished 
 that he dared to say a comforting word, to explain how well 
 he understood it was all an accident. On the way home, 
 he walked silently, meditating upon disgrace, and for the 
 first time he realized something of human cruelty and the 
 lust to humiliate and submerge deeper still the fallen. 
 At the same time he himself experienced, in retrospect of 
 the incident, a certain curious excitement, and did not know 
 whether, after all, he had not taken pleasure in the little 
 girl's shame, whether, after all, he would not have liked to 
 go back and talk the whole matter out again. However, 
 there was that exciting chapter in Treasure Island to finish 
 and the September Boy's Own Paper to expect. On the 
 next day Michael, walking with Miss Carthew on the Leas, 
 met General Mace, and girls' schools with their curious 
 excitements and blushes were entirely forgotten. General 
 Mace, it appeared, was an old friend of Miss Carthew's 
 father and was staying by himself at Folkestone. General 
 Mace had fought in the Indian Mutiny and was exactly 
 what a general should be, very tall with a white mustache 
 fiercely curling and a rigid back that bent inward like a bow 
 and a magnificent ebony walking-stick and a gruff voice. 
 General Mace seemed to take a fancy to Michael and act- 
 ually invited him to go for a walk with him next day at 
 ten o'clock. 
 
 "Sharp, mind," said the General as he saluted stiffly. 
 *Ten o'clock to the minute." 
 
 Michael spent the rest of the day in asking questions 
 of Miss Carthew about General Mace, and scarcely slept 
 that night for fear he might be late. At nine o'clock, 
 Michael set out for the lodgings and ran all the way to the 
 General's house on the Leas and walked about and fidgeted
 
 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 113 
 
 and fretted himself, until the clock struck the first chime of 
 ten, when he rang the bell and was shown upstairs and was 
 standing on the General's hearthrug before the echo of the 
 last chime had died away. 
 
 The General cleared his throat and, after saluting Michael, 
 suggested a walk. Proudly Michael walked beside this 
 tall old soldier up and down the Leas. He was told tales 
 of the Mutiny; he learned the various ranks of the British 
 Army from Lance-corporal to Field-marshal; he agreed at 
 the General's suggestion to aim at a commission in the 
 Bengal Cavalry, preferably in a regiment which wore a 
 uniform of canary-yellow. Every morning Michael walked 
 about Folkestone with General Mace, and one morning 
 they turned into a toy-shop where Michael was told to 
 choose two boxes of soldiers. Michael at first chose a box 
 of Highlanders doubling fiercely with fixed bayonets and a 
 stationary Highland Regimental Band, each individual 
 of which had a different instrument and actually a music- 
 stand as well. These two boxes together cost seven shillings, 
 and Michael was just leaving the shop, w^hen he saw a small 
 penny box containing twelve very tiny soldiers. Michael 
 was in a quandary. For several shillings, he would be able 
 to buy eighty-four penny boxes, that is to say one thousand 
 and eight soldiers, whereas in the two boxes of Highlanders 
 already selected there were only twelve with bayonets, twelve 
 with instruments and twelve music-stands. It was really 
 very difficult to decide, and General Mace declined to make 
 any suggestion as to which w^ould be the wiser choice. 
 Michael was racked by indecision and after a long debate 
 chose the original two boxes and played with his Highland- 
 ers for several years to come. 
 
 "Quite right," said the General when they reached the 
 sunlight from the dusty little toy-shop. "Quite right. 
 Quality before quantity, sir. I'm glad to see you have so 
 much common sense."
 
 114 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 Almost before the holidays seemed to have begun, the 
 holidays were over. There was a short .and melancholy 
 day of packing up, and a farewell visit through the rain to 
 General Mace. He and Michael sat for a while in his room, 
 while they talked earnestly of the Indian Army and the 
 glories of patriotism. Michael told tales, slightly exag- 
 gerated, of the exploits of Pearson's army and General 
 Mace described the Relief of Lucknow. Michael felt that 
 they were in profound sympathy; they both recognized the 
 splendor of action. The rain stopped, and in a rich 
 autumnal sunset they walked together for the last time over 
 the golden puddles and spangled wetness of the Leas. 
 Michael went through the ranks of the British Army 
 without a single mistake, and promised faithfully to make 
 the Bengal Lancers his aim through youth. 
 
 "Punctuality, obedience and quality before quantity," said 
 the General, standing up as tall and thin as Don Quixote 
 against the sunset glow. "Good-bye." 
 
 "Good-bye," said Michael. 
 
 They saluted each other ceremoniously, and parted. 
 The next day Michael was in London, and, after a depress- 
 ing Sunday and an exciting Monday spent in buying a 
 Norfolk suit and Eton collars, the new term began with all 
 the excitements of "moving up," of a new form-master, of 
 new boys, of seeing who would be in the Football Eleven and 
 of looking forward to Christmas with its presents and pan- 
 tomimes.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 MORE ENCOUNTERS 
 
 IN the Upper Fourth class, under the tutorship of 
 Mr. Macrae, Michael began to prosecute seriously 
 the study of Greek, whose alphabet he had learnt 
 the preceding term. He now abandoned the scarlet 
 book of Elementary Latin for Henry's Latin Primer, 
 which began with "Balbus was building a wall," and looked 
 difficult in its mulberry-cloth binding. This term in the 
 Upper Fourth was very trying to Michael. Troubles 
 accumulated. Coincident with the appearance of Greek 
 irregular verbs came the appearance of Avery, a new boy 
 who at once, new boy though he was, assumed command 
 of the Upper Fourth and made Michael the target for his 
 volatile and stinging shafts. Misfortune, having once di- 
 rected her attention to Michael, pursued him for some time 
 to come. Michael was already sufficiently in awe of Avery's 
 talent for hurting his feelings, when from the Hebrides 
 Mrs. Fane sent down Harris tweed for Michael's Norfolk 
 suits. He begged Miss Carthew to let him continue in 
 the inconspicuous dark blue serge which was the fashion 
 at Randell's; but for once she was unsympathetic, and 
 Michael had to wear the tweed. Avery, of course, was very 
 witty at his expense and for a long time Michael was known 
 as "strawberry-bags," until the joke palled. Michael had 
 barely lived down the Harris tweed, when Avery discovered, 
 while they were changing into football shorts, that Michael 
 
 115
 
 ii6 YOUTH^S ENCOUNTER 
 
 wore combinations instead of pants and vest. Combinations 
 were held to be the depth of effeminacy, and Avery often 
 inquired w^hen Michael was going to appear in petticoats 
 and stays. Michael spoke to Miss Carthew about these 
 combinations which at the very moment of purchase he had 
 feared, but Miss Carthew insisted that they were much 
 healthier than the modish pants and vest, and Michael 
 was not allowed to change the style of his underclothing. 
 In desperation he tied some tape round his waist, but the 
 observant Avery noticed this ruse, and Michael was more 
 cruelly teased than ever. Then one Monday morning, 
 the worst blow of all fell suddenly. The boys at Randell's 
 had on Saturday morning to take down from dictation the 
 form-list in a home-book, which had to be brought back on 
 Monday morning signed by a parent, so that no boy should 
 escape the vigilance of the paternal eye. Of course, Miss 
 Carthew always signed Michael's home-book and so far no 
 master had asked any questions. But Mr. Macrae said quite 
 loudly on this Monday morning: 
 
 *'Who is this Maud Carthew that signs your book, Fane?" 
 
 Michael felt the pricking of the form's ears and blushed 
 hotly. 
 
 "My mother's away," he stammered. 
 
 "Oh," said Mr. Macrae bluntly, "and who is this person 
 then?" 
 
 Michael nearly choked with shame. 
 
 "My governess — my sister's governess, I mean," he added, 
 desperately trying to retrieve the situation. 
 
 "Oh, yes," said Mr. Macrae. "I see." 
 
 The form tittered, while the crimson Michael stumbled 
 back to his desk. It was a long time before Avery grew 
 tired of Miss Carthew or before the class wearied of crying 
 "Maudie" in an united falsetto, whenever Michael ventured 
 to speak. Mr. Macrae, too, made cruel use of his advantage, 
 for whenever Michael tripped over an irregular verb Mr.
 
 MORE ENCOUNTERS 117 
 
 Macrae would address to the ceiling in his soft unpleasant 
 voice sarcastic remarks about governesses, while every 
 Monday morning he would make a point of putting on his 
 glasses to examine Michael's home-book very carefully. 
 The climax of Michael's discomfort was reached when a 
 snub-nosed boy called Jubb with a cockney accent asked 
 him w^hat his father was. 
 
 "He's dead," Michael answered. 
 
 *'Yes, but what was he?" Jubb persisted. 
 
 "He was a gentleman," said Michael. 
 
 Avery happened to overhear this and was extremely witty 
 over Michael's cockiness, so witty that Michael was goaded 
 into retaliation, notwithstanding his fear of Avery's tongue. 
 
 "Well, what is your father?" he asked. 
 
 "My father's a duke, and I've got an uncle who's a 
 millionaire, and my governess is a queen," said Avery. 
 
 Michael was silent; he could not contend with Avery. 
 Altogether the Upper Fourth was a very unpleasant class; 
 but next term, Michael and half of the class were moved up 
 to the Lower Fifth, and Avery left to go to a private school 
 in Surrey, because he was ultimately destined for Charter- 
 house, near which school his people had, as he said, taken a 
 large house. Curiously enough the combination of half the 
 Upper Fourth with the half of the Lower Fifth left behind 
 made a rather pleasant class, one that Michael enjoyed as' 
 much as any other so far, particularly as he was beginning 
 to find that he was clever enough to avoid doing as much 
 schoolwork as hitherto he had done, without in any way 
 permanently jeopardizing his position near the top of the 
 form. To be sure Mr. Wagstaff, the cherub-faced master of 
 the Lower Fifth, complained of his continually shifting 
 position from one end of the class to the other; but Michael 
 justified himself and incidentally somewhat annoyed Mr. 
 Wagstaff by coming out head boy in the Christmas examina- 
 tions. Meanwhile, if he found Greek irregular verbs and
 
 ii8 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 Latin gender rhymes tiresome, Michael read unceasingly 
 at home, preferably books that encouraged the private 
 schoolboy's instinct to take sides. Michael was for the 
 Trojans against the Greeks, partly on account of the Greek 
 verbs, but principally because he once had a straw hat 
 inscribed H.M.S. Hector. He was also for the Lancastrians 
 against the Yorkists, and, of course, for the Jacobites against 
 the Hanoverians. Somewhat illogically, he was for the 
 Americans against the English, because as Miss Carthew 
 pointed out he was English himself and the English were 
 beaten. She used to tease Michael for nearly always choos- 
 ing the beaten side. She also used to annoy him by her 
 assertion that, in taking the part of the Americans in the 
 War of Independence, he showed that most of his other 
 choices were only due to the books he read. She used to 
 make him very angry by saying that he was at heart a 
 Roundhead and a Whig, and even hinted that he would 
 grow up a Radical. This last insinuation really annoyed 
 him very much indeed, because at Randell House no boy 
 could be anything but a Conservative without laying himself 
 open to the suggestion that he was not a gentleman. 
 
 In time, after an absence of nearly two years, Mrs. Fane 
 came home for a long time ; but Michael did not feel any of 
 those violent emotions of joy that once he used to feel when 
 he saw her cab rounding the corner. He was shy of his 
 mother, and she for her part seemed shy of him, and told 
 Miss Carthew that school had not improved Michael. She 
 wondered, too, why he always seemed anxious to be playing 
 with other boys. 
 
 "It's quite natural," Miss Carthew pointed out. 
 
 "Darling Michael. I suppose it is," Mrs. Fane agreed 
 vaguely. "But he's so grubby and inky now^adays." 
 
 Michael maintained somewhat indignantly that all the 
 boys at Randell's were like him, for he was proud that by 
 being grubby and inky no boy could detect in him any
 
 MORE ENCOUNTERS 119 
 
 p ■ 
 
 inclination to differentiate himself from the mass. At 
 Randell's, where there was one way only of thinking and 
 behaving and speaking, it would have been grossly cocky 
 to be brushed and clean. Michael resented his mother's 
 attempt to dress him nicely and was almost rude when she 
 suggested ideas for charming and becoming costumes. 
 
 "I do think boys are funny," she used to sigh. 
 
 "Well, mother," Michael would argue, "if I wore a 
 suit like that all the other boys would notice it." 
 
 "But I think it's nice to be noticed," Mrs. Fane would 
 contend. 
 
 "I think it's beastly," Michael always said. 
 
 "I wish you wouldn't use that horrid word," his mother 
 would say disapprovingly. 
 
 "All the boys do," was Michael's Invariable last word. 
 
 Then, "Michael," Miss Carthew would say sharply, as 
 she fixed him with that cold look which he so much 
 dreaded. Michael would blush and turn away, abashed; 
 while Stella's company would be demanded by his mother 
 instead of his, and Stella would come into the room all 
 lily-rosed beside her imp-like brother. 
 
 Stella was held by Michael to be affected, and he would 
 often point out to her how little such behavior would be 
 tolerated at a boys' school. Stella's usual reply was to pout, 
 a form of expression which came under the category of 
 affectations, or she would cry, which was a degree worse 
 and was considered to be as good as sneaking outright. 
 Michael often said he hoped that school would improve 
 Stella's character and behavior; yet when she went to 
 school, Michael thought that not only was she none the 
 better for the experience, but he was even inclined to sug- 
 gest that she was very much the worse. Tiresome little 
 girl friends came to tea sometimes and altered Michael's 
 arrangements; and when they came they used to giggle in 
 corners and Stella used to show off detestably. Once
 
 I20 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 Michael was so much vexed by a certain Dorothy that he 
 kissed her spitefully, and a commotion ensued from the 
 middle of which rose Miss Carthew, gray-eyed and august 
 like Pallas Athene in The Heroes. It seemed to Michael 
 that altogether too much importance was attached to this 
 incident. He had merely kissed Dorothy in order to show 
 his contempt for her behavior. One would think from the 
 lecture given by Miss Carthew that it was pleasant to kiss 
 giggling little girls. Michael felt thoroughly injured by the 
 imputation of gallantry, and sulked instead of giving reasons. 
 
 "I really think your mother is right," Miss Carthew said 
 at last. ''You are quite different from the old Michael." 
 
 "I didn't want to kiss her," he cried, exasperated. 
 
 "Doesn't that make it all the worse?" Miss Carthew sug- 
 gested. 
 
 Michael shrugged his shoulders, feeling powerless to con- 
 tend with all this stupidity of opinion. 
 
 "Surely," said Miss Carthew at last, "Don Quixote or 
 General Mace or Henry V wouldn't have kissed people 
 against their will in order to be spiteful." 
 
 "They might," argued Michael; "if rotten little girls 
 came to tea and made them angry." 
 
 "I will not have that word 'rotten' used in front of me," 
 Miss Carthew said. 
 
 "Well, fat-headed, then,'* Michael proposed as a eu- 
 phemism. 
 
 "The truth is," Miss Carthew pointed out, "you were 
 angry because you couldn't have the Macalisters to tea and 
 you vented your anger on poor Stella and her friends. I 
 call it mean and unchivalrous." 
 
 "Well, Stella goes to mother and asks for Dorothy to 
 come to tea, when you told me I could have the Macalisters, 
 and I don't see why I should always have to give way." 
 
 "Boys always give way to girls," generalized Miss Car- 
 thew.
 
 MORE ENCOUNTERS 121 
 
 "I don't believe they do nowadays," said Michael. 
 
 "I see it's hopeless to argue any more. I'm sorry you 
 won't see you're in the wrong. It makes me feel disap- 
 pointed." 
 
 Michael again shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 "I don't see how I can possibly ask your mother to let 
 Nancy stay here next Christmas. I suppose you'll be trying 
 to kiss her." 
 
 Michael really had to laugh at this. 
 
 "Why, I like Nancy awfully," he said. "And we both 
 think kissing is fearful rot — I mean frightfully stupid. But 
 I won't do it again. Miss Carthew. I'm sorry. I am 
 really." 
 
 There was one great advantage in dealing with Miss 
 Carthew. She was always ready to forgive at once, and, as 
 Michael respected her enough to dislike annoying her, he 
 found it perfectly easy to apologize and be friends — par- 
 ticularly as he had set his heart on Nancy's Christmas visit. 
 
 Carlington Road and the Confederate Roads were now 
 under the control of Michael and his friends. Rodber had 
 gone away to a public school: the elder Macalister and 
 Garrod had both got bicycles, which occupied all their 
 time: Michael, the twin Macalisters and a boy called Nor- 
 ton were in a very strong position of authority. Norton 
 had two young brothers and the Macalisters had one, so 
 that there were three slaves in perpetual attendance. It 
 became the fashion to forsake the school field for the more 
 adventurous wasteland of the neighborhood. At the end 
 of Carlington Road itself still existed what was practically 
 open country as far as it lasted. There were elm-trees and 
 declivities and broken hedges and the excavated hollows 
 of deserted gravel pits. There was an attractive zigzag 
 boundary • fence which was sufficiently ruinous at certain 
 intervals to let a boy through to wander in the allotments 
 of railway workers. Bands of predatory "cads" prowled 
 9
 
 122 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 about this wasteland, and many were the fierce fights at 
 sundown between the cads and the Randellites. Caps were 
 taken for scalps, and Miss Carthew was horrified to ob- 
 serve nailed to Michael's bedroom wall the filthiest cap she 
 had ever seen. 
 
 Apart from the battles there were the luxurious camps, 
 w^here cigarettes at five a penny were smoked to the last 
 pufE and were succeeded by the consumption of highly 
 scented sweets to remove the traces of tobacco. These 
 camps were mostly pitched in the gravelly hollows, where 
 Michael and the Macalisters and Norton used to sit round a 
 campfire on the warm evenings of summer, while silhouet- 
 ted against the blue sky above stood the minor Macalister 
 and the junior Nortons in ceaseless vigilance. The bait held 
 out to these sentries, who sometimes mutinied, was their 
 equipment with swords, guns, pistols, shields, bows, arms 
 and breastplates. So, heavily and decoratively armed and 
 sustained by the prospect of peppermint bull's-eyes, Dicky 
 Macalister and the two Nortons were content for an hour 
 to scan the horizon for marauding cads, while down below 
 the older boys discussed life in all its ambiguity and compli- 
 cation. These symposiums in the gravel pit tried to solve 
 certain problems in a very speculative manner. 
 
 "There must be some secret about being married," said 
 Michael one Saturday afternoon, when the sun blazed down 
 upon the sentries and the last cigarette had been smoked. 
 
 "There is," Norton agreed. 
 
 "I can't make out about twins," Michael continued, 
 looking critically at the Macalisters. 
 
 Siegfried Macalister, generally known as "Smack," in 
 distinction to his brother Hugh, always called "Mac," felt 
 bound to offer a suggestion. 
 
 "There's twenty minutes' difference between us. I heard 
 my mater tell a visitor, and besides I'm the eldest." 
 
 Speculation was temporarily interrupted by a bout be-
 
 MORE ENCOUNTERS 123 
 
 tween Smack and Mac, because neither was allowed to claim 
 priority. At the end of an indecisive round, Michael struck 
 in: 
 
 "But why are there twins? People don't like twins com- 
 ing, because in Ally Sloper there's always a joke about 
 twins." 
 
 "I know married people who haven't got any children 
 at all," said Norton, in order still more elaborately to com- 
 plicate the point at issue. 
 
 "Yes, there you are," said Michael. "There's some secret 
 about marriage." 
 
 "There's a book in my mater's room which I believe 
 would tell us," hinted Smack. 
 
 "There's a good deal in the Bible," Norton observed. 
 "Only it's difficult to find the places and then you can't 
 tell for certain what they mean." 
 
 Then came a long whispering, at the end of which the 
 four boys shook their heads very wisely and said that they 
 were sure that was it. 
 
 "Hullo!" Michael shouted, forgetting the debate. 
 "Young Dicky's signaling." 
 
 "Indians," said Mac. 
 
 "Sioux or Apaches?" asked Smack anxiously. 
 
 "Neither. It's Arabs. Charge," shouted Norton. 
 
 All problems went to the winds in the glories of action, 
 in the clash of stick on stick, in the rending of cad's collar 
 and cad's belt, and in the final defeat of the Arabs with the 
 loss of their caravan — a sugar-box on a pair of elliptical 
 wheels. 
 
 In addition to the arduous military life led by Michael 
 at this period, he was also in common with Smack and Mac 
 and Norton a multiplex collector. At first the two principal 
 collections were silkworms and silver paper. Afterwards 
 came postage stamps and coins and medals and autographs 
 and birds' eggs and shells and fossils and bones and skins
 
 124 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 and butterflies and moths and portraits of famous cricketers. 
 From the moment the first silkworm was brought home in 
 a perforated cardboard box to the moment when by some 
 arrangement of vendible material the first bicycle was se- 
 cured, the greater part of Michael's leisure was mysteri- 
 ously occupied in swapping. This swapping would continue 
 until the mere theory of swapping for swapping's sake, as 
 exemplified in a paper called The Exchange and Mart, 
 was enough. When this journal became the rage the most 
 delightful occupation of Michael and his friends was that 
 of poring over the columns of this medium of barter in 
 order to read of X.Y.Z. in Northumberland, who was 
 willing to exchange five Buff Orpingtons, a suit, a tennis 
 racket and Cowper's Poems for a mechanical organ or a 
 five foot by four foot greenhouse. All the romance of 
 commerce w^as to be found in The Exchange and Mart, 
 together with practical hints on the moulting of canaries or 
 red mange in collies. Cricket was in the same way made a 
 mathematical abstraction of decimals and initials and aver- 
 ages and records. All sorts of periodicals were taken in 
 — Cricket, The Cricketer, Cricketing, among many 
 others. From an exact perusal of these, Michael and the 
 Macalisters knew that Streatham could beat Hampstead and 
 were convinced of the superiority of the Incogniti C.C. over 
 the Stoics C.C. With the collections of cricketers' por- 
 traits some of these figures acquired a conceivable person- 
 ality; but for the most part, they remained L.M.N. O.P.Q. 
 Smith representing 36.58 an innings and R.S.T.U.V.W. 
 Brown costing 11.07 ^ wicket. That they wore mustaches, 
 lived and loved like passionate humanity did not seem to 
 matter compared with the arithmetical progression of their 
 averages. When Michael and Norton (who was staying 
 with him at St. Leonards) were given shillings and told 
 to see the Hastings' Cricket Week from the bowling of the 
 first ball to the drawing of the final stump, Michael and
 
 MORE ENCOUNTERS 125 
 
 Norton were very much bored indeed, and deprecated the 
 waste of time in watching real cricket, when they might 
 have been better occupied in collating the weekly cricketing 
 journals. 
 
 At Christmas Michael emerged from a successful au- 
 tumn term with Stories from the Odyssey, by Dean 
 Church, and a chestnut that w^as reputed to have conquered 
 nine hundred and sixty-six other and softer chestnuts. That 
 nine hundred and sixty-sixer of Michael's was a famous nut, 
 and the final struggle between it (then a five hundred and 
 forty-oner) and the four hundred and twxnty-fourer it 
 smashed was a contest long talked of in circles where Con- 
 querors were played. Michael much regretted that the 
 etiquette of the Lent term, which substituted peg-tops for 
 Conquerors, should prevent his chestnut reaching four fig- 
 ures. He knew that next autumn term, if all fell out as 
 planned, he would be at St. James' School itself, where 
 Conquerors and tops and marbles were never even men- 
 tioned, save as vanities and toys of early youth. However, 
 he swapped the nine hundred and sixty-sixer for seven white 
 mice and a slow-worm in spirits of wine belonging to Nor- 
 ton; and he had the satisfaction of hearing later on that 
 after a year in rejuvenating oil the nine hundred and sixty- 
 sixer became a two thousand and thirty-threer before it 
 fell down a drain, undefeated. 
 
 After Christmas Nancy Carthew came up from Hamp- 
 shire to spend a fortnight at Carlington Road, and the holi- 
 days were spent in a fever of theaters and monuments and 
 abbeys. Michael asked Nancy what she thought of Stella 
 and her affectation, and was surprised by Nancy saying she 
 thought Stella was an awfully jolly kid and "no end good" 
 at the piano. Michael, in consideration of Nancy's en- 
 comium, tried to take a fresh view of Stella, and was able 
 sincerely to admit that, compared with many other little 
 girls of the neighborhood, Stella was fairly pretty. He de-
 
 126 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 cided that it would be a good thing for Norton to marry 
 her. He told Norton that there seemed no reason why he 
 and Stella should not come together in affection, and Norton 
 said that, if Michael thought he should, he was perfectly 
 willing to marry Stella, when he was grown up. Michael 
 thereupon swapped a box of somewhat bent dragoons for 
 a ring, and presented this ring to Norton with the injunc- 
 tion that he should on no account tell Stella that he was 
 engaged to her, in case it made her cocky. He also forbade 
 Norton to kiss her (not that he supposed Norton wanted to 
 kiss Stella), because Miss Carthew would be annoyed and 
 might possibly close the area door to Norton for the future. 
 
 When Nancy went back to Hampshire, Michael felt 
 lonely. The Macalisters and the Nortons had gone away 
 on visits, and Carlington Road was dreary without them. 
 Michael read a great deal and by reason of being at home he 
 gradually became less grubby, as the holidays wore on. 
 Also his hair grew long and waved over his forehead with 
 golden lights and shadows and curled in bunches by his 
 ears. A new Eton suit well became him, and his mother 
 said how charming he looked. Michael deplored good looks 
 in boys, but he managed to endure the possession of them 
 during the little space that remained before the Lent term 
 began. He took to frequenting the drawing-room again as 
 of old, and, being nowadays allowed to stay up till a quarter 
 to nine, he used to spend a rosy half-hour after dinner sit- 
 ting on a footstool in the firelight by his mother's knee. 
 She used to stroke his hair and sigh sometimes, when she 
 looked at him. 
 
 One afternoon, just before term began, Mrs. Fane told 
 him to make himself as tidy as possible, because she wanted 
 to take him out to pay a call. Michael was excited by this 
 notion, especially when he heard that they were to travel 
 by hansom, a form of vehicle which he greatly admired. 
 The hansom bowled along the Kensington Road with
 
 MORE ENCOUNTERS 127 
 
 Michael in his Eton suit and top hat sitting beside his 
 mother, scented sweetly with delicious perfumes and very 
 silky to the touch. They drove past Kensington Gardens, 
 all dripping with January rains, past Hyde Park and the 
 Albert Memorial, past the barracks of the Household Cav- 
 alry, past Hyde Park Corner and the Duke of Wellington's 
 house. They dashed along with a jingle and a rattle over 
 the slow old omnibus route, and Michael felt very much 
 distinguished as he turned round to look at the melancholy 
 people crammed inside each omnibus they passed. When 
 they came to Devonshire House, they turned round to the 
 left and pulled up before a grand house in a square. Michael 
 pressed the bell, and the door opened immediately, much 
 more quickly than he had ever known a door open. 
 
 "Is his lordship in?" asked Mrs. Fane. 
 
 "His lordship is upstairs, ma'am," said the footman. 
 
 The hall seemed full of footmen, one of whom took 
 Michael's hat and another of whom led the way up a wide 
 soft staircase that smelled like the inside of the South Ken- 
 sington Museum. All the way up, the walls were hung 
 with enormous pictures of men in white wigs. Presently 
 they stood in the largest room Michael had even entered, a 
 still white room full of golden furniture. Michael had 
 barely recovered his breath from astonishment at the size 
 of the room, when he saw another room round the corner, 
 in which a man was sitting by a great fire. When the foot- 
 man had left the room very quietly, this man got up and 
 held Mrs. Fane's hand for nearly a minute. Then he looked 
 at Michael curiously, Michael thought, so curiously as to 
 make him blush. 
 
 "And this is the boy?" the gentleman asked. 
 
 Michael thought his mother spoke very funnily, as if 
 she were just going to cry, when she answered: 
 
 "Yes, this is Michael."
 
 128 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 "My God, Valerie," said the man, "it makes it harder 
 than ever." 
 
 Michael took the opportunity to look at this odd man 
 and tried to think where he had seen him before. He was 
 sure he had seen him somewhere. But every time, just as 
 he had almost remembered, a mist came over the picture 
 he w^as trying to form, so that he could not remember. 
 
 "Well, Michael," said the gentleman, "you don't know 
 who I am." 
 
 "Ah, don't, Charles," said Mrs. Fane. 
 
 "Well, he's not so wise as all that," laughed the gentle- 
 man. 
 
 Michael thought it was a funny laugh, more sad than 
 cheerful. 
 
 "This is Lord Saxby," said Mrs. Fane. 
 
 "I say, my name is Saxby," Michael exclaimed. 
 
 "Nonsense," said Lord Saxby, "I don't believe it." 
 
 "It is really. Charles Michael Saxby Fane." 
 
 "Well, that's a very strange thing," said Lord Saxby. 
 
 "Yes, I think it's awfully funny," Michael agreed. "Be- 
 cause I never heard of anyone called Saxby. My name's 
 Charles, too. Only, of course, that's quite a common name. 
 But nobody at our school knows Fm called Saxby except a 
 boy called Buckley, who's an awful beast. We don't tell 
 our Christian names, you know. If a chap lets out his 
 Christian name, he gets most frightfully ragged by the 
 other chaps. Chaps think you're an awfully silly ass if you 
 let out your Christian name." 
 
 Michael was finding it very easy to talk. 
 
 "I must hear some more about this w^onderful school," 
 Lord Saxby declared. 
 
 Then followed a delightful conversation in which due 
 justice was done to the Macalister twins and to Norton, 
 and to the life they shared with Michael.
 
 MORE ENCOUNTERS 129 
 
 "By gad, Valerie, he ought to go to Eton, you know,'* 
 declared Lord Saxby, turning to Michael's mother. 
 
 "No, no. I'm sure you were right when you said St. 
 James'," persisted Mrs. Fanie. 
 
 "Perhaps I was," Lord Saxby sighed. "Well, Valerie — 
 not again. It's too damnably tantalizing." 
 
 "I thought just once while he was still small," said Mrs. 
 Fane softly. "Photographs are so unsatisfactory. And you 
 haven't yet heard Stella play." 
 
 "Valerie, I couldn't. Look at this great barrack of a 
 house. If you only knew how I long sometimes for — what 
 a muddle it all is!" 
 
 Then a footman came in with tea, and Michael wondered 
 what dinner was like in this house if mere tea were so grand 
 and silvery. 
 
 "I think I must drive you back in the phaeton," said 
 Lord Saxby. 
 
 "No, no, Charles. No more rules must be broken." 
 
 "Yes, I suppose you're right. But don't — not again, 
 please. I can't bear to think of the *ifs.' " 
 
 Then Lord Saxby turned to Michael. 
 
 "Look here, young man, what do you want most?" 
 
 "Oh, boxes of soldiers and an unused set of Siamese," 
 said Michael. 
 
 "Siamese what? Siamese cats?" 
 
 "No, you silly," laughed Michael. "Stamps, of course!'* 
 
 "Oh, stamps," said Lord Saxby. "Right — and soldiers, 
 eh? Good." 
 
 All the way back in the hansom Michael wished he had 
 specified artillery to Lord Saxby; but two days afterward 
 dozens of boxes of all kinds of soldiers arrived, and unused 
 sets not merely of Siamese, but of North American Ter- 
 centenaries and Borneos and Labuans and many others. 
 
 "I say," Michael gasped, "he's a ripper, isn't he? What
 
 130 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 spiffing boxes! I say, he is a decent chap, isn't he? When 
 are we going to see Lord Saxby again, mother?" 
 
 "Some day." 
 
 "I can have Norton to tea on Wednesday, can't I?** 
 begged Michael. ''He'll think my soldiers are awfully rip- 
 ping." 
 
 "Darling Michael," said his mother. 
 
 "Mother, I will try and not be inky," said Michael in 
 a burst of affectionate renunciation. 
 
 "Dearest boy," said his mother gently.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 HOLIDAYS IN FRANCE 
 
 IN Michael's last term at St. James' Preparatory School, 
 Mrs. Fane settled that he should for the holidays 
 go to France with Mr. Vernon and Mr. Lodge, two 
 masters who were accustomed each year to take a few boys 
 away with them to the coast of Brittany. Five boys were 
 going this summer — Michael and Hands and Hargreaves 
 and Jubb and Rutherford; and all five of them bragged 
 about their adventure for days before school broke up. 
 Miss Carthew drove with Michael to Victoria Station and 
 handed him over to Mr. Lodge, who was walking about in 
 a very thick and romantic overcoat. Mr. Lodge was a 
 clean-shaven, large-faced and popular master, and Mr. Ver- 
 non vv^as an equally popular master, deep-voiced, heavy-mus- 
 tached, hook-nosed. In fact, it was impossible to say which 
 of the two one liked the better. Mr. Lodge at once pro- 
 duced two packets of Mazawattee tea, which he told 
 Michael to put in his pocket and say nothing about when 
 he landed in France, and when Hands, Hargreaves, Ruther- 
 ford and Jubb arrived, they were all given packets of tea by 
 Mr. Lodge and told to say nothing about them when they 
 landed in France. Mr. Vernon appeared, looking very 
 business-like and shouting directions about the luggage to 
 porters, while Mr. Lodge gathered the boys together and 
 steered them through the barrier on to the platform and 
 into the train for Newhaven. The steamer by which they 
 
 131
 
 132 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 were going to cross was not an ordinary packet-boat, but a 
 cargo-boat carrying vegetable ivory. For Channel voyagers 
 they were going to be a long while at sea, calling at Havre 
 and afterwards rounding Cherbourg and Brest, before they 
 reached St. Corentin, the port of their destination at the 
 mouth of the Loire. It was rough weather all the way to 
 Havre, and Michael was too ill to notice much the crew 
 or the boat or any of the other boys. However, the excite- 
 ment of disembarking at Havre about midnight put an end 
 to seasickness, for it was very thrilling at such an hour to 
 follow Mr. Lodge and Mr. Vernon through the gloomy 
 wharves and under their dripping archways. When, after 
 this strange walk, they came to a wide square and saw 
 cafes lighted up and chairs and tables in the open air before 
 the doors, Michael felt that life was opening out on a vista 
 of hitherto unimagined possibilities. They all sat down at 
 midnight, wrapped up in their traveling coats and not at 
 all too much tired to sip grenadine sucree and to crunch 
 Petit Beurre biscuits. Michael thought grenadine sucree 
 was just as nice as it looked and turned to Hands, a skull- 
 headed boy who was sitting next to him: 
 
 '1 say, this is awfully decent, isn't it?" 
 
 ''Rather," squeaked Hands in his high voice. "Much 
 nicer than pineappleade." 
 
 After they had stayed there for a time, watching isolated 
 passers-by slouch across the wind-blown square, Mr. Lodge 
 announced they must hurry back to the boat and get a good 
 night's sleep. Back they went between the damp walls of 
 the shadowy wharves, plastered with unfamiliar advertise- 
 ments, until they reached their boat and went to bed. In 
 the morning, when Michael woke up, the steamer was pitch- 
 ing and rolling: everything in the cabin was lying in a 
 jumble on the floor, and Rutherford and Hargreaves were 
 sitting up in their bunks wide awake. Rutherford was the 
 oldest boy of the party and he was soon going in for his
 
 HOLIDAYS IN FRANCE 133 
 
 Navy examination; but he had been so seasick the day 
 before that Michael felt that he was just as accessible as the 
 others and was no longer afraid to talk to this hero without 
 being spoken to first. Rutherford, having been so sick, felt 
 bound to put on a few airs of grandeur ; but he was pleasant 
 enough and very full of information about many subjects 
 which had long puzzled Michael. He spoke with authority 
 on life and death and birth and love and marriage, so that 
 when Michael emerged into the wind from the jumbled 
 cabin he felt that to dress beside Rutherford was an event 
 not easily to be forgotten: but later on as he paced the 
 foam-spattered deck, and meditated on the facts of existence 
 so confidently revealed, he began to fear that the learned 
 Rutherford was merely a retailer of unwarranted legends. 
 Still he had propounded enough for Michael, when he re- 
 turned to Carlington Road, to theorize upon and impart to 
 the Macalisters; and anyway, without bothering about 
 physiological problems, it was certainly splendid to walk 
 about the deck in the wind and rain, and no longer to hate, 
 but even to enjoy, the motion of the boat. It was exhilarat- 
 ing to clamber right up into the bows among coils of rope 
 and to see how the boat charged through the spuming water. 
 Michael nearly made up his mind to be a sailor instead of a 
 Bengal Lancer, and looked enviously at the ship's boy in his 
 blue blouse. But presently he heard a savage voice, and one 
 of the sailors so much admired kicked the ship's boy down 
 the companion into the forecastle. Michael was horrified, 
 when, late in the gray and stormy afternoon, he heard cries 
 of pain from somewhere down below. He ran to peer into 
 the pit whence they came, and in the half light he could see 
 a rope's-end clotted with blood. This sight dismayed him, 
 and he longed to ask Mr. Lodge or Mr. Vernon to inter- 
 fere and save the poor ship's boy, but a feeling of shame 
 compelled silence and, though he was sincerely shocked by 
 the thought of the cruel scenes acted down there in the heart
 
 134 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 of the ship, he could not keep back a certain exultation and 
 excitement similar to that which he had felt at Folkestone 
 in the girls' school last summer. 
 
 Soon the steamer with its cargo of vegetable ivory and 
 tortured ship's boy and brutal crew were all forgotten in 
 the excitement of arriving at St. Corentin, of driving miles 
 into the country until they reached the house where they 
 were going to spend six weeks. It was an old house set far 
 back from the high road and reached by a long drive be- 
 tween pollarded acacias. All round the house were great 
 fig trees and pear trees and plum trees. The garden was 
 rank with unpruned gooseberry and currant bushes, untidy 
 with scrambling gourds and grape vines. It was a garden 
 utterly unlike any garden that Michael had ever known. 
 There seemed to be no flowers in this overw^helming vege- 
 tation which matted everything. It was like the garden of 
 the Sleeping Beauty's palace. The crumbling walls were 
 webbed with briars; their foundations were buried in 
 thickets of docks and nettles, and the fruit trees that grew 
 against them had long ago broken loose from any restraint. 
 It was a garden that must surely take a very long time to 
 explore, so vast was it, so trackless, so much did every corner 
 demand a slow advance. 
 
 When the bo5^s had unpacked and when they had been 
 introduced to Mrs. Wylde, the mistress of the house, and 
 when they had presented to her the packets of Mazawattee 
 tea and when they themselves had eaten a deliciously novel 
 dinner at the unusual hour of six, they all set out to explore 
 the luxuriant wilderness behind the house. Mr. Vernon and 
 Mr. Lodge shouted to them to eat only the ripe fruit, and 
 with this solitary injunction left them to their own amuse- 
 ments until bedtime. Rutherford, Hargreaves and Jubb at 
 once set out to find ripe fruit, and, as the first tree they 
 came to was loaded with greengages, Rutherford, Har- 
 greaves and Jubb postponed all exploration for the present.
 
 HOLIDAYS IN FRANCE 135 
 
 Michael and Hands, who was sleeping in his room, and 
 with whom he had already made friends, left the others 
 behind them. As they walked farther from the house, they 
 spoke in low tones, so silent was this old garden. 
 
 "Fm sure it's haunted," said Michael. "I never felt so 
 funny, not exactly frightened, you know, but sort of fright- 
 ened." 
 
 "It's still quite light," squeaked the hopeful Hands. 
 
 "Yes, but the sun's behind all these trees and you can't 
 hear anything, but only us walking," whispered Michael. 
 
 However, they went on through a jungle of artichokes 
 and through an orchard of gnarled apple trees past a mil- 
 dewed summerhouse, until they reached a serpentine path 
 between privet bushes, strongly scented in the dampness all 
 around. 
 
 "Shall we?" murmured Hands doubtfully. 
 
 "Yes. We can bunk back if we see anything," said 
 Michael. "I like this." 
 
 They walked on, following the zigzags of the path, but 
 stopped dead as a blackbird shrilled and flapped into the 
 bushes affrighted. 
 
 "By Jove, that beastly bird made me awfully funky," said 
 Michael. 
 
 "Let's go back," said Hands. "Suppose we got murdered. 
 People do in France." 
 
 "Rot," said Michael. "Not in a private garden, you 
 cuckoo." 
 
 With mutual encouragement the two boys wandered on, 
 until they found farther progress barred by a high hedge, 
 impenetrable apparently and viewless to Michael and Hands 
 who were not very tall. 
 
 "What sucks!" said Michael. "I hate turning back. I 
 think it's rotten to turn back. Don't you? Hullo!" he 
 cried. "Look here, Hands. Here's a regular sort of tunnel 
 going down hill. It's quite steep."
 
 136 YOUTH^S ENCOUNTER 
 
 In a moment Hands and Michael were half sliding, half 
 climbing down a cliff. The lower they went, the faster 
 they traveled, and soon they were sliding all the way, be- 
 cause they had to guard their faces against the brambles that 
 twined above them. 
 
 ''Good lord," gasped Michael, as he bumped down a sheer 
 ten-feet of loose earth. 'Tm getting jolly bumped. Look 
 out, Hands, you kicked my neck, you ass." 
 
 "I can't help it," gasped Hands. "I'm absolutely slip- 
 ping, and if I try to catch hold I scratch myself." 
 
 They w^re sliding so fast that the only thing to do was 
 to laugh and give way. So, with shouts and laughter and 
 bumps and jolts and the pushing of loose stones and earth 
 before them, Michael and Hands came with a run to the 
 bottom of the cliff and landed at last on soft sea-sand. 
 
 "By gum," said Michael, "we're right on the beach. 
 What a rag!" 
 
 The two boys looked back to the scene of their descent. 
 It was a high cliff covered with shrubs and brambles, ap- 
 parently unassailable. Before them was the sea, pale blue 
 and gold, and to the right and to the left were the flat 
 lonely sands. They ran, shouting with excitement, toward 
 the rippling tide. The sand-hoppers buzzed about their 
 ankles: Hands tripped over a jelly-fish and fell into several 
 others: sea-gulls swooped above them, crying continually. 
 
 "It's like Robinson Crusoe," Michael declared. 
 
 He was mad with the exhilaration of possession. He 
 owned these sands. 
 
 "Oh, young Hands fell down on the sands," he cried, 
 bursting into uncontrollable laughter at the absurdity of the 
 rhyme. Then he found razor-shells and waved his arms 
 triumphantly. He found, too, wine-stained shells and rosy 
 shells and great purple mussels. He and Hands took off 
 their shoes and stockings and ran through the limpid water 
 that sparkled with gold and tempted them to wade forever
 
 HOLIDAYS IN FRANCE 137 
 
 ankle deep. They reached a broken mass of rock which 
 would obviously be surrounded by water at high tide; they 
 clambered up to the summit and found there grass and 
 rabbits' holes. 
 
 "It's a real island," said Michael. "It is! I say, Hands, 
 this is our island. We discovered it. Bags I, we keep it." 
 
 "Don't let's get caught by the tide," suggested cautious 
 Hands. 
 
 "All right, you funk," jeered Michael. 
 
 They came back to the level sands and wandered on 
 toward the black point of clifE bounding the immediate 
 view. 
 
 "I say, there's a cave. I bet you there's a cave," Michael 
 called to his companion, who was examining a dead fish. 
 
 "Wait a jiffy," shouted Hands; but Michael hurried on 
 to the cave. He w^anted to be the first to enter under its 
 jagged arch. Already he could see the silver sand shimmer- 
 ing upon the threshold of the inner darkness. He walked 
 in, awed by the secrecy of this sea-cavern, almost expectant 
 of a mermaid or octopus in the deepest cranny. Suddenly 
 he stopped. His heart beat furiously: his head swam: his 
 legs quivered under him. Then he turned and ran toward 
 the light. 
 
 "Good lummy!" said Hands, when Michael came up 
 to him. "Whatever's the matter? You're simply fright- 
 fully white." 
 
 "Come away," said Michael. "I saw something beastly." 
 
 "What was it?" 
 
 "There's a man in there and a woman. Oh, it was 
 beastly." 
 
 Michael dragged Hands by the arm, but not before they 
 had left th€ cave far behind would he speak. 
 
 "What was it really?" asked Hands, when they stood at 
 
 the bottom of the cliff. 
 
 "I couldn't possibly tell anybody ever," said Michael. 
 10
 
 138 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 "You're making it up," scoffed Hands. 
 
 "No, I'm not," said Michael. 'Took here, don't say 
 anything to the others about that cave. Promise." 
 
 Hands promised silence; and he and Michael soon dis- 
 covered a pathway up the cliff. When they reached the 
 garden it was a deeper green than ever in the falling twi- 
 light, and they did not care to linger far from the house. 
 It was a relief to hear voices and to see Rutherford, Har- 
 greaves and Jubb still eating plums. Presently they played 
 games on a lawn with Mr. Vernon and Mr. Lodge, and 
 soon, after reading sleepily for a while in the tumble-down 
 room which was set apart for the boys' use, Michael and 
 Hands went to bed and, after an exciting encounter with a 
 bat, fell asleep. 
 
 The days in Brittany went by very swiftly. In the morn- 
 ing at eight o'clock there were great bowls of cafe-au-lait 
 and rolls with honey and butter waiting in the dining-room 
 for the boys when they came back from bathing. All the 
 other boys except Michael had come to France to improve 
 their French ; but he worked also at the first book of Ovid's 
 Metamorphoses and at Lucian's Charon, because he was 
 going in for a scholarship at St. James'. However, these 
 classical subjects were put away at eleven o'clock, when 
 dejeuner with all sorts of new and delicious dishes was 
 served. After this there was nothing to do, until six o'clock, 
 but enjoy oneself. Sometimes the boys made expeditions 
 into St. Corentin, where they wondered at the number of 
 dogs to each inhabitant and bought cakes and sweets at a 
 pastrycook's and gas-filled balloons which they sent up in 
 the market-place. Or they would stroll down to the quays 
 and watch the shipping and practice their French on sailors 
 looking more like pirates than ordinary sailors. 
 
 Once, while Michael w^as gazing into a shop window at 
 some dusty foreign stamps in a brass tray, a Capuchin friar 
 spoke to him in very good English and asked if he collected
 
 HOLIDAYS IN FRANCE 139 
 
 stamps. Michael said that he did, and the Capuchin invited 
 him to come back to the convent and see his collection. 
 Michael thought this was a splendid invitation and willingly- 
 accompanied the Capuchin whom, except for a sore on his 
 lip, he liked very much. He thought the inside of the con- 
 vent was rather like the inside of an aquarium, but he en- 
 joyed the stamps very much. The friar gave him about a 
 dozen of his duplicates, and Michael promised to write to 
 him when he got home, and to send him some of his own. 
 Then they had tea in the friar's cell, and afterwards 
 Michael set out to walk back to St. Antoine. It was not 
 yet six o'clock when he reached the house, but there was a 
 terrible fuss being made about his adventure. Telegrams 
 had been despatched: the gendarmerie had been informed, 
 and the British Vice-consul had been interviewed. Mr. 
 Vernon asked in his deepest voice where the deuce he had 
 been, and when Michael told him he had been taking tea 
 with a monk Mr. Vernon was more angry than ever. 
 
 "Don't do things like that. Good heavens, boy, you 
 might have been kidnapped and turned into a Catholic, be- 
 fore you knew where you were. Hang it all, remember I'm 
 responsible for your safety and never again get into con- 
 versation with a wandering monk." 
 
 Michael explained about the stamps, but Mr. Vernon 
 said that was a very pretty excuse, and would by no means 
 hear of Michael visiting the convent again. When Michael 
 thought over this fuss he could not understand what it had 
 all been about. He could not imagine anything more harm- 
 less than this Capuchin friar with the sore on his lip. How- 
 ever, he never did see him again, except once in the distance, 
 when he pointed him out to Mr. Vernon, who said he 
 looked a dirty ruffian. Michael discovered that grown-up 
 people always saw danger where there was no danger, but 
 when, as on the occasion when Hands and he plainly per-
 
 140 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 celved a ghost in the garden, there was every cause for real 
 alarm they merely laughed. 
 
 The weather grew warmer as August moved on, and 
 Michael with Mr. Vernon and Mr. Lodge used sometimes 
 to plunge into the depths of the country, there to construe 
 Ovid and Lucian while the other boys w^orked at French 
 with the Frenchman who came in from St. Corentin to 
 teach them. Michael enjoyed these expeditions with Mr. 
 Vernon and Mr. Lodge. They would sit down in the lush 
 grass of a shady green lane, close to a pool w^here the bull- 
 frogs croaked. Michael would construe the tale of Deu- 
 calion and Pyrrha to Mr. Lodge, while Mr. Vernon lay on 
 his back and smoked a large pipe. Then a White Admiral 
 butterfly w^ould soar round the oak trees, and Ovid would 
 be thrown behind them like Deucalion's stones; while 
 Michael and Mr. Vernon and Mr. Lodge manoeuvred and 
 shouted and ran up and down, until the White Admiral 
 was either safely bottled with the cyanide of potassium or 
 soared aw^ay out of sight. When Ovid was finished for 
 the day, Mr. Lodge used to light a big pipe and lie on his 
 back, while Michael construed the Dialogue of Charon to 
 Mr. Vernon. Then an Oak Eggar moth would fly with 
 tumbling reckless flight beyond the pool, luring Michael and 
 Mr. Lodge and Mr. Vernon to charge through in pursuit, 
 not deterred by the vivid green slime of the wayside water 
 as the ghosts were deterred by gloomy Styx. Indeed, as the 
 hot August days went by, each one was marked by its butter- 
 flies more definitely than by anything else. Michael thought 
 that France was a much better place for collecting them 
 than England. Scarce Sw^allow-tails and ordinary Swallow- 
 tails haunted the cliffs majestically. Clouded Yellows were 
 chased across the fields of clover. Purple Emperors and 
 Camberwell Beauties and Bath Whites were all as frequent 
 as Heath Browns at home. Once, they all went on a long 
 expedition to Bluebeard's Castle on the other side of the
 
 HOLIDAYS IN FRANCE 141 
 
 Loire, and, while they sat in a garden-cafe, drinking their 
 grenadine sucree, hundreds of Silver-washed Fritillaries ap- 
 peared over the tables. How the fat French bourgeois 
 stared to see these mad English boys chasing butterflies in 
 their sunny bee-haunted garden. But how lovely the Fritil- 
 laries looked, set upside down to show their powdered green 
 and rosy wings washed by silver streaks. Perhaps the most 
 exciting catch of all happened, close to the shutting in of a 
 September dusk, in the avenue of pollarded acacias. 
 Michael saw the moth first on the lowest bough of a tree. 
 It was jet-black marked with thick creamy stripes. Neither 
 he nor Hands had a net, and they trembled with excitement 
 and chagrin. Michael threw a stone rather ineffectively 
 and the moth changed its position, showing before it settled 
 down on a higher branch underwings of glowing vermilion. 
 
 '*Oh, what can it be?" Michael cried, dancing. 
 
 "It's frightfully rare," squeaked Hands. 
 
 "You watch it carefully, while I scoot for a net," com- 
 manded Michael. 
 
 He tore along up the darkening drive, careless of ghosts 
 or traveling seamen bent on murder and robbery. He 
 rushed into the hall and shouted, "A terribly rare moth in 
 the drive! Quick, my net!" and rushed back to the vigilant 
 Hands. The others followed and, after every cunning of 
 the hunter had been tried, the moth was at last secured and; 
 after a search through Kirby's Butterflies and Moths, pro- 
 nounced to be a Jersey Tiger, not so rare, after all, in fact, 
 very common abroad. But it was a glorious beast when 
 set, richly black, barred and striped with damasked cream 
 over a flame of orange-scarlet. 
 
 The six weeks w^ere over. Michael had to leave in ad- 
 vance of the others, in order to enter for his scholarship 
 examination at St. James'. Mr. Lodge took him to St. 
 Malo and handed him over to the charge of Rutherford's 
 older brother, who was already at St. James' and would see
 
 142 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 Michael safely to London. Michael could scarcely believe 
 that this Rutherford was a boy, so tall was he, such a heavy 
 black mustache had he and so pleasant was he to Michael. 
 Michael thought with regret of the green and golden days 
 in Brittany, as he waved to Mr. Lodge standing on the St. 
 Malo jetty. He felt, as the steamer sailed across the glassy 
 sea through a thick September haze, that he was coming 
 back to greater adventures, that he was older and, as he 
 paced beside Rutherford up and down the deck, that he was 
 more important. But he thought with regret of Brittany 
 and squeaky Hands and the warm days of butterflies. He 
 hoped to return next year and see again the fig tree by his 
 bedroom window and the level shore of the Loire estuary 
 and the tangled tumble-down garden on the cliff's edge. 
 He would always think of Mr. Lodge and Mr. Vernon, 
 those very dearly loved schoolmasters. He would think of 
 the ghostly Breton lanes at twilight and the glorious Sun- 
 days unspoilt by church or best clothes and of the bullfrogs 
 in the emerald pools. 
 
 Michael disliked the examination very much indeed. He 
 hated the way in which all the other competitors stared. 
 He disliked the speed with which they wrote and the easy 
 manners of some of them. However, he gained his scholar- 
 ship mostly by age marks and was put in the Lower Third, 
 the youngest boy in the class by two years, and became a 
 Jacobean, turning every morning round the same gate, walk- 
 ing every morning up the same gravel path, running every 
 morning up the same wide steps, meeting every morning the 
 same smell of hot-water pipes and hearing every day the 
 same shuffle of quick feet along the corridors past the same 
 plaster cast of the Laocoon.
 
 BOOK TWO 
 CLASSIC EDUCATION
 
 CHAPTER I 
 THE JACOBEAN 
 
 MICHAEL found the Lower Third at St. James' a 
 jolly class. He was so particularly young that 
 he was called ''Baby," but with enough obvious 
 affection to make the dubious nickname a compliment. To 
 be sure, Mr. Braxted would often cackle jokes in a raucous 
 voice about his age, and if Michael made a false quantity 
 he would grumble and say he was paid as a schoolmaster 
 not as a wet-nurse. However, Mr. Braxted was such a 
 dandy and wore such very sharply creased and tight trousers 
 and was so well set up and groomed that the class was 
 proud of his neat appearance, and would inform the Upper 
 Third that Foxy Braxted did, at any rate, look a gentleman, 
 a distinction which the Upper Third could scarcely claim 
 for their own form-master. 
 
 Michael liked the greater freedom of a public school. 
 There were no home-books to be signed by governesses: 
 there was no longer any taboo upon the revelation of Chris- 
 tian names. Idiosyncrasies were overlooked in the vaster 
 society of St. James'. The senior boys paid no attention to 
 the juniors, but passed them by scornfully as if they were 
 grubs not worth the trouble of squashing. There was no 
 longer the same zest in the little scandals and petty spite- 
 fulness of a private school. There was much greater free- 
 dom in the choice of one's friends, and Michael no longer 
 felt bound to restrict his intimacy to the twin Macalisters 
 
 145
 
 146 YOUTH^S ENCOUNTER 
 
 and Norton. Sometimes in the quarter (as the break was 
 now called) Michael would stand on the top of the steps 
 that led down from the great red building into the school- 
 ground. From this point he would survey the huge green 
 field with its archipelago of countless boys. He would think 
 how few of their names he knew and from what distances 
 many of them traveled each morning to school. He could 
 wander among them by himself and not one would turn a 
 curious head. He was at liberty even to stare at a few 
 great ones whom athletic prowess had endow^ed already with 
 legendary divinity, so that among small boys tales were told 
 of their daring and their immortality gradually woven into 
 the folk-lore of St. James'. Sometimes a member of the 
 first fifteen would speak to Michael on a matter of athletic 
 business. 
 
 "What's your name?" 
 
 "Fane," Michael would answer, hoping the while that 
 his contemporaries might be passing and see this colloquy 
 between a man and a god. 
 
 "Oh, yes," the hero would carelessly continue, "I've got 
 you down already. Mind you turn up to Little Side at 
 1 145 sharp." 
 
 Little Side was the football division that included the 
 smallest third of the school. Sometimes the hero would 
 ask another question, as: 
 
 "Do you know a kid called Smith P.L.?" 
 And Michael with happy blushes would be able to point 
 out Smith P.L. to the great figure. 
 
 Michael played football on Little Side with great regu- 
 larity, rushing home to dinner and rushing off again to 
 change and be in the field by a quarter to two. He could 
 run very fast, and for that reason the lords of Little Side 
 made him play forward, a position for which the slightness 
 of his body made him particularly unsuited. One day, how- 
 ever, he managed to intercept a pass, to outwit a three-
 
 THE JACOBEAN 147 
 
 quarter, to dodge the full-back and to score a try, plumb 
 between the posts. Luckily one of the heroes had strolled 
 down from Pelion that afternoon to criticize Little Side 
 and Michael was promoted from the scram to play three- 
 quarter back on the left wing, in which position he really 
 enjoyed football very much indeed. 
 
 It fell out that year that the St. James' fifteen was the 
 most invincible ever known in the school's history, and 
 every Saturday afternoon, when there was a home match, 
 Michael in rain or wind or pale autumnal sunlight would 
 take up his position in the crowd of spectators to cheer and 
 shout and urge St. James' to another glorious victory. 
 Match after match that year earned immortal fame in the 
 school records, sending the patriotic Jacobeans of every size 
 and age home to a happy tea in the rainy twilight. Those 
 were indeed afternoons of thunderous excitement. How 
 everybody used to shout — "School — Schoo-oo-ol — Schoo-ol! 
 Play up — Schoo-00-ool ! James ! Ja-a-a-mes ! Oh, go low. 
 Kick! Touch! Forward! Held! Offside! Go in your- 
 self! Schoo-ool!" 
 
 How Michael's heart beat at the thud of the Dulford 
 forwards in their last desperate rush toward the School 
 "twenty-five." Down went the School halves, and over 
 them like a torrent swept the Dulford pack. Down went 
 the three-quarters in a plucky attempt to sit on the ball. 
 Ah! There was an unanimous cry of agony, as everybody 
 pressed against the boundary rope and craned toward the 
 touchline until the posts creaked before the strain. Not in 
 vain had those gallant three-quarters been smeared with mud 
 and bruised by the boots of the surging Dulford pack; for 
 the ball had been kicked on too far and Cutty Jackson, the 
 School back, had fielded it miraculously. He was going to 
 punt. "Kick!" yelled the despairing spectators. And Jack- 
 son, right under the disappointed groans of the Dulford 
 forwards, whose muscles cracked with the effort to fetch
 
 148 YOUTH^S ENCOUNTER 
 
 him down, kicked the ball high, high into the silvery No- 
 vember air. Up with that spinning greasy oval traveled 
 the hopes of the onlookers, and, as it fell safely into touch, 
 from all round the field rose like a rocket a huge sigh of 
 relief that presently broke into volleys and paeans of exulta- 
 tion, as half-time sounded with St. James' a goal to the 
 good. How Michael admired the exhausted players when 
 they sucked the sliced lemons and lay about in the mud; 
 how he envied Cutty Jackson, when the lithe and noble 
 fellow leaned against the goalpost and surveyed his audience. 
 "Sidiness" could be easily forgiven after that never-to-be- 
 forgotten kick into touch. Why, thought Michael, should 
 not he himself be one day ranked as the peer of Cutty Jack- 
 son? Why should not he, six or seven years hence, pene- 
 trate the serried forces of Dulford and score a winning try, 
 even as the referee's whistle was lifted to sound "time"? 
 Ambition woke in Michael, while he surveyed upon that 
 muddy field the prostrate forms of the fifteen, like statues 
 in a museum. Then play began and personal desires were 
 merged in the great hope of victory for the School. Hardly 
 now could the spectators shout, so tense was the struggle, 
 so long was each full minute of action. Michael's brain 
 swam with excitement. He saw the Dulford team as giants 
 bull-necked and invulnerable. He sav/ the School halves 
 shrinking, the School three-quarters shiver like grass and the 
 School forw^ards crumple before the Dulford charges. They 
 were beaten: the untarnished record was broken: Michael 
 could have sobbed for his side. Swifter than swallows, the 
 Dulford three-quarters flew down the now all too short 
 field of play. They were in! Look! They were dancing 
 in triumph. A try to Dulford! Disconsolately the School 
 team lined up behind their disgraced goal. Jauntily the 
 Dulford half walked away with the shapely leather. The 
 onlookers held their breath, as the ball, evilly accurate, 
 dangerously direct, was poised in position for the kick at
 
 THE JACOBEAN 149 
 
 goal. The signal was given: the School team made their 
 rush: the ball rose in the air, hung for a moment motion- 
 less, hit a goalpost, quivered and fell back. One goal to a 
 try — five points to three — and St. James' was leading. 
 Then indeed did the School play up. Then indeed did 
 every man in the team ''go low": and for the rest of the 
 game to neither side did any advantage incline. Grunts and 
 muttered oaths, the thud of feet, the smack of wet leather 
 lasted continually. In the long line-ups for the throw in 
 from touch, each man marked his man viciously: the sweat 
 poured down from hanging jaws: vests w^ere torn, knees 
 were grimed with mud and elbows were blackened. The 
 scrimmages w^re the tightest and neatest ever watched, and 
 neither scrum could screw the other a foot. At last the 
 shrill whistle of the referee proclaimed the end of an im- 
 mortal contest. There were cheers for the victors by the 
 vanquished, by the vanquished for their conquerors. The 
 spectators melted away into the gathering mist and rain, a 
 flotsam of black umbrellas. In a few moments the school- 
 ground was desolate and silent. Michael, as he looked at 
 the grass plowed into mud by the severe struggle, thought 
 what superb heroes were in his School team; and just as 
 he was going home, content, he saw a blazer left on a post. 
 It was Jackson's, and Michael, palpitating with the honor, 
 ran as fast as he could to the changing-room through the 
 echoing cloister beneath the school. 
 
 "I say, Jackson, you left this on the ground," he said 
 shyly. 
 
 Jackson looked up from a conversation with the Dulford 
 full-back. 
 
 "Oh, thanks very much," he murmured, and went on 
 with his talk. 
 
 Michael would not have missed that small sentence for 
 any dignity in the world. 
 
 During his first term at St. James', Michael went on
 
 ISO YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 with his study of the art of dancing, begun during the 
 previous winter without much personal satisfaction and with 
 a good deal of self-consciousness. These dancing lessons 
 took place in the hall at Randell's, and Michael revisited 
 his old school with a new confidence. He found himself 
 promoted to stay beyond the hour of pupilage in order 
 pleasantly to pass away a second hour by dancing formally 
 with the sisters and cousins of other boys. He had often 
 admired last year those select Jacobeans who, buttoning 
 white gloves, stood in a supercilious group, while their 
 juniors clumped through the Ladies' Chain uninspired by 
 the swish of a single petticoat. Now he was of their sacred 
 number. It was not surprising that under the influence of* 
 the waltz and the Circassian circle and the schottische and 
 the quadrille and the mazurka Michael should fall in 
 love. He was not anxious to fall in love: many times to 
 other boys he had mocked at woman and dilated upon the 
 folly of matrimony. He had often declared on his way to 
 and from school that celibacy should be the ideal of every 
 man. He used to say how little he could understand the 
 habit of sitting in dark corners and kissing. Even Miss 
 Carthew he grew accustomed to treat almost with rudeness, 
 lest some lynx-eyed friend of his should detect in his relation 
 with her a tendency toward the sentimental. However, 
 Muriel in her salmon-colored accordion-pleated frock 
 bowled Michael off his superior pedestal. He persuaded 
 himself that this was indeed one of those unchangeable 
 passions of which he read or rather did read now. This 
 great new emotion was certainly Love, for Michael could 
 honestly affirm that as soon as he saw Muriel sitting on a 
 chair with long black legs outstretched before her he loved 
 her. No other girl existed and, when he moved toward 
 her for the pleasure of the next dance, he felt his heart 
 beating, his cheeks on fire. Muriel seemed to like him after 
 a fashion. At any rate, she cordially supported him in a
 
 THE JACOBEAN 151 
 
 project of long-deferred revenge upon Mr. Macrae of the 
 Upper Fourth at Randell's, and she kept "cave" while 
 Michael tried the door of his empty class-room ofE the top 
 gallery of the hall. It was unlocked, and Michael crept in 
 and quickly threw the contents of Mr. Macrae's desk out 
 of the window and wrote on the blackboard: "Mr. Macrae 
 is the silliest ass in England." Then he and Muriel walked 
 demurely back to join the tinkling mazurka down below 
 and, though many inquiries were set on foot as to the per- 
 petrator of the outrage, Michael was never found out. 
 
 Michael's passion for Muriel increased with every evening 
 of her company, and he went so far as to make friends with 
 a very unpopular boy who lived in her road, for the sake of 
 holding this unpopular boy in close conversation by his 
 threshold on the chance of seeing Muriel's gray muff in 
 the twilight. Muriel w^as strangely cold for the heroine 
 of such a romance, and indeed Michael only once saw her 
 really vivacious, which was when he gave her a catapult. 
 Yet sometimes she would make a clandestine appointment 
 and talk to him for twenty minutes in a secluded terrace, 
 so that he consoled himself with a belief in her untold 
 affection. Michael read Don Quixote again on account of 
 Dulcinea del Toboso, and he was greatly moved by the 
 knight's apostrophes and declamations. He longed for a 
 confidant and was half inclined to tell Stella about Muriel; 
 but when he came to the point Stella was engrossed in a new 
 number of Little Folks and Michael feared she was un- 
 worthy of such a trust. The zenith of his passion was 
 attained at the Boarders' dance to which he and Muriel 
 and even Stella were invited. Michael had been particularly 
 told by Miss Carthew that he was to dance four times at 
 least with Stella and never to allow her to be without a 
 partner. He was in despair and felt, as he encountered 
 the slippery floor with Stella hanging nervously on his arm, 
 that round his neck had been tied a millstone of responsi-
 
 152 YOUTH^S ENCOUNTER 
 
 bility. There in a corner was Muriel, exquisite in yellow- 
 silk, and in her hair a yellow bow. Boys flitted round her, 
 like bees before a hive, and here was he powerless with this 
 wretched sister. 
 
 "You wait here," said Michael. "I'll be back in half a 
 
 jiffy." 
 
 "Oh, no," pouted Stella. "You're not to leave me alone, 
 Michael. Miss Carthew said you were to look after me." 
 
 Michael groaned. 
 
 "Do you like ices?" he asked desperately. "You do, 
 don't you?" 
 
 "No," said Stella. "They make my tooth ache." 
 
 Michael almost wept with chagrin. He had planned to 
 swap with Stella for unlimited ices all her dances with him. 
 Then he saw a friend whom he caught hold of, and with 
 whom he whispered fiercely for a moment. 
 
 "I say, you might dance with my kiddy sister for a bit. 
 She's awfully fond of ices, so you needn't really dance." 
 
 The friend said he preferred to remain independent at 
 a dance. 
 
 "No, I say, do be a decent chap," begged Michael. "Just 
 dance with her once and get another chap to dance with her 
 after you've had your shot. Oh, do. Look here. What'll 
 you swap for the whole of her program?" 
 
 The friend considered the proposition in its commercial 
 side. 
 
 "Look here," Michael began, and then, as he nervously 
 half turned his head, he saw the crowd thickening about 
 Muriel. He waved his arm violently in the hope that she 
 would realize his plight and keep the rivals at arm's length. 
 "Look here," he went on, "you know my bat with the 
 whalebone splice?" This bat was Michael's most precious 
 possession and, even as he bartered it for love, he smelt 
 the fragrant linseed-oil of the steeped bandages which now 
 preserved it for summer suns.
 
 THE JACOBEAN 153 
 
 The friend's eyes twinkled greedily. 
 
 "ril swap that bat," said Michael, "if you'll make sure 
 my kiddy sister hasn't got a single empty place on her pro- 
 gram all the dance." 
 
 "All right," said the friend. And, as he was led up to 
 Stella, Michael whispered hurriedly, when the introduction 
 had been decorously made: 
 
 "This chap's frightfully keen on you, Stella. He simply 
 begged me to introduce him to you." 
 
 Then from the depths of Michael's soul a deep-seated 
 cunning inspired him to add: 
 
 "I wouldn't at first, because he was awfully in love with 
 another girl, and I thought it hard cheese on her, because 
 she's here to-night. But he said he'd go home if he didn't 
 dance with you. So I had to." 
 
 Michael looked inquiringly at Stella, marked the smirk 
 of satisfaction on her lips, then recklessly, almost sliding 
 over the polished floor, he plunged through Muriel's suitors 
 and proffered his program. They danced together nearly 
 all the evening, and alas, Muriel told him that she was 
 going to boarding school next term. It was a blow to 
 Michael, and the dance program with Muriel's name 
 fourteen times repeated was many times looked at with 
 sentimental pangs each night of next term before Michael 
 went to bed a hundred miles away from Muriel at her 
 boarding school. 
 
 However, Muriel and her porcelain-blue eyes and the full 
 
 bow of her lips and the slimness and girlishness of her were 
 
 forgotten in the complexities of life at a great public school. 
 
 Michael often looked back to that first term in the Lower 
 
 Third as a period of Arcadian simplicity, a golden age. In 
 
 his second term Michael, after an inconspicuous position in 
 
 the honest heart of the list, was not moved up, for which 
 
 he was very glad, as the man who took the Upper Third 
 11
 
 154 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 was by reputation a dull driver without any of the amenities 
 by which Foxy Braxted seasoned scholastic life. 
 
 One morning, when the Lower Third had been pleasantly 
 dissolved in laughter by Foxy's caustic jokes at the expense 
 of a boy who had pronounced the Hebrides as a dissyllable, 
 following a hazardous guess that the capital of New South 
 Wales was New York, the door of the classroom opened 
 abruptly and Dr. Brownjohn the Headmaster sailed in. 
 
 "Is there a boy called Fane in this class?" he demanded 
 deeply. 
 
 The laughter had died away when the tip of Dr. Brown- 
 john's nose glistened round the edge of the door, and in the 
 deadly silence Michael felt himself withering away. 
 
 "Oh, yes," said Mr. Braxted, cheerfully indicating 
 Michael with his long forefinger. 
 
 "Tell him to pack up his books and go to Mr. Spivey in 
 the Hall. I'll see him there," rumbled Dr. Brownjohn as, 
 after transfixing the Lower Third with a glance of the most 
 intense ferocity, he swung round and left the room, slam- 
 ming the door behind him. 
 
 "You'd better take what you*re doing to Mr. Spivey," 
 said Mr. Braxted in his throatiest voice, "and tell him with 
 my compliments you're an idle young rascal. You can get 
 your books at one o'clock." 
 
 Michael gathered together pens and paper, and left his 
 desk in the Lower Third. 
 
 "Good-bye, sir," he said as he went away, for he knew 
 Foxy Braxted really rather liked him. 
 
 "Good-bye," cackled his late form-master. 
 
 The Lower Third followed his exit from their midst 
 with an united grin of farewell, and Michael was presently 
 interviewing Mr. Spivey in the Hall. He realized that he 
 was now a member of that assorted Purgatory, the Special, 
 doomed to work there for a term of days or weeks, and after 
 this period of intensive culture to be planted out in a higher
 
 THE JACOBEAN 155 
 
 form beyond the ordinary mechanics of promotion. Mostly 
 in the Special class Michael worshipped the two gods « 
 and eav, and his whole life was devoted to the mastery of 
 Greek conditional sentences in their honor. 
 
 The Special form at St. James' never consisted of more 
 than fourteen or fifteen boys, all of whom were taught 
 individually, and none of whom knew when they would be 
 called away. The Special was well called Purgatory. 
 Every morning and every afternoon the inmates toiled away 
 at their monotonous work, sitting far removed from one 
 another in the great echoing hall, concentrated for the most 
 part on It and lav. Every morning and every afternoon 
 at a fatal moment the swinging doors of the lower end of 
 the Hall would clash together, and the heavy tread of Dr. 
 Brownjohn would be heard as he rolled up one of the two 
 aisles between the long desks. Every morning and every 
 afternoon Dr. Brownjohn would sit beside some boy to 
 inspect his work, and every morning and every afternoon 
 hearts would beat the faster, until Dr. Brownjohn had 
 seized his victim, when the other boys would simultaneously 
 work with an almost lustful concentration. 
 
 Dr. Brownjohn was to Michael the personification of 
 majesty, dominion, ferocity and awe. He was huge of build, 
 with a long gray beard to which adhered stale morsels of 
 food and the acrid scent of strong cigars. His face was 
 plowed and fretted with indentations volcanic: scoriae 
 torrents flowed from his eyes, his forehead was seared and 
 cleft with frowning crevasses and wrinkled with chasms. 
 His ordinary clothes were stained with soup and rank with 
 tobacco smoke, but over them he wore a full and swishing 
 gown of silk. When he spoke his voice rumbled in the 
 titanic deeps of his body, or if he were angry it burst forth 
 in an appalling roar that shook the great hall. His method 
 of approach was enough to frighten anyone, for he would 
 swing along up the aisle and suddenly plunge into a seat
 
 is6 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 beside the chosen boy, pushing him along the form with his 
 black bulk. He would seize the boy's pen, and after 
 scratching his own head with the end of the holder, would 
 follow w^ord by word the liturgy of « and lav, tapping 
 the paper between the lines as he read each sentence, so 
 that at the end of his examination the page was peppered 
 w^ith dots of ink. Dr. Brownjohn, although he had a 
 voice like ten bulls, was himself very deaf, and after bel- 
 lowing in a paralyzing bass he would always finish a re- 
 mark with an intoned *'um?" of tenor interrogation to 
 exact assent or answer from his terrified pupil. When due 
 reverence was absent from Michael's worship of It and 
 €ax, Dr. Brownjohn would frown at him and roar and 
 bellow and rumble and thunder and peal his execration and 
 contempt. Then suddenly his fury would be relieved by 
 this eruption, and he would affix his initials to the bottom 
 of the page — S.C.B. — standing for Samuel Constantine 
 Brownjohn, after which endorsement he would pat 
 Michael's head, rumble an unintelligible joke and plunge 
 down beside another victim. 
 
 One of Michael's greatest trials was his inability to con- 
 vince Miss Carthew how unutterably terrific Dr. Brown- 
 john really was. She insisted that Michael exaggerated his 
 appearance and manners, and simply would not believe the 
 stories Michael told of parents and guardians who had 
 trembled with fear when confronted by the Old Man. In 
 many ways Michael found Miss Carthew was very con- 
 tentious nowadays, and very seldom did an evening pass 
 without a hot argument betw^een him and her. To be sure, 
 she used to say it was Michael who had grown contradic- 
 tory and self-assertive, but Michael could not see that he 
 had radically altered since the first moment he saw Miss 
 Carthew, now nearly four years ago. 
 
 Michael's purgatory in the Special continued for several 
 weeks, and he grew bored by the monotony of his work
 
 THE JACOBEAN 157 
 
 that was only interrupted by the suspense of the Head- 
 master's invasions. Sometimes Dr. Brownjohn would make 
 his dreadful descent early in the "hour," and then, relieved 
 from the necessity to work with such ardor, Michael would 
 gaze up to the raftered roof of the hall and stare at the 
 long lancet windows filled with the coats of arms in stained 
 glass of famous bygone Jacobeans. He would wonder 
 whether in those windows still unfilled a place would one 
 day be found for his name and whether years and years 
 hence boys doing Greek conditional sentences would specu- 
 late upon the boyhood of Charles Michael Saxby Fane. 
 Then Mr. Spivey would break into his dreams with some 
 rather dismal joke, and Michael would make blushing 
 amends to It and eav by writing as quickly as he could 
 three complete conditional sentences in honor and praise of 
 the twin gods. Mr. Spivey, the master in charge of the 
 Special, was mild and good-humored. No one could fail 
 to like 'him, but he was not exhilarating; and Michael was 
 greatly pleased when one morning Mr. Spivey informed 
 him that he was to move into the Shell. Michael was glad 
 to dodge the Upper Third, for he knew that life in the 
 Shell under Mr. Neech would be an experience. 
 
 Chaps had often said to Michael, "Ah, wait till you get 
 into old Neech's form." 
 
 "Is he decent?" Michael would inquire. 
 
 "Some chaps like him," the chaps in question would 
 ambiguously reply. 
 
 When Mr. Spivey introduced Michael to the Shell, Mr. 
 Neech was sitting in his chair with his feet on the desk and 
 a bandanna handkerchief over his face, apparently fast asleep. 
 The inmates of the Shell were sitting, vigorously learning 
 something that seemed to cause them great hardship; for 
 every face was puzzled, and from time to time sighs floated 
 upon the classroom air. 
 
 Mr. Spivey coughed nervously to attract Mr. Neech's
 
 158 YOUTH^S ENCOUNTER 
 
 attention, and when Mr. Neech took no notice he tapped 
 nervously on the desk with Mr. Neech's ruler. Somewhere 
 in the back row of desks a titter of mirth was faintly 
 audible. Mr. Neech was presumably aroused w4th great 
 suddenness by Mr. Spivey's tapping and swung his legs off 
 the desk and, sitting bolt upright in his chair, glared at the 
 intruders. 
 
 "Oh, the Headmaster has sent Fane from the Special," 
 Mr. Spivey nervously explained. 
 
 Mr. Neech threw his eyes up to the ceiling and looked 
 as if Michael's arrival wxre indeed the last straw. 
 
 "Twenty-six miserable boj's are already having a detest- 
 able and stultifying education in this wretched class," 
 lamented Mr. Neech. "And now comes a twenty-seventh. 
 Very well. Very well. I'll stuff him with the abominable 
 jargon and filthy humbug. I'll cram him w^ith the un- 
 digested balderdash. Oh, you unhappy boy," Mr. Neech 
 went on, directly addressing Michael. "You unfortunate 
 imp and atom. Sit down, if you can find a desk. Sit down 
 and fill your mind with the ditchwater I'm paid to teach 
 you." 
 
 Mr. Spivey had by this time reached the door, and with 
 a nervous nod he abruptly vanished. 
 
 "Now then, everybody," said Mr. Neech, closing his lips 
 very tightly in a moment's pause and then breaking forth 
 loudly. "You have had one quarter of an hour to learn 
 the repetition you should all have learned last night. Begin, 
 that mooncalf with a dirty collar, the boy Wilberforce, and 
 if any stupid stoat or stockfish boggles over one word I'll 
 flay him. Begin! The boy Fane can sit still. The others 
 stand up!" shouted Mr. Neech. "Now the boy Wilber- 
 force ! 
 
 "Tityre tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi 
 
 "Go on, you bladder of idiocy."
 
 THE JACOBEAN 159 
 
 Michael watched the boy Wilberforce concentrate all his 
 faculties upon not making a single mistake, and hoped that 
 he would satisfy this alarming master. While Wilberforce 
 spoke the lines of the Eclogue, panting between each hex- 
 ameter, Mr. Neech strode up and down the room with his 
 arms crossed behind him, wagging the tail of his gown. 
 Sometimes he would strike his chin and, looking upward, 
 murmur to himself the lines with an expression of profound 
 emotion. Wilberforce managed to get through, and another 
 boy called Verney took up the Eclogue successfully, and so 
 on through the class it was successfully sustained. 
 
 "You pockpuddings, you abysmal apes," Mr. Neech 
 groaned at his class. "Why couldn't you have learned those 
 lines at home? You idle young blackguards, you pestilent 
 oafs, you fools of the first water, write them out. Write 
 them out five times." 
 
 "Oh, sir," the Shell protested in unison. 
 
 "Oh, sir!" Mr. Neech mimicked. "Oh, sir! Well, I'll 
 let you off this time, but next time, next time, my stars and 
 garters, I'll flog any boy that makes a single mistake." 
 
 Mr. Neech was a dried-up snuflF-colored man, with a 
 long thin nose and stringy neck and dark piercing eyes. He 
 always wore a frock-coat green with age and a very old top- 
 hat and very shiny trousers. He read Spanish newspapers 
 and second-hand-book catalogs all the way to school, and 
 was never seen to walk with either a master or a boy. His 
 principal hatreds were Puseyism and actors; but as two 
 legends were extant, in one of which he had been seen to 
 get into a first-class railway carriage with a copy of the 
 Church Times and in the other of which he had been seen 
 smoking a big cigar in the stalls of the Alhambra Theater, 
 it was rather doubtful whether his two hatreds were as 
 deeply felt as they were fervently expressed. He was re- 
 puted to have the largest library in England outside the 
 British Museum and also to own seven Dachshunds. He w^as
 
 i6o YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 a man who fell into ungovernable rages, when he would flog 
 a boy savagely and, the flogging done, fling his cane out of 
 the window in a fit of remorse. He would set impositions 
 of unprecedented length, and revile himself for ruining the 
 victim's handwriting. He would keep his class in for an 
 hour and mutter at himself for a fool to keep himself in as 
 well. Once, he locked a boy in at one o'clock, and the 
 boy's mother wrote a long letter to complain that her son 
 had been forced to go without his dinner. Legend said 
 that Mr. Neech had been reprimanded by Dr. Brownjohn 
 on account of this, which explained Mr. Neech 's jibes at 
 the four pages of complaint from the parents that were 
 supposed inevitably to follow his mildest rebuke of the most 
 malignant boy. 
 
 Michael enjoyed Mr. Neech's eccentricities after the 
 drabness of the Special. He was lucky enough to be in 
 Mr. Neech's good graces, because he was almost the only 
 boy who could say in what novel of Dickens or Scott some 
 famous character occurred. Mr. Neech had a conception 
 of education quite apart from the mere instilling of declen- 
 sions and genders and "num" and "nonne" and *'quin" and 
 €t and lav. He taught Geography and English History 
 and English Literature, so far as the school curriculum 
 allowed him. Divinity and English meant more to Mr. 
 Neech than a mere hour of Greek Testament and a pedant's 
 fiddling with the text of Lycidas. Michael had a dim 
 appreciation of his excellence, even in the Shell: he identi- 
 fied him in some way with Tom Brown's Schooldays, with 
 prints of Eton and Westminster, with Miss Carthew's tales 
 of her brother on the Britannia. Michael recognized him 
 as a character in those old calf-bound books he loved to 
 read at home. Once Mr. Neech called a boy a dog-eared 
 Rosinante, and Michael laughed aloud, and when fiercely 
 Mr. Neech challenged him, denying he had ever heard of 
 Rosinante, Michael soon showed that he had read Don
 
 THE JACOBEAN i6i 
 
 Quixote with some absorption. After that Mr. Neech put 
 Michael in one of the favored desks by the window and 
 would talk to him, while he warmed his parchment-covered 
 hands upon the hot-water pipes. Mr. Neech was probably 
 the first person to impress Michael with the beauty of the 
 past or rather to give him an impetus to arrange his own 
 opinions. Mr. Neech, lamenting the old days long gone, 
 thundering against modernity and denouncing the whole 
 system of education that St. James' fostered, was almost 
 the only schoolmaster with a positive personality w^hom 
 Michael ever encountered. Michael had scarcely realized, 
 until he reached the Shell, in what shadowy dates of history 
 St. James' was already a famous school. Now in the vul- 
 garity of its crimson brick, in the servility with which it 
 truckled to bourgeois ideals, in the unimaginative utility it 
 worshiped, Michael vaguely apprehended the loss of a soul. 
 He would linger in the corridors, reading the lists of dis- 
 tinguished Jacobeans, and during Prayers he would with 
 new interest speculate upon the lancet windows and their 
 stained-glass heraldry, until vaguely in his heart grew a 
 patriotism more profound than the mere joy of a football 
 victory, a patriotism that submerged Hammersmith and 
 Kensington and made him proud that he himself was ver- 
 itably a Jacobean. He was still just as eager to see St. 
 James* defeat Dulford at cricket, just as proud to read that 
 St. James' had won more open scholarships at the Univer- 
 sities than some North-country grammar school ; but at the 
 same time he was consoled in the event of defeat by pride 
 in the endurance of his school through so many years of 
 English History. 
 
 It was about this time that Michael saw in a second-hand 
 shop a print of the tower of St. Mary's College, Oxford. 
 It was an old print and the people, small as emmets, who 
 thronged the base of that slim and lovely tower, were 
 dressed in a bygone fashion that very much appealed to
 
 1 62 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 Michael. This print gave him the same thrill he experi- 
 enced in listening to Mr. Neech's reminiscences or in read- 
 ing Don Quixote or in poring over the inscriptions of 
 famous Jacobeans. Michael had already taken it as an 
 axiom that one day he would go to Oxford, and now he 
 made up his mind he would go to St. Mary's College. At 
 this moment people were hurrying past that tower, even as 
 they hurried in this gray print and even as Michael himself 
 would one day hurry. Meanwhile, he was enjoying the 
 Shell and Mr. Neech's eccentricities and the prospect of 
 winning the Junior Form Cricket Shield, a victory in which 
 Michael would participate as scorer for the Shell. 
 
 Summer suns shone down upon the green playground of 
 St. James', rippling with flanneled forms. The radiant air 
 was filled with merry cries, with the sounds of bat and ball, 
 with boyhood in action. In the great red mass of the school 
 buildings the golden clock moved on through each day's 
 breathless hour of cricket. The Junior Shield was won by 
 the Shell, and the proud victors, after a desperate argument 
 with Mr. Neech, actually persuaded him to take his place 
 in the commemorative photograph. School broke up and 
 the summer holidays began.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 THE QUADRUPLE INTRIGUE 
 
 MICHAEL, although Stella was more of a tie than 
 a companion, was shocked to hear that she would 
 not accompany Miss Carthew and himself to 
 Eastbourne for the summer holidays. He heard with a 
 recurrence of the slight jealousy he had always felt of Stella 
 that, though she was not yet eleven years old, she was going 
 to Germany to live in a German family and study music. 
 To Michael this step seemed a device to spoil Stella beyond 
 the limits of toleration, and he thought with how many new 
 affectations Stella would return to her native land. More- 
 over, why should Stella have all the excitement of going 
 abroad and living abroad while her brother plodded to 
 school in dull ordinary London? Michael felt very strongly 
 that the balance of life was heavily weighted in favor of 
 girls and he deplored the blindness of grown-up people 
 unable to realize the greater attractiveness of boys. It was 
 useless for Michael to protest, although he wasted an even- 
 ing of Henty in arguing the point with Miss Carthew. 
 Stella became primed with her own importance before she 
 left England, and Michael tried to discourage her as much 
 as he could by pointing out that in Germany her piano- 
 playing would be laughed at and by warning her that her 
 so evident inclination to show off would prejudice against 
 her the bulk of Teutonic opinion. However, Michael's 
 well-meant discouragement did not at all abash Stella, who 
 
 163
 
 1 64 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 under his most lugubrious prophecies trilled exasperatlngly 
 cheerful scales or ostentatiously folded unimportant articles 
 of clothing with an exaggerated carefulness, the while she 
 fussed with her hair and threw conceited glances over her 
 shoulder into the mirror. Then, one day, the bonnet of a 
 pink and yellow Fraulein bobbed from a cab-window, and, 
 after a finale of affectation and condescension on the front- 
 door steps for the benefit of passers-by, Stella set out for 
 Germany and Michael turned back into the house with 
 pessimistic fears for her future. The arrangements for 
 Stella's transportation had caused some delay in Michael's 
 holidays and, as a reward for having been forced to endure 
 the sight of Stella going abroad, he was told that he might 
 invite a friend to stay with him at Eastbourne during the 
 remainder of the time. Such an unexpected benefaction 
 made Michael incredulous at first. 
 
 ''Anyone I like?" he said. "For the whole of the hols? 
 Good lord, how ripping." 
 
 Forthwith he set out to consider the personal advantages 
 of all his friends in turn. The Macalisters as twins were 
 ruled out; besides, of late the old intimacy w^as wearing 
 thin, and Michael felt there were other chaps w^ith more 
 claim upon him. Norton w^as ruled out, because it would 
 be the worst of bad form to invite him without the Mac- 
 alisters and also because Norton was no longer on the 
 Classical side of St. James'. Suddenly the idea of asking 
 Merivale to stay with him occurred like an inspiration. 
 Merivale was not at present a friend w^ith anything like the 
 pretensions of Norton or the Macalisters. Merivale could 
 not be visualized in earliest Randell days, indeed he had 
 been at a different private school, and it was only during 
 this last summer term that he and Michael had taken to 
 walking arm in arm during the "quarter." Merivale turned 
 to the left when he came out of school and Michael turned 
 to the right, so that they never met on their way nor walked
 
 THE QUADRUPLE INTRIGUE 165 
 
 home together afterwards. Nevertheless, in the course of 
 the term, the friendship had grown, and once or twice 
 Michael and Merivale had sat beneath the hawthorn trees, 
 between them a stained bag of cherries in the long cool 
 grass, while intermittently they clapped the boundary hits 
 of a school match that was clicking drowsily its progress 
 through the summer afternoon. Tentative confidences had 
 been exchanged, and by reason of its slower advance toward 
 intimacy the friendship of Michael and Merivale seemed 
 built on a firmer basis than most of the sudden affinities of 
 school life. Now, as Michael recalled the personality of 
 Merivale with his vivid blue eyes and dull gold hair and 
 his laugh and freckled nose and curiously attractive walk, 
 he had a great desire for his company during the holidays. 
 Miss Carthew was asked to write to Mrs. Merivale in 
 order to give the matter the weight of authority; but 
 Michael and Miss Carthew went off to Eastbourne before 
 the answer arrived. The sea sparkled, a cool wind blew 
 down from Beachy Head; the tamarisks on the front quiv- 
 ered ; Eastbourne was w^onderful, so wonderful that Michael 
 could not believe in the probability of Merivale, and the 
 more he thought about it the more he felt sure that Mrs. 
 Merivale w^ould write a letter of polite refusal. However, 
 as if they w^re all people in a book, everything happened 
 according to Michael's most daringly optimistic hopes. 
 Mrs. Merivale wrote a pleasant letter to Miss Carthew to 
 say that her boy Alan was just now staying at Brighton 
 with his uncle Captain Ross, that she had written to her 
 brother who had written back to say that Alan and he would 
 move on to Eastbourne, as it did not matter a bit to him 
 where he spent the next w^eek. Mrs. Merivale added that, 
 if it were convenient, Alan might stay on with Michael 
 when his uncle left. By the same post came a letter from 
 Merivale himself to say that he and his uncle Kenneth
 
 1 66 YOUTffS ENCOUNTER 
 
 were arriving next day, and that he jolly well hoped Fane 
 was going to meet him at the railway station. 
 
 Michael, much excited, waited until the train steamed in 
 with its blurred line of carriage window^s, from one of which 
 Merivale w^as actually leaning. Michael waved : Merivale 
 waved: the train stopped: Merivale jumped out: a tall 
 man w^ith a very fair mustache and close-cropped fair hair 
 alighted after Merivale and was introduced and shook hands 
 and made several jokes and was on terms of equality before 
 he and Merivale and Michael had got into the blue-lined 
 fly that was to drive them to Captain Ross's hotel. During 
 the few days of Captain Ross's stay, he and Michael and 
 Merivale and Miss Carthew w^ent sailing and climbed up 
 Beachy Head and watched a cricket match in Devonshire 
 Park and generally behaved like all the other summer vis- 
 itors to Eastbourne. Michael noticed that Captain Ross 
 was very polite to Miss Carthew and heard with interest 
 that they both had many friends in common — soldiers and 
 sailors and Royal Marines. Michael listened to a great 
 deal of talk about "when I was quartered there" and 'Svhen 
 he was stationed at Malta" and about Gunners and Sappers 
 and the Service. He himself spoke of General Mace and 
 was greatly flattered when Captain Ross said he knew him 
 by reputation as a fine old soldier. Michael was rather dis- 
 appointed that Captain Ross was not in the Bengal Lancers, 
 but he concluded that, next to being in the Bengal Lancers, 
 it was best to be with him in the Kintail Highlanders (the 
 Duke of Clarence's own Inverness-shire Buffs). 
 
 "Uncle Ken looks jolly ripping in a kilt," Merivale in- 
 formed Miss Carthew, when on the last evening of Captain 
 Ross's stay they were all sitting in the rubied light of the 
 hotel table. 
 
 "Shut up, showman," said Captain Ross, banging his 
 nephew on the head with a Viennese roll.
 
 THE QUADRUPLE INTRIGUE 167 
 
 "Oh, I say, Uncle Kenneth, that loaf hurts most aw- 
 fully," protested Merivale. 
 
 "Well, don't play Barnum," said the Captain as he 
 twirled his little mustache. "It's not done, my lad." 
 
 When Captain Ross went away next morning, Miss 
 Carthew, at his earnest invitation, accompanied the boys to 
 see him off, and, as they walked out of the station, Merivale 
 nudged Michael to whisper: 
 
 "I say, I believe my uncle's rather gone on Miss 
 Carthew." 
 
 "Rot," said Michael. "Why, she'd be most frightfully 
 
 annoyed. Besides, chaps' uncles don't get gone on " 
 
 Michael was going to add "chaps' sisters' governesses," but 
 somehow he felt the remark was all wrong, and blushed 
 the conclusion of the sentence. 
 
 The weather grew very hot, and Miss Carthew took to 
 sitting in a canvas chair and reading books on the beach, 
 so that Michael and Merivale were left free to do very 
 much as they wanted, which, as Michael pointed out, was 
 rather decent of her. 
 
 "I say, Merivale," Michael began one day, as he and his 
 friend, arm in arm, were examining the credentials of the 
 front on a shimmering morning, "I say, did you notice that 
 Miss Carthew called you Alan?" 
 
 "I know. She often does," replied Merivale. 
 
 "I say, Merivale," said Michael shyly, "supposing I call 
 you Alan and you call me Michael — only during the hols, 
 of course," he added hastily. 
 
 "I don't mind," Alan agreed. 
 
 "Because I suppose there couldn't be two chaps more 
 friends than you and me," speculated Michael. 
 
 "I like you more than I do any other chap," said Alan 
 
 simply. 
 
 "So I do you," said Michael. "And it's rather decent
 
 1 68 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 just to have one great friend who you call by his Christian 
 name." 
 
 After this Michael and Alan became very intimate and 
 neither held a secret from the other, as through the crowds 
 of seaside folk they threaded their way along the promenade 
 to whatever band of minstrels had secured their joint devo- 
 tion. They greatly preferred the Pierrots to the Niggers, 
 and very soon, by a week's unbroken attendance at the three 
 daily sessions, Michael and Alan knew the words and music 
 of most of the repertory. Of the comic songs they liked 
 best The Dandy Colored Coon, although they admired 
 almost equally a duet whose refrain was: 
 
 We are a couple of barmy chaps, hush, not a word! 
 
 A little bit loose in our tiles, perhaps, hush, not a word! 
 
 We're lunatics, lunatics, everybody declares 
 
 We're a couple of fellows gone wrong in our bellows, 
 
 As mad as a pair of March hares. 
 
 Gradually, however, and more especially under the influ- 
 ence of Japanese lanterns and a moon-splashed sea, Michael 
 and Alan avowed openly their fondness for the more serious 
 songs sung by the Pierrettes. The words of one song in 
 particular were by a reiteration of passionate utterance 
 deeply printed on their memory: 
 
 Two little girls in blue, lad, 
 Two little girls in blue, 
 They were sisters, we were brothers, 
 And learnt to love the two. 
 
 And one little girl in blue, lad, 
 
 Who won your father's heart, 
 
 Became your mother: I married the other, 
 
 But we have drifted apart. 
 
 This lyric seemed to Michael and Alan the most pro- 
 foundly moving accumulation of words ever known. The 
 sad words and poignant tune wrung their hearts with the
 
 THE QUADRUPLE INTRIGUE 169 
 
 tears always imminent in life. This lyric expressed for the 
 two boys the incommunicable aspirations of their most sacred 
 moments. As they leaned over the rail of the promenade 
 and gazed down upon the pretty Pierrette, whose tremolo 
 made the night air vibrant with emotion, Michael and Alan 
 were moved by a sense of fleeting time, by thoughts of old 
 lovers and by an intense self-pity. 
 
 "It's frightfully decent, isn't it?" murmured Michael. 
 
 "Ripping," sighed Alan. "I wish I could give her more 
 than a penny." 
 
 "So do I," echoed Michael. "It's beastly being without 
 much tin." 
 
 Then "Encore," they both shouted as the Pierrette receded 
 from the crimson lantern-light into obscurity. Again she 
 sang that song, so that w^hen Michael and Alan looked sol- 
 emnly up at the stars they became blurred. They could not 
 bear The Dandy Colored Coon on such a night, and, seeing 
 no chance of luring Pierrette once more into the lantern- 
 light, they pushed their way through the crowd of listeners 
 and walked arm in arm along the murmurous promenade. 
 
 "It's beastly rotten to go to bed at a quarter past nine," 
 Michael declared. 
 
 "We can talk up in our room," suggested Alan. 
 
 "I vote we talk about the Pierrots," said Michael, affec- 
 tionately clasping his chum's arm. 
 
 "Yes, I vote we do too," Alan agreed. 
 
 The next day the Pierrots were gone. Apparently they 
 had had a quarrel with the Corporation and moved farther 
 along the South Coast. Michael and Alan were dismayed, 
 and in their disgust forsook the beach for the shrubberies 
 of Devonshire Park, where, in gloomy by-ways, laurel- 
 shaded, they spoke quietly of their loss. 
 
 "I wonder if we shall ever see that girl again," said 
 Michael. "I'd know her anywhere. If I was grown up 
 I'd know her. I swear I would." 
 12
 
 170 YOUTH^S ENCOUNTER 
 
 "She was a clinker," Alan regretted. 
 
 "I don't suppose we shall ever see a girl half as pretty," 
 Michael thought. 
 
 "Not by a long chalk," Alan agreed. "I don't suppose 
 there is a girl anyw^here in the world a quarter as pretty. 
 I think that girl was simply fizzing." 
 
 They paced the mossy path in silence and suddenly round 
 a corner came upon a bench on which were seated two girls 
 in blue dresses. Michael and Alan found the coincidence so 
 extraordinary that they stared hard, even when the two girls 
 put their heads down and looked sidelong and giggled and 
 thumped each other and giggled again. 
 
 "I say, are you laughing at us?" demanded Michael. 
 
 "Well, you looked at us first," said the fairer of the two 
 girls. 
 
 In that moment Michael fell in love. 
 
 "Come away," whispered Alan. "They'll follow us if 
 we don't." 
 
 "Do you think they're at all decent?" asked Michael. 
 "Because, if you do, I vote we talk to them. I say, Alan, 
 do let's anj^vvay, for a lark." 
 
 "Supposing anyone we know saw us?" queried Alan. 
 
 "Well, we could say something," Michael urged. He 
 was on fire to prosecute this adventure and, lest Alan should 
 still hold back, he took from his pocket a feverish bag of 
 satin pralines and boldly offered them to the girl of his 
 choice. 
 
 "I say, would you like some tuck?" 
 
 The girls giggled and sat closer together; but Michael 
 still proffered the sweets and at last the girl whom he 
 admired dipped her hand into the bag. As all the satin 
 pralines were stuck together, she brought out half a dozen, 
 and was so much embarrassed that she dropped the bag, 
 after which she giggled. 
 
 "It doesn't matter a bit," said Michael. "I can get some
 
 THE QUADRUPLE INTRIGUE 171 
 
 more. These are beastly squashed. I say, what's your 
 name?" 
 
 So began the quadruple intrigue of Dora and Winnie and 
 Michael and Alan. 
 
 Judged merely by their dress, one would have unhesitat- 
 ingly set down Dora and Winnie as sisters; but they were 
 unrelated and dressed alike merely to accentuate, as girl 
 friends do, the unanimity of their minds. They were both 
 of them older by a year or more than Michael and Alan; 
 while in experience they were a generation ahead of either. 
 The possession of this did not prevent them from giggling 
 foolishly, and from time to time looking at each other with 
 an expression compounded of interrogation and shyness. 
 Michael objected to this look, inasmuch as it implied their 
 consciousness of a mental attitude in which neither he nor 
 Alan had any part. He was inclined to be sulky when- 
 ever he noticed an exchange of glances, and very soon in- 
 sisted upon a temporary separation by which he and Dora 
 took one path, while Alan with Winnie pursued another. 
 
 Dora was a neatly made child, and Michael thought the 
 many-pleated blue skirt that reached down to her knees, and 
 showing as she swung along a foam of frizzy white petti- 
 coats, very lovely. He liked, too, the curve of her leg and 
 the high buttoned boots and the big blue bow in her curly 
 golden hair. He admired immensely her large shady hat 
 trimmed with cornflowers and the string of bangles on her 
 wrist and her general effect of being almost grown up and 
 at the same time still obviously a little girl. As for Dora's 
 face, Michael found it beautiful with the long-lashed blue 
 eyes and rose-leaf complexion and cleft chin and pouting 
 bow mouth. Michael congratulated himself upon securing 
 the prettier of the two. Winnie with her gray eyes and 
 ordinary hair and dark eyebrows and waxen skin was cer- 
 tainly not comparable to this exquisite doll of his own. 
 
 At first Michael was too shy to make any attempt to kiss
 
 172 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 Dora. Nevertheless the kissing of her ran in his mind from 
 the beginning, and he would lie awake planning how the 
 feat was to be accomplished. He was afraid that if suddenly 
 he threw his arms round her she might take offense and 
 refuse to see him again. Finally he asked Alan's advice. 
 
 "I say, have you ever kissed Winnie ?" he called from his 
 bed. 
 
 Through the darkness came Alan's reply: 
 
 "Rather not. I say, have you?" 
 
 "Rather not." Then Michael added defiantly, "But I 
 jolly well wish I had." 
 
 "She wouldn't let you, would she?" 
 
 "That's what I can't find out," Michael said despon- 
 dently. "I've held her hand and all that sort of rot, and 
 I've talked about how pretty I think she is, but it's beastly 
 difficult. I say, you know, I don't believe I should ever be 
 able to propose to a girl — you know — a girl you could 
 marry — a lady. I'm tremendously gone on Dora and so are 
 you on Winnie. But I don't think they're ladies, because 
 Dora's got a sister who's in a pantomime and wears tights, 
 so you see I couldn't propose to her. Besides, I should 
 feel a most frightful fool going down on my knees in the 
 path. Still I must kiss her somehow. Look here, Alan, 
 if you promise faithfully you'll kiss Winnie to-morrow, 
 when the clock strikes twelve, I'll kiss Dora. Will you? 
 Be a decent chap and kiss Winnie, even if you aren't beastly 
 keen, because I am. So will you, Alan?" 
 
 There was a minute's deliberation by Alan in the darkness, 
 and then he said he would. 
 
 "I say, you are a clinker, Alan. Thanks most awfully." 
 
 Michael turned over and settled himself down to sleep, 
 praying for the good luck to dream of his little girl in blue. 
 
 On the next morning Alan and Michael eyed each other 
 bashfully across the breakfast table, conscious as they were 
 of the guilty vow not yet fulfilled. Miss Carthew tried in
 
 THE QUADRUPLE INTRIGUE 173 
 
 vain to make them talk. They ate in silence, oppressed with 
 resolutions. They saw Winnie and Dora in Devonshire 
 Park at eleven o'clock, and presently went their different 
 ways along the mazy paths. Michael talked of subjects 
 most remote from love. He expounded to Dora the 
 ranks of the British Army; he gave her tips on birds'- 
 nesting; he told her of his ambition to join the Bengal 
 Lancers and he boasted of the exploits of the St. James' 
 Football Fifteen. Dora giggled the minutes away, and at 
 five minutes to twelve they were on a seat, screened against 
 humanity's intrusion. Michael listened with quickening 
 pulses to the thump of tennis balls in the distance. At 
 last he heard the first stroke of twelve and looked appre- 
 hensively toward Dora. Four more strokes sounded, but 
 Michael still delayed. He wondered if Alan would keep 
 his promise. He had heard no scream of dismay or startled 
 giggle from the shrubbery. Then as the final stroke of 
 midday crashed forth, he flung his arms round Dora, pressed 
 her to him and in his confusion kissed very roughly the 
 tilted tip of her nose. 
 
 "Oh, you cheek!" she gasped. 
 
 Then Michael kissed her lips, coldly though they were 
 set against his love. 
 
 "I say, kiss me," he whispered, with a strange new excite- 
 ment crimsoning his cheeks and rattling his heart so loudly 
 that he w^ondered if Dora noticed anything. 
 
 "Shan't!" murmured Dora. 
 
 "Do." 
 
 "Oh, I couldn't," she said, wriggling herself free. "You 
 have got a cheek. Fancy kissing anyone." 
 
 "Dora, I'm frightfully gone on you," affirmed Michael, 
 choking with the emotional declaration. "Are you gone 
 
 on me: 
 
 ?" 
 
 "I like you all right," Dora confessed. 
 
 "Well then, do kiss me. You might. Oh, I say, do."
 
 174 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 He leaned over and sought those unresponsive lips that, 
 mutely cold, met his. He spent a long time trying to 
 persuade her to give way, but Dora protested she could not 
 understand why people kissed at all, so silly as it was. 
 
 "But it's not," Michael protested. "Or else everybody 
 wouldn't want to do it." 
 
 However, it was useless to argue with Dora. She was 
 willing to put her curly golden head on his shoulder, until 
 he nearly exploded with sentiment; she seemed not to mind 
 how often he pressed his lips to hers; but all the time she 
 was passive, inert, drearily unresponsive. The deeper she 
 seemed to shrink within herself and the colder she stayed, 
 the more Michael felt inclined to hurt her, to shake her 
 roughly, almost to draw blood from those soft, lifeless lips. 
 Once she murmured to him that he was hurting her, and 
 Michael w^as In a quandary between an overwhelming soft- 
 ness of pity and an exultant desire to make her cry out 
 sharply with pain. Yet as he saw that golden head upon his 
 shoulder, the words and tune of Two Little Girls In Blue 
 throbbed on the air, and with an aching fondness Michael 
 felt his eyes fill with tears. Such love as his for Dora could 
 never be expressed with the eloquence and passion it de- 
 manded. 
 
 Michael and Alan had tacitly agreed to postpone all 
 discussion of their passionate adventure until the blackness 
 of night and secret intimacy of their bedroom made the 
 discussion of it possible. 
 
 "I say, I kissed Dora this morning," announced Michael. 
 
 "So did I Winnie," said Alan. 
 
 "She wouldn't kiss me, though," said Michael. 
 
 "Wouldn't she?" Alan echoed in surprise. "Winnie kissed 
 me. 
 
 "She didn't!" exclaimed Michael. 
 
 "She did, I swear she did. She kissed me more than I
 
 THE QUADRUPLE INTRIGUE 175 
 
 kissed her. I felt an awful fool. I nearly got up and walked 
 away. Only I didn't like to." 
 
 "Good lord," apostrophized Michael. He was staggered 
 by Alan's success and marveled that Alan, who was admit- 
 tedly less clever than himself, should conquer when he had 
 failed. He could not understand the reason; but he sup- 
 posed that Dora, being so obviously the prettier, was 
 deservedly the more difficult to win. However, Michael 
 felt disinclined to pursue the subject, because it was plain 
 that Alan took no credit to himself for his success, and he 
 wished still to be the leader in their friendship. He did 
 not want Alan to feel superior in anything. 
 
 The next day Miss Carthew was laid up in bed with a 
 sick headache, so that Michael and Alan were free to take 
 Dora and Winnie upon the promenade without the risk of 
 detection. Accordingly, when they met in Devonshire 
 Park, Michael proposed this public walk. He was the more 
 willing to go, because, since Alan's revelation of Winnie, 
 he took a certain pleasure in denying to her the attraction 
 of Alan's company. Winnie was not very anxious for the 
 walk, but Dora seemed highly pleased, and, Dora being the 
 leader of the pair, Winnie had to give way. While they 
 strolled up and down the promenade in a row, Dora pointed 
 out to Michael and Alan in how many respects they both 
 failed to conform to the standards of smartness, as she con- 
 ceived them. For instance, neither of them carried a stick 
 and neither of them wore a tie of any distinction. Dora 
 called their attention to the perfectly dressed youths of 
 the promenade with their high collars and butterfly ties 
 and Wanghee canes and pointed boots and vivid waistcoats. 
 
 After the walk the boys discussed Dora's criticism and 
 owned that she was right. They marshaled their money 
 and bought made-up bow-ties of purple and pink that were 
 twisted round the stud with elastic and held in position 
 by a crescent of whalebone. They bought made-up white
 
 176 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 silk knotted ties sown with crimson fleurs-de-lys and impaled 
 with a permanent brass horseshoe. They spent a long time 
 in the morning plastering back their hair with soap and 
 water, while in the ribbons of their straw hats they pinned 
 inscribed medallions. Finally they purchased Wanghee 
 canes and when they met their two little girls in blue the 
 latter both averred that Michael and Alan were much 
 improved. 
 
 Miss Carthew remained ill for two or three days; so 
 Michael and Alan were able to display themselves and their 
 sweethearts all the length of the promenade. They took 
 to noticing the cut of a coat as it went by and envied the 
 pockets of the youths they met; they envied, too, the 
 collars that surrounded the adolescent neck, and wished 
 the time had come for them to wear "chokers." Sometimes, 
 before they undressed, they would try to pin round their 
 necks stiff sheets of note-paper in order to gauge, however 
 slightly, the effect of high collars on their appearance. 
 
 The weather was now steadily fine and hot, and Michael 
 begged Miss Carthew to let him and Alan buy two blazers 
 and cricket belts. Somev/hat to his surprise, she made no 
 objection, and presently Michael and Alan appeared upon 
 the front in white trousers, blue and yellow blazers and 
 cherry-colored silk belts fastened in front by a convenient 
 metal snake. Dora thought they looked "all right," and, 
 as Miss Carthew had succumbed again to her headache, 
 Michael and Alan were free to swagger up and down on the 
 melting asphalt of the promenade. Miss Carthew grew no 
 better, and one day she told the boys that Nancy was coming 
 down to look after them. Michael did not know whether 
 he were really glad or not, because, fond as he was of Nancy, 
 he was deeply in love with Dora and he had a feeling that 
 Nancy would interfere with the intrigues. In the end, 
 as it happened, Nancy arrived by some mistake on the day 
 before she was expected and, setting forth to look for the
 
 THE QUADRUPLE INTRIGUE 177 
 
 boys, she walked straight into them arm in arm with Dora 
 and Winnie. Michael was very much upset, and told the 
 girls to scoot, a command which they obeyed by rushing 
 across the road, giggling loudly, standing on the opposite 
 curb and continuing to giggle. 
 
 "Hullo," said Nancy, "who are your young friends in 
 blue cashmere?" 
 
 Michael blushed and said quickly they were friends of 
 Alan, but Alan would not accept the responsibility. 
 
 "Well, I don't admire your taste," said Nancy con- 
 temptuously. "No, and I don't admire your get-up," she 
 went on. "Did you pick those canes up on the beach, 
 what?" 
 
 "We bought them," said Michael, rather affronted. 
 
 "My goodness," said Nancy. "What dreadful-looking 
 things. I say, Michael, you're in a fair way toward looking 
 like a thorough young bounder. Don't you come to Cobble 
 Place with that button on your hat. Well, don't let me 
 disturb you. Cut off to the Camera Obscura with Gertie 
 and Evangeline. I don't expect I'm smart enough for you 
 two." 
 
 "We don't particularly want to go with those girls," 
 said Michael, looking down at his boots, very red and biting 
 his under-lip. Alan was blushing too and greatly abashed. 
 
 "Well," said the relentless Nancy, "it's a pity you don't 
 black your faces, for I never saw two people look more 
 like nigger minstrels. Where did you get that tie? No 
 wonder my sister feels bad. That belt of yours, Michael, 
 would give a South Sea Islander a headache. Go on, hurry 
 off like good little boys," she jeered. "Flossie and Cissie 
 are waiting for you.'* 
 
 Michael could not help admitting, as he suffered this 
 persiflage from Nancy, that Dora and Winnie did look rather 
 common, and he wished they would not stand almost within
 
 178 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 earshot, giggling and prodding each other. Then suddenly 
 Michael began to hate Dora and the quadruple intrigue 
 was broken up. 
 
 "I say, Alan," he said, looking up again, "let's bung 
 these sticks into the sea. They're rotten sticks." 
 
 Alan at once threw his as far as it would go and bet 
 Michael he would not beat the distance. So Michael's 
 stick followed its companion into oblivion. Nancy was great 
 sport, after all, as both boys admitted, and when Michael 
 grazed his finger very slightly on a barnacled rock he ban- 
 daged it up with his silk tie. Very soon he discovered the 
 cut was not at all serious, but he announced the tie was 
 spoilt and dipped it casually into a rock pool, where it 
 floated blatantly among the anemones and rose-plumed 
 seaweed. Alan's tie vanished less obtrusively ; no one noticed 
 when or where. As for the buttons inscribed w^th mottoes 
 they became insignificant units in the millions of pebbles 
 on the beach. 
 
 Nancy was great sport and ready to do whatever the boys 
 suggested in the way of rock-climbing and walking provided 
 they would give her due notice, so that she could get into 
 a hockey skirt and thick shoes. They had fine blowy da3's 
 with Nancy up on Beachy Head above the sparkling blue 
 water. They caught many blue butterflies, but never the 
 famous Mazarin blue which legend in the butterfly-book 
 said had once been taken near Eastbourne. 
 
 Michael and Alan, even in the dark privacy of their room, 
 did not speak again of Dora and Winnie. Michael had an 
 idea that Alan had always been ashamed of the business, 
 and felt mean when he thought how he had openly told 
 Nancy that they were his friends. Once or twice, when 
 Michael was lying on his back, staring up at the sky over 
 Beachy Head, the wind lisping round him sadly made him 
 feel sentimental, but sentimental in a dominion where Dora
 
 THE QUADRUPLE INTRIGUE 179 
 
 and Winnie were unknown, where they would have been 
 regarded as unpleasant intruders. Up here in the daisy's 
 eye, the two little girls in blue seemed tawdry and took 
 their place in the atmosphere of Michael's earlier childhood 
 with Mrs. Frith's tales and Annie's love-letters. For 
 Michael the whole affair now seemed like the half-remem- 
 bered dreams which, however pleasant at the time, repelled 
 him in the recollection of them. Moreover, he had experi- 
 enced a sense of inequality in his passion for Dora. He gave 
 all; she returned nothing. Looking back at her now under 
 the sailing clouds, he thought her nose was ugly, her mouth 
 flabby, her voice odious and her hair beastly. He blushed 
 at the memory of the ridiculous names he had called her, 
 at the contemplation of his enthusiastic praise of her beauty 
 to Alan. He was glad that Alan had been involved, however 
 unwillingly. Otherwise he was almost afraid he would have 
 avoided Alan in future, unable to bear the injury to his 
 pride. This sad sensation promoted by the wind in the 
 grasses, by the movement of the clouds and the companion- 
 ship of Alan and Nancy, was more thrilling than the Pier- 
 rette's tremolo in the lantern light. Michsiel's soul was 
 flooded with a vast affection for Alan and for Nancy. He 
 wished that they all could stay here in the wind forever. 
 It was depressing to think of the autumn rain and the dreary 
 gaslit hours of afternoon school. And yet it was not de- 
 pressing at all, for he and Alan might be able to achieve 
 the same class. It would be difficult, for Michael knew 
 that he himself must inevitably be moved up two forms, 
 while Alan was only in the Upper Third now and could 
 scarcely for being ninth in his class get beyond the Lower 
 Fourth, even if he escaped the Shell. How Michael wished 
 that Alan could go into the Special for a time, and how 
 pleasant it would be suddenly to behold Alan's entrance 
 into his class, so that, without unduly attracting attention,
 
 i8o YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 he could manage to secure a desk for Alan next to himself. 
 But when Michael and Alan (now again the austere 
 Fane and Merivale) went back to school, Michael was in 
 the Middle Fourth, and Alan just missed the double 
 remove and inherited Michael's scrabbled desk in the Shell.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 PASTORAL 
 
 THE new term opened inausplciously ; for Miss 
 Carthew fell ill again more seriously, and Michael's 
 mother came back, seeming cross and worried. 
 She settled that, as she could not stay at home for long, 
 Michael must be a boarder for a year. Michael did not at 
 all like this idea, and begged that Nancy might come and 
 look after him. But Mrs. Fane told him not to make every- 
 thing more difficult than it was already by grumbling and 
 impossible suggestions. Michael was overcome by his 
 mother's crossness and said no more. Mrs. Fane announced 
 her intention of shutting up the house in Carlington Road 
 and of coming back in the summer to live permanently at 
 home, when Michael would be able to be a day-boy again. 
 Mrs. Fane seemed injured all the time she had to spend in 
 making arrangements for Michael to go to Mr. Wheeler's 
 House. She wished that people would not get ill just when 
 it was most inconvenient. She could not understand why 
 everything happened at exactly the wrong moment, and she 
 was altogether different from the tranquil and lovely lady 
 whom Michael had hitherto known. However, the windows 
 of Number 64 were covered with newspapers, the curtain- 
 poles were stripped bare, the furniture stood heaped in the 
 middle of rooms under billowy sheets, and Michael drove 
 up with all his luggage to the gaunt boarding-house of Mr. 
 Wheeler that overlooked the School ground. 
 
 181
 
 1 82 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 Michael knew that the alteration in his status would make 
 a great difference. Long ago he remembered how his friend- 
 ship with Buckley had been finally severed by the breaking 
 up of Buckley's home and the collapse of all Buckley's 
 previous opinions. Michael now found himself in similar 
 case. To be sure, there was not at St. James' the same icy 
 river of prejudice between boarders and day-boys which 
 divided them so irreparably at Randell's. Nevertheless, 
 it was impossible for a boarder to preserve unspoilt a real 
 intimacy with a day-boy. To begin with, all sorts of new 
 rules about streets being in and out of bounds made it 
 impossible to keep up those delightful walks home with 
 boys who w^nt in the same direction as oneself. There 
 was no longer that hurried appeal to "wait for me at five 
 o'clock" as one passed a friend in the helter-skelter of 
 reaching the class-room, when the five minutes' bell had 
 stopped and the clock was already chiming three. It was not 
 etiquette among the boarders of the four Houses to walk 
 home with day-boys except in a large and amorphous com- 
 pany of both. It was impossible to go to tea with day-boys 
 on Saturday afternoons without special leave both from the 
 Housemaster and from the captain of the House. A boarder 
 was tied down mercilessly to athletics, particularly to rowing, 
 which was the pride of the Houses and was exalted by them 
 above every other branch of sport. Michael, as a promising 
 light-weight, had to swim every Saturday, until he could 
 pass the swimming test at the Paddington Baths, when he 
 became a member of the rowing club, in order to cox the 
 House four. It did not add to his satisfaction with life, 
 when by his alleged bad steering Wheeler's House was beaten 
 by Marlowe's House coxed by the objectionable Buckley, 
 now on the Modern Side and, as a result of his capable 
 handling of the ropes, likely to be cox of the School Eight 
 in the race against Dulford from Putney Bridge to Hammer- 
 smith. The Christmas holidays were a dismal business in
 
 PASTORAL 183 
 
 Mr. Wheeler's empty barracks. To be sure, Mrs. Wheeler 
 made herself as plumply agreeable as she could; but the 
 boredom of it all was exasperating and was only sustained 
 by reading every volume that Henty had ever written. 
 Four weeks never dragged so endlessly, even in the glooms 
 of Carlington Road under Nurse's rule. The Lent term 
 with its persistent rowing practice on the muddy Thames 
 was almost as bad as the holidays. Michael hated the barges 
 that bore down upon him and the watermen who pulled 
 across the bows of his boat. He hated the mudlarks by the 
 riverside who jeered as he followed the crew into the 
 School boathouse, and he loathed the walk home with the 
 older boys who talked incessantly of their own affairs. 
 Nor did the culminating disaster of the defeat by Marlowe's 
 House mitigate his lot. When the Lent term was over, 
 to his great disappointment, some domestic trouble made 
 it impossible for Michael to spend the Easter holidays 
 with Alan, so that instead of three weeks to weld again that 
 friendship in April wanderings, in finding an early white- 
 throat's nest in the front of May, and in all the long 
 imagined delights of spring, Michael was left again with 
 Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler to spend a month of rain at a bleak 
 golf-resort, where he was only kept from an unvoiced misery 
 by reading "Brother takes the hand of brother" in Long- 
 fellow's Psalm of Life, melting thereat into a flood of tears 
 that relieved his lonely oppression. 
 
 Even the summer term was a bondage with its incessant 
 fagging for balls, while the lords of the House practiced 
 assiduously at the nets. He and Alan walked together 
 sometimes during the quarter and held on to the stray 
 threads of their friendship that still resisted the exacting 
 knife of the House's etiquette; but it became increasingly 
 difficult under the stress of boarding-school existence. 
 Indeed, it was only the knowledge that this summer term 
 would end the miserable time and that Alan was catching up
 
 1 84 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 to Michael's class which supported the two friends through 
 their exile. Michael was savagely jealous, when he saw 
 Alan leaving the School at five o'clock arm in arm with an- 
 other boy. He used to sulk for a week afterwards, avoiding 
 Alan in the quarter and ostentatiously burying himself in a 
 group of boarders. And if Alan would affectionately catch 
 him up w^hen he was alone, Michael w^ould turn on him and 
 with bitter taunts suggest that Alan's condescension was 
 unnecessary. In School itself Michael was bored by his 
 sojourn both in the Middle Fourth and in the Upper 
 Fourth B. The Cicero and the Thucj'dides were vilely dull; 
 all the dullest books of the ^neid were carefully chosen, 
 while Mr. MarjoriBanks and Mr. Gale were both very dull 
 teachers. At the end of the summer examinations, Michael 
 found himself at the bottom of the Upper Fourth B in 
 Classics, in Drawing and in English. However, the knowl- 
 edge that next term w^ould now inevitably find him and Alan 
 in the same class, meeting again as equals, as day-boys 
 gloriously free, sustained him through a thunderous inter- 
 view with Dr. Brownjohn. He emerged from the Doctor's 
 study in a confusion of abusive epithets to find Alan loyally 
 waiting for him by the great plaster cast of the Laocoon. 
 
 "Damn old Brownjohn," growled Michael. *'I think he's 
 the damnedest old beast that ever lived. I do hate him." 
 
 "Oh, bother him," cried Alan, dancing with excitement. 
 "Look here, I say, at this telegram. It's just arrived. The 
 porter was frightfully sick at having to give me a telegram. 
 He is a sidy swine. What do you think? My uncle is 
 going to marry Miss Carthew!" 
 
 "Get out," scoffed Michael, whose brain, overwhelmed 
 by the pealing thunders of his late interview, refused to 
 register any more shocks. 
 
 "No, really. Read this." 
 
 Michael took the piece of paper and read the news. But 
 he was still under the influence of a bad year and, instead of
 
 PASTORAL 185 
 
 dancing with Alan to the tune of his excitement, grumbled : 
 "Well, why didn't Miss Carthew send a telegram to me? 
 
 I think she might have. I believe this is all bally rot." 
 Alan's face changed, changed indeed to an expression 
 
 of such absolute disappointment that Michael was touched 
 
 and, forgetting all that he had endured, thrust his arm into 
 
 Alan's arm and murmured: 
 
 '*By Jove, old Alan, it is rather decent, isn't it?" 
 When Michael reached the House, he found a letter 
 
 from Miss Carthew, which consoled him for that bad year 
 
 and made him still more penitent for his late ungraciousness 
 
 toward Alan. 
 
 Cobble Place, 
 
 My dear old Michael: J^^^ ^7* 
 
 You will be tremendously surprised to hear that I am 
 going to marry Captain Ross. I fancy I can hear you say 
 "What rot. I don't believe it." But I am, and of course 
 you can understand how gloriously happy I feel, for you 
 know how much you liked him. Poor old boy, I'm afraid 
 you've had a horrid time all this year, and I wish I hadn't 
 been so stupid as to get ill, but never mind, it's over now 
 and Captain Ross and I are coming up to London to fetch 
 you and Alan down here to spend the whole of the holidays 
 and make the wedding a great success. May, Joan and 
 Nancy and my mother all send their very best love, and 
 Nancy says she's looking forward to your new ties (I don't 
 know what obscure jest of hers this is) and also to hear of 
 your engagement (silly girl!) I shall see you on Wednes- 
 day and you're going to have splendid holidays, I can prom- 
 ise you. Your mother writes to say that she is coming 
 back to live at home in September, so there'll be no more 
 boarding school for you. Stella wrote to me from Ger- 
 many, and I hear from Frau Weingardt that everybody 
 prophesies a triumphant career for her, so don't snub her 
 when she comes back for her holidays in the autumn. Just 
 be as nice as you can, and you can be very nice if you like. 
 Will you? Now, dear old boy, my best love till we meet 
 on Wednesday. Your loving 
 
 Maud Carthew. 
 13
 
 1 86 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 Then indeed Michael felt that life was the finest thing 
 conceivable, and in a burst of affectionate duty wrote a 
 long letter to Stella, giving with every detail an account 
 of how Wheeler's beat Marlowe's at cricket, including the 
 running-out of that beast Buckley by Michael amidst the 
 plaudits of his House. Next morning Alan told him that 
 his mother was frightfully keen for Michael to stay with 
 them at Richmond, until his Uncle Ken and Miss Carthew 
 arrived ; and so Michael by special leave from Mr. Wheeler 
 left the House a day or two before the others and had the 
 exquisite pleasure of traveling up with Alan by the District 
 Railway to Hammersmith Broadway for a few mornings, 
 and of walking arm in arm with Alan through the School 
 gates. Mrs. Merivale was as pretty as ever, almost as pretty 
 as his own beautiful mother, and Mr. Merivale entertained 
 Michael and Alan with his conjuring tricks and his phono- 
 graph and his ridiculous puns. Even when they reached the 
 gate in a summer shower and ran past the sweet-smelling 
 rose trees in the garden, Mr. Merivale shouted from the 
 front door, "Hello, here come the Weterans," but, when he 
 had been severely punched for so disgraceful a joke, he was 
 flatly impenitent and made half a dozen more puns imme- 
 diately afterwards. In a day or tw^o Miss Carthew and 
 Captain Ross arrived, and after they had spent long mysteri- 
 ous days shopping in town, Michael and Alan and Miss Car- 
 thew and Captain Ross traveled down to Hampshire — the 
 jolliest railway party that was ever known. 
 
 Nothing at Basingstead Minor seemed to have changed 
 in five years, from the dun pony to the phloxes in the 
 garden, from the fantail pigeons to the gardener who fed 
 the pigs. Michael spent all the first few hours in rapid 
 renewals of friendship with scenery and animals, dragging 
 Alan at his heels and even suggesting about ten minutes 
 before the gong would sound for dinner that they should 
 bunk round and borrow the key of the tower on the hill.
 
 PASTORAL 187 
 
 He and Alan slept up in the roof in a delightful impromptu 
 of a room with uneven bare floor and sloping ceiling and 
 above their beds a trap-door into an apple loft. There were 
 at least half a dozen windows with every possible aspect to 
 the neat high road and the stable-yard arid the sun-dyed 
 garden and the tall hills beyond. August was a blaze of blue 
 and green and gold that year, but everybody at Cobble Place 
 was busy getting ready for the wedding and Michael and 
 Alan had the countryside to themselves. Their chief 
 enterprise was the exploration of the sources of the stream 
 in a canoe and a fixed endeavor to reach Basingstead Major 
 by water. Early in the morning they would set out, well 
 equipped with scarlet cushions and butterfly-nets and poison- 
 bottles and sandwiches and stone bottles of ginger-beer 
 and various illustrated papers and Duke's Cameo cigarettes. 
 Michael now paid fivepence for ten instead of a penny for 
 five cigarettes; he also had a pipe of elegantly tenuous 
 shape, which was knocked out so often that it looked quite 
 old, although it was scarcely colored at all by tobacco smoke. 
 Nowadays he did not bother to chew highly scented sweets 
 after smoking, because Captain Ross smoked so much that 
 all the blame of suspicious odors could be laid on him. 
 
 Those were halcyon days on that swift Hampshire river. 
 Michael and Alan would have to paddle hard all the morn- 
 ing and scarcely make any progress against the stream. 
 Every opportunity to moor the canoe was taken advantage 
 of; and the number of Marsh Fritillaries that were sacri- 
 ficed to justify a landing in rich water-meadows was enor- 
 mous. 
 
 "Never mind," Michael used to say, "they'll do for 
 swaps." 
 
 Through the dazzling weather the kingfishers with wings 
 of blue fire would travel up and down the stream. The 
 harvest was at its height and in unseen meadows sounded 
 the throb of the reaper and binder, while close at hand above
 
 188 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 the splash and gurgle of the rhythmic paddles could be 
 heard the munching of cattle. To left and right of the 
 urgent boat darted the silver companies of dace, and deep 
 in brown embayed pools swam the fat nebulous forms of 
 chub. Sometimes the stream, narrowing where a large 
 tree-trunk had fallen, gushed by their prow and called for 
 every muscle to stand out, for every inch to be fought, 
 for every blade of grass to be clutched before the canoe 
 won a way through. Sometimes the stream widened to 
 purling rapids and scarcely would even a canoe float upon 
 the diamonded rivulets and tumbling pebbles and silting 
 silver sand, so that Michael and Alan would have to dis- 
 embark and drag the boat to deeper water. Quickly the 
 morning went by, long before the source of the stream was 
 found, long before even the village of Basingstead Major 
 was reached. Some fathomless millpool would hold Michael 
 and Alan with its hollow waterfall and overarching trees 
 and gigantic pike. Here grew, dipping down to the water, 
 sprays of dewberries, and here, remote even from twittering 
 w^arblers and the distant harvest cries, Michael and Alan 
 drowsed away the afternoon. They scarcely spoke, for they 
 were too w^ell contented with the languorous weather. 
 Sometimes one of them would clothe a dream with a boy's 
 slang, and that was all. Then, when the harvesters had long 
 gone home and when the last cow was stalled, and when the 
 rabbits were scampering by the edge of the sloping wood- 
 lands, Michael and Alan would unmoor their canoe and glide 
 homeward with the stream. Through the deepening silence 
 their boat would swing soundlessly past the purple loosestrife 
 and the creamy meadowsweet, past the yellow loosestrife 
 and scented rushes and the misted blue banks of cranesbill, 
 past the fig^vort and the little yellow waterlilies, while 
 ahvays before their advance the voles plumped into the water 
 one by one and in hawthorn bushes the wings of roosting 
 birds fluttered. Around them on every side crept the mist
 
 PASTORAL 189 
 
 in whose silver muteness they landed to gather white 
 mushrooms. Home they would come drenched with dew^ 
 and arm in arm they would steal up the dusky garden to 
 the rose-red lamps and twinkling golden candlelight of 
 Cobble Place. 
 
 In the actual week before the wedding Michael and Alan 
 were kept far too busy to explore streams. They ran from 
 one end of Basingstead Minor to the other and back 
 about a dozen times a day. They left instructions with 
 various old ladies in the village at whose cottages guests were 
 staying. They carried complicated floral messages from 
 Mrs. Carthew to the Vicar and equally complicated floral 
 replies from the Vicar to Mrs. Carthew. They were allowed 
 to drive the aged dun pony to meet Mr. and Mrs. Merivale 
 on the day before the wedding and had great jokes with Mr. 
 Merivale because he would say that it was an underdone 
 pony and because he would not believe that dun was spelt 
 d-u-n. As for the wedding-day itself, it was for Michael 
 and Alan one long message interrupted only by an argument 
 with the cook with regard to the amount of rice they had 
 a right to take. 
 
 Michael felt very shy at the reception and managed to 
 avoid calling Miss Carthew Mrs. Ross; although Alan dis- 
 tinctly addressed her once with great boldness as Aunt 
 Maud, for which he was violently punched in the ribs by 
 Michael, as with stifled laughter they both rushed headlong 
 from the room. However, they came back to hear old Major 
 Carthew proposing the bride and bridegroom's health and 
 plunged themselves into a corner with handkerchiefs stuffed 
 into their mouths to listen to Captain Ross stammer an em- 
 barrassed reply. They were both much relieved when 
 Mr. Merivale by a series of the most atrocious puns allowed 
 their laughter to flow forth without restraint. All the guests 
 went back to London later in the afternoon and Michael and 
 Alan were left to the supervision of Nancy, who had
 
 I90 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 promised to take them out for a day's shooting. They had 
 a wonderful day over the flickering September stubble. 
 Michael shot a lark by mistake and Alan wounded a land- 
 rail; Nancy, however, redeemed the party's credit by 
 bagging three brace of fat French partridges which, when 
 eaten, tasted like pigeons, because the boys could not bear 
 to wait for them to be hung even for two hours. 
 
 Michael had a conversation with Mrs. Carthew one after- 
 noon, while they paced slowly and regularly the gay path 
 beside the sunny red wall of the garden. 
 
 ''Well, how do you like school now?" she asked. 'Dear 
 me, I must say you're greatly improved," she went on. 
 "Really, when you came here five years ago, you were 
 much too delicate-looking." 
 
 Michael kicked the gravel and tried to turn the trend 
 of the conversation by admiring the plums on the wall, 
 but Mrs. Carthew went on. 
 
 "Now you really look quite a boy. You and Alan both 
 slouch abominably, and I cannot think why boys always 
 w^alk on one side of their boots. I must say I do not like 
 delicate boys. My own boy w^as always such a boy." Mrs. 
 Carthew sighed and Michael looked very solemn. 
 
 "Well, do you like school?" she asked. 
 
 "I like holidays better,'* answered Michael. 
 
 "I'm delighted to hear it," Mrs. Carthew said decidedly. 
 
 "I thought last year was beastly," said Michael. "You 
 see I was a boarder and that's rot, if you were a day-boy 
 ever, at least I think so. Alan and me are in the same form 
 next term. We're going to have a most frightful spree. 
 We're going to do everything together. I expect school 
 won't be half bad then." 
 
 "Your mother's going to be at home, isn't she?" Mrs. 
 Carthew inquired. 
 
 "Yes. Rather," said Michael. "It will be awfully rum. 
 She's always away, you know. I wonder why."
 
 PASTORAL 191 
 
 "I expect she likes traveling about," said Mrs. Carthew. 
 
 "Yes, I expect she does," Michael agreed. ''But don't 
 you think it's very rum that I haven't got any uncles or 
 aunts or any relations? I do. I never meet people w^ho 
 say they knew my father like Alan does and like Miss — 
 like Mrs. Ross does. Once I went with my mater to see 
 an awfully decent chap called Lord Saxby and my name's 
 Saxby. Do you think he's a relation? I asked the mater, 
 but she said something about not asking silly questions." 
 
 "Humph!" said Mrs. Carthew, as she adjusted her 
 spectacles to examine an espalier of favorite peaches. "I 
 think you'll have to be very good to your mother," she con- 
 tinued after a minute's silence. 
 
 "Oh, rather," assented Michael vaguely. 
 
 "You must always remember that you have a particular 
 responsibility, as you will be alone with her for a long time, 
 and, no doubt, she has given up a great deal of what she most 
 enjoys in order to stay with you. So don't think only of 
 yourself." 
 
 "Oh, rather not," said Michael. 
 
 In his heart he felt while Mrs. Carthew was speaking 
 a sense of remote anxiety. He could not understand why, 
 as soon as he asked any direct questions, mystery enveloped 
 his world. He had grown used to this in Miss Carthew's 
 case, but Mrs. Carthew was just as unapproachable. He 
 began to wonder if there really were some mystery about 
 himself. He knew the habit among grown-up people of 
 wrapping everything in a veil of uncertainty, but in his case 
 it was so universally adopted that he began to be suspicious 
 and determined to question his mother relentlessly, to lay 
 conversational traps for her and thereby gain bit by bit the 
 details of his situation. He was older now and had already 
 heard such rumors of the real life of the world that a 
 chimera of unpleasant possibilities was rapidly forming. 
 Left alone, he began to speculate perpetually about himself.
 
 192 YQUTH^S ENCOUNTER 
 
 to brood over anxious guesses. Perhaps his father was in 
 prison and not dead at all. Perhaps his father was in a 
 lunatic asylum. Perhaps he himself had been a foundling 
 laid on the doorstep long ago, belonging neither to his mother 
 nor to anyone else. He racked his brain for light from the 
 past to be shed upon his present perplexity, but he could 
 recall no flaw in the care with which his ignorance had been 
 cherished. 
 
 When Michael reached Carlington Road on a fine Sep- 
 tember afternoon and saw the window-boxes of crimson 
 and w^hite petunias and the sunlight streaming down upon 
 the red-brick houses, he was glad to be home again in familiar 
 Sixty-four. Inside it had all been repapered and repainted. 
 Every room was much more beautiful and his mother was 
 glad to see him. She took him round all the new rooms and 
 hugged him close and was her slim and lovely self again. 
 Actually, among many surprises, Michael was to have the 
 old gloomy morning-room for himself and his friends. It 
 looked altogether different now in the checkered sunlight 
 of the plane tree. The walls had been papered with scenes 
 from cowboy life. There were new cupboards and shelves 
 full of new books and an asbestos gas fire. There were 
 some jolly chairs and a small desk which almost invited one 
 to compose iambics. 
 
 "Can I really have chaps to tea every Saturday?" Michael 
 asked, stupefied with pleasure. 
 
 "Whenever you like, dearest boy." 
 
 "By Jove, how horribly decent," said Michael.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 BOYHOOD'S GLORY 
 
 WHEN at the beginning of term a melancholy- 
 senior boy, meeting Michael in one of the corri- 
 dors during the actual excitement of the move, 
 asked him what form he was going into and heard he was 
 on the road to Caryll's, this boy sighed, and exclaimed: 
 
 "Lucky young devil." 
 
 "Why?" asked Michael, pushing his way through the 
 diversely flowing streams of boys who carried household 
 gods to new class-rooms. 
 
 "Why, haven't you ever heard old Caryll is the greatest 
 topper that ever walked?" 
 
 "I've heard he's rather a decent sort." 
 
 "Chaps have said to me — chaps who've left, I mean," 
 explained the lantern-jawed adviser, "that the year with 
 Caryll is the best year of all your life." 
 
 Michael looked incredulous. 
 
 "You won't think so," prophesied Lantern-jaws gloomily. 
 "Of course you won't." Then, with a sigh that was audible 
 above the shuffling feet along the corridors, he turned to 
 enter a mathematical class-room where Michael caught a 
 glimpse of trigonometrical mysteries upon a blackboard, as he 
 himself hurried by with his armful of books toward Caryll's 
 class-room. He hoped Alan had bagged two desks next to 
 each other in the back row; but unfortunately this scheme 
 was upset by Mr. Caryll's proposal that the Upper 
 
 193
 
 194 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 Fourth A should for the present sit in alphabetical order. 
 There was only one unit between Michael and Alan, a 
 persevering and freckled Jew called Levy, whose life was 
 made a burden to him in consequence of his interposition. 
 
 Mr. Caryll was an old clergyman reputed in school 
 traditions to be verging on ninety. Michael scarcely thought 
 he could be so old, when he saw him walking to school with 
 rapid little steps and a back as straight and soldierly as 
 General Mace's. Mr. Caryll had many idiosyncrasies, 
 among others a rasping cough which punctuated all his 
 sentences and a curious habit of combining three pairs of 
 spectacles according to his distance from the object in 
 view. Nobody ever discovered the exact range of these 
 spectacles; but, to reckon broadly, three pairs at once 
 were necessary for an exercise on the desk before him 
 and for the antics of the back row of desks only one. 
 Mr. Caryll was so deaf that the loudest turmoil in 
 the back row reached him in the form of a whisper 
 that made him intensely suspicious of cribbing; but, as 
 he could never remember where any boy was sitting, by 
 the time he had put on or taken off one of his pairs of glasses, 
 the noise had opportunity to subside and the authors were 
 able to compose their countenances for the sharp scrutiny 
 which followed. Mr. Caryll always expected every pupil 
 to cheat and invented various stratagems to prevent this 
 vice. In a temper he was apparently the most cynical of 
 men, but as his temper never lasted long enough for him 
 to focus his vision upon the suspected person, he was in 
 practice the blandest and most amiable of old gentlemen. 
 He could never resist even the most obvious joke, and his 
 form pandered shamelessly to this fondness of his, so that, 
 when he made a pun, they would rock with laughter, stamp 
 their feet on the floor and bang the lids of their desks to 
 express their appreciation. This hullabaloo, which reached 
 Mr. Caryll in the guise of a mild titter, affording him the
 
 BOYHOOD'S GLORY 195 
 
 utmost satisfaction, could be heard even in distant class- 
 rooms, and sometimes serious mathematical masters in the 
 throes of algebra would send polite messages to beg Mr. 
 Caryll kindly to keep his class more quiet. 
 
 Michael and Alan often enjoyed themselves boundlessly 
 in Mr. Caryll's form. Sometimes they would deliberately 
 misconstrue Cicero to beget a joke, as when Michael 
 translated "abjectique homines" by "cast-off men" to 
 afford Mr. Caryll the chance of saying, "Tut-tut. 
 The great booby's thinking of his cast-off clothing." 
 Michael and Alan used to ask for leave to light the 
 gas on foggy afternoons, and with an imitation of Mr. 
 Caryll's rasping cough they would manage to extinguish 
 one by one a whole box of matches to the immense 
 entertainment of the Upper Fourth A. They dug pens 
 into the diligent Levy; they stuck the lid of his desk with 
 a row of thin gelatin lozenges in order that, when after 
 a struggle he managed to open it, the lid should fly up and 
 hit him a blow on the chin. They loosed blackbeetles in 
 the middle of Greek Testament and pretended to be very 
 much afraid while Mr. Caryll stamped upon them one 
 by one, deriding their cowardice. They threw paper darts 
 and paper pellets with unerring aim; they put drawing- 
 pins in the seat of a fat and industrious German called 
 Wertheim; they filled up all the ink-pots in the form with 
 blotting-paper and crossed every single nib. They played 
 xylophonic tunes with penholders on the desk's edge and 
 carved their initials inside; they wrote their names in ink 
 and made the inscription permanent by rubbing it over with 
 blotting-paper. They were seized with sudden and un- 
 accountable fits of bleeding from the nose to gain a short 
 Exeat to stand in the fresh air by the Fives Courts. They 
 built up ramparts of dictionaries in the forefront of their 
 desks to play noughts and crosses without detection; they 
 soaked with ink all the chalk for the blackboard and divested
 
 196 YOUTH^S ENCOUNTER 
 
 Levy of his boots which they passed round the form during 
 "rep"; they made elaborate jointed rods with foolscap 
 to prod otherwise unassailable boys at the other end of the 
 room and when, during the argument which followed the 
 mutual correction by desk-neighbors of Mr. Caryll's 
 weekly examination paper, they observed an earnest group 
 of questioners gathered round the master's dais, they would 
 charge into them from behind so violently that the front 
 row, generally consisting of the more eager and laborious 
 boys, was precipitated against Mr. Caryll's chair to the 
 confusion of labor and eagerness. Retribution followed 
 very seldom in the shape of impots; and even they were 
 soon done by means of an elaborate arrangement by which 
 six pens lashed together did six times the work of one. 
 Sometimes Michael or Alan would be invited to move their 
 desks out close to Mr. Caryll's dais of authority for a week's 
 disgrace; but even this punishment included as compensa- 
 tion a position of facing the class and therefore the oppor- 
 tunity to play the buffoon for its benefit. Sometimes 
 Michael or Alan would be ejected with vituperation from 
 the classroom to spend an hour in the corridor without. 
 Unfortunately they were never ejected together, and 
 anyway it was an uneasy experience on account of Dr. 
 Brownjohn's habit of swinging round a corner and demand- 
 ing a reason for the discovery of a loiterer in the corridor. 
 The first time he appeared, it w^as always possible by assum- 
 ing an air of intentness and by walking toward him very 
 quickly to convey the impression of one upon an urgent 
 errand; but when Dr. Brownjohn loomed on his return 
 journey, it was necessary to evade his savage glance by creep- 
 ing round the great cast of the Antlnous that fronted the 
 corridor. On one of these occasions Michael in his nervous- 
 ness shook the statue and an Insecurely dependent fig-leaf 
 fell with a crash onto the floor. Michael nearly flung 
 himself over the well of the main staircase In horror, but
 
 BOYHOOD'S GLORY 197 
 
 deaf Dr. Brownjohn swung past into a gloom beyond, and 
 presently Michael was relieved by the grinning face of a 
 compatriot beckoning permission to reenter the class- 
 room. Safely inside, the fall of the fig-leaf was made out 
 by Michael to be an act of deliberate daring on his part, 
 and when at one o'clock the form rushed out to verify the 
 boast his position was tremendously enhanced. The news 
 flew round the school, and several senior boys were observed 
 in conversation with Michael, so that he was able to swagger 
 considerably. Also he turned up his trousers a full two 
 inches higher and parted his hair on the right-hand side, 
 a mode which had long attracted his ambition. 
 
 Now, indeed, were Michael and Alan in the zenith of 
 boyhood's glory. No longer did they creep diffidently 
 down the corridors; no longer did they dread to run the 
 gauntlet of a Modern class lined up on either side to await 
 the form-master's appearance. If some louts in the Modern 
 Fourth dared to push them from side to side, as they went 
 by, Michael and Alan would begin to fight and would 
 shout, "You stinking Modern beasts! Classics to the 
 rescue!" To their rescue would pour the heroes of the 
 Upper Fourth A. Down went the Modern textbooks of 
 Chemistry and Physics, and ignominiously were they hacked 
 along the corridor. Doubled up by a swinging blow from 
 a bag stood the leader of the Moderns, grunting and gasping 
 in his windless agony. Back to the serenity of Virgilian airs 
 went the Upper Fourth A, with Michael and Alan arm in 
 arm amid their escort, and most dejectedly did the Modern 
 cads gather up their scientific textbooks; but during the 
 "quarter" great was the battle waged on the "gravel" — 
 that haunt of thumb-biting, acrimonious and uneasy 
 factions. Michael and Alan were not yet troubled with the 
 fevers of adolescence. They were cool and clear and joyous 
 as the mountain torrent; for them life was a crystal of 
 laughter, many-faceted to adventure. Theirs was now
 
 198 YOUTITS ENCOUNTER 
 
 that sexless interlude before the Eton collar gave way to 
 the "stick up" and before the Eton jacket, trim and jaunty, 
 was discarded for an ill-fitting suit that imitated the dull 
 garb of a man. No longer were Michael and Alan grubby 
 and inky; no longer did they fill their pockets with an 
 agglomeration of messes; no longer did their hair sprout 
 in bister sparseness, for now Michael and Alan were vain 
 of the golden lights and chestnut shadows, not because 
 girls mattered, but because like Narcissus they perceived 
 themselves in the mirror of popular admiration. Now they 
 affected very light trousers and very broad collars and shoes 
 and unwrinkling socks and cuffs that gleamed very white. 
 They looked back with detestation upon the excesses of 
 costume induced by the quadruple intrigue, and they con- 
 gratulated themselves that no one of importance had beheld 
 their lapse. 
 
 Michael and Alan w^ere lords of Little Side football 
 and in their treatment of the underlings stretched the pre- 
 rogatives of greatness to the limit. They swaggered onto 
 the field of play, where in combination on the left wing 
 they brought off feats of astonishing swiftness and agility. 
 Michael used to watch Alan seeming very fair in his black 
 vest and poised eagerly for the ball to swing out from the 
 half-back. Alan would take the spinning pass and bound 
 forward into the stink-stained Modern juniors or embryo 
 subalterns of Army C. The clumsiest of them would 
 receive Alan's delicate hand full in his face and, as with 
 revengeful mutter ings the enemy bore down upon him, 
 Alan would pass the ball to Michael, who with all his speed 
 would gallop along the touch-line and score a try in the 
 corner. Members of Big Side marked Michael and Alan as 
 the two most promising three-quarters for Middle Side 
 next year, and when the bell sounded at twenty minutes to 
 three the members of Big Side w^ould walk with Michael 
 and Alan toward the changing-room and encourage them
 
 BOYHOOD'S GLORY 199 
 
 by flattery and genial ragging. In the lavatory, Michael 
 and Alan would souse with water all the kids in reach, and 
 the kids would be duly grateful for so much acknowledg- 
 ment of their existence from these stripling gods. In the 
 changing-room they would pleasantly fling the disordered 
 clothes of trespassers near their sacred places on to the floor 
 or kick the caps of Second-Form boys to the dusty tops of 
 lockers, and then, just as the clock was hard on three, they 
 would saunter up the School steps and along the corridor 
 to their classroom, where they would yawn their way 
 through Cicero's prosy defence of Milo or his fourth denun- 
 ciation of Catiline. 
 
 At home Michael much enjoyed his mother's company, 
 although he was now in the cold dawn of affection for any- 
 thing save Alan. He no longer was shocked by his mother's 
 solicitude or demonstrativeness, fearful of offending 
 against the rigid standards of the private school or the uncer- 
 tain position of a new boy at a public school. He yielded 
 gracefully to his mother's pleasure in his company out of 
 a mixture of politeness and condescension; but he always 
 felt that, when he gave up for an hour the joys of the world 
 for the cloister of domesticity, he was conferring a favor: 
 At this period nothing troubled him at all save his position 
 in the School and the necessity to spend every available 
 minute with Alan. The uncertainty of his father's position 
 which had from time to time troubled him was allayed by 
 the zest of existence, and he never bothered to question 
 his mother at all pertinaciously. In every way he was 
 making a pleasant pause in his life to enjoy the new emotion 
 of self-confidence, his distinction in football, his popularity 
 with contemporaries and seniors and his passion for the 
 absolute identification of Alan's behavior with his and his 
 own with Alan's. At home every circumstance fostered this 
 attitude. Alone with his mother, Michael was singularly 
 free to do as he liked and he could always produce from
 
 200 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 the past precedents which she was unable to controvert for 
 any whim he wished to establish as a custom. In any case, 
 Mrs. Fane seemed to enjoy spoiling him, and Michael was 
 no longer averse to her praise of his good looks and to 
 the pleasure she expressed in the company of Alan and him- 
 self at a concert or matinee. Another reason for Michael's 
 nonchalant happiness was his normality. Nowadays he 
 looked at himself in the old wardrobe that once had power 
 to terrify him with nocturnal creakings, and no longer 
 did he deplore his thin arms and legs, no longer did he mark 
 the diffidence of the sensitive small boy. Now he could at 
 last congratulate himself upon his ability to hold his own 
 with any of his equals whether with tongue or fist. Now, 
 too, when he went to bed, he went to bed as serenely as a 
 kitten, curling himself up to dream of sport with mice. 
 Sometimes Alan on Friday night would accompany him to 
 spend the week-end at Carlington Road and, when he did 
 so, the neighborhood w^as not allowed to be oblivious of 
 the event. In the autumnal dusk Michael and he would 
 practice drop-kicks and high punts in the middle of the 
 street, until the ball had landed twice in two minutes on 
 the same balcony to the great annoyance of the "skivvy," 
 who was with debonair assurance invited to bung it down 
 for a mere lordly "thank you" from the offenders. Some- 
 times the ball would early in the afternoon strike a sun- 
 flamed window, and with exquisite laughter Michael and 
 Alan would retreat to Number 64, until the alarmed lady 
 of the house was quietly within her own doors again. 
 Another pleasant diversion with a football was to take 
 drop-kicks from close quarters at the backs of errand-boys, 
 especially on wet days when the ball left a spheroid of mud 
 where it struck the body. 
 
 "Yah, you think yourselves — funny," the errand-boy 
 would growl. 
 
 "We do. Oh, rather," Michael and Alan would reply
 
 BOYHOOD^S GLORY 201 
 
 and with smiling indifference defeat their target still more 
 unutterably. 
 
 When dusk turned to night, Michael and Alan would 
 wonder what to do and, after making themselves unbearable 
 in the kitchen, they would sally out into the back-garden 
 and execute some devilry at the expense of neighbors. 
 They would walk along the boundary walks of the succedent 
 oblongs of garden that ran the w^hole length of the road; 
 and it was a poor evening's sport which produced no fun 
 anj^'here. Sometimes they would detect, white in the 
 darkness, a fox-terrier, whereat they would miaow and rustle 
 the poplar trees and reduce the dog to a state of hysterical 
 yapping which would be echoed in various keys by every 
 dog within earshot. Sometimes they would observe a 
 lighted kitchen with an unsuspicious cook hard at work 
 upon the dinner, meditating perhaps upon a jelly or flavor- 
 ing anxiously the soup. Then if the window were open 
 Michael and Alan would take pot-shots at the dish with 
 blobs of mould or creep down into the basement, if the 
 window were shut, and groan and howl to the cook's pallid 
 dismay and to the great detriment of her family's dinner. 
 In other gardens they would fling explosive ''slap-bangs" 
 against the wall of the house or fire a gunpowder train or 
 throw gravel up to a lighted bath-room window. There 
 was always some amusement to be gained at a neighbor's 
 expense between six and seven o'clock, at w^hich latter hour 
 they w^ould creep demurely home and dress for dinner, 
 the only stipulation Mrs. Fane made with Michael in ex- 
 change for leave to ask Alan to stay with him. 
 
 At dinner, in the orange glow of the dining-room, Michael 
 and Alan would be completely charming and very conver- 
 sational, as they told Mrs. Fane how they rotted old Caryll 
 or ragged young Levy or scored two tries that afternoon. 
 Mrs. Fane would seem to be much interested and make the 
 most amusing mistakes and keep her son and her guest in an 
 14
 
 202 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 ecstatic risibility. After dinner they would sit for a while in 
 the perfumed drawing-room, making themselves agreeable 
 and useful by fetching Mrs. Fane's novel or blotting-pad 
 or correspondence, or by pulling up an armchair or by 
 extricating a footstool and drawing close the curtains. 
 Then Michael and Alan would be inclined to fidget, until 
 Michael announced it was time to go and swat. Mrs. 
 Fane would smile exquisitely and say how glad she was they 
 did not avoid their home w^ork and remind them to come and 
 say good night at ten o'clock sharp. Encouraged by Mrs. 
 Fane's gracious dismissal, Michael and Alan would plunge 
 into the basement and gain the sanctity of Michael's own 
 room. They w^ould elaborately lay the table for work, 
 spreading out foolscap and notebooks and Cicero Pro 
 Milone and Cicero In Catilinam and Thucydides IV and 
 the green-backed Ion of Euripides. They would make ex- 
 haustive researches into the amount of work set to be 
 show^n up on Monday morning, and with a sigh they would 
 seat themselves to begin. First of all the Greek Testament 
 w^ould be postponed until Sunday as a more appropriate 
 day, and then Michael would feel an overpowering desire 
 to smoke one cigarette before they began. This cigarette 
 had to be smoked close to the open window, so that the smoke 
 could be puffed outside into the raw autumnal air, w^hile 
 Alan kept *'cave," rushing to the door to listen at the slight- 
 est rumor of disturbance. When the cigarette was finished, 
 they would contemplate for a long time the work in front 
 of them, and then Michael would say he thought it rather 
 stupid to swat on Friday night with all Saturday and Sunday 
 before them, and who did Alan think was the better half- 
 back — Rawson or Wilding? This question led to a long 
 argument before Raw^son was adjudged to be the better 
 of the two. Then Alan would bet Michael he could not 
 write down from memory the Nottinghamshire cricket team, 
 and Michael w^ould express his firm conviction that Alan
 
 BOYHOOD'S GLORY 203 
 
 could not possibly name the winners of the Oxford and 
 Cambridge quarter-mile for the last three years. Finally 
 they would both recur to the problem ever present, the 
 best way to obtain two bicycles and, what was more impor- 
 tant, the firm they would ultimately honor with their 
 patronage. The respective merits of the Humber, the 
 Rover, the Premier, the Quadrant, the Swift and the 
 Sunbeam created a battleground for various opinions, 
 and, as for the tires, it seemed impossible to decide between 
 Palmers, Clinchers and Dunlops. In the middle of the dis- 
 cussion, the clock in the passage would strike ten, at which 
 Michael and Allan would yawn and dawdle their way up- 
 stairs. Perhaps the bicycle problem had a wearing effect, 
 for Mrs. Fane would remark on their faded appearance 
 and hope they were not working too hard. Michael and 
 Allan would look particularly conscious of their virtue 
 and admit they had had a very tiring week, what with foot- 
 ball and Cicero and quadratic equations; and so after 
 affectionate good nights they would saunter up to bed. 
 Upstairs, they would lean out of the bedroom window 
 and watch the golden trains go by, and ponder the changing 
 emeralds and rubies of the signal-box farther along the line ; 
 then after trying to soak a shadowy tomcat down below 
 with water from the toilet-jug Michael and Alan would 
 undress. 
 
 In the darkness Michael and Alan would lie side by side 
 secure in a companionship of dreams. They murmured 
 now their truly intimate thoughts; they spoke of their hopes 
 and ambitions, of the army with its glories of rank and 
 adventure, of the woods and forests of India, of treasure 
 on coral islands and fortunes in the canons of the West. 
 They spoke of the School Fifteen and of Alan's probable 
 captaincy of it one day; they discussed the Upper Sixth 
 with its legend of profound erudition; they wondered if 
 it would be worth while for Michael to swat and be Captain
 
 204 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 of the School. They talked again of bicycles and decided 
 to make an united effort to secure them this ensuing Christ- 
 mas by compounding for one great gift any claims they 
 possessed on birthday presents later in the year. They 
 talked of love, and of the fools they had been to waste their 
 enthusiasm on Dora and Winnie. They made up their minds 
 to forswear the love of women with all its humiliations 
 and disappointments and futilities. Through life each would 
 be to the other enough. Girls would be forever an intru- 
 sion between such deathless and endeared friends as they 
 w^ere. Michael pointed out how awkward it would be if 
 he and Alan both loved the same girl and showed how it 
 w^ould ruin their twin lives and wreck their joint endeavor; 
 while Alan agreed it would be mad to risk a separation 
 for such froth of feminine attractiveness. The two of 
 them vowed in the darkness to stick always together, so that 
 whatever fate life held for either it should hold for both. 
 They swore fidelity to their friendship in the silence and 
 intimacy of the night; and when, rosy in the morning, 
 they stood up straightly in the pale London sunlight, 
 they did not regret the vows of the night, nor did they 
 blush for their devotion, since the world conjured a long 
 vista of them both arm in arm eternally, and in the imme- 
 diate present all the adventurous charm of a Saturday's 
 whole holiday. 
 
 If there was a First Fifteen match on the School ground, 
 Michael and Alan honored it with their attendance and 
 liked nothing so wtII as to elbow their way through a mob of 
 juniors in order to nod familiarly to a few members of the 
 Fifteen. The School team that year was not so successful 
 as its two predecessors, and Michael and Alan were often 
 compelled to voice their disdain to the intense disgust of 
 the juniors huddled about them. Sometimes they would 
 hear an irreverent murmur of "Hark at sidey Fane and 
 sidey Merivale," which would necessitate the punching of a
 
 BOYHOOD'S GLORY 205 
 
 number of heads to restore the disciplinary respect they 
 demanded. On days when the School team was absent 
 at Dulford or Tonbury or Haileybridge, Michael and Alan 
 would scornfully glance at the Second Fifteen's desolate 
 encounter with some other Second Fifteen, and vote that 
 such second-rate football was bally rot. On such occasions 
 the School ground used to seem too large and empty for 
 cheerfulness, and the two friends would saunter round 
 West Kensington on the chance of an adventure, ending 
 up the afternoon by laying out money on sweets or on the 
 fireworks now displayed in anticipation of the Fifth of 
 November. Saturday evening would be spent in annoying 
 the neighbors with squibs and Chinese crackers and jumping 
 crackers and tourbillons and maroons and Roman candles 
 and Bengal lights, while after dinner the elaborate prepara- 
 tions for home work would again be made with the same 
 inadequate result. 
 
 On Sunday Michael and Alan used to brush their top- 
 hats and button their gloves and tie their ties very carefully 
 and, armed with sticks of sobriety and distinction, swagger 
 to whatever church was fashionable among their friends. 
 During the service they w^ould wink to acquaintances 
 and nudge each other and sing very loudly and clearly 
 their favorite hymns, while through the dull hymns they 
 would criticise their friends' female relations. So the week 
 would fulfil its pleasant course until nine o'clock on Monday 
 morning, when Michael and Alan would run all the way to 
 school and in a fever of industry get through their home 
 work with the united assistance of the rest of the Upper 
 Fourth A, as one by one the diligent members arrived in 
 Hall for a few minutes' gossip before Prayers. During 
 Prayers, Michael and Alan would try to forecast by marking 
 off the full stops w^hat paragraph of Cicero they w^ould each 
 be called upon to construe; finally, when old Caryll named 
 Merivale to take up the oration's thread, Michael would
 
 2o6 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 hold the crib on his knees and over Levy's laborious back 
 Vi^hisper in the voice of a ghoul the meaning. 
 
 At Christmas, after interminable discussion and innumer- 
 able catalogs, the bicycles vi^ere bought, and in the Lent 
 term with its lengthening twilights Michael and Alan 
 devoted all their attention to bicycling, except in wet 
 weather, when they played Fives, bagging the covered 
 courts from small boys who had waited days for the chance 
 of playing in them. Michael, during the Lent term, often 
 rode back with Alan after School to spend the week-end 
 at Richmond, and few delights were so rare as that of 
 scorching over Barnes Common and down the Mortlake 
 Road with its gardens all a-blow with spring flowers and 
 on the other bank of the river over Kew, the great spring 
 skies keeping pace with their whirring wheels. 
 
 Yet best of all was the summer term, that glorious azure 
 summer term of fourteen and a half, which fled by in a 
 radiancy. Michael and Alan were still in the Upper Fourth 
 A under Mr. Caryll; they still fooled away the hours of 
 school, relying upon the charm of their joint personality 
 to allay the extreme penalty of being sent up to the Head- 
 master for incorrigible knavery. They were Captain and 
 Vice-Captain of the Classical Upper Fourth Second Eleven, 
 preferring the glory of leadership to an ambiguous position 
 in the tail of the First Eleven. Michael and Alan were in 
 their element during that sunburnt hour of cricket before 
 afternoon school. They wore white felt hats, and Michael 
 in one of his now rare flights of imagination thought that 
 Alan in his looked like Perseus in a Flaxman drawing. 
 Many turned to look at the two friends, as enlaced they 
 wandered across the "gravel" on their way to change out 
 of flannels, Michael nut-brown and Alan rose-bloomed like 
 a peach. 
 
 At five o'clock they would eat a rowdy tea in the School 
 tuckshop to the accompaniment of flying pellets of bun,
 
 BOYHOOD'S GLORY 207 
 
 after which they would change again for amber hours of 
 cricket, until the sun made the shadow of the stumps as 
 long as telegraph poles, and the great golden clock face in 
 the School buildings gleamed a late hour. They would 
 part from each other with regret to ride off in opposite 
 directions. Michael would linger on his journey home 
 through the mellow streets of Kensington, writing with his 
 bicycle wheels lazy parabolas and curves in the dust of each 
 quiet road. Twilight was not far off, the murmurous twi- 
 light of a London evening with its tranced lovers and wink- 
 ing stars and street-lamps and window-panes. More and 
 more slowly Michael would glide along, loth to desert the 
 dreaming populations of dusk. He would turn down unfre- 
 quented corners and sail by unfamiliar terraces, aware of 
 nothing but the languors of effortless motion. Time, passing 
 by in a sensuous oblivion, made Michael as much a part of 
 the nightfall as the midges that spun incessantly about 
 his progress. Then round a corner some night-breeze would 
 blow freshly in his face; he would suddenly realize it was 
 growing late and, pressing hard the pedals of his bicycle, he 
 would dart home, swift as a bird that crosses against the 
 dying glow of the sunset. 
 
 Michael's mother was always glad to see him and always 
 glad when he sat with her on the balcony outside the draw- 
 ing-room. If he had wanted to cross-examine her, he would 
 have found an easy witness, so tranquil and so benignant 
 that year was every night of June in London. But Michael 
 had for the time put aside all speculation and drugged 
 his imagination with animal exercise, allowing himself no 
 time to think of anything but the present. He was dimly 
 aware of trouble close at hand, when the terminal examina- 
 tions should betray his idleness; but it was impossible to 
 worry over what was now sheerly inevitable. This summer 
 term was perfect, and why should one consider ultimate 
 time? Even Stella's holidays from Germany had been
 
 2o8 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 postponed, as if there were a veritable conspiracy by cir- 
 cumstances to wave away the least element of disturbance. 
 Next Saturday he and Alan were going to spend the day 
 in Richmond Park; and w^hen it came in its course what a 
 day it was. The boys set out directly after breakfast 
 and walked through the pungent bracken, chasing the deer 
 and the dragonflies as if there were nothing to distinguish 
 them. Down streamed the sun from the blue July heavens; 
 but Michael and Alan clad in white went careless of the 
 heat. They walked over the grass uphill and ran down 
 through the cool dells of oak trees, down toward the glassy 
 ponds to play "ducks and drakes" in the flickering weather. 
 They stood by the intersecting carriage-roads and mocked 
 the perspiring travelers in their black garments. They 
 cared for nothing but being alive in Richmond Park on a 
 summer Saturday of London. At last, near a shadowy wood- 
 land, where the grasses grew very tall, Michael and Alan, 
 smothering the air with pollen, flung themselves down into 
 the fragrancy and, while the bees droned about them, slept 
 in the sun. Later in the afternoon, the two friends sat 
 on the Terrace among the old ladies and the old gentle- 
 men, and the nurserymaids and the children's hoops. Down 
 below the Thames sparkled in a deep green prospect of 
 England. An hour went by; the old ladies and the old gen- 
 tlemen and the nurser5'mards and the hoops faded away one 
 by one under the darkling trees. Down below, the Thames 
 threaded with shining curves a vast and elusive valley of 
 azure. The Thames died away to a sheen of dusky silver; 
 the azure deepened almost to indigo; lights flitted into ken 
 one by one; there traveled up from the river a sound of 
 singing, and somewhere in the houses behind a piano began 
 to tinkle. Michael suddenly became aware that the end of 
 the summer term was in sight. He shivered in the dewfall 
 and put his arm round Alan's neck affectionately and inti- 
 mately; only profound convention kept him from kissing
 
 BOYHOOD'S GLORY 209 
 
 his friend and by not doing so he felt vaguely that something 
 was absent from this perfection of dusk. Something in 
 Michael at that moment demanded emotional expression, 
 and from afternoon school of yesterday recurred to his mind 
 a note to some lines in the Sixth i^neid of Virgil. He re- 
 membered the lines, having by some accident learned his 
 repetition for that day: 
 
 Hue omnis turba ad ripas eifusa ruebat, 
 Matres atque viri defunctaque corpora vita 
 Magnanimum heroum, pueri innuptaeque puellae, 
 Impositique rogis juvenes ante ora parentum; 
 Quam multa in silvis auctumni frigore primo 
 Lapsa cadunt folia, aut ad terram gurgite ab alto 
 Quam mult^e glomerantur aves ubi frigidus annus 
 Trans pontum fugat et terris immittit apricis. 
 
 Compare, said the commentator, Milton, Paradise Lost, 
 Book L 
 
 Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks 
 In Vallombrosa. 
 
 As Michael mentally repeated the thunderous English 
 line, a surge of melancholy caught him up to overwhelm 
 his thoughts. In some way those words expressed what he 
 was feeling at this moment, so that he could gain relief 
 from the poignancy of his joy here in the darkness close 
 to Alan with the unfathomable valley of the Thames be- 
 neath, by saying over and over again: 
 
 Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks 
 In Vallombrosa. 
 
 "Damn, damn, damn, damn," cried Alan suddenly. 
 *'Exams on Monday! Damn, damn, damn, damn." 
 "I must go home and swat to-night," said Michael.
 
 210 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 "So must I," sighed Alan. 
 
 "Walk with me to the station," Michael asked. 
 
 "Oh, rather," replied Alan. 
 
 Soon Michael was jolting back to Kensington in a stuffy 
 carriage of hot Richmond merrymakers, while all the time 
 he sat in the corner, saying over and over again: 
 
 Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks 
 In Vallombrosa. 
 
 All Saturday night and all Sunday Michael worked breath- 
 lessly for those accursed examinations; but at the end of 
 them he and Alan were bracketed equal, very near the tail 
 of the Upper Fourth A. Dr. Brownjohn sent for each of 
 them in turn, and each of them found the interview very 
 trying. 
 
 "What do you mean by it.'*" roared the Headmaster 
 to Michael. "What do you mean by it, you young black- 
 guard? Um? Look at this list. Um? It's a contemp- 
 tible position for a Scholar. Down here with a lump of 
 rabbits' brains, you abominable little loafer. Um? If 
 you aren't in the first five boys of the Lower Fifth next 
 term, I'll kick you off the Foundation. What good are you 
 to the School? Um? None at all." 
 
 As Dr. Brownjohn bellowed forth this statement, his 
 mouth opened so wide that Michael instinctively shrank 
 back as if from a crater in eruption. 
 
 "You don't come here to swagger about," growled the 
 Headmaster. "You come here to be a credit to your school. 
 You pestilent young jackanapes, do you suppose I haven't 
 noticed your idleness! Um? I noticed everything. Get 
 out of my sight and take your hands out of your pockets, 
 you insolent little lubber. Um?" 
 
 Michael left the Headmaster's room with an expression 
 of tragic injury; in the corridor was a group of juniors.
 
 BOYHOOD'S GLORY 211 
 
 "What the devil are you kids hanging about here for?" 
 Michael demanded. 
 
 "All right, sidey Fane," they burbled. Michael dashed 
 into the group and grabbed a handful of caps which he 
 tossed into the dusty complications of the Laocoon. To 
 their lamentations he responded by thrusting his hands 
 deep down into his pockets and whistling, "Little Dolly 
 Daydreams, pride of Idaho." The summer term would 
 be over in a few days, and Michael was sorry to say good- 
 bye to Alan, who was going to Norway with his father and 
 mother and would therefore not be available for the whole 
 of the holidays. Indeed, he was leaving two days before 
 School actually broke up. Michael was wretched without 
 Alan and brooded over the miseries of life that so soon 
 transcended the joys. On the last day of term he was 
 seized with an impulse to say good-bye to Mr. Caryll, 
 an impulse which he could not understand and was inclined 
 to deplore. However, it was too strong for his conventions, 
 and he loitered behind in the confusion of merry departures. 
 
 "Good-bye, sir," he said shyly. 
 
 Mr. Caryll took off two pairs of spectacles and examined 
 Michael through the remaining pair, rasping out the familiar 
 cough as he did so. 
 
 "Now, you great booby, what do you want?" he asked. 
 
 "Good-bye, sir," Michael said, more loudly. 
 
 "Oh, good-bye," said Mr. Caryll. "You've been a very 
 idle boy" — cough — cough — "and I" — cough — cough — "I 
 don't think I ever knew such an idle boy before." 
 
 "I've had a ripping time in your class, sir," said Michael. 
 
 "What do you mean?" — cough — cough — "are you trying 
 to be impudent?'* exclaimed Mr. Caryll, hastily putting 
 on a second pair of spectacles to cope with the situation. 
 
 "No, sir. I've enjoyed being in your class. I'm sorry 
 I was so low down in the list. Good-bye, sir." 
 
 Mr. Caryll seemed to realize at last that Michael was
 
 212 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 being sincerely complimentary, so he took of^ all the pairs 
 of spectacles and beamed at him with an expression of the 
 most profound benignity. 
 
 "Oh, well" — cough — cough — "we can't all be top" — 
 cough — cough — "but it's a pity you should be so very low 
 down" — cough — cough — "you're a Scholar too, which makes 
 it much worse. Never mind. Good boy at heart" — cough — 
 cough — "better luck in your next form" — cough — cough. 
 "Hope you'll enjoy yourself on your holidays." 
 
 "Good-bye, sir. Thanks awfully," said Michael. He 
 turned away from the well-loved class-room of old Caryll 
 that still echoed with the laughter of the Upper Fourth A. 
 
 "And don't work too hard" — cough — cough, was Mr. 
 Caryll's last joke. 
 
 In the corridor Michael caught up the lantern-jawed boy 
 who had prophesied this year's pleasure at the beginning 
 of last autumn. 
 
 "Just been saying good-bye to old Christmas," Michael 
 volunteered. 
 
 "He's a topper," said Lantern-jaws. "The best old boy 
 that ever lived. I wish I was going to be in his form again 
 next term." 
 
 "So do I," said Michael. "We had a clinking good time. 
 So long. Hope you'll have decent holidays." 
 
 "So long," said the lantern-jawed boy lugubriously, 
 dropping most of his mathematical books. "Same to you." 
 
 When Michael was at home he took a new volume of 
 Henty into the garden and began to read. Suddenly he 
 found he was bored by Henty. This knowledge shocked 
 him for the moment. Then he went indoors and put For 
 Name and Fame, or Through Afghan Passes back on the 
 shelf. He surveyed the row of Henty's books gleaming 
 with olivine edges, and presently he procured brown paper 
 and with Cook's assistance wrapped up the dozen odd vol- 
 umes. At the top he placed a slip of paper on which was
 
 BOYHOOD'S GLORY 213 
 
 written 'Tresented to the Boys' Library by C. M. S. Fane." 
 Michael was now in a perplexity for literary recreation 
 until he remembered Don Quixote. Soon he was deep in 
 that huge volume, out of the dull world of London among 
 the gorges and chasms and waterfalls of Castile. Boyhood's 
 zenith had been attained: Michael's imagination was 
 primed for strange emotions.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 INCENSE 
 
 STELLA came back from Germany less foreign-looking 
 than Michael expected, and he could take a certain 
 amount of pleasure in her company at Bournemouth. 
 For a time they were well matched, as they walked with 
 their mother under the pines. Once, as they passed a bunch 
 of old ladies on a seat, Stella said to Michael: 
 
 "Did you hear what those people said?" 
 
 Michael had not heard, so Stella whispered: 
 
 "They said, 'What good-looking children !' Shall we turn 
 back and walk by them again?" 
 
 "Whatever for?" Michael demanded. 
 
 "Oh, I don't know," said Stella, flapping the big violet 
 bows in her chestnut hair. "Only I like to hear people 
 talking about me. I think it's interesting. I always try to 
 hear what they say when I'm playing." 
 
 "Mother," Michael appealed, "don't you think Stella 
 ought not to be so horribly conceited? I do." 
 
 "Darling Stella," said Mrs. Fane, "I'm afraid people 
 spoil her. It isn't her fault." 
 
 "It must be her fault," argued Michael. 
 
 Michael remembered Miss Carthew's admonition not to 
 snub Stella, but he could not help feeling that Miss Carthew 
 herself would have disapproved of this open vanity. He 
 wished that Miss Carthew were not now Mrs. Ross and 
 far away in Edinburgh. He felt almost a responsibility with 
 regard to Stella, a highly moral sensation of knowing better 
 
 214
 
 INCENSE 215 
 
 the world and its pitfalls than she could. He feared for 
 the effect of its lure upon Stella and her vanity, and was 
 very anxious his sister should always comport herself with 
 credit to her only brother. In his mother's attitude Michael 
 seemed to discern a dangerous inclination not to trouble 
 about Stella's habit of thought. He resolved, when he and 
 Stella were alone together, to address his young sister seri- 
 ously. Stella's nonchalance alarmed him more and more 
 deeply as he began to look back at his own life and to survey 
 his wasted years. Michael felt he must convince Stella that 
 earnestness was her only chance. 
 
 "You're growing very fast, Michael," said his mother 
 one morning. "Really I think you're getting too big for 
 Etons." 
 
 Michael critically examined himself in his mother's toilet- 
 glass and had to admit that his sleeves looked short and 
 that his braces showed too easily under his waistcoat. The 
 fact that he could no longer survey his reflection calmly, 
 and that he dreaded to see Stella admire herself, showed him 
 something was wrong. 
 
 "Perhaps I'd better get a new suit," he suggested. 
 
 In his blue serge suit, wearing what the shops called a 
 Polo or Shakespeare collar, Michael felt more at ease, al- 
 though the sleeves were now as much too long as lately his 
 old sleeves were too short. The gravity of this new suit 
 confirmed his impression that age was stealing upon him 
 and made him the more inclined to lecture Stella. This 
 desire of his seemed to irritate his mother, who would 
 protest : 
 
 "Michael, do leave poor Stella alone. I can't think why 
 you've suddenly altered. One would think you'd got the 
 weight of the world on your shoulders." 
 
 "Like Atlas," commented Michael gloomily. 
 
 "I don't know who it's like," said Mrs. Fane. "But it's 
 very disagreeable for everybody round you."
 
 2i6 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 "Michael always thinks he knows about everything," 
 Stella put in spitefully. 
 
 *'Oh, shut up!" growled Michael. 
 
 He was beginning to feel that his mother admired Stella 
 more than himself, and the old jealousy of her returned. 
 He was often reproved for being untidy and, although he 
 was no longer inky and grubby, he did actually find that his 
 hair refused to grow neatly and that he was growing clumsy 
 both in manners and appearance. Stella always remained 
 cool and exasperatingly debonair under his rebukes, whereas 
 he felt himself growing hot and awkward. The old self- 
 consciousness had returned and with it two warts on his 
 finger and an intermittent spot on his chin. Also a down 
 was visible on his face that somehow blunted his profile 
 and made him more prone than ever to deprecate the habit 
 of admiring oneself in a looking-glass. He felt impelled to 
 untie Stella's violet bows whenever he caught her posing 
 before the mirror, and as the holidays advanced he and she 
 grew^ less and less well matched. The old worrying specu- 
 lation about his father returned, together with a wish that 
 his mother would not dress in such gay colors. Michael 
 admired her slimness and tallness, but he wished that men 
 would not turn round and stare at her as she passed them. 
 He used to stare back at the men with a set frowning face 
 and try to impress them with his distaste for their manners ; 
 but day by day he grew more miserable about his mother, 
 and would often seek to dissuade her from what he con- 
 sidered a too conspicuous hat or vivid ribbon. She used to 
 laugh and tell him that he was a regular old "provincial." 
 The opportunity for perfect confidence between Michael 
 and his mother seemed to have slipped by, and he found it 
 impossible now to make her talk about his father. To be 
 sure, she no longer tried to wave aside his inquiries; but 
 she did worse by answering "yes" or "no" to his questions
 
 INCENSE 217 
 
 according to her mood, never seeming to care whether she 
 contradicted a previous statement or not. 
 
 Once, Michael asked straight out w^hether his father w^as 
 in prison, and he was relieved when his mother rippled with 
 laughter and told him he was a stupid boy. At the same 
 time, since he had been positively assured his father was 
 dead, Michael felt that laughter, however convincing it 
 were, scarcely became a widow. 
 
 "I cannot think what has happened to you, Michael. 
 You were perfectly charming all last term and never seemed 
 to have a moment on your hands. Now you hang about the 
 house on these lovely fine days and mope and grumble. I 
 do wish you could enjoy yourself as you used to." 
 
 "Well, I've got no friends down here," Michael declared. 
 *'What is there to do? I'm sick of the band, and the niggers 
 are rotten, and Stella always wants to hang about on the 
 pier so that people can stare at her. I wish she'd go back 
 to her glorious Germany where everything is so wonderful." 
 
 "Why don't you read? You used to love reading," sug- 
 gested Mrs. Fane. 
 
 "Oh, read!" exclaimed Michael. "There's nothing to 
 read. I hate Henty. Always the same!" 
 
 "Well, I don't know anything about Henty, but there's 
 Scott and Dickens and " 
 
 "I've read all them, mother," Michael interrupted petu- 
 lantly. 
 
 "Well, why don't you ask Mrs. Rewins if you can borrow 
 a book from her, or I'll ask her, as you don't like going 
 downstairs." 
 
 Mrs. Rewins brought up an armful of books which 
 Michael examined dismally one by one. However, after 
 several gilded volumes of sermons and sentimental Sunday- 
 school prizes, he came across a tattered Newgate Calendar 
 and Roderick Random, both of which satisfied somewhat his 
 new craving for excitement. When he had finished these 
 15
 
 2i8 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 books, Mrs. Rewins invited him to explore the cupboard 
 in her warm kitchen, and here Michael found Peregrine 
 Pickle, Tom Jones, a volume of Bentley's Miscellany con- 
 taining the serial of Jack Sheppard by Harrison Ainsworth, 
 and What Every Woman of Forty-five Ought to Knov^r. 
 The last work upset him very much because he found it 
 unintelligible in parts, and v^^here it was intelligible ex- 
 tremely alarming. An instinct of shamefulness made him 
 conceal this book in a drawer, but he became very anxious 
 to find out exactly how old his mother was. She, however, 
 was more elusive on this point than he had ever known her, 
 and each elaborate trap failed, even the innocent production 
 of the table for ascertaining anybody's age in a blue six- 
 penny Encyclopaedia: still, the Encyclopaedia was not with- 
 out its entertainment, and the table of diseases at the end 
 was very instructive. Among the books which Michael had 
 mined down in Mrs. Rewins' kitchen was The Ingoldsby 
 Legends illustrated by Cruikshank. These he found very 
 enthralling, for though he was already acquainted with The 
 Jackdaw of Rheims, he now discovered many other poems 
 still more amusing, in many of which he came across with 
 pleasure quotations that he remembered to have heard used 
 with much effect by Mr. Neech in the Shell. The macabre 
 and ghostly lays did not affect him so much as the legends 
 of the saints. These he read earnestly as he read Don 
 Quixote, discerning less of laughter than of Gothic adven- 
 ture in their fantastic pages, while his brain was fired by the 
 heraldic pomps and ecclesiastical glories. 
 
 About this time he happened to pay a visit to Christ- 
 church Priory and by the vaulted airs of that sanctuary he 
 was greatly thrilled. The gargoyles and brasses and effigies 
 of dead knights called to him mysteriously, but the inappro- 
 priate juxtaposition of an early Victorian tomb shocked him 
 with a sense of sacrilege. He could not bear to contem- 
 plate the nautical trousers of the boy commemorated. Yet,
 
 INCENSE 219 
 
 simultaneously with his outraged decorum, he was attracted 
 to this tomb, as if he detected in that ingenuous boy posited 
 among sad cherubs some kinship with himself. 
 
 In bed that night Michael read The Ingoldsby Legends 
 in a fever of enjoyment, while the shadows waved about the 
 ceiling and walls of the seaside room in the vexed candle- 
 light. As yet the details of the poems did not gain their 
 full effect, because many of the words and references were 
 not understood. He felt that knowledge was necessary 
 before he could properly enjoy the color of these tales. 
 Michael had always been inclined to crystallize in one strong 
 figure of imagination his vague impressions. Two years 
 ago he had identified Mr. Neech with old prints, with Tom 
 Brown's Schooldays and with shelves of calf-bound books. 
 Now in retrospect he, without being able to explain his 
 reason to himself, identified Mr. Neech with that statue 
 of the trousered boy in Christchurch Priory, and not merely 
 Mr. Neech but even The Ingoldsby Legends as well. He 
 felt that they were both all wTong in the sanctified glooms 
 of the Middle Ages, and yet he rejoiced to behold them 
 there, as if somehow they were a pledge of historic con- 
 tinuity. Without the existence of the trousered boy Michael 
 would scarcely have believed in the reality of those stone 
 ladies and carved knights. The candlelight fluttered and 
 jigged in the seaside room, while Mr. Neech, The Ingoldsby 
 Legends and the oratories of Christchurch became more and 
 more hopelessly confused. Michael's excited brain was 
 formulating visions of immense cathedrals beneath whose 
 arches pattered continually the populations of old prints: 
 the tower of St. Mary's College, Oxford, rose, slim and 
 lovely, against the storm-wrack of a Dore sky : Don Quixote 
 tilted with knights-at-arms risen from the dead. Michael 
 himself was swept along in cavalcades toward the clouds 
 with Ivanhoe, Richard Coeur de Lion, Roderick Random 
 and half a dozen woodcut murderers from the Newgate
 
 220 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 Calendar. Then, just as the candlelight was gasping and 
 shimmering blue in the bowl of the candlestick, he fell 
 asleep. 
 
 In the sunshine of the next day, Michael almost won- 
 dered whether like someone in The Ingoldsby Legends he 
 had ridden with witches on a broomstick. All the cool 
 security of boyhood had left him; he was in a turmoil of 
 desire for an astounding experience. He almost asked him- 
 self what he wanted so dearly; and, as he pondered, out 
 of the past in a vision came the picture of himself staring 
 at the boy who walked beside the incense with a silver boat. 
 What did the Lay of St. Alois say? 
 
 This with his chasuble, this with his rosary. 
 This with his incense-pot holding his nose awry. 
 
 Michael felt a craving to go somewhere and smell that 
 powerful odor again. He remembered how the boy had put 
 out his tongue and he envied him such familiarity with 
 pomps and glories. 
 
 "Are there any High Churches in Bournemouth?" he 
 asked Mrs. Rewins. "Very high. Incense and all that, 
 you know." 
 
 Mrs. Rewins informed him there was one church so high 
 that some said it was practically "Roming Catholic." 
 
 "Where is it?" asked Michael, choking with excitement. 
 Yet he had never before wanted to go to church. In the 
 days of Nurse he had hated it. In the days of Miss 
 Carthew he had only found it endurable, if his friends were 
 present. He had loathed the rustle of many women dressed 
 in their best clothes. He had hated the throaty voices of 
 smooth-faced clergymen. He had despised the sleek choir- 
 boys smelling of yellow soap. Religion had been com- 
 pounded of Collects, Greek Testament, Offertory Bags, var- 
 nish, qualms for the safety of one's top-hat, the pleasure of
 
 INCENSE 221 
 
 an extra large hassock, ambition to be grown up and bend 
 over instead of kneeling down, the podgy feel of a Prayer 
 Book, and a profound disapproval that only Eton and Win- 
 chester among public schools were mentioned in its diapha- 
 nous fumbling pages. Now religion should be an adventure. 
 The feeling that he was embarking upon the unknown 
 made Michael particularly reticent, and he was afraid to 
 tell his mother that on Sunday morning he proposed to 
 attend the service at St. Bartholomew's, lest she might sug- 
 gest coming also. He did not want to be irritated by 
 Stella's affectations and conceit, nor did he wish to notice 
 various women turning round to study his mother's hat. 
 In the end Michael did not go on Sunday to the church 
 of his intention, because at the last moment he could not 
 brace himself to mumble an excuse. 
 
 Late on the afternoon of the following day Michael 
 walked through the gustiness of a swift-closing summer 
 toward St. Bartholomew's, where it stood facing a stretch 
 of sandy heather and twisted pine trees on the outskirts of 
 Bournemouth. The sky was stained infrequently with the 
 red of a lifeless sunset and, as Michael watched the desola- 
 tion of summer's retreat, he listened sadly to the sibilant 
 heather lisping against the flutes of the pines, while from 
 time to time the w^ind drummed against the buttresses and 
 boomed against the bulk of the church. Michael drew 
 near the west door, whose hinges and nails stood out unnat- 
 urally distinct in the last light of the sun. Abruptly on the 
 blowy eve the church-bell began to ring, and from various 
 roads Michael saw people approaching, their heads bent 
 against the gale. At length he made up his mind to follow 
 one of the groups through the churchyard and presently, 
 while the gate rattled behind him in the wind, he reached 
 the warm glooms within. As he took his seat and perceived 
 the altar loaded with flowers, dazzling with lighted candles, 
 he wondered why this should be so on a Monday night in
 
 222 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 August. The air was pungent with the smell of wax and 
 the stale perfume of incense on stone. The congregation 
 was scattered about in small groups and units, and the 
 vaulted silence was continually broken by coughs and sighs 
 and hollow footsteps. From the tower the bell rang in 
 slow monotone, while the wind whistled and moaned and 
 flapped and boomed as if, thought Michael, all the devils 
 in hell were trying to break into the holy building. The 
 windows were now scarcely luminous with the wan shadow 
 of daylight, and would indeed have been opaque as coal, 
 had the inside of the church been better lighted. But the 
 few wavering gas-jets in the nave made all seem dark save 
 where the chancel, empty and candlelit, shone and sparkled 
 in a radiancy. Something in Michael's attitude must have 
 made a young man sitting behind lean over and ask if he 
 w^anted a Prayer Book. Michael turned quickly to see a 
 lean and eager face. 
 
 "Yes, please. I left mine at home," he answered. 
 
 "Well, come and sit by me," said the young man. 
 
 Michael changed his place and the young man talked in 
 a low w^hisper, while the bell rang its monotone upon the 
 gusts which swept howling round the church. 
 
 "Solemn Evensong isn't until seven o'clock. It's our 
 patronal festival, St. Bartholomew's Day — you know. We 
 had a good Mass this morning. Every year we get more 
 people. Do you live in Bournemouth?" 
 
 "No," whispered Michael. "I'm just here for the holi- 
 days." 
 
 "What a pity," said the stranger. *'We do so want 
 servers — you know — decent-looking servers. Our boys are 
 so clumsy. It's not altogether their fault — the cassocks — 
 you know — they're only in two sizes. They trip up. I'm 
 the Ceremonarius, and I can tell you I have my work cut 
 out. Of course, I ought to have been helping to-night.
 
 INCENSE 223 
 
 But I wasn't sure I could get away from the Bank in time. 
 I hope Wilson — that's our second thurifer — won't go wrong 
 in the Magnificat. He usually does." 
 
 The bell stopped: there was a momentary hush for the 
 battling wind to moan louder than ever: then the organ 
 began to play and from the sacristy came the sound of a 
 chanted Amen. Choristers appeared, followed by t^vo or 
 three of the clerg\-, and when these had taken their places, 
 a second procession appeared with boys in scarlet and lace 
 and a tinkling censer and a priest in a robe of blood-red 
 velvet patterned with dull gold. 
 
 "That's the new cope," whispered the stranger. "Fine 
 work, isn't it?" 
 
 "Awfully decent," Michael whispered back. 
 
 "All I hope is the acolytes will remember to put out the 
 candles immediately after the Third Collect. It's so im- 
 portant," said the stranger. 
 
 "I expect they will," whispered Michael encouragingly. 
 
 Then the Office began, and Michael, waiting for a spir- 
 itual experience, communed that night with the saints of 
 God, as during the Magnificat his soul rose to divine glories 
 on the fumes of the aspiring incense. There was a quality 
 in the voices of the boys which expressed for him more 
 beautifully than the full Sunday choir could have done the 
 pathos of human praise and the purity of his own surrender 
 to Almighty God. The splendors of the ]VIagnificat died 
 away to a silence and one of the clergy stepped from his 
 place to read the Second Lesson. As he came down the 
 chancel steps, Michael's new friend whispered: 
 
 "The censing of the altar w^as all right. It's really a 
 good thing sometimes to be a spectator — you know — one 
 sees more." 
 
 Michael nodded a vague assent. Already the voice of 
 the lector was vibrating through the church.
 
 224 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn towards 
 the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and 
 the other Mary to see the sepulchre. 
 
 Michael thought to himself how^ he had come to St. Bar- 
 tholomew's when Sunday was over. That was strange. 
 
 His countenance was like lightning and his raiment 
 white as snow: and for fear of him the keepers did 
 shake, and became as dead men. 
 
 "I wish that boy Wiggins wouldn't fidget with his 
 zuchetto," Michael's friend observed. 
 
 And behold, he goeth before you into Galilee; there 
 shall ye see him: lo, I have told you. 
 
 Michael felt an impulse to sob, as he mentally offered the 
 best of himself to the worship of Christ, for the words of 
 the lesson were striking on his soul like bells. 
 
 And when they saw him, they worshiped him: but 
 some doubted. 
 
 "Now you see the other boy has started fidgeting with 
 his,'' complained the young man. 
 
 And, lo, I am v/ith you alway, even unto the end of 
 the world. Amen. 
 
 As the lector's retreating footsteps died away into the 
 choir, the words were burned on Michael's heart, and for 
 the first time he sang the Nunc Dimittis with a sense of the 
 privilege of personally addressing Almighty God. When 
 the Creed was chanted, Michael uttered his belief passion- 
 ately, and w^hile the Third Collect was being read between 
 the exalted candles of the acolytes he wondered why never 
 before had the words struck him with all their power 
 against the fears and fevers of the night.
 
 INCENSE 225 
 
 Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord; and 
 by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers 
 of this night, for the love of thy only Son, our Saviour, 
 Jesus Christ. Amen. 
 
 The acolytes lowered their candles to extinguish them: 
 then they darkened the altar while the hymn was being sung, 
 and Michael's friend gave a sigh of relief. 
 
 ''Perfectly all right," he whispered. 
 
 Michael himself was sorry to see the gradual extinction 
 of the altar-lights; he had concentrated upon that radiance 
 his new desire of adoration and a momentary chill fell upon 
 him, as if the fiends without were gaining strength and fury. 
 All dread and doubt was allayed when, after the murmured 
 Grace of Our Lord, the congregation and the choir and the 
 officiant knelt in a silent prayer. The wind still shrieked 
 and thundered: the gas-jets w^aved uneasily above the hud- 
 idled forms of the worshipers: but over all that incense- 
 clouded gloom lay a spirit of tranquillity. Michael said 
 the Our Father to himself and allowed his whole being to 
 expand in a warmth of surrender. The purification of 
 sincere prayer, voiced more by his attitude of mind than by 
 any spoken w^ord, made him infinitely at peace with life. 
 
 When the choir and clergy had filed out and the sacristan 
 like an old rook came limping down the aisle to usher the 
 congregation forth into the dark wind of Bartlemy-tide, 
 Michael's friend said: 
 
 ''Wait just a minute. I want to speak to Father Money- 
 penny for a moment, and then we can walk back together." 
 
 Michael nodded, and presently his friend came back from 
 the sacristy with Father Moneypenny in cassock and biretta, 
 looking like the photographs of clergymen that Michael 
 remembered in Nurse's album long ago. 
 
 "So you enjoyed the Evensong?" inquired the priest. 
 "Capital! You must come to Mass next Sunday. There 
 will be a procession. By the way, Prout, perhaps your
 
 226 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 young friend would help us. We shall want extra torch- 
 boys." 
 
 Mr. Prout agreed, and Michael, although he wondered 
 what his mother would say, was greatly excited by the idea. 
 They were standing now by the door of the church, and as 
 it opened a gust of wind burst in and whistled round the 
 interior. Father Moneypenny shivered. 
 
 "What a night. The end of summer, I'm afraid." 
 
 He closed the door, and Michael and Mr. Prout forced 
 their way through the gale over the wet gravel of the 
 churchyard. The pine trees and the heather made a melan- 
 choly concert, and they were glad to reach the blown lamp- 
 light of the streets. 
 
 ''Will you come round to my place?" Mr. Prout asked. 
 
 "Well, I ought to go back. My mater will be anxious," 
 said Michael. 
 
 Mr. Prout thereupon invited him to come round to- 
 morrow afternoon. 
 
 "I shall be back from the Bank about five. Good night. 
 You've got my card? Bernard Prout, Esdraelon, Saxton 
 Road. Good night. Pleased to have met you." 
 
 Mrs. Fane was surprised to hear of Michael's visit to St. 
 Bartholomew's. 
 
 "You're getting so secretive, dearest boy. I'd no idea 
 you were becoming interested in religion." 
 
 "Well, it is interesting," said Michael. 
 
 "Of course. I know it must be. So many people think 
 of nothing else. And do you really want to march in the 
 procession?" 
 
 "Yes, but don't you and Stella come," Michael said. 
 
 "Oh, I must, Michael. I'd love to see you in all those 
 pretty clothes." 
 
 "Well, I can go round and see this chap Prout, can't I ?" 
 Michael asked.
 
 INCENSE 227 
 
 "I suppose so," Mrs. Fane replied. *'Of course, I don't 
 know anything about him. Is he a gentleman?" 
 
 "Of course he's a gentleman," affirmed Michael warmly. 
 ''Besides I don't see it matters a bit whether he's a gentle- 
 man or not." 
 
 "No, of course it doesn't really, as it all has to do with 
 religion," Mrs. Fane agreed. "Nothing is so mixed as 
 religious society." 
 
 Saxton Road possessed no characteristic to distinguish it 
 from many similar roads in Bournemouth. A few hydran- 
 geas debated in sheltered corners whether they should be 
 pink or blue, and the number of each house was subordinate 
 to its title. The gate of Esdraelon clicked behind Michael's 
 entrance just as the gate of Homeview or Ardagh or Glen- 
 side would have clicked. By the bay-window of the ground 
 floor was planted a young passion-flower whose nursery 
 label lisped against the brick-work, and whose tendrils were 
 flattened beneath wads of nail-pierced flannel. Michael 
 was directed upstairs to Mr. Prout's sitting-room on the 
 first floor, where the owner was arranging the teacups. 
 
 "I'm so glad you were able to come," he said. 
 
 Michael looked round the room with interest, and while 
 the tea-cake slowly cooled Mr. Prout discussed with enthu- 
 siasm his possessions. 
 
 "That's St. Bernardine of Sienna," he explained, pointing 
 to a colored statuette. "My patron, you know. Curious 
 I should have been born on his day and be christened Ber- 
 nard. I thought of changing my name to Bernardine, but 
 it's so difficult at a Bank. Of course, I have a cult for St. 
 Bernard, too, but I never really can forgive him for oppos- 
 ing the Immaculate Conception. Father Moneypenny and 
 I have great arguments on that point. I'm afraid he's a 
 little bit wobbly. But absolutely sound on the Assumption. 
 Oh, absolutely, I'm glad to say. In fact, I don't mind tell- 
 ing you that next year we intend to keep it as a Double of
 
 228 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 the First Class with Octave whichj of course, it is. This 
 rosary is made of olive-wood from the Garden of Geth- 
 semane and I'm very anxious to get it blessed by the Pope. 
 Some friends of mine are going to Rome next Easter with 
 a Polytechnic tour, so I may be able to manage it. But it's 
 difficult. The Cardinals — you know," said Mr. Prout 
 vaguely. "They're inclined to be bitter against English 
 Catholics. Of course, Vaughan made the mistake of his 
 life in getting the Pope to pronounce against English Or- 
 ders. I know a Roman priest told me he considered it a 
 fatal move. However — j^ou're waiting for your tea?" 
 
 Michael ate Mr. Prout's bread-and-butter and drank his 
 tea, while the host hopped from trinket to trinket. 
 
 "This is a sacred amulet which belonged to one of the 
 Macdonalds who fought at Prestonpans. I suppose you're 
 a Jacobite? Of course, I belong to all the Legitimist 
 Societies — the White Rose, the White Cockade, the White 
 Carnation. Every one. I wish I were a Scotchman, al- 
 though my grandmother was a Miss Macmillan, so I've 
 got Scotch blood. You are a Jacobite, aren't you?" 
 
 "Rather," said Michael as enthusiastically as his full 
 mouth would allow him to declare. 
 
 "Of course, it's the only logical political attitude for an 
 English Catholic to adopt," said Mr. Prout. "All this 
 Erastianism — you know. Terrible. What's the Privy 
 Council got to do with Vestments? Still the Episcopal 
 appointments haven't been so bad lately. That's Lord 
 Salisbur}^ Of course, we've had trouble with our Bishop. 
 Oh, yes. He simply declines to listen to reason on the 
 subject of Reservation for the Sick. Personally I advised 
 Father Moneypenny not to pay any attention to him. I 
 said the Guild of St. Wilfrid — that's our servers' guild, you 
 know^ — was absolutely in favor of defiance, open defiance. 
 But one of the churchwardens got round him. There's 
 your Established Church. Money's what churchwardens
 
 INCENSE 229 
 
 think of — simply money. And has religion got anything to 
 do with money? Nothing. 'Blessed are the poor,' You 
 can't go against that, as I told Major Wilton — that's our 
 people's warden — in the sacristy. He's a client of ours at 
 the Bank, or I should have said a jolly sight more. I 
 should have told him that in my opinion his attitude was 
 simony — rank simony, and let it go at that. But I couldn't 
 very well, and, of course, it doesn't look well for the Cere- 
 monarius and the churchwarden to be bickering after Mass. 
 By the way, will you help us next Sunday?" 
 
 "I'd like to," said Michael, "but I don't know anything 
 about it." 
 
 "There'll be a rehearsal," said Mr. Prout. "And it's 
 perfectly simple. You elevate your torch first of all at the 
 Sanctus and then at the Consecration. And now, if you've 
 finished your tea, I'll show you my oratory. Of course, 
 you'll understand that I'm only in rooms here, but the 
 landlady is a very pleasant woman. She let me plant that 
 passion-flower in the garden. Perhaps you noticed it? The 
 same with this oratory. It was a housemaid's cupboard, but 
 it was very inconvenient — and there isn't a housemaid as a 
 matter of fact — so I secured it. Come along." 
 
 Mr. Prout led the way on to the landing, at the end of 
 which were two doors. 
 
 "We can't both kneel down, unless the door's open," said 
 Mr. Prout. "But, when I'm alone, I can just shut myself 
 in." 
 
 He opened the oratory door as he spoke, and Michael 
 was impressed by the appearance of it. The small window 
 had been covered with a rice-paper design of Jesse's Rod. 
 
 "It's a bit 'Protty,' " whispered Mr. Prout. "But I 
 thought it was better than plain squares of blue and red." 
 
 "Much better," Michael agreed. 
 
 A ledge nailed beneath the window supported two brass 
 candlesticks and a crucifix. The reredos was an Arundel
 
 230 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 print of the Last Supper and on corner-brackets on either 
 side were statues of the Immaculate Conception and Our 
 Lady of Victories. A miniature thurible hung on a nail 
 and on another nail was a holy-water stoup, which Michael 
 at first thought was intended for soap. In front of the altar 
 w^as a prie-dieu stacked with books of devotion. There were 
 also blessed palms, very dusty, and a small sanctuary lamp 
 suspended from the ceiling. Referring to this, Mr. Prout 
 explained that really it came from the Turkish Exhibition 
 at Earl's Court, but that he thought it would do, as he had 
 carefully exorcized it according to the use of Sarum. 
 
 "Shall we say Vespers?" suggested Mr. Prout. "You 
 know — the Small Office of the Blessed Virgin. It won't 
 take long. We can say Compline too, if you like." 
 
 "Just as you like," said Michael. 
 
 "You're sure you don't mind the door being left open? 
 Because, you see, we can't both get in otherwise. In fact, 
 I have to kneel sideways when I'm alone." 
 
 "Won't your landlady think it rather rum?" Michael 
 asked. 
 
 "Good gracious, no. Why, when we have Vespers of 
 St. Charles the Martyr, I have fellows kneeling all the way 
 down the stairs, you know — members of the White Rose 
 League, Bournemouth and South of England Branch." 
 
 Michael w^as handed a thin sky-blue book labelled Office 
 of the B.V.M. 
 
 "Latin or English?" queried Mr. Prout. 
 
 "Whichever you like," said Michael. 
 
 "Well, Latin, if you don't mind. I'm anxious to learn 
 Latin, and I find this is good practice." 
 
 "It doesn't look very good Latin^^' said Michael doubt- 
 fully. 
 
 "Doesn't it?" said Mr. Prout "It ought to. It's the 
 right version." 
 
 "I expect this is Hellenistic — I mean Romanistic — Latin,'*
 
 INCENSE 231 
 
 said Michael, who was proud of his momentary superiority 
 in knowledge. "Greek Test is Hellenistic Greek." 
 
 "Do you know Greek?" asked Mr. Prout. 
 
 "A little." 
 
 Mr. Prout sighed. 
 
 When the Office was concluded, Michael promised he 
 would attend a rehearsal of next Sunday's ceremony and, 
 if he felt at ease, the Solemn High Mass itself. Mr. Prout, 
 before Michael went away, lent him a book called Ritual 
 Reason Why, and advised him to buy The Catholic Religion 
 at One Shilling, and meanwhile to practice direct Invocation 
 of the Saints. 
 
 At home Michael applied himself with ardor to the mas- 
 tery of his religion. He wrestled with the liturgical colors ; 
 he tried to grasp the difference between Transubstantiation, 
 Consubstantiation and the Real Presence; and he congrat- 
 ulated himself upon being under the immediate patronage 
 of an Archangel. Also with Charles as his first name he 
 felt he could fairly claim the protection of St. Charles the 
 Martyr, though later on Mr. Prout suggested St. Charles 
 Borromeo as a less ordinary patron. However, there was 
 more than ritualism in Michael's new attitude, more than 
 the passion to collect new rites and liturgies and ornaments 
 as once he had collected the portraits of famous cricketers 
 or silkworms or silver-paper. To be sure, it soon came to 
 seem to him a terribly important matter whether, according 
 to the Roman sequence, red were worn at Whitsuntide or 
 whether, according to Old English use, white were the 
 liturgical color. Soon he would experience a shock of dis- 
 may on hearing that some reputed Catholic had taken the 
 Ablutions at the wrong moment, just as once he had been 
 irritated by ignorant people confusing Mr. W. W. Read 
 of Surrey with Read (M.) of the same county. Beyond 
 all this Michael sincerely tried to correct his morals and 
 manners in the light of aspiration and faith. He experi-
 
 232 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 enced a revolt against impurity of any kind and was simul- 
 taneously seized with a determination to suffer Stella's con- 
 ceit gladly. He really felt a deep-seated avarice for being 
 good. He may not have distinguished between morality 
 due to emotion and morality wrung out of intellectual 
 assent: but he did know that the Magnificat's incense took 
 him to a higher elation than Dora's curly head upon his 
 shoulder, or even than Alan's bewitching company. Under 
 the influence of faith, Michael found himself bursting with 
 an affection for his mother such as he had not felt for a 
 long time. Indeed Michael was in a state of love. He 
 loved the candles on the altar, he loved his mother's beauty, 
 he loved Stella, he loved the people on the beach and the 
 August mornings and the zest for acquiring and devouring 
 information upon every detail connected with the Catholic 
 religion; and out of his love he gratified Mr. Prout by 
 consenting to bear a torch at the Solemn High Mass on the 
 Sunday wnthin the octave of St. Bartholomew, Apostle and 
 Martyr and Patron of St. Bartholomew's Church, Bourne- 
 mouth. 
 
 Michael's first High Mass was an emotional experience 
 deeper even that that windy Evensong. The church was 
 full of people. The altar was brilliant with flowers and 
 lights. The sacristy was crowded with boys in scarlet cas- 
 socks and slippers and zuchettos, quarreling about their 
 cottas and arguing about their heights. Everybody had a 
 favorite banner which he wanted to escort and, to compli- 
 cate matters still farther, everybody had a favorite com- 
 panion by whose side he wished to walk. 
 
 The procession was marshaled before the altar: the 
 organ crashed through the church: the first thurifer started 
 off, swinging his censer toward the clouded roof. After 
 him went the cross of ebony and silver, while one by one 
 at regular intervals between detachments of the choir the 
 banners of the saints floated into action. Michael escorted
 
 INCENSE 233 
 
 the blue velvet banner of Our Lady, triumphant, crowned, 
 a crescent moon beneath her feet and round about her stars 
 and Cherubim. The procession was long enough to fill two 
 aisles at once, and as Michael turned up the south aisle on 
 the return to the chancel, he saw the pomp of the proces- 
 sion's rear — the second thurifer, Mr. Prout in a cotta bor- 
 dered by lace two feet deep, the golden crucifix aloft, the 
 acolytes with their golden candlesticks, the blood-red dal- 
 matic and tunicle of the deacon and sub-deacon, and sol- 
 emnly last of all the blood-red cope of the celebrant. 
 Michael took no pleasure in being observed by the congre- 
 gation; he was simply elated by the privilege of being able 
 to express his desire to serve God, and during the Mass, 
 when the Sanctus bell chimed forth, he raised his torch 
 naturally to the paean of the salutation. The service w^as 
 long: the music was elaborate: it was back-breaking work 
 to kneel on the chancel steps without support; but Michael 
 welcomed the pain w^ith pleasure. During the Elevation of 
 the Host, as he bowed his head before the wonder of bread 
 and wine made God, his brain reeled in an ecstasy of sublime 
 worship. There was a silence save for the censer tinkling 
 steadily and the low whispered words of the priest and the 
 click of the broken wafer. The candles burned with a 
 supernatural intensity: the boys who lately quarreled over 
 precedence were hushed as angels: the stillness became 
 fearful; the cold steps burned into Michael's knees and 
 the incense choked him. At last, after an age of adoration, 
 the plangent appeal of the Agnus Dei came with a melody 
 that seemed the music of the sobbing world from w^hich 
 all tears had departed in a clarity of harmonious sound. 
 
 Before Michael left Bournemouth, Mr. Prout promised 
 to come and see him in London, and Mr. Moneypenny 
 said he would write to a priest who would be glad to pre- 
 pare him for Confirmation. When Michael reached school 
 again he felt shy at meeting Alan who would talk about 
 16
 
 234 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 nothing but football and was dismayed to find Michael 
 indifferent to the delights of playing three-quarter on Mid- 
 dle Side. Michael deplored Alan's failure to advance intel- 
 lectually beyond mere football, and the two of them tem- 
 porarily lost touch with each other's ambitions. Michael 
 now read nothing but ecclesiastical books, and was greatly 
 insulted by Mr. Viner's elementary questions. Mr. Viner 
 was the priest to whom Mr. Moneypenny had written about 
 Michael. He had invited him to tea and together they had 
 settled that Michael should be confirmed early in the spring. 
 Michael borrowed half a dozen books from Mr. Viner and 
 returned home to make an attempt to convert the cook and 
 the housemaid to the Catholic faith as a preliminary to con- 
 verting his mother and Alan. In the end he did actually 
 convert a boy in the Lower Fifth who, for his strange 
 beliefs, suffered severely at the hands of his father, a 
 Plymouth Brother. Michael wished that Stella had not 
 gone back to Germany, for he felt that in her he would 
 have had a splendid object on whom to practice his power 
 of controversy. At Mr. Viner's house Michael met another 
 Jacobean called Chator, in whom he found a fellow-enthu- 
 siast. Chator knew of two other Jacobeans interested in 
 Church matters, Martindale and Rigg, and the four of 
 them founded a society called De Rebus Ecclesiasticis, 
 which met every Friday evening in Michael's room to dis- 
 cuss the Catholic Church in all her aspects. The discus- 
 sions were often heated because Michael had violently Ultra- 
 montane leanings, Chator was narrowly Sarum, Martindale 
 tried to preserve a happy mien, and Rigg always agreed 
 with the last speaker. The Society De Rebus Ecclesiasticis 
 was splendidly quixotic and gloriously unrelated to the dead 
 present. To the quartet of members Archbishop Laud 
 was a far more vital proposition than Archbishop Temple, 
 the society of cavaliers was more vividly realized than the 
 Fabian Society. As was to be expected from Michael's
 
 INCENSE 235 
 
 preoccupation with the past, he became very anxious again 
 about his parentage. He longed to hear that in some way 
 he was connected with Jacobite heroes and the romantic 
 Stuarts. Mrs. Fane was no longer able to put him off with 
 contradictions and vagueness: Michael demanded his family 
 tree. The hymn, ''Faith of Our Fathers," ringing through 
 a Notting Dale mission-hall, moved him to demand his 
 birthright of family history. 
 
 "Well, I'll tell you, Michael," said his mother at last. 
 "Your father ought to have been the Earl of Saxby — only — 
 something went wrong — some certificate or something." 
 
 "An Earl?" cried Michael, staggered by the splendid 
 news. "But — but, mother, we met Lord Saxby. Who was 
 that?" 
 
 "He's a relation. Only please don't tell people about 
 this, because they wouldn't understand. It's all very mud- 
 dled and difficult." 
 
 "My father ought to have been Lord Saxby? Why 
 wasn't he? Mother, was he illegitimate?" 
 
 "Michael, how can you talk like that? Of course not." 
 
 Michael blushed because his mother blushed. 
 
 "I'm sorry, mother, I thought he might have been. Peo- 
 ple are. You read about them often enough." 
 
 Michael decided that, as he must not tell Chator, Martin- 
 dale and Rigg the truth, he would, at any rate, join himself 
 on to the House of Saxby collaterally. To his disappoint- 
 ment, he discovered that the only reference in history to 
 an Earl of Saxby made out that particular one to be a 
 most pestilent roundhead. So Michael gave up being the 
 Legitimist Earl of Saxby, and settled instead to be de- 
 scended through the indiscretion of an early king from the 
 Stuarts. Michael grew more and more ecclesiastical as 
 time went on. He joined several Jacobite societies, and 
 accompanied Mr. Prout on the latter's London visit to a 
 reception at Clifford's Inn Hall in honor of the Legitimist
 
 236 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 Emperor of Byzantium. Michael was very much impressed 
 by kissing the hand of an Emperor, and even more deeply 
 impressed by the Scottish piper, who marched up and down 
 during the light refreshment at one shilling a head after- 
 wards. Mr. Prout, accompanied by Michael, Chator, Mar- 
 tindale and Rigg, spent the Sunday of his stay in town by 
 attending early Mass in Kensington, High Mass in Hol- 
 born. Benediction in Shoreditch and Evensong in Padding- 
 ton. He also joined several more guilds, confraternities 
 and societies, and presented Michael with one hair from the 
 five hairs he possessed of a lock of Prince Charlie's hair 
 (authentic) before he returned to Bournemouth. This 
 single hair was a great responsibility to Michael, until he 
 placed it in a silver locket to wear round his neck. During 
 that year occurred what the papers called a Crisis in the 
 Church, and Michael and his three friends took in every 
 week The Church Times, The Church Review, The Eng- 
 lish Churchman, Church Bells, The Record and The Rock 
 in order to play their part in the crisis. They attended 
 Protestant meetings to boo and hiss from the gallery or to 
 applaud violently gentlemen on their side who rose to ask 
 the lecturer what they supposed to be irrefutable questions. 
 In the spring Michael made his first Confession and was 
 confirmed. The first Confession had more effect on his 
 imagination than the Confirmation, which in retrospect 
 seemed chiefly a sensation of disappointment that the Bishop 
 in view of the crisis in the Church refused to wear the 
 miter temptingly laid out for him by Mr. Viner. The 
 Confession, however, was a true test of Michael's depth. 
 Mr. Viner was by no means a priest who only thought of 
 candles and lace. He was a gaunt and humorous man, 
 ready to drag out from his penitents their very souls. 
 
 Michael found that first Confession an immense strain 
 upon his truthfulness and pluck, and he made up his mind 
 never to commit another mortal sin, so deeply did he blush
 
 INCENSE 237 
 
 in the agony of revelation. Venial faults, viewed in the 
 aggregate, became appalling, and the real sins, as one by 
 one Michael compelled himself to admit them, stabbed his 
 self-consciousness w^th daggers of shame. Michael had a 
 sense of completeness w^hich prevented him from making a 
 bad Confession, from gliding over his sins and telling half- 
 truths, and having embarked upon the duties of his religion 
 he was not going to avoid them. The Confession seemed 
 to last forever. Beforehand, Michael had supposed there 
 would be only one commandment whose detailed sins would 
 make his heart beat with the difficulty of confessing them; 
 but when he knelt in the empty church before the severe 
 priest, every breach of the other commandments assumed a 
 demoniac importance. Michael thought that never before 
 could Father Viner have listened to such a narration of 
 human depravity from a boy of fifteen, or even from a man 
 full grown. He half expected to see the priest rise in the 
 middle and leave his chair in disgust. Michael felt beads 
 of sweat trickling from his forehead : the strain grew more 
 terrible: the crucifix before him gave him no help: the 
 book he held fell from his fingers. Then he heard the 
 words of absolution, tranquil as evening bells. The inessen- 
 tials of his passionate religion faded away in the strength 
 and beauty of God's acceptation of his penitence. Outside 
 in the April sunlight Michael could have danced his exulta- 
 tion before he ran home winged with the ecstasy of a light 
 heart.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 PAX 
 
 THE Lower Fifth only knew Michael during the 
 Autumn term. After Christmas he moved up to 
 the Middle Fifth, and, leaving behind him many 
 friends, including Alan, he found himself in an industrious 
 society concentrated upon obtaining the Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge Higher Certificate for proficiency in Greek, Latin, 
 Mathematics and either Divinity, French or History. Re- 
 moved from the temptations of a merry company, Michael 
 worked very hard indeed and kept his brain fit by argument 
 instead of football. The prevailing attitude of himself and 
 his contemporaries toward the present was one of profound 
 pessimism. The scholarship of St. James' was deteriorating; 
 there was a dearth of great English poets; novelists were 
 not so good as once they were in the days of Dickens; the 
 new boys were obviously inferior to their prototypes in the 
 past; the weather was growing worse year by year; the 
 country was plunging into an abyss. In school Michael 
 prophesied more loudly than any of his fellow Jeremiahs, 
 and less and less did it seem worth while in these Certificate- 
 stifled days to seek for romance or poetry or heroism or 
 adventure. Yet as soon as the precincts of discipline and 
 study were left behind, Michael could extract from life full 
 draughts of all these virtues. 
 
 Without neglecting the Oxford and Cambridge Higher 
 Certificate, he devoured voraciously every scrap of informa- 
 
 238
 
 PAX 239 
 
 tion about Catholicism which it was possible to acquire. 
 Books were bought in tawdry repositories — Catholic Belief, 
 The Credentials of the Catholic Church, The Garden of 
 the Soul, The Glories of Mary by S. Alphonso Liguori, 
 Alban Butler's Lives of the Saints, The Clifton Tracts, 
 and, on his own side of the eternal controversy, Lee's Valid- 
 ity of English Orders, The Alcuin Club Transactions with 
 many other volumes. Most of all he liked to pore upon 
 the Tourist's Church Guide, which showed with asterisks 
 and paragraph marks and sections and daggers what 
 churches throughout the United Kingdom possessed the five 
 points of Incense, Lights, Vestments, Mixed Chalice and 
 Eastward Position. He found it absorbing to compare the 
 progress of ritual through the years. 
 
 Michael, as once he had known the ranks of the British 
 Army from Lance-corporal to Field Marshal, could tell the 
 hierarchy from Sexton to Pope. He knew, too, as once he 
 knew the history and uniform of Dragoons, Hussars and 
 Lancers, the history and uniform of the religious orders — 
 Benedictines, Cistercians, Franciscans, Dominicans (how he 
 loved the last in their black and white habit, Domini canes, 
 watchdogs of the Lord), Carmelites, Praemonstratensians, 
 Augustinians, Servites, Gilbertines, Carthusians, Redemptor- 
 ists. Capuchins, Passionists, Jesuits, Oblates of St. Charles 
 Borromeo and the Congregation of St. Philip Neri. 
 Michael outvied Mr. Prout in ecclesiastical possessions, and 
 his bedroom was nearly as full as the repository from which 
 it was stocked. There were images of St. Michael (his 
 own patron), St. Hugh of Lincoln (patron of schoolboys), 
 and St. James of Compostella (patron of the school), to- 
 gether with Our Lady of Seven Dolors, Our Lady Star of 
 the Sea and Our Lady of Lourdes, Our Lady of Perpetual 
 Succor, Our Lady of Victory; there were eikons, scap- 
 ulars, crucifixes, candlesticks, the Holy Child of Prague, 
 rosaries, and indeed every variety of sacred bric-a-brac.
 
 240 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 Michael slept in an oriental atmosphere, because he had 
 formed the habit of burning during his prayers cone-shaped 
 pastilles in a saucer. The tenuous spiral of perfumed smoke 
 carried up his emotional apostrophes through the prosaic 
 ceiling of the old night-nursery past the stars, beyond the 
 Thrones and Dominations and Seraphim to God. Michael's 
 contest with the sins of youth had become much more 
 thrilling since he had accepted the existence of a personal 
 fiend, and in an ecstasy of temptation he would lie in bed 
 and defy the Devil, calling upon his patron the Archangel 
 to descend from heaven and battle with the powers of evil 
 in that airy arena above the coal-wharf beyond the railway 
 lines. But the Father of Lies had many tricks with which 
 to circumvent Michael; he would conjure up sensuous 
 images before his antagonist; succubi materialized as pretty 
 housemaids, feminine devils put on tights and openwork 
 stockings to encounter him from the pages of pink weekly 
 papers, and sometimes Satan himself would sit at the foot 
 of his bed in the darkness and tell him tales of how other 
 boys enjoyed themselves, arguing that it was a pity to waste 
 his opportunities and filling his thoughts with dissolute 
 memories. Michael would leap from his bed and pray 
 before his crucifix, and through the darkness angels and 
 saints would rally to his aid, until Satan slunk off with his 
 tail between his legs, personally humiliated. 
 
 At school the fever of the examination made Michael 
 desperate with the best intentions. He almost learned the 
 translations of Thucydides and Sophocles, of Horace and 
 Cicero. He knew by heart a meanly written Roman His- 
 tory, and no passage in Corneille could hold an invincible 
 word. Cricket was never played that summer by the Mid- 
 dle Fifth; it was more useful to wander in corners of the 
 field, murmuring continually the tables of the Kings of 
 Judah from Maclear's sad-hued abstract of Holy Scripture. 
 In the end Michael passed in Greek and Latin, in French
 
 PAX 241 
 
 and Divinity and Roman History, even in Algebra and 
 Euclid; but the arithmetical problems of a Stockbroker, a 
 Paper-hanger and a Housewife made all the rest of his 
 knowledge of no account, and Michael failed to see beside 
 his name in the school list that printed bubble which would 
 refer him to the tribe of those who had satisfied the exam- 
 iners for the Oxford and Cambridge Higher Certificate. 
 This failure depressed Michael, not because he felt impli- 
 cated in any disgrace, but because he wished very earnestly 
 that he had not wasted so many hours of fine weather in 
 work. He made up his mind that the mistake should never 
 be repeated, and for the rest of his time at St. James' he 
 resisted all set books. If Demosthenes was held necessary, 
 Michael would read Plato, and when Cicero was set 
 Michael would feel bound to read Livy. 
 
 Michael looked back on the year with dissatisfaction, and 
 wondered if school was going to become more and more 
 boring each new term for nine more terms. The prospect 
 was unendurably gray, and Michael felt that life was not 
 worth living. He talked over with Mr. Viner the flatness 
 of existence on the evening after the result of the examina- 
 tion was known. 
 
 "I swatted like anything," said Michael gloomily. "And 
 what's the good? I'm sick of everything." 
 
 The priest's eyes twinkled, as he plunged deeper into his 
 wicker armchair and puffed clouds of smoke toward the 
 comfortable shelves of books. 
 
 "You want a holiday," he remarked. 
 
 "A holiday?" echoed Michael fretfully. "What's the 
 good of a holiday with my mater at some beastly seaside 
 place?" 
 
 "Oh, come," said the priest, smiling. "You'll be able to 
 probe the orthodoxy of the neighboring clergy." 
 
 "Oh, no, really, it's nothing to laugh at, Mr. Viner. 
 You've no idea how beastly it is to dawdle about in a crowd
 
 242 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 of people, and then at the end go back to another term of 
 school. I'm sick of everything. Will you lend me Lee's 
 Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Terms?" added Michael in a 
 voice that contained no accent of hope. 
 
 "I'll lend you anything you like, my dear boy," said the 
 priest, "on one condition." 
 
 "What's that?" 
 
 "Why, that you'll admit life holds a few grains of con- 
 solation." 
 
 "But it doesn't," Michael declared. 
 
 "Wait a bit, I haven't finished. I was going to say — 
 when I tell you that we are going to keep the Assumption 
 this August." 
 
 Michael's eyes glittered for a moment with triumph. 
 
 "By Jove, how decent." Then they grew dull again. 
 "And I shan't be here. The rotten thing is, too, that my 
 mater wants to go abroad. Only she says she couldn't 
 leave me alone. But, of course, she could really." 
 
 "Why not stay with a friend — the voluble Chator, for 
 instance, or Martindale, that Solomon of schoolboys, or 
 Rigg who in Medicean days would have been already a 
 cardinal, so admirably does he incline to all parties?" 
 
 "I can't ask myself," said Michael. "Their people would 
 think it rum. Besides, Chator's governor has gout, and I 
 wouldn't care to be six weeks with the other two. Oh, I 
 do hate not being grown up." 
 
 "What about your friend Alan Merivale? I thought 
 him a very charming youth and refreshingly unpietistic." 
 
 "He doesn't know the difference between a chasuble and 
 a black gown," said Michael. 
 
 "Which seems to me not to matter very much ultimately," 
 put in Mr. Viner. 
 
 "No, of course, it doesn't. But if one is keen on some- 
 thing and somebody else isn't, it isn't much fun," Michael 
 explained. "Besides, he can't make me out nowadays."
 
 PAX 243 
 
 "Surely the incomprehensible is one of the chief charms 
 of faith and friendship." 
 
 "And anyway he's going abroad to Switzerland — and I 
 couldn't possibly fish for an invitation. It is rotten. Every- 
 thing's always the same." 
 
 "Except in the Church of England. There you have an 
 almost blatant variety," suggested the priest. 
 
 "You never will be serious when I want you to be," 
 grumbled Michael. 
 
 "Oh, yes I will, and to prove it," said Mr. Viner, "I'm 
 going to make a suggestion of unparagoned earnestness." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "Now just let me diagnose your mental condition. You 
 are sick of everything — Thucydides, cabbage, cricket, school, 
 schoolfellows, certificates and life." 
 
 "Well, you needn't rag me about it," Michael inter- 
 rupted. 
 
 "In the Middle Ages gentlemen in your psychical per- 
 plexity betook themselves either to the Crusades or entered 
 a monastery. Now, why shouldn't you for these summer 
 holidays betake yourself to a monastery? I will write to 
 the Lord Abbot, to your lady mother, and if you consent, 
 to the voluble Chator's lady mother, humbly pointing out 
 and ever praying, etc., etc." 
 
 "You're not ragging?" asked Michael suspiciously. 
 "Besides, what sort of a monastery?" 
 
 "Oh, an Anglican monastery; but at the same time 
 Benedictines of the most unimpeachable severity. In short, 
 why shouldn't you and Mark Chator go to Clere Abbas on 
 the Berkshire Downs?" 
 
 "Are they strict?" inquired Michael. "You know, saying 
 the proper offices and all that, not the Day Hours of the 
 English Church — that rotten Anglican thing." 
 
 "Strict!" cried Mr. Viner. "Why, they're so strict that 
 St. Benedict himself, were he to abide again on earth, would
 
 244 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 seriously consider a revision of his rules as interpreted by 
 Dom Cuthbert Manners, O.S.B., the Lord Abbot of Clere." 
 
 "It would be awfully ripping to go there," said Michael 
 enthusiastically. 
 
 "Well then," said Mr. Viner, "it shall be arranged. 
 Meanwhile confer with the voluble and sacerdotal Chator 
 on the subject." 
 
 The disappointment of the ungranted certificate, the 
 ineffable tedium of endless school, seaside lodgings and all 
 the weighty ills of Michael's oppressed soul vanished on that 
 wine-gold July noon when Michael and Chator stood un- 
 trammeled by anything more than bicycles and luggage 
 upon the platform of the little station that dreamed its 
 trains away at the foot of the Downs. 
 
 "By Jove, we're just like pilgrims," said Michael, as his 
 gaze followed the aspiring white road which rippled up- 
 ward to green summits quivering in the haze of summer. 
 The two boys left their luggage to be fetched later by the 
 Abbey marketing-cart, mounted their bicycles, waved a 
 good-bye to the friendly porter beaming among the red 
 roses of the little station and pressed energetically their 
 obstinate pedals. After about half a mile's ascent they 
 jumped from their machines and walked slowly upward 
 until the station and clustering hamlet lay breathless below 
 them like a vision drowned deep in a crystal lake. As they 
 went higher a breeze sighed in the sun-parched grasses, 
 and the lines and curves of the road intoxicated them with 
 naked beauty. 
 
 "I like harebells almost best of any flowers," said Michael. 
 "Do you?" 
 
 "They're awfully like bells," observed Chator. 
 
 "I wouldn't care if they weren't," said Michael. "It's 
 only in London I want things to be like other things." 
 
 Chator looked puzzled. 
 
 *'I can't exactly explain what I mean," Michael went on.
 
 PAX 245 
 
 "But they made me want to cry just because they aren't 
 like anything. You won't understand what I mean if I 
 explain ever so much. Nobody could. But when I see 
 flowers on a lovely road like this, I get sort of frightened 
 whether God won't grow tired of bothering about human 
 beings. Because really, you know, Chator, there doesn't 
 seem much good in our being on the earth at all." 
 
 "I think that's a heresy," pronounced Chator. "I don't 
 know which one, but I'll ask Dom Cuthbert." 
 
 "I don't care if it is heresy. I believe it. Besides, reli- 
 gion must be finding out things for yourself that have been 
 found out already." 
 
 "Finding out for yourself," echoed Chator with a look 
 of alarm. "I say, j^ou're an absolute Protestant." 
 
 "Oh, no I'm not," contradicted Michael. "I'm a 
 Catholic." 
 
 "But you set yourself up above the Church." 
 
 "When did I?" demanded Michael. 
 
 "Just now." 
 
 "Because I said that harebells were ripping flowers?" 
 
 "You said a lot more than that," objected Chator. 
 
 "What did I say?" Michael parried. 
 
 "Well, I can't exactly remember what you said." 
 
 "Then what's the use of saying I'm a Protestant?" cried 
 Michael in triumph. "I think I'll play footer again next 
 term," he added inconsequently. 
 
 "I jolly well would," Chator agreed. "You ought to 
 have played last football term." 
 
 "Except that I like thinking," said Michael. "Which is 
 rotten in the middle of a game. It's jolly decent going 
 to the monastery, isn't it? I could keep walking on this 
 road forever without getting tired." 
 
 "We can ride again now," said Chator. 
 
 "Well, don't scorch, because we'll miss all the decent 
 flowers if you do," said Michael.
 
 246 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 Then silently for a while they breasted the slighter in- 
 cline of the summit. 
 
 "Only six weeks of these ripping holidays," Michael 
 sighed. " And then damned old school again." 
 
 "Hark!" shouted Chator suddenly. "I hear the Angelus." 
 
 Both boys dismounted and listened. Somewhere, indeed, 
 a bell was chiming, but a bell of such quality that the sound 
 of it through the summer was like a cuckoo's song in its 
 unrelation to place. Michael and Chator murmured their 
 salute of the Incarnation, and perhaps for the first time 
 Michael half realized the mysterious condescension of God. 
 Here, high up on these downs, the Word became imaginable, 
 a silence of wind and sunlight. 
 
 "I say, Chator," Michael began. 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "Would you mind helping me mark this place where we 
 are?" 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Look here, you won't think I'm pretending, but I be- 
 lieve I was converted at that moment." 
 
 Chator's well-known look of alarm that always followed 
 one of Michael's doctrinal or liturgical announcements was 
 more profound than it had ever been before. 
 
 "Converted?" he gasped. "What to?" 
 
 "Oh, not to anything," said Michael. "Only different 
 from what I was just now, and I want to mark the place." 
 
 "Do you mean — put up a cross or something?" 
 
 "No, not a cross. Because, when I was converted, I felt 
 a sudden feeling of being frightfully alive. I'd rather put a 
 stone and plant harebells round it. We can dig with our 
 spanners. I like stones. They're so frightfully old, and I'd 
 like to think, if I was ever a long way from here, of my 
 stone and the harebells looking at it — every year new hare- 
 bells and the same old stone."
 
 PAX 247 
 
 "Do you know what I think you are?" inquired Chator 
 solemnly. "I think you're a mystic." 
 
 "I never can understand what a mystic was," said 
 Michael. 
 
 "Nobody can," said Chator encouragingly. "But lots 
 of them were made saints all the same. I don't think you 
 ever will be, because you do put forward the most awfully 
 dangerous doctrines. I do think you ought to be careful, 
 about that. I do really." 
 
 Chator was spluttering under the embarrassment of his 
 own eloquence, and Michael, delicately amused, looked at 
 him with a quizzical smile. Chator was older than Michael, 
 and by reason of the apoplectic earnestness of his appearance 
 and manner, and the natural goodness of him so sincerely, 
 if awkwardly, expressed, he had a certain influence which 
 Michael admitted to himself, however much in the public 
 eye he might affect to patronize Chator from his own intel- 
 lectual eminence. Along the road of speculation, however, 
 Michael would not allow Chator's right to curb him, and 
 he took a wilful pleasure in galloping ahead over the wildest, 
 loftiest paths. To shock old Chator was Michael's delight; 
 and he never failed to do so. 
 
 "You see," Chator spluttered, "it's not so much what 
 you say now; nobody would pay any attention to you, 
 and I know you don't mean half what you say; but later 
 on you'll begin to believe in all these heretical ideas of 
 your own. You'll end up by being an Agnostic. Oh, yes 
 you will," he raged with torrential prophecies, as Michael 
 leaned over the seat of his bicycle laughing consumedly. 
 "You'll go on and on wondering this and that and im- 
 proving the doctrines of the Church until you improve 
 them right away." 
 
 "You are a funny old ass. You really are," gurgled 
 Michael. "And what's so funny to me is that just when 
 I had a moment of really believing, you dash in with your
 
 248 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 warnings and nearly spoil it all. By Jove, did you see that 
 Pale Clouded Yellow?" he shouted suddenly. "By Jove, 
 I haven't seen one in England for an awful long time. I 
 think I'll begin collecting butterflies again." 
 
 Disputes of doctrine were flung to the wind that sang 
 in their ears as they mounted their bicycles and coasted 
 swiftly from the bare green summits of the downs into 
 a deep lane overshadowed by oak-trees. Soon they came 
 to the Abbey gates, or rather to the place where the Abbey 
 gates would one day rise in Gothic commemoration of 
 the slow subscriptions of the faithful. At present the 
 entrance was only marked by a stony road disappearing 
 abruptly at the behest of a painted finger-post into verdur- 
 ous solitudes. After wheeling their bicycles for about a 
 quarter of a winding mile, the two boys came to a large 
 open spp.ce in the wood and beheld Clere Abbey, a long 
 low wooden building set as piously near to the overgrown 
 foundations of old Clere Abbey as was possible, 
 
 "What a rotten shame," cried Michael, "that they can't 
 build a decent Abbey. Never mind, I think it's going to 
 be rather good sport here." 
 
 They walked up to the door that seemed too massive 
 for the flimsy pile to which it gave entrance, and pealed 
 the large bell that hung by the side. Michael was pleased 
 to observe a grille through which peered the eyes of the 
 monastic porter inquisitive of the wayfarers. Then a bolt 
 shot back; the door opened, and Michael and Chator en- 
 tered the religious house. 
 
 *Tm Brother Ambrose," said the porter, a stubby man 
 with a flat pock-marked face whose ugliness was redeemed 
 by an expression of wonderful innocence. "Dom Cuthbert 
 is expecting you in the Abbot's Parlor." 
 
 Michael and Chator followed Brother Ambrose, through 
 a pleasant book-lined hall, into the paternal haunt where 
 the Lord Abbot of Clere sat writing at a roll-top desk.
 
 PAX 249 
 
 He rose to greet the boys, who with reverence perceived him 
 to be a tall dark angular man with glowing eyes that seemed 
 very deeply set on either side of his great hooked nose. 
 He could scarcely have been over thirty-five years of age, 
 but he moved with a languid awkwardness that made him 
 seem older. His voice was very remote and melodious as 
 he welcomed them. Michael looked anxiously at Chator to 
 see if he followed any precise ritual of salutation, but 
 Dom Cuthbert solved the problem by shaking hands at 
 once and motioning them to wicker chairs beside the empty 
 hearth. 
 
 "Pleasant ride?" inquired Dom Cuthbert. 
 
 "Awfully decent," said Michael. "We heard the Angelus 
 a long way off." 
 
 "A lovely bell," murmured Dom Cuthbert. "Tubular. 
 It was given to us by the Duke of Birmingham. Come 
 along, I'll show you the Abbey, if you're not too tired." 
 
 "Rather not," Michael and Chator declared. 
 
 The Abbot led the way into the book-lined hall. 
 
 "This is the library. You can read here as much as you 
 like. The brethren sit here at recreation-time. This is the 
 refectory," he went on, with distant chimings in his tone. 
 
 The two boys gazed respectfully at the bare trestle table 
 and the raised reading desk and the picture of St. Benedict. 
 
 "Of course we haven't much room yet," Dom Cuthbert 
 continued. "In fact we have very little. People are very 
 suspicious of monkery." 
 
 He smiled tolerantly, and his voice faded almost out of 
 the refectory, as if it would soothe the harsh criticism of 
 the world, hence infinitely remote. 
 
 "But one day" — from worldly adventure his voice came 
 back renewed with hope — "one day, when we have some 
 money, we shall build a real Abbey." 
 
 "This is awfully ripping though, isn't it?" observed 
 
 Michael with sympathetic encouragement. 
 17
 
 250 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 **I daresay the founder of the Order was never so well 
 housed," agreed the Abbot. 
 
 Dom Cuthbert led them to the guest-chamber, from 
 which opened three diminutive bedrooms. 
 
 "Your cells," the monk said. "But of course you'll feed 
 in here," he added, indicating the small bare room in which 
 they stood with so wide a sweep of his ample sleeve that 
 the matchboarded ceiling soared into vast Gothic twilights 
 and the walls were of stone. Michael was vaguely re- 
 minded of Mr. Prout and his inadequate oratory. 
 
 "The guest-brother is Dom Gilbert," continued the 
 Abbot. "Come and see the cloisters." 
 
 They passed from the guest-room behind the main build- 
 ing and saw that another building formed there the second 
 side of a quadrangle. The other two sides were still open 
 to the hazel coppice that here encroached upon the Abbey. 
 However, there w^ere traceable the foundations of new build- 
 ing to complete the quadrangle, and a mass of crimson 
 hollyhocks were shining with rubied chalices in the quiet 
 sunlight. For all its incompleteness, this was a strangely 
 beautiful corner of the green world. 
 
 "Are these the cloisters?" Michael asked. 
 
 "One day, one day," replied Dom Cuthbert. "A little 
 rough at present, but before I die I'm sure there will be a 
 mighty edifice in this wood to the glory of God and His 
 saints." 
 
 "I'd like it best that way," said Michael. "Not all at 
 once." 
 
 He felt an imaginative companionship with the aspirations 
 of the Abbot. 
 
 "Now we'll visit the Chapel," said Dom Cuthbert. "We 
 built the Chapel with our own hands of mud and stone 
 and laths. You'll like the Chapel. Sometimes I feel quite 
 sorry to think of leaving it for the great Abbey Church 
 we shall one day build with the hands of workmen."
 
 PAX 251 
 
 The Chapel was reached by a short cloister of primitive 
 construction, and it was the simplest, purest place of worship 
 that Michael had ever seen. It seemed to have gathered 
 beneath its small roof the whole of peace. On one side the 
 hazel bushes grew so close that the windows opened on to 
 the mysterious green heart of life. Two curtains worked 
 with golden blazonries divided the choir from the congre- 
 gation. 
 
 **This is where you'll sit," said Dom Cuthbert, pointing 
 to two kneeling-chairs on either side of the opening into 
 the choir. "Perhaps you'll say a prayer now for the Order. 
 The prayers of children travel very swiftly to God." 
 
 Dom Cuthbert passed to the Abbot's stall to kneel, while 
 Michael and Chator knelt on the chairs. When they had 
 prayed for a while, the Abbot took them into the sacristy 
 and showed them the vestments and the sacred vessels of 
 the altar, and from the sacristy door they passed into a 
 straight woodland way. 
 
 "The Abbot's walk," said Dom Cuthbert, with a beautiful 
 smile. "The brethren cut this wonderful path during their 
 hours of recreation. I cannot envy any cloisters with this 
 to walk in. How soft is the moss beneath our feet, and 
 in Spring how loudly the birds sing here. The leaves 
 come very early, too, and linger very late. It is a wonderful 
 path. Now I must go and work. I have a lot of letters 
 to write. Explore the woods and the downs and enjoy 
 yourselves. You'll find the rules that the guests must ob- 
 serve pinned to the wall of the guest-room. Enjoy your- 
 selves and be content." 
 
 The tall figure of the monk with its languid awkwardness 
 of gait disappeared from the Abbot's walk, and the two 
 boys, arm-in-arm, wandered off in the opposite direction. 
 
 "Everything was absolutely correct," burbled Chator. 
 "Oh, yes, absolutely. Not at all Anglican. Perfectly 
 correct. I'm glad. I'm really very glad. I was a bit afraid
 
 252 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 at first ft might be Anglican. But it's not — oh, no, 
 not at all." 
 
 In the guest-chamber they read the rules for guests, and 
 discovered to their mortification that they were not ex- 
 pected to be present at Matins and Lauds. 
 
 "I was looking forward to getting up at two o'clock," 
 said Michael. "Perhaps Dom Cuthbert will let us some- 
 times. It's really much easier to get up at two o'clock than 
 five. Mass is at half-past five, and we must go to that." 
 
 Dom Gilbert, the guest-brother, came in with plates of 
 bread and cheese, while the boys were reading the rules, 
 and they questioned him about going to Matins. He 
 laughed and said they would have as much church as they 
 wished without being quite such strict Benedictines as 
 that. Michael was not sure whether he liked Dom Gilbert 
 — he was such a very practical monk. 
 
 "If you go to Mass and Vespers and Compline every day," 
 said Dom Gilbert, "you'll do very well. And please be 
 punctual for your meals." 
 
 Michael and Chator looked injured. 
 
 "Breakfast after Mass. Bread and cheese at twelve. 
 Cup of tea at five, if you're in. Supper at eight." 
 
 Dom Gilbert left them abruptly to eat their bread and 
 cheese alone. 
 
 "He's rather a surly chap," grumbled Michael. "He 
 doesn't seem to me the right one to have chosen for guest- 
 brother at all. I had a lot I wanted to ask him. For one 
 thing I don't know where the lav is. I think he's a rotten 
 guest-brother." 
 
 The afternoon passed in a walk along the wide ridge of 
 the downs through the amber of this fine summer day. 
 Several hares were seen and a kestrel, while Chator disposed 
 very volubly of the claims of several Anglican clergymen to 
 Catholicism. After tea in the hour of recreation they met 
 the other monks, Dom Gregory the organist, Brother
 
 PAX 253 
 
 George and Brother William. It was not a very large 
 monastery. 
 
 Chator found the Vespers somewhat trying to his 
 curiosity, because owing to the interposition of the curtain 
 he was unable to criticize the behavior of the monks in 
 choir. This made him very fidgety, and rather destroyed 
 Michael's sense of peace. However, Chator restrained 
 his ritualistic ardor very well at Compline, w^hich in the 
 dimness of the starlit night was a magical experience, as 
 one by one with raised cowls the monks entered in black 
 procession and silence absolute. Michael, where he knelt 
 in the ante-chapel, was profoundly moved by the intimate 
 responses and the severe Compline hymn. He liked, too, 
 the swift departure to bed without chattering good-nights 
 to spoil the solemnity of the last Office. Even Chator kept 
 all conversation for the morning, and Michael felt he had 
 never lain down upon a couch so truly sanctified, nor ever 
 risen from one so pure as when Dom Gilbert knocked with 
 a hammer on the door and, standing dark against the milk- 
 white dawn, murmured, 'Tax vobiscum."
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 CLOVEN HOOFMARKS 
 
 IN the first fortnight of their stay at Clere Abbas 
 Michael and Chator lived like vagabond hermits 
 rejoicing in the freedom of fine weather. Mostly 
 they went for long walks over the downs and through 
 the woodlands of the southern slope. To the monks at 
 recreation-time they would recount their adventures with 
 gamekeepers and contumacious farmers, their discoveries 
 of flowers and birds and butterflies, their entertainment at 
 remote cottage homes and the hospitalities of gipsy camps. 
 To be sure they would often indulge in theological dis- 
 cussions, and sometimes, when caught by the azure-footed 
 dusk in unfamiliar lanes, they would chant plainsong to 
 the confusion of whatever ghostly pursuers, whether Dryads 
 or mediaeval fiends or early Victorian murderers, that 
 seemed to dog their footsteps. So much nowadays did 
 the unseen world mingle with the ordinary delights of 
 youth. 
 
 "Funny thing," said Michael to Chator. "When I was 
 a kid I used to be frightened at night — always. Then for 
 a long time I wasn't frightened at all, and now again I 
 have a queer feeling just after sunset, a sort of curious 
 dampness inside me. Do you ever have it?" 
 
 "I only have it when you start me off," said Chator. 
 "But it goes when we sing 'Te lucis ante terminum' or 
 chant the Nicene Creed or anything holy." 
 
 254
 
 CLOVEN HOOFMARKS 255 
 
 "Yes, it does with me," Michael agreed dubiously. "But, 
 if I drive it away, it comes back in the middle of the 
 night. I have all sorts of queer feelings. Sometimes I feel 
 as if there wasn't any me at all, and I'm surprised to see a 
 letter come addressed to me. But when I see a letter 
 I've written, I'm still more surprised. Do you have that 
 feeling? Then often I feel as if all we were doing or saying 
 at a certain moment had been done or said before. Then 
 at other times I have to hold onto a tree or hurt myself 
 with something just to prove I'm there. And then some- 
 times I think nothing is impossible for me. I feel abso- 
 lutely great, as if I were Shakespeare. Do you ever have 
 that feeling?" 
 
 But Chator was either not sufficiently introspective so to 
 resolve his moods, or else he was too simply set on his own 
 naive religion for his personality to plunge haphazard into 
 such spiritual currents uncharted. 
 
 The pleasantest time of the monastic week was Sunday 
 afternoon, when Dom Cuthbert, very lank and pontifical, 
 would lean back in the deepest wicker chair of the library 
 to listen to various Thoughts culled by the brethren from 
 their week's reading. The Thought he adjudged best was 
 with a diamond pencil immortalized upon a window-pane, 
 and the lucky discoverer derived as much satisfaction from 
 the verdict as was compatible with Benedictine humility. 
 Dom Cuthbert allowed Michael and Chator to share in 
 these occasions, and he evidently enjoyed the variety of 
 choice which displayed so nicely the character of his flock. 
 
 One afternoon Michael chose for his excerpt Don 
 Quixote's exclamation, "How these enchanters hate me,' 
 Sancho," with Sancho's reply, "O dismal and ill-minded 
 enchanters." 
 
 The brethren laughed very loudly at this, for though 
 they were English monks, and might have been considered 
 eccentric by the Saxon world, their minds really ran on
 
 256 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 lines of sophisticated piety over platitudinous sleepers of 
 thought. Michael blushed defiantly, and looked at Dom 
 Cuthbert for comprehension. 
 
 *'Hark at the idealist complaint of disillusionment by the 
 Prince of Darkness," said Dom Cuthbert, smiling. 
 
 "It's not a complaint," Michael contradicted. "It's just 
 a remark. That's why I chose it. Besides, it gives me a 
 satisfied feeling. Words often make me feel hungry." 
 
 The monks interrupted him with more laughter, and 
 Michael, furiously self-conscious, left the library and went 
 to sit alone in the stillest part of the hazel coppice. 
 
 But when he came back in the silent minutes before 
 Vespers he read his sentence on the window-pane, and 
 blinked half-tearfully at the westering sun. He never had 
 another Thought enshrined, because he was forever after 
 this trying to find sentences that would annoy Dom Gilbert, 
 whom he suspected of leading the laughter. Visitors began 
 to come to the Abbey now — and the two boys were much 
 interested in the people who flitted past almost from day 
 to day. Among them was Mr. Prout who kept up a duet 
 of volubility with Chator from morning to night for 
 nearly a week, at the end of which he returned to his 
 Bournemouth bank. These discussions amused Michael 
 most when he was able to break the rhythm of the battle- 
 dores by knocking down whatever liturgical or theological 
 shuttlecock was being used. He would put forward the 
 most outrageous heresy as his own firm conviction, and 
 scandalize and even alarm poor Mr. Prout, w^ho did not 
 at all relish dogmatic follow-my-leader and prayed for 
 Michael's reckless soul almost as fervidly as for the con- 
 fusion of the timid and malignant who annually objected 
 to the forthcoming feast of the Assumption at St. Bar- 
 tholomew's. Mr. Prout, however, was only one of a series 
 of ritualistic young men who prattled continually of vest- 
 ments and ceremonies and ornaments, until Michael
 
 CLOVEN HOOFMARKS 257 
 
 began to resent their gossip and withdraw from their society 
 into the woods, there to dream, staring up at the green and 
 blue arch above him, of the past here in wind-stirred soli- 
 tude so much the more real. Michael was a Catholic be- 
 cause Catholicism assured him of continuity and shrouded 
 him with a sensuous austerity; but in these hours of revolt 
 he found himself wishing for the old days with Alan. He 
 was fond enough of Chator, but to Chator everything was 
 so easy, and, when one day a letter arrived to call him back 
 to his family earlier than he expected, Michael was glad. 
 The waning summer was stimulating his imagination with 
 warm noons and gusty twilights; Chator's gossip broke the 
 spell. 
 
 Michael went for solitary walks on the downs, where he 
 loved to lie in hollows and watch the grasses fantastically 
 large against the sky, and the bulky clouds with their slow, 
 bewitching motion. He never went to visit sentimentally 
 the spot where stone and harebell commemorated his brief 
 experience of faith's profundity, for he dreaded lest indiffer- 
 ence should rob him of a perfect conception. He knew 
 very well even already the dangerous chill familiarity of 
 repetition. Those cloud-enchanted days of late summer 
 made him listlessly aware of fleeting impulses, and simul- 
 taneously dignified with incommunicable richness the pas- 
 sivity and even emptiness of his condition. On the wide 
 spaces of the downs he wandered luxuriously irresolute; 
 his mind, when for a moment it goaded itself into an effort 
 of concentration, faltered immediately, so that dead chival- 
 ries, gleaming down below in the rainy dusk of the valleys, 
 suffered in the very instant of perception a transmutation 
 into lamplit streets; and the wind's dull August booming 
 made embattled drums and fanfares romantic no more 
 than music heard in London on the way home from school. 
 Everything came to seem impossible and intangible, Michael 
 could not conceive that he ever was or ever would be in
 
 258 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 a class-room again, and almost immediately afterwards 
 he would w^onder whether he ever had been or ever would 
 be anywhere else. He began to imagine himself grown up, 
 but this w^as a nightmare thought, because he would either 
 realize himself decrepit with his own young mind or out- 
 wardly the same as he was now with a mind hideously 
 distorted by knowledge and sin. He could never achieve 
 a consistent realization that would give him definite am- 
 bitions. He longed to make up his mind to aim at some 
 profession, and the more he longed the more hopeless did 
 it seem to try to fit any existing profession with the de- 
 pressing idea of himself grown up. Then he would relax 
 his whole being and let himself be once more bewitched 
 into passivity by clouds and waving grasses. 
 
 Upon this mental state of Michael intruded one day a 
 visitor to the Abbey. A young man with spectacles and 
 a pear-shaped face, who wore gray flannel shirts that 
 depressed Michael unendurably, made a determined effort 
 to gain his confidence. The more shy that Michael 
 became, the more earnestly did this young man press him 
 with intimate questions about his physical well-being. For 
 Michael it was a strange and odiously embarrassing ex- 
 perience. The young man, whose name was Garrod, 
 spoke of his home in Hornsey and invited Michael to stay 
 with him. Michael shuddered at the idea of staying in a 
 strange suburb ; strange suburbs had always seemed to him 
 desolate, abominable and insecure. He always visualized 
 a draughty and ill-lighted railway platform, a rickety and 
 gloomy omnibus, countless Nonconformist chapels and in- 
 frequent policemen. Garrod spoke of his work on Sundays 
 at a church that was daily gaining adherents, of a dissolute 
 elder brother and an Agnostic father. Michael could have 
 cried aloud his unwillingness to visit Garrod. But the 
 young man was persistent; the young man was sure that 
 Michael, from ignorance, was leading an unhealthy life.
 
 CLOVEN HOOFMARKS 259 
 
 Garrod spoke of ignorance with ferocity; he trampled on 
 it with polytechnical knowledge, and pelted it with 
 all sorts of little books that afflicted Michael with nausea. 
 Michael loathed Garrod, and resented his persistent in- 
 structions, his offers to solve lingering physical perplexities. 
 For Michael, Garrod defiled the country by his cockney 
 complacency, his attacks upon public schools, his unpleasant 
 interrogations. Michael longed for Alan that together 
 they might rag this worm who wriggled so obscenely into 
 the secret places of a boy's mind. 
 
 "Science is all the go nowadays," said Garrod. "And 
 Science is what we want. Science and Religion. Some 
 think they don't go together. Don't they? I think the^ 
 do then." 
 
 "I hate science," said Michael. "Except for doctors, 
 of course — I suppose they've got to have it," he added 
 grudgingly. "At St. James' the Modern fellows are nearly 
 always bounders." 
 
 "But don't you want to know what your body's made 
 of?" demanded Garrod. 
 
 "I don't want to be told. I know quite enough for 
 myself." 
 
 "Well, would you like to read " 
 
 "No, I don't want to read anything," interrupted 
 Michael. 
 
 "But have you read " 
 
 "The only books I like," expostulated Michael, "are the 
 books I find for myself." 
 
 "But you aren't properly educated." 
 
 "I'm at a public school," said Michael proudly. 
 
 "Yes, and public schools have got to go very soon." 
 
 "Who says so?" demanded Michael fiercely. 
 
 "We say so. The people." 
 
 "The people?" echoed Michael. "What people? Why,
 
 26o YOUTH'S ' ENCOUNTER 
 
 if public schools were done away with we shouldn't have 
 any gentlemen," 
 
 "You're getting ofiE of the point," said Garrod. "You 
 don't understand what I'm driving at. You're a fellow 
 I took a fancy to right off, as you might say. I don't want 
 to see you ruin your health for the want of the right word 
 at the right moment. Oh, yes, I know." 
 
 "Look here," said Michael bluntly, "I don't want to be 
 rude, but I don't want to talk about this any more. It 
 makes me feel beastly." 
 
 "False modesty is the worst thing we've got to fight 
 against," declared Garrod. 
 
 So the argument continued, w^hile all the time the zealous 
 young man would fling darts of information that, however 
 much Michael was unwilling to receive them, generally 
 stuck fast. Michael was relieved when Garrod passed on 
 his way, and he vowed to himself never to run the risk 
 of meeting him again. 
 
 The visit of Garrod opened for Michael a door to uneasy 
 speculation. At his private school he had known the 
 hostility of "cads," and later on he had been aware of the 
 existence of "bounders"; the cads were always easily 
 defeated by force of arms, but this sudden attack upon his 
 intimacy by a bounder was disquieting and difficult to 
 deal with. He resented Garrod's iconoclasm, resented it 
 furiously in retrospect, wishing that he had parried more 
 icily his impudent thrusts; and he could almost have re- 
 joiced in Garrod's reappearance that with disdain he 
 might have wounded the fellow incurably. Yet he had a 
 feeling that Garrod might have turned out proof against 
 the worst weapons he knew how to use, and the memory 
 of the "blighter's" self-confidence was demoralizing to 
 Michael's conception of superiority. The vision of a 
 world populated by hostile Garrods rose up, and some of 
 the simplicity of life vanished irredeemably, so that Michael
 
 CLOVEN HOOFMARKS 261 
 
 took refuge in dreams of his own fashioning, where in a 
 feudal world the dreamer rode at the head of mankind. 
 Lying awake in the intense blackness of his cell, Michael 
 troubled himself once more with his identity, wishing 
 that he knew more about himself and his father, wishing 
 that his mother were not growing more remote every day, 
 wondering whether Stella over in Germany was encountering 
 Garrods and praying hard with a sense of impotency in the 
 darkness. He tried to make up his mind to consult Dom 
 Cuthbert, but the lank, awkward monk, fond though he 
 was of him, seemed unapproachable by daylight, and the 
 idea of consulting him, still more of confessing to him, 
 never crystallized. 
 
 These were still days bedewed with the approach of 
 Autumn; milkwhite at morn and at noon breathless with 
 a silver intensity that yearned upward against an azure 
 too ethereal, they floated sadly into night with humid, 
 intangible draperies of mist. These were days that forbade 
 Michael to walk afield, and that with haunting, autumnal 
 birdsong held him in a trance. He would find himself at 
 the day's end conscious of nothing but a remembrance of 
 new stubble trodden mechanically with languors attendant, 
 and it was only by a great effort that he brought himself to 
 converse with the monks working among the harvest or for 
 the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin to pick heavy white 
 chrysanthemums from the stony garden of the Abbey. 
 
 Michael was the only guest staying in the Abbey on the 
 vigil, and he sat almost in the entrance of the choir between 
 the drawn curtains, not very much unlike the devout figure 
 of some youthful donor in an old Italian picture, somber 
 against the blazing Vespers beyond. Michael was always 
 hoping for a direct manifestation from above to reward 
 the effort of faith, although he continually reproved himself 
 for this desire and flouted his weakness. He used to gaze 
 into the candles until they actually did seem to burn
 
 262 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 with angelic eyes that made his heart leap in expectation 
 of the sign awaited; but soon fancy would betray him, and 
 they would become candles again, merely flickering. 
 
 On this September dusk there were crimson shadows of 
 sunset deepening to purple in the corners of the chapel; 
 the candles were very bright; the brethren in the stalls 
 sang with austere fervor; the figure of Dom Cuthbert 
 veiled from awkwardness by the heavy white cope moved 
 before the altar during the censing of the Magnificat with 
 a majesty that filled the small choir; the thurible tinkled 
 its perfumed harmonies; and above the contentment of the 
 ensuing hush blackbirds were heard in the garden or seen 
 slipping to and fro like shadows across the windows. 
 
 Michael at this moment realized that there was a seventh 
 monk in the choir, and wondered vaguely how he had failed 
 to notice this newcomer before. Immediately after being 
 made aware of his presence he caught the stranger's eye, 
 and blushed so deeply that to cover his confusion he turned 
 over the pages of a psalter. Curiosity made him look up 
 again, but the new monk was devoutly wrapped in con- 
 templation, nor did Michael catch his eye again during the 
 Office. At supper he inquired about the newcomer of Dom 
 Gilbert, who reproved him for inquisitiveness, but told him 
 he was called Brother Aloysius. Again at Compline Michael 
 caught his glance, and for a long time that night in the 
 darkness he saw the eyes of Brother Aloysius gleaming 
 very blue. 
 
 On the next day Michael, wandering by the edge of the 
 hazel coppice, came upon Brother Aloysius with deep-stained 
 mouth and hands gathering blackberries. 
 
 "Who are you?" asked the monk. "You gave me a 
 very funny look at Vespers." 
 
 Michael thought this was an extremely unusual way for 
 a monk, even a new monk, to speak, and hesitated a moment 
 before he explained who he was.
 
 CLOVEN HOOFMARKS 263 
 
 "I suppose you can help me pick blackberries. I suppose 
 that isn't against the rules." 
 
 "I often help the brothers," said Michael simply. "But 
 I don't much care for picking blackberries. Still, I don't 
 mind helping you." 
 
 Michael had an impulse to leave Brother Aloysius, but 
 his self-consciousness prevented him from acting on it, and 
 he kept the picker company in silence v^^hile the blackberries 
 dropped lusciously into the basket. 
 
 "Feel my hand," said Brother Aloysius suddenly. "It's 
 as hot as hell." 
 
 This time Michael stared in frank astonishment. 
 
 "Well, you needn't look so frightened," said the monk. 
 "You don't look so very good yourself." 
 
 "Well, of course I'm not good," said Michael. "Only 
 I think it's funny for a monk to sw^ear. You don't mind 
 my saying so, do you?" 
 
 "I don't mind. I don't mind anything," said Brother 
 Aloysius. 
 
 Tension succeeded this statement, a tension that Michael 
 longed to break; but he could do no more than continue to 
 pick the blackberries. 
 
 "I suppose you v^^onder why I'm a monk?" demanded 
 Brother Aloysius. 
 
 Michael looked at his questioner's pale face, at the un- 
 comfortable ej-es gleaming blue, at the full stained mouth 
 and the long feverish hands dyed with purple juice. 
 
 "Why are you?" he asked. 
 
 "Well, I thought I'd try if anything could make me feel 
 good, and then you looked at me in Chapel and set me 
 off again." 
 
 "I set you oflf?" stammered Michael. 
 
 "Yes, you with your big girl's eyes, just like a girl I 
 used to live with. Oh, you needn't look so proper. I 
 expect you've often thought about girls. I did at your
 
 264 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 age. Three months with girls, three months with priests. 
 Girls and priests — that's my life. When I was tired of 
 women, I became religious, and when I was tired of Church, 
 I took to women. It was a priest told me to come here to 
 see if this would cure me, and now, damn you, you come 
 into Chapel and stare and set me thinking of the Seven 
 Sisters Road on that wet night I saw her last. That's 
 where she lives, and you look exactly like her. God ! you're 
 the image of her. You might almost be her ghost incar- 
 nate." 
 
 Brother Aloysius caught hold of Michael's arm and spoke 
 through clenched teeth. In Michael's struggle to free him- 
 self the basket of blackberries was upset, and they trod the 
 spilt fruit into the grass. Michael broke away finally and 
 gasped angrily: 
 
 "Look here, I'm not going to stay here. You're mad." 
 
 He ran from the monk into the depths of the wood, not 
 stopping until he reached a silent glade. Here on the moss 
 he sat panting, horrified. Yet, when he came to compose 
 the sentences in which he should tell Dom Cuthbert of 
 his experience with the new monk, he found himself wishing 
 that he had stayed to hear more. He actually enjoyed in 
 retrospect the humiliation of the man, and his heart beat 
 with the excitement of hearing more. Slowly he turned 
 to seek again Brother Aloysius. 
 
 "You may as well tell me some more, now you've begun," 
 said Michael. 
 
 For three or four days Michael was always in the company 
 of Brother Aloysius, plying him with questions that sounded 
 abominable to himself, when he remembered with what 
 indignation he had rejected Garrod's offer of knowledge. 
 Brother Aloysius spared no blushes, whether of fiery shame 
 or furtive desire, and piece by piece Michael learned the 
 fabric of vice. He was informed coldly of facts whose 
 existence he had hitherto put down to his own most solitary
 
 CLOVEN HOOFMARKS 265 
 
 and most intimate imaginations. Every vague evil that 
 came w^ickedly before sleep w^as now^ made real w^ith concrete 
 examples; the vilest ideas, that hitherto he had considered 
 peculiar to himself and perhaps a few more sadly tempted 
 dreamers tossing through the vulnerable hours of the night, 
 w^ere commonplace to Brother Aloysius, v^hose soul w^as 
 twisted, whose mind was debased to such an extent that 
 he could boast of his delight in making the very priest 
 writhe and wince in the Confessional. 
 
 Conversations with Brother Aloysius were sufficiently 
 thrilling journeys, and Michael was always ready to follow 
 his footsteps as one might follow a noctambulatory cat. 
 The Seven Sisters Road was the scene of most of his ad- 
 ventures, if adventures they could be called, these dissolute 
 pilgrimages. Michael came to know this street as one comes 
 to know the street of a familiar dream. He walked along it 
 in lavender sunrises watching the crenelated horizon of 
 housetops; he sauntered through it slowly on dripping 
 midnights, and on foggy November afternoons he speculated 
 upon the windows with their aqueous sheen of incandescent 
 gas. On summer dusks he pushed his way through the fetid 
 population that thronged it, smelling the odor of stale 
 fruit exposed for sale, and on sad gray Sabbaths he saw the 
 ill-corseted servant girls treading down the heels of their 
 ugly boots, and plush-clad children who continually dropped 
 Sunday-school books in the mud. 
 
 And not only was Michael cognizant of the sordid street's 
 exterior. He heard the creak of bells by blistered doors, he 
 tripped over mats in narrow gloomy passages and felt his 
 way up stale rickety stairs. Michael knew many rooms in 
 this street of dreams, but they were all much alike with 
 their muslin and patchouli, their aspidistras and yellowing 
 photographs. The ribbed pianos tintinnabulated harshly 
 with songs cut from the squalid sheets of Sunday papers; 
 18
 
 266 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 in unseen basements children whined, while on the mantel- 
 piece garish vases rattled to the vibration of traffic. 
 
 Michael was also aware of the emotional crises that occur 
 in the Seven Sisters Road, from the muttered curses of the 
 old street-walkers with their crape bonnets cocked awry 
 and their draggled musty skirts to Brother Aloysius himself 
 shaken with excess of sin in colloquy w^ith a ghostly voice 
 upon a late winter dawn. 
 
 *'A ghost?" he echoed incredulously. 
 
 ''It's true. I heard a voice telling me to go back. And 
 when I went back, there she was sitting in the armchair 
 with the antimacassar round her shoulders because it was 
 cold, and the carving-knife across her knees, waiting up to 
 do for the fellow that was keeping her. I reckon it was 
 God sent me back to save her." 
 
 Even Michael in his vicious mood could not tolerate 
 this hysterical blasphemy, and he scoffed at the supernatural 
 explanation. But Brother Aloysius did not care whether he 
 was believed or not. He himself was sufficient audience to 
 himself, ready to applaud and condemn w^ith equal exagger- 
 ation of feeling. 
 
 After a week of self-revelation Brother Aloysius suddenly 
 had spiritual qualms about his behavior, and announced to 
 Michael that he must go to Confession and free himself 
 from the oppressive responsibility of his sin. Michael did 
 not like the thought of Dom Cuthbert being aware of the 
 way in which his last days at the monastery had been spent, 
 and hoped that Brother Aloysius would confess in as general 
 a manner as possible. Yet even so he feared that the per- 
 spicacious Abbot would guess the partner of his penitent, 
 and, notwithstanding the sacred impersonality of the Con- 
 fessional, regard Michael with an involuntary disgust. 
 However, the confession, with all its attendant pangs of 
 self-reproach, passed over, and Michael was unable to 
 detect the slightest alteration in Dom Cuthbert's attitude
 
 CLOVEN HOOFMARKS 267 
 
 toward him. But he avoided Brother Aloysius so carefully 
 during the remainder of his stay that it was impossible to 
 test the Abbot's knowledge as directly as he could have 
 wished. 
 
 The night before Michael was to leave the monastery, a 
 great gale blew from the southwest and kept him wide 
 awake hour after hour until the bell for Matins. He felt 
 that on this his last night it would be in order for him to 
 attend the Office. So he dressed quickly and hurried through 
 the wind-swept corridor into the Chapel. Here, in a 
 severity of long droning psalms, he tried to purge his mind 
 of all it had acquired fiom the shamelessness of Brother 
 Aloysius. He was so far successful that he could look 
 Dom Cuthbert fearlessly in the face when he bade him 
 good-bye next day, and, as he coasted over the downs 
 through the calm September sunlight, he to himself seemed 
 like the country washed by the serene radiance of the 
 tempest's aftermath.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 MIRRORS 
 
 MICHAEL somehow felt shy when he heard his 
 mother's voice telling him to come into her room. 
 He had run upstairs and knocked excitedly at her 
 door before the shyness overwhelmed him, but it was too 
 late not to enter, and he sat down to give her the account 
 of his holidays. Rather dull it seemed, and robbed of all 
 vitality by the barrier which both his mother and he hastened 
 to erect between themselves. 
 
 "Well, dear, did you enjoy yourself at this Monastery?" 
 
 "Oh, rather." 
 
 "Is the — what do you call him — the head monk a nice 
 man?" 
 
 "Oh, yes, awfully decent." 
 
 "And your friend Chator, did he enjoy himself?" 
 
 "Oh, rather. Only he had to go before me. Did you 
 enjoy yo'irself abroad, mother?" 
 
 "Very much, dear, thank you. We had lovely weather 
 all the time." 
 
 "We had awfully ripping weather too." 
 
 "Have you got everything ready for school in the morn- 
 ing?" 
 
 "There's nothing much to get. I suppose I'll go into 
 Cray's — the Upper Fifth. Do you want me now, 
 mother?" 
 
 268
 
 MIRRORS 269 
 
 "No, dear. I have one or two letters to write." 
 
 "I think I'll go round and see if Chator's home yet. 
 You don't mind?" 
 
 "Don't be late for dinner." 
 
 "Oh, no, rather not." 
 
 Going downstairs from his mother's room, Michael had 
 half an impulse to turn back and confide in her the real 
 account of his holidays. But on reflection he protested 
 to himself that his mother looked upon him as immaculate, 
 and he felt unwilling to disturb by such a revolutionary 
 step the approved tranquillities of maternal ignorance. 
 
 Mr. Cray, his new form-master, was a man of distinct 
 personality, and possessed a considerable amount of educa- 
 tive ability; but unfortunately for Michael the zest of 
 c assies had withered in his heart after his disappointment 
 over the Oxford and Cambridge Certificate. Therefore 
 Mr. Cray with his bright archaeology and chatty scholar- 
 ship bored Michael more profoundly than any of his 
 masters so far had bored him. Mr. Cray resented this 
 attitude very bitterly, being used to keenness in his form, 
 and Michael's dreary indolence, which often came nearer 
 to insolence, irritated him. As for the plodding, inky 
 sycophants who fawned upon Mr. Cray's informativeness, 
 Michael regarded them with horror and contempt. He 
 sat surrounded by the butts and bugbears of his school-life. 
 All the boys whose existence he had deplored seemed to 
 have clambered arduously into the Upper Fifth just to 
 enrage him with the sight of their industrious propinquity. 
 There they sat w^ith their scraggy wrists protruding from 
 shrinking coat-sleeves, with ambitious noses glued to their 
 books, with pens and pencils neatly disposed for demon- 
 strative annotation, and nearly all of them conscious 
 of having figured in the school-list with the printed bubble 
 of the Oxford and Cambridge Higher Certificate beside 
 their names. Contemplating them in the mass, Michael
 
 270 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 scarcely knew how he would endure another dusty year of 
 school. 
 
 ''And now we come to the question of the Homeric 
 gate — the Homeric gate, Fane, when you can condescend 
 to our level," said Mr. Cray severely. 
 
 "I'm listening, sir," said Michael wearily, 
 
 "Of course the earliest type of gate was without hinges 
 — without hinges, Fane! Very much like your attention, 
 Fane!" 
 
 Several sycophants giggled at this, and Michael, gazing 
 very earnestly at Mr. Cray's benign but somewhat dirty 
 bald head, took a bloody revenge upon those in reach of 
 his javelin of quadruple penholders. 
 
 "For Monday," said Mr. Cray, when he had done with 
 listening to the intelligent advice of his favorite pupils 
 on the subject of gates ancient and modern, "for Monday 
 the essay will be on Patriotism." 
 
 Michael groaned audibly. 
 
 "Isn't there an alternative subject, sir?" he gloomily 
 inquired. 
 
 "Does Fane dislike abstractions?" said Mr. Cray. 
 "Curious! Well, if Fane wishes for an alternative subject, 
 of course Fane must be obeyed. The alternative subject 
 will be An Examination into the Fundamental Doctrines 
 of Hegelian Idealism. Does that suit Fane?" 
 
 "Very well indeed," said Michael, who had never heard 
 of Hegel until that moment, but vowed to himself that 
 somehow between this muggy Friday afternoon and next 
 Monday morning he would conquer the fellow's opinions. 
 As a matter of fact, the essay proved perfectly easy with 
 the assistance of The Popular Encyclopedia, though Mr. 
 Cray called it a piece of impudence and looked almost 
 baleful when Michael showed it up. 
 
 From this atmosphere of complacent effort Michael 
 withdrew one afternoon to consult Father Viner about
 
 MIRRORS 271 
 
 his future. Underneath the desire for practical advice 
 was a desire to talk about himself, and Michael was dis- 
 appointed on arriving at Father Viner's rooms to hear that 
 he was out. However, learning that there was a prospect 
 of his speedy return, he came in at the landlady's suggestion 
 to amuse himself with a book while he waited. 
 
 Wandering round the big bay-windowed room with its 
 odor of tobacco and books, and casting a careless glance 
 at Father Viner's desk, Michael caught sight of his own 
 name in the middle of a neatly written letter on the top 
 of a pile of others. He could not resist taking a long 
 glance to see the address and verify the allusion to himself, 
 and with this longer glance curiously conquered so com- 
 pletely the prejudice against prying into other people's 
 correspondence that Michael, breathing nervously under the 
 dread of interruption, took up the letter and read it right 
 through. It was in his present mood of anxiety about 
 himself very absorbing. 
 
 Clere Abbey 
 
 Michael Mass. 
 
 PAXHh 
 Dear Brother: 
 
 I have been intending to write to you about young 
 Michael Fane ever since he left us, and your letter of in- 
 quiry has had the effect of bringing me up to the point. 
 
 I hardly know what to tell you. He's a curious youth, 
 very lovable, and with enough brains to make one wish 
 that he might have a vocation for the priesthood. At the 
 same time I noticed while he was with us, especially after 
 the admirable Chator departed, an overwhelming languor 
 which I very much deplored. 
 
 He spent much of his time with a very bad hat indeed, 
 whom I have just sent away from Clere. If you ever come 
 across Mr. Henry Meats, be careful of him. Arbuthnot 
 of St. Aidan's, Holloway, sent him to me. You know 
 Arbuthnot's expansive (and for his friends expensive) 
 Christianit)^ This last effort of his was a snorter, a soft,
 
 272 YOUTH^S ENCOUNTER 
 
 nasty, hysterical, little blob of vice. I ought to have seen 
 through the fellow before I did. Heaven knows I get 
 enough of the tag-rag of the Movement trying to be taken 
 on at Clere. I suppose the monastic life will always make 
 an imperishable appeal to the worst, and, thank God, some 
 of the best. I mention this fellow to you because I'm 
 afraid he and Michael may meet again, and I don't at all 
 like the idea of their acquaintanceship progressing, especially 
 as it was unluckily begun beneath a religious roof. So 
 keep an eye on Mr. Henry Meats. He's really bad. 
 
 Another fellow I don't recommend for Michael is Percy 
 Garrod. Not that I think there is much danger in that 
 direction, for I fancy Michael was very cold with him. 
 Percy is a decent, honest, hard-working, common ass, with 
 a deep respect for the Pope and the Polytechnic. He's a 
 trifle zealous, however, with bastard information about 
 physical science, and not at all the person I should choose 
 to lecture Michael on the complications of adolescence. 
 
 We are getting on fairly well at Clere, but it's hard work 
 trying to make this country believe there is the slightest 
 necessity for the contemplative life. I hope all goes well 
 with you and your work. 
 
 Yours affectionately in Xt., 
 
 CuTHBERT Manners^ O.S.B. 
 
 Poor Michael. His will be a difficult position one day. 
 I feel on re-reading this letter that I've told you nothing 
 you don't already know. But he's one of those elusive 
 boys who have lived within themselves too much and too 
 long. 
 
 Michael put this letter back where he had found it, and 
 wondered how much of the contents would be discussed 
 by Father Viner. He was glad that Brother Aloysius had 
 vanished, because Brother Aloysius had become like a bad 
 dream with which he was unwilling in the future to renew 
 acquaintance. On his own character Dom Cuthbert 
 had not succeeded in throwing very much light — at any 
 rate not in this letter. Father Viner came in to interrupt
 
 MIRRORS 273 
 
 Michael's meditations, and began at once to discuss the 
 letter. 
 
 "The Lord Abbot of Clere thinks you're a dreamer," 
 he began abruptly. 
 
 "Does he, Mr. Viner?" echoed Michael, who somehow 
 could never bring himself to the point of addressing the 
 priest as "Father." Shyness always overcame his will. 
 
 "What do you dream about, young Joseph?" 
 
 "Oh, I only think about a good many things, and wonder 
 what I'm going to be and all that," Michael replied. "I 
 don't want to go into the Indian Civil Service or anything 
 with exams. I'm sick of exams. What I most want to do 
 is to get away from school. I'm sick of school, and the 
 fellows in the Upper Fifth are a greasy crowd of swats 
 always sucking up to Cray." 
 
 "And who is the gentleman with the crustacean name 
 that attracts these barnacles?" 
 
 "Cray? Oh, he's my form-master, and tries to be 
 funny." 
 
 "So do I, Michael," confessed Mr. Viner. 
 
 "Oh, well, that's different. I'm not bound to listen to 
 you, if I don't want to. But I have to listen to Cray for 
 eighteen hours every week, and he hates me because I w^on't 
 take notes for his beastly essays. I think I'll ask my mater 
 if I can't leave school after this term." 
 
 "And then what would you do?" 
 
 "Oh, I don't know. I could settle when I'd left." 
 
 "What about Oxford?" 
 
 "Well, I could go to Oxford later on." 
 
 "I don't think you could quite so easily as you think. 
 Anyway, you'd much better go to Oxford straight from 
 school." 
 
 "Eight more terms before I leave. Phew!" 
 
 Michael groaned. "It's such a terrible waste of time, and 
 I know Oxford's ripping."
 
 2 74 YOUTH^S ENCOUNTER 
 
 'Terhaps something will come along to interest you. 
 
 And always, dear boy, don't forget you have your religion." 
 
 "Yes, I know," said Michael. "But at the Abbey I 
 
 met some people who were supposed to be religious, and 
 
 they were pretty good rotters." 
 
 The priest looked at him and seemed inclined to let 
 Michael elaborate this topic, but almost immediately he 
 dismissed it with a commonplace. 
 
 "Oh, well," Michael sighed, "I suppose something will 
 happen soon to buck me up. I hope so. Perhaps the 
 Kensitites will start making rows in churches again," he 
 went on hopefully. "Will you lend me the Apocryphal 
 Gospels? We're going to have a discussion about them at 
 the De Rebus Ecclesiasticis." 
 
 "Oh, the society hasn't broken up?" inquired Mr. Viner. 
 "Rather not. Only everybody's changed rather. Chator's 
 become frightfully Roman. He was Sarum last term, and 
 he thinks I'm frightfully heretical, only of course I say 
 a lot I don't mean just to rag him. I say, by the way, 
 who wrote *In a Garden'?" 
 
 "It sounds a very general title," commented Mr. Viner, 
 with a smile. 
 
 "Well, it's some poem or other." 
 
 "Swinburne wrote a poem in the Second Series of Poems 
 and Ballads called 'A Forsaken Garden.' Is that what you 
 mean?" 
 
 "Perhaps. Is it a famous poem?" 
 "Yes, I should say it was distinctly." 
 "Well, that must be it. Cray tried to be funny about 
 it to-day in form, and said to me, 'Good heavens, haven't 
 you read "In a Garden"?' And I said I'd never heard 
 of it. And then he said in his funny way to the class, 
 *I suppose you've all read it.' And none of them had, 
 which made him look rather an ass. So he said we'd better 
 read it by next week."
 
 MIRRORS 275 
 
 "I can lend you my Swinburne. Only take care of it," 
 said Mr. Viner. ''It's a wonderful poem. 
 
 "In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland, 
 At the sea-down's edge between windward and lee. 
 Walled round with rocks as an inland island, 
 The ghost of a garden fronts the sea." 
 
 "I say," exclaimed Michael eagerly, "I never knew 
 Swinburne was a really great poet. And, fancy, he's alive 
 now." 
 
 "Alive, and living at Putney," said Mr. Viner. 
 
 "And yet he wrote what you've just said!" 
 
 "He wrote that, and many other things too. He wrote: 
 
 "Before the beginning of years 
 
 There came to the making of man 
 Time, with a gift of tears; 
 
 Grief, with a glass that ran; 
 Pleasure, with pain for leaven; 
 
 Summer, with flowers that fell; 
 Remembrance fallen from heaven. 
 
 And madness risen from hell." 
 
 "Good lord," sighed Michael. "And he's in Putney 
 at this very moment." 
 
 Michael went home clasping close the black volume, 
 and in his room that night, while the gas jet flamed ex- 
 citably in defiance of rule, he read almost right through 
 the Second Series of Poems and Ballads. It was midnight 
 when he turned down the gas and sank feverishly into 
 bed. For a long while he was saying to himself isolated 
 lines: The wet skies harden; the gates are barred on the 
 summer side. The rose red acacia that mocks the rose. 
 Sleep, and if life was bitter to thee, brother. For whom all 
 winds are quiet as the sun, all waters as the shore. 
 
 In school on Monday morning Mr. Cray, to Michael's
 
 276 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 regret, did not allude to the command that his class should 
 read *'In a Garden." Michael was desperately anxious at 
 once to tell him how much he had loved the poem and 
 to remind him of the real title, "A Forsaken Garden." At 
 last he could bear it no longer and went up flushed with 
 enthusiasm to Mr. Cray's desk, nominally to inquire into 
 an alleged mistake in his Latin Prose, but actually to 
 inform Mr. Cray of his delight in Swinburne. When the 
 grammatical blunder had been discussed, Michael said with 
 as much nonchalance as he could assume: 
 
 "I read that poem, sir. I think it's ripping." 
 
 "What poem?" repeated Mr. Cray vaguely. "Oh, yes, 
 'Enoch Arden.' " 
 
 "Enoch Arden," stammered Michael. "I thought you 
 said *In a Garden.' I read 'A Forsaken Garden,' by 
 Swinburne." 
 
 Mr. Cray put on his most patronizing manner. 
 
 "My poor Fane, have you never heard of 'Enoch Arden ?' 
 Perhaps you've never even heard of Tennyson?" 
 
 "But Swinburne's good, isn't he, sir?" 
 
 "Swinburne is very well," said Mr. Cray. "Oh, yes, 
 Swinburne will do, if you like rose-jam. But I don't recom- 
 mend Swinburne for you, Fane." 
 
 Then Mr. Cray addressed his class: 
 
 "Did you all read 'Enoch Arden?'" 
 
 "Yes, sir," twittered the Upper Fifth. 
 
 "Fane, however, with that independence of judgment 
 which distinguishes his Latin Prose from, let us say, the 
 prose of Cicero, preferred to read 'A Forsaken Garden' by 
 one Swinburne." 
 
 The Upper Fifth giggled dutifully. 
 
 "Perhaps Fane will recite to us his discovery," said 
 Mr. Cray, scratching his scurfy head with the gnawed end 
 of a penholder. 
 
 Michael blushed resentfully, and walked back to his desk.
 
 MIRRORS 277 
 
 "No?" said Mr. Cray with an affectation of great sur- 
 prise. 
 
 Then he and the Upper Fifth, contented with their 
 superiority, began to chew and rend some tough Greek 
 particles which ultimately became digestible enough to be 
 assimilated by the Upper Fifth; while Mr. Cray himself 
 purred over his cubs, looking not very unlike a mangy old 
 lioness. 
 
 "Eight more terms," groaned Michael to himself. 
 
 Mr. Cray was not so blind to his pupils' need for mild 
 intellectual excitement, however much he might scorn 
 the easy emotions of Swinburne. He really grew lyrical 
 over Homeric difficulties, and even spoke enthusiastically 
 of Mr. Mackail's translation of the Georgics; but always 
 he managed to conceal the nobility of his theme beneath 
 a mass of what he called "minor points." He would create 
 his own rubbish heap and invite the Upper Fifth to scratch 
 in it for pearls. One day a question arose as to the exact 
 meaning of ovXoxvraL in Homer. Michael would have 
 been perfectly content to believe that it meant "whole 
 barleycorns," until Mr. Cray suggested that it might be 
 equivalent to the Latin "mola," meaning "grain coarsely 
 ground." An exhausting discussion followed, illustrated 
 by examples from every sort of writer, all of which had to 
 be taken down in notes in anticipation of a still more ex- 
 hausting essay on the subject. 
 
 "The meal may be trite," said Mr. Cray, "but not the 
 subject," he added, chuckling. "However, I have only- 
 touched the fringe of it; you will find the arguments fully 
 set forth in Buttmann's Lexilogus. Who possesses that 
 invaluable work?" 
 
 Nobody in the Upper Fifth possessed it, but all anxiously 
 made a note of it, in order to acquire it over the counter of 
 the Book Room downstairs.
 
 278 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 "No use," said Mr. Cray. "Buttmann's Lexilogus is 
 now out of print." 
 
 Michael pricked up at this. The phrase lent a curious 
 flavor of Romance to the dull book. 
 
 "No doubt, however, you will be able to obtain it second- 
 hand," added Mr. Cray. 
 
 The notion of tracking down Buttmann's Lexilogus 
 possessed the Upper Fifth. Eagerly after school the 
 diligent ones discussed ways and means. Parties were 
 formed, almost one might say expeditions, to rescue the 
 valuable work from oblivion. Michael stood contemptu- 
 ously aside from the buzz of self-conscious effort round 
 him, although he had made up his own mind to be one of the 
 first to obtain the book. Levy, however, secured the first 
 copy for fourpence in Farringdon Street, earning for his 
 sharpness much praise. Another boy bought one for three 
 shillings and sixpence in Paddington, the price one would 
 expect to pay, if not a Levy; and there were rumors 
 of a copy in Kensington High Street. To Michael the 
 mart of London from earliest youth had been Hammer- 
 smith Broadway, and thither he hurried, hopeful of dis- 
 covering Buttmann's dingy Lexilogus, for the purchase of 
 which he had thoughtfully begged a sovereign from his 
 mother. Michael did not greatly covet Buttmann's, but he 
 was sure that the surplus from three shillings and sixpence, 
 possibly even from fourpence, would be very welcome. 
 
 He found at last in a turning off Hammersmith Broadway 
 a wonderful bookshop, whose rooms upon rooms leading 
 into one another were all lined and loaded with every kind 
 of book. The proprietor soon found a copy of Buttmann, 
 which he sold to Michael for half a crown, leaving him 
 with fifteen shillings for himself, since he decided that it 
 would be as well to return his mother at least half a crown 
 from her sovereign. The purchase completed, Michael 
 began to wander round the shop, taking down a book here,
 
 MIRRORS 279 
 
 a book there, dipping into them from the top of a ladder, 
 sniffing them, clapping their covers together to drive aw^ay 
 the dust, and altogether thoroughly enjoying himself, vi^hile 
 the daylight slow^ly faded and street-lamps came vv^Inking 
 into ken outside. At last, just as the shop-boy w^as putting 
 up the shutters, Michael discovered a volume bound in half- 
 morocco of a crude gay blue, that proved on inspection to 
 contain the complete poetical works of Algernon Charles 
 Swinburne, for the sum of seventeen shillings and sixpence. 
 
 What was now left of his golden sovereign that should 
 have bought so much besides Buttmann's brown and musty 
 Lexilogus ? 
 
 Michael approached the proprietor with the volume in 
 his hand. 
 
 "How much?" he asked, with a queer choking sensation, 
 a throbbing excitement, for he had never before even 
 imagined the expenditure of seventeen shillings and six- 
 pence on one book. 
 
 "What's this?" said the proprietor, putting on his spec- 
 tacles. "Oh, yes, Swinburne — pirated American edition. 
 Seventeen shillings and sixpence." 
 
 "Couldn't you take less?" asked Michael, with a vague 
 hope that he might rescue a shilling for his mother, if not 
 for cigarettes. 
 
 "Take less?" repeated the bookseller. "Good gracious, 
 young man, do you know what you'd have to pay for 
 Swinburne's stuff separate? Something like seven or eight 
 pounds, and then they'd be all in different volumes. Whereas 
 here you've got — lemme see — Atalanta in Calydon, Chaste- 
 lard, Poems and Ballads, Songs before Sunrise, Bothwell, 
 Tristram of LA^onesse, Songs of Two Nations, and heaven 
 knows what not. I call seventeen shillings and sixpence 
 very cheap for what you might almost call a man's life- 
 work. Shall I wTap it up?"
 
 28o YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 "Yes, please," said Michael, gasping with the effect of 
 the plunge. 
 
 But when that night he read 
 
 Swallow, my sister, O fair swift swallow, 
 
 he forgot all about the cost. 
 
 The more of Swinburne that Michael read, the more 
 impatient he grew of school. The boredom of Mr. Cray's 
 class became stupendous; and Michael, searching for 
 some way to avoid it, decided to give up Classics and apply 
 for admission to the History Sixth, w^hich w^as a small 
 association of boys who had drifted into this appendix 
 for the purpose of defeating the ordinary rules of pro- 
 motion. For instance, when the Captain of the School 
 Eleven had not attained the privileged Sixth, he was often 
 allowed to enter the History Sixth, in order that he might 
 achieve the intellectual dignity which consorted with his 
 athletic prowess. 
 
 Michael had for some time envied the leisure of the 
 History Sixth, with its general air of slackness and its 
 form-master, Mr. Kirkham, who, on account of holding 
 many administrative positions important to the athletic life 
 of the school, was often absent from his class-room. He 
 now racked his brains for an excuse to achieve the idle 
 bliss of these charmed few. Finally he persuaded his mother 
 to write to the Headmaster and apply for his admission, on 
 the grounds of the greater utility of History in his future 
 profession. 
 
 "But what are you going to be, Michael?" asked his 
 mother. 
 
 "I don't know, but you can say I'm going to be a barrister 
 or something." 
 
 "Is History better for a barrister?" 
 
 "I don't know, but you can easily say you think it is."
 
 MIRRORS 281 
 
 In the end his mother wrote to Dr. Brownjohn, and 
 one gray November afternoon the Headmaster sailed into 
 the class-room of the Upper Fifth, extricated Michael with 
 a roar, and marched with him up and down the dusky 
 corridor in a ferocious discussion of the proposal. 
 
 "Why do you want to give up your Classics?" bellowed 
 Dr. Brownjohn. 
 
 In the echoing corridor Michael's voice sounded pain- 
 fully weak against his monitor's. 
 
 "I don't want to give them up, sir. Only I would like 
 to learn History as well," he explained. 
 
 "What's the good of History?" roared the Doctor. 
 
 "I thought I'd like to learn it," said Michael. 
 
 "You shouldn't think, you infamous young sluggard." 
 
 "And I could go on reading Classics, sir, I could really." 
 
 "Bah!" shouted Dr. Brownjohn. "Impudent nonsense, 
 you young sloth. Why didn't you get your Certificate?" 
 
 "I failed in Arithmetic, sir." 
 
 "You'll fail in your whole life, boy," prophesied Dr. 
 Brownjohn in bull-deep accents of reproach. "Aren't you 
 ashamed of yourself?" 
 
 "No, sir," said Michael. "I don't think I am, because 
 I worked jolly hard." 
 
 "Worked, you abominable little loafer? You've never 
 worked in your life. You could be the finest scholar in 
 the school, and you're merely a coruscation of slatternly, 
 slipshod paste. Bah ! What do you expect to do when you 
 leave school? Um?" 
 
 "I want to go to Oxford." 
 
 "Then get the Balliol Scholarship." 
 
 "I don't want to be a Balliol," said Michael. 
 
 "Then get the major scholarship at Trinity, Cambridge." 
 
 "I don't intend to go to Cambridge," said Michael. 
 
 "Good heavens, boy," roared Dr. Brownjohn, "are you 
 trying to arrange your own career?" 
 19
 
 282 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 *'No, sir," said Michael. "But I want to go to St. 
 Mary's, Oxford." 
 
 ''Then get a scholarship at St. Mary's." 
 
 ''But I don't want to be a Scholar of any college. I 
 want to go up as a Commoner." 
 
 The veins on Dr. Brownjohn's forehead swelled with 
 wrath, astonishment and dismay. 
 
 "Get out of my sight," he thundered. "Get back into 
 your class-room. I've done with you; I take no more 
 interest in you. You're here to earn glory for your school, 
 you're here to gain a scholarship, not to air your own 
 opinions. Get out of my sight, you young scoundrel. 
 How dare you argue with me? You shan't go into the 
 History Sixth! You shall stew in your own obstinate 
 juice in the Upper Fifth until I choose to move you out 
 of it. Do you hear? Go back into your class-room. 
 I'll write to your mother. She's an idiotic woman, and 
 you're a slovenly, idle, good-for-nothing cub." 
 
 Overwhelmed with failure and very sensitive to the in- 
 quisitive glances of his classmates, Michael sat down in 
 his own desk again as unobtrusively as he could. 
 
 Michael's peace of mind was not increased by the con- 
 sciousness of Mr. Cray's knowledge of his appeal to with- 
 draw from the Upper Fifth, and he became exposed to 
 a large amount of sarcasm in allusion to his expressed 
 inclination tow^ard history. He was continually referred 
 to as an authority on Constitutions; he was invited to 
 bring forward comparisons from more modern times to 
 help the elucidation of the Syracusan expedition or the 
 Delian Confederacy. 
 
 All that Michael gained from Mr. Cray was a passion 
 for second-hand books — the latest and most fervid of all 
 his collecting hobbies. 
 
 One wintry evening in Elson's Bookshop at Hammer- 
 smith he was enjoying himself on the top of a ladder,
 
 MIRRORS 283 
 
 when he became aware of an interested gaze directed 
 at himself over the dull-gilt edges of a large and expensive 
 work on Greek sculpture. The face that so regarded him 
 was at once fascinating and repulsive. The glittering 
 blue eyes full of laughter were immediately attractive, but 
 something in the pointed ears and curled-back lips, some- 
 thing in the peculiarly white fingers faintly penciled about 
 the knuckles with fine black hairs, and after a moment some- 
 thing cruel in the bright blue eyes themselves restrained 
 him from an answering smile. 
 
 "What is the book, Hyacinthus?" asked the stranger, 
 and his voice was so winning and so melodious in the 
 shadowy bookshop that Michael immediately fell into the 
 easiest of conversations. 
 
 "Fond of books?" asked the stranger. "Oh, by the way, 
 my name is Wilmot, Arthur Wilmot." 
 
 Something in Wilmot's manner made Michael suppose 
 that he ought to be familiar with the name, and he tried to 
 recall it. 
 
 "What's your name?" the stranger went on. 
 
 Michael told his name, and also his school, and before 
 very long a good deal about himself. 
 
 "I live near you," said Mr. Wilmot. "We'll walk along 
 presently. I'd like you to dine with me one night soon. 
 When?" 
 
 "Oh, any time," said Michael, trying to speak as if 
 invitations to dinner occurred to him three or four times a 
 day. 
 
 "Here's my card," said the stranger. "You'd better 
 show it to your mother — so that she'll know it's all right. 
 I'm a writer, you know." 
 
 "Oh, yes," Michael vaguely agreed. 
 
 "I don't suppose you've seen any of my stuflF. I don't 
 publish much. Sometimes I read my poems to Interior 
 people."
 
 284 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 Michael looked puzzled. 
 
 "Interior is my name for the people who understand. 
 So few do. I should say you'd be sympathetic. You look 
 sympathetic. You remind me of those exquisite boys who 
 in scarlet hose run delicately with beakers of w^ine or stand 
 in groups about the corners of old Florentine pictures." 
 
 Michael tried to look severe, and yet, after the Upper 
 Fifth, even so direct and embarrassing a compliment was 
 slightly pleasant. 
 
 "Shall we go along? To-night the Hammersmith Road 
 is full of mystery. But, first, shall I not buy you a book — 
 some exquisite book full of strange perfumes and passion- 
 ate courtly gestures? And so you are at school? How 
 wonderful to be at school! How Sicilian! Strange youth, 
 you should have been sung by Theocritus, or, better, been 
 crowned with myrtle by some wonderful unknown Greek, 
 some perfect blossom of the Anthology." 
 
 Michael laughed rather foolishly. There seemed nothing 
 else to do. 
 
 "Won't you smoke? These Chiar cigarettes in their 
 diaphanous paper of mildest mauve would suit your oddly 
 remote, your curiously shy glance. You had better not 
 smoke so near to the savage confines of St. James' School? 
 How ascetic! How stringent! What book shall I buy 
 for you, O greatly to be envied dreamer of Sicilian dreams? 
 Shall I buy you Mademoiselle de Maupin, so that all her 
 rococo soul may dance with gilded limbs across your vision? 
 Or shall I buy you A Rebours, and teach you to live? And 
 yet I think neither would suit you perfectly. So here is a 
 volume of Pater — Imaginary Portraits. You will like to 
 read of Denys I'Auxerrois. One day I myself will write 
 an imaginary portrait of you, wherein your secret, sidelong 
 smile will reveal to the world the whole art of youth." 
 
 "But really — thanks very much," stammered Michael, 
 who was beginning to suspect the stranger of madness —
 
 MIRRORS 285 
 
 "it's awfully kind of you, but, really, I think I'd rather 
 not." 
 
 "Do not be proud," said Mr. Wilmot. "Pride is for 
 the pure in heart, and you are surely not pure in heart. 
 Or are you? Are you indeed like one of those wonderful 
 white statues of antiquity, unaware of the soul with all its 
 maladies?" 
 
 In the end, so urgent was Mr. Wilmot, Michael accepted 
 the volume of Pater, and w^alked with the stranger through 
 the foggy night. Somehow the conversation Vv'as so de- 
 structive of all experience that, as Michael and his new 
 friend went by the school-gates and perceived beyond the 
 vast bulk of St. James' looming, Michael felt himself a 
 stranger to it all, as if he never again would with a crowd of 
 companions surge out from afternoon school. The stranger 
 came as far as the corner of Carlington Road with Michael. 
 
 "I will write to your mother and ask her to let you dine 
 with me one night next week. You interest me so much." 
 
 Mr. Wilmot waved a pontifical good-bye and vanished 
 in the direction of Kensington. 
 
 At home Michael told his mother of the adventure. 
 She looked a little doubtful at his account of Mr. Wilmot. 
 
 "Oh, he's all right, really. Mother. Only, you know, 
 a little peculiar. But then he's a poet." 
 
 Next day came a letter from Mr. Wilmot. 
 
 205 Edwardes Square^ W. 
 
 November. 
 Dear Mrs. Fane: 
 
 I must apologize for inviting your son to dinner so un- 
 ceremoniously. But he made a great appeal to me, sitting 
 on the top of a ladder in Elson's Bookshop. I have a 
 library, in which he may enjoy himself whenever he likes. 
 Meanwhile, may he come to dinner with me on Friday 
 next? Mr. Johnstone, the Member for West Kensington, 
 is coming with his nephew who may be dull without 
 Michael. Michael tells me he thinks of becoming an eccle-
 
 286 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 siastical lawyer. In that case Jolinstone will be particu- 
 larly useful, and can give him some hints. He's a personal 
 friend of old Dr. Brownjohn. With many apologies for 
 my "impertinence," 
 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 Arthur Wilmot. 
 
 "This is a perfectly sensible letter," said Mrs. Fane. 
 
 "Perhaps I thought he was funnier than he really was. 
 Does he say anything else except about me sitting on the 
 top of a ladder?" 
 
 Somehow Michael was disappointed to hear that this 
 was all.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 THE YELLOW AGE 
 
 DINNER with Mr. Arthur Wilmot occupied most 
 of Michael's thoughts for a week. He was 
 mainly concerned about his costume, and he was 
 strenuously importunate for a tail-coat. Mrs. Fane, how- 
 ever, was sure that a dinner-jacket would better become 
 his youthfulness. Then arose the question of stick-up 
 collars. Michael pointed out that very soon he would be 
 sixteen, and that here was a fine opportunity to leave behind 
 the Polo or Shakespeare collar. 
 
 "You're growing up so quickly, dearest boy," sighed his 
 mother. 
 
 Michael was anxious to have one of the new double 
 collars. 
 
 "But don't they look rather outref" protested Mrs. 
 Fane. 
 
 "Well, Abercrombie, the Secretary of the Fifteen, wears 
 one," observed Michael. 
 
 "Have your own way, dear," said Mrs. Fane gently. 
 
 Two or three days before the dinner-party Michael 
 braved everything and wore one of the new double collars 
 to school. Its extravagant advent among the discreet neck- 
 wear of the Upper Fifth caused a sensation. Mr. Cray 
 himself looked curiously once or twice at Michael, who 
 assumed in consequence a particularly nonchalant air, and 
 lounged over his desk even more than usual. 
 
 287
 
 288 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 "Are you going on the stage, Fane?" enquired Mr. Cra}^ 
 finally, exasperated by Michael's indolent construing. 
 
 "Not that I know of," said Michael. 
 
 "I wasn't sure whether that collar was part of your 
 get-up as an eccentric comedian." 
 
 The Upper Fifth released its well-born laugh, and 
 Michael scowled at his master. 
 
 However, he endured the sarcasm of the first two days 
 and still wore the new collars, vowing to himself that 
 presently he would make fresh attacks upon the convention 
 of school attire, since apparently he was able thereby to 
 irritate old Cray. 
 
 After all, the dinner-party was not so exciting as he had 
 hoped from the sample of his new friend's conversation. 
 To be sure he w^as able to smoke as much as he liked, and 
 drink as much champagne as he knew how without warning 
 headshakes; but Mr. Johnstone, the Member for West 
 Kensington, was a moon-faced bore, and his nephew turned 
 out to be a lank nonentity on the despised Modern side. 
 Mr. Johnstone talked a good deal about the Catholic 
 movement, which somehow during the last few weeks was 
 ceasing to interest Michael so much as formerly. Michael 
 himself ascribed this apostasy to his perusal, ladder-high, 
 of Zola's novel Lourdes with its damaging assaults upon 
 Christian credulity. The Member of Parliament seemed 
 to Michael, after his psychical adventures of the past few 
 months, curiously dull and antique, and he evidently con- 
 sidered Michael affected. However, he encouraged the 
 idea of ecclesiastical law, and promised to talk to Dr. 
 Brownjohn about Michael's release from the thraldom of 
 Classics. As for the nephew, he seemed to be able to do 
 nothing but stretch the muscles of his chicken-like neck 
 and ask continually whether Michael w^as going to join 
 the Field Club that some obscure Modern Lower Master 
 was in travail with at the moment. He also invited
 
 THE YELLOW AGE 289 
 
 Michael to join a bicycling club that apparently met at 
 Surbiton every other Saturday afternoon. Mr. Wilmot 
 contented himself with silence and the care of his guests' 
 entertainment. 
 
 Finally the Member for West Kensington with his 
 crudely jointed nephew departed into the fog, and Mr. 
 Wilmot, with an exaggerated sigh, shut the front door. 
 "I must be going, too," said Michael grudgingly. 
 "My dear boy, the evening has scarcely begun," objected 
 Mr. Wilmot. "Come upstairs to my library, and tell me 
 all about your opinions, and whether you do not think that 
 everything is an affectation." 
 They went up together. 
 
 "Every year I redecorate this room," Mr. Wilmot ex- 
 plained. "Last year it was apple-green set out with cherry- 
 red. Now I am become a mysterious peacock-blue, for 
 lately I have felt terribly old. How well this uncertain 
 tint suits your fresh languor." 
 
 Michael admired the dusky blue chamber with the plain 
 mirrors of tarnished gilt, the gleaming books and exotic 
 engravings, and the heterogeneous finery faintly effeminate. 
 He buried himself in a deep embroidered chair, with an 
 ebony box of cigarettes at his feet, while Mr. Wilmot, 
 after a myriad mincing preliminaries, sought out various 
 highly colored bottles of liqueurs. 
 
 "This is a jolly ripping room," sighed Michael. 
 "It represents a year's moods," said Mr. Wilmot. 
 "And then will you change it?" asked Michael. 
 "Perhaps. The most subtly painted serpent casts ulti- 
 mately its slough. Creme-de-Menthe?" 
 
 "Yes, please," said Michael, who would have accepted 
 anything in his present receptive condition. 
 
 "And what do you think of life?" enquired Mr. Wilmot, 
 taking his place on a divan opposite Michael. "Do you 
 mind if I smoke my Jicky-scented hookah?" he added.
 
 290 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 "Not at all," said Michael. "These cigarettes are jolly 
 ripping. I think life at school is frightfully dull — except, 
 of course, when one goes out. Only I don't often." 
 
 "Dull?" repeated Mr. Wilmot. "Listen to the amazing 
 cruelty of youth that finds even his adventurous Sicilian 
 existence dull." 
 
 "Well, it is," said Michael. "I think I used to like it, 
 but now^adays everything gets fearfully stale almost at 
 once." 
 
 "Already your life has been lived?" queried Mr. Wilmot 
 very anxiously. 
 
 "Well, not exactly," Michael replied, vi^Ith a quick 
 glance toward his host to make sure he was not joking. 
 "I expect that when I leave school I shall get interested 
 again. Only just lately I've given up everything. First 
 I was keen on Footer, and then I got keen on Ragging, 
 and then I got keen on Work even" (this was confessed 
 apologetically) "and just lately I've been keen on the 
 Church — only now I find that's pretty stale." 
 
 "The Church!" echoed Mr. Wilmot. "How wonder- 
 ful! The dim Gothic glooms, the somber hues of stained 
 glass, the incense-wreathed acolytes, the muttering priests, 
 the bedizened banners and altars and images. Ah, elusive 
 and particolored vision that once was mine!" 
 
 "Then I got keen on Swinburne," said Michael. 
 
 "You advance along the well-worn path of the Interior 
 and Elect," said Mr. Wilmot. 
 
 "Pm still keen on Swinburne, but he makes me feel 
 hopeless. Sad and hopeless," said Michael. 
 
 "Under the weight of sin?" asked Mr. Wilmot. 
 
 "Not exactly — because he seems to have done everything 
 and " 
 
 "You'd like to?" 
 
 "Yes, I would," said Michael. "Only one can't live 
 like a Roman Emperor at a public school. What I hate
 
 THE YELLOW AGE 29^ 
 
 is the way everj^body thinks you ought to be interested in 
 things that aren't really interesting at all. What people 
 can't understand about me is that I could be keener than 
 anybody about things schoolmasters and that kind don't 
 think right or, at any rate, important. I don't mean to 
 say I want to be dissipated, but " 
 
 "Dissipated ?" echoed Mr. Wilmot, raising his eyebrows. 
 
 "Well, 5'ou know what I mean," blushed Michael. 
 
 "Dissipation is a condition of extreme old age. I might 
 be dissipated, not you," said Mr. Wilmot. "Why not say 
 wanton? How much more beautiful, how much more 
 intense a word." 
 
 "But wanton sounds so beastly affected," said Michael. 
 "As if it was taken out of the Bible. And you aren't so 
 very old. Not more than thirty." 
 
 "I think what you're trying to say is that, under your 
 present mode of life, you find self-expression impossible. 
 Let me diagnose your symptoms." 
 
 Michael leaned forward eagerly at this proposal. Noth- 
 ing was so entertaining to his egoism just now as diagnosis. 
 Moreover, Mr. Wilmot seemed inclined to take him more 
 seriously than Mr. Viner, or, indeed, any of his spiritual 
 directors so far. Mr. Wilmot prepared himself for the 
 lecture by lighting a very long cigarette wrapped in brittle 
 fawn-colored paper, whose spirals of smoke Michael fol- 
 lowed upward to their ultimate evanescence, as if indeed 
 they typified with their tenuous plumes and convolutions 
 the intricate discourse that begot them. 
 
 "In a sense, my dear bo)^ your charm has waned — the 
 faerie charm, that is, which wraps in heedless silver armor 
 the perfect boyhood of man. You are at present a queer 
 sort of mythical animal whom wx for want of a better 
 term call 'adolescent.' Intercourse with anything but 
 your own self shocks both you and the world with a sense 
 of extravagance, as if a centaur pursued a nymph or fought
 
 292 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 with a hero. The soul — or what we call the soul — is 
 struggling in the bondage of your unformed body. Lately 
 you had no soul, you were ethereal and cold, yet withal 
 in some remote way passionate, like your own boy's voice. 
 Now the silly sun is melting the snow, and what was a 
 little while since crystalline clear virginity is beginning to 
 trickle down toward a headlong course, carrying with it 
 the soiled accumulation of the years to float significantly 
 into the wide river of manhood. But I am really being 
 almost intolerably allegorical — or is it metaphorical?" 
 
 "Still, I think I understand what you mean," Michael 
 said encouragingly. 
 
 "Thrown back upon your own resources, it is not sur- 
 prising that you attempt to allay your own sense of your 
 own incongruity by seeking for its analogy in the decorative 
 excitements of religion or poetry. Love would supply the 
 solution, but you are still too immature for love. And if 
 you do fall in love you will sigh for some ample and un- 
 attainable matron rather than the slim, shy girl that would 
 better become your pastoral graces. At present you lack 
 all sense of proportion. You are only aware of your awk- 
 wardness. Your corners have not yet been, as they say, 
 knocked off. You are still somewhat proud of their Gothic 
 angularity. You feel at home in the tropic dawns of 
 Swinburne's poetry, in the ceremonious exaggerations of 
 Mass, because neither of these conditions of thought and 
 behavior allow you to become depressed over your oddity, 
 to see yourself crawling with bedraggled wings from the 
 cocoon of mechanical education. The licentious ingenuity 
 of Martial, Petronius and Apuleius with their nightmare 
 comedies and obscene phantasmagoria, Lucian, that boule- 
 vardier of Olympic glades, all these could allow you to feel 
 yourself more at home than does Virgil with his peaceful 
 hexameters or the cold, relentless narrations of Thucy- 
 dides."
 
 THE YELLOW AGE 293 
 
 '*Yes, that's all very well," objected Michael. "But 
 other chaps seem to get on all right without being bored 
 by ordinary things." 
 
 "Already spurning the gifts of Apollo, contemptuous of 
 Artemis, ignorant of Bacchus and Aphrodite, you are bent 
 low before Pallas Athene. Foolish child, do not pray for 
 wisdom in this overwise, thin-faced time of ours. Rather 
 demand of the gods folly, and drive ever furiously your 
 temperament like a chariot before you." 
 
 "I met an odd sort of chap the other day," Michael 
 said thoughtfully. "A monk he was, as a matter of fact — 
 who told me a skit of things — you know — about a bad life. 
 It's funny, though I hate ugly things and common things, 
 he gave me a feeling that Fd like to go right away from 
 everything and live in one of those horrible streets that 
 you pass in an omnibus when the main road is up. Per- 
 haps you don't understand w^hat I mean?" 
 
 Mr. Wilmot's eyes glittered through the haze of smoke. 
 
 "Why shouldn't I understand? Squalor is the Parthen- 
 ope of the true Romantic. You'll find it in all the poets 
 you love best — if not in their poetry, certainly in their 
 lives. Even romantic critics are not without temptation. 
 One day you shall read of Hazlitt and Sainte-Beuve. And 
 now, dear boy, here is my library, which holds as many 
 secrets as the Spintrian books of Elephantis, long ago lost 
 and purified by the sea. I am what the wise world would 
 call about to corrupt your mind, and yet I believe that, for 
 one who like you must some day make trial of the utter- 
 most corruption, I am prescribing more wisely than 
 Chiron, the pig-headed or rather horse-bodied old proto- 
 type of all schoolmasters^ who sent his hero pupils one after 
 another into the world, proof against nothing but a few 
 spear-thrusts. I offer you better than fencing-bouts and 
 wrestling matches. I offer you a good library. Read every 
 day and all night and, when you are a man full grown,
 
 294 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 you will smile at the excesses of your contemporaries, at 
 their divorces and disgraces. You will stand aloof like a 
 second Aurelius, coining austere aphorisms and mocking 
 the weakness of your unlearned fellows. Why are priests 
 generally so inept in the confessional? Because they learn 
 their knowledge of life from a frowsy volume of Moral 
 Theology that, in the most utterly barbarous Latin, emits 
 an abstract of humanity's immeasurable vice. In the same 
 w^ay most young men encounter wickedness in some sudden 
 shock of depravity from which they retire blushing and 
 mumbling, 'Who'd have thought it.' 'Who'd have thought 
 it,' they cry, and are immediately empaneled on a jury. 
 
 "Not so you, O more subtle youth, with the large, deep 
 eyes and secret, sidelong smile. 
 
 "There on my shelves are all the ages. I have spoken 
 to you of Petronius, of Lucian and Apuleius. There is 
 Suetonius, with his incredibly improper tales that show 
 how beastliness takes root and flowers from the deposited 
 muck of a gossip's mind. There is Tacitus, ever willing 
 to sacrifice decency to antithesis, and Ausonius, whose 
 ribald verses are like monkish recreation; yet he had withal 
 a pretty currency of honest silver Latin, Christian though 
 he was. You must read your Latin authors well, for, 
 since you must be decadent, it is better to decay from a 
 good source. And neglect not the Middle Ages. You will 
 glide most easily into them from the witches and robbers 
 of Apuleius. You will read Boccaccio, w^hose tales are 
 intaglios carved with exquisitely licentious and Lilliputian 
 scenes. Neither forget Villon, whose light ladies seem ever 
 to move elusively in close-cut gowns of cloth-of-gold and 
 incredibly tall steeple-hats. But even with Villon the world 
 becomes complicated, and you will soon reach the tempera- 
 mental entanglements of the nineteenth century, for you 
 may avoid the coarse, the beery and besotted obviousness 
 of the Georgian age.
 
 THE YELLOW AGE 295 
 
 "But I like the eighteenth century almost best of all," 
 protested Michael. 
 
 "Then cure yourself of that most lamentable and most 
 demode taste, or I shall presently believe that you read 
 a page or two of Boswell's Life of Johnson every morning, 
 vv^hile the w^ater is running into your bath. You can never 
 be a true decadent, treading delicately over the garnered 
 perfection of the v^orld's art, if you really admire and enjoy 
 the eighteenth century." 
 
 Michael, hov^^ever, looked very doubtful over his de- 
 manded apostasy. 
 
 "But, never mind," Mr. Wilmot went on. "When you 
 have read Barbey d'Aurevilly and Baudelaire, Mallarme, 
 Verlaine, CatuUe Mendes and Verhaeren, when the Par- 
 nassians and Symbolists have illuminated you, and you 
 become an Interior person, when Aubrey Beardsley and 
 Ferdinand Rops have printed their fierce debauchery upon 
 your imagination, then you will be glad you have forsaken 
 the eighteenth century. How crude is the actual number 
 eighteen, how far from the passionate mystery of seventeen 
 or the tired wisdom of nineteen! O wonderful nineteenth 
 century, in whose gray humid dusk you and I are lucky 
 enough to live!" 
 
 "But what about the twentieth century?" asked Michael. 
 
 Mr. Wilmot started. 
 
 "Listen, and I will tell you my intention. Two more 
 years have yet to run before that garish and hideous date, 
 prophetic of all that is bright and new and abominably raw. 
 But I shall have fled, how I know not; haply mandragora 
 will lure my weary mind to rest. I think I should like to 
 die as La Gioconda was painted, listening to flute-players 
 in a curtained alcove; or you, Michael, shall read to me 
 some diabolic and funereal song of Baudelaire, so that I 
 may fearfully pass away." 
 
 Michael, sitting in the dim room of peacock-bliie made
 
 296 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 tremendously nocturnal by the heavy smoke of all the 
 cigarettes, did not much care for the turn the conversation 
 of Mr. Wilmot had taken. It had been interesting enough, 
 w^hile the discussion applied directly to himself; but all 
 this vague effusion of learning meant very little to him. 
 At the same time, there v^as an undeniable eccentricity in 
 a member of the Upper Fifth sitting thus in fantastic 
 communion with a figure completely outside the imagina- 
 tion of Mr. Cray or any of his inky groundlings. Michael 
 began to feel a contemptuous pity for his fellows now 
 buried in bedclothes, hot and heavy with Ciceronian sen- 
 tences and pious preparation. He began to believe that if 
 he wished to keep pace with this new friendship he must 
 acquire something of Mr. Wilmot's heightened air. And, 
 however mad he might seem, there stood the books, and 
 there stood the cigarettes for Michael's pleasure. It was 
 all very exciting, and it would not have been possible to 
 say that before he met Wilmot. 
 
 The friendship progressed through the rest of the 
 autumn term, and Michael drifted farther away from the 
 normal life of the school than even his incursion into 
 Catholicism had taken him. That phase of his development 
 had penetrated deeper than any other, and from time to 
 time Michael knew bitter repentances and made grim reso- 
 lutions. From time to time letters would arrive from Dom 
 Cuthbert asking him down to Clere Abbey; Mr. Viner, 
 too, would question him narrowly about his new set of 
 friends, and Michael's replies never seemed perfectly satis- 
 factory to the shrewd priest. 
 
 It was by his costume more than by anything else that 
 Michael expressed at first his sense of emancipation. He 
 took to coming to school in vivid bow-ties that raised Mr. 
 Cray's most sarcastic comments. 
 
 "The sooner you go to the History Sixth, Fane, and take 
 that loathsome ribbon with you, the better for us all.
 
 THE YELLOW AGE 297 
 
 Where did you get it? Out of the housemaid's trunk, 
 one would sa)', by its appearance." 
 
 "It happens to be a tie," said Michael with insolence in 
 his tone. 
 
 "Oh, it happens to be a tie, does it? Well, it also hap- 
 pens to be an excellent rule of St. James' School that all 
 boys, however clever, wear dark suits and black ties. There 
 also happens to be an excellent cure for pretentious and 
 flamboyant youths who disregard this rule. There happens 
 to be a play by one Euripides called the Alcestis. I suggest 
 you write me out the first two hundred lines of it." 
 
 Michael's next encounter was with Mr. Viner, on the 
 occasion of his producing in the priest's pipe-seasoned sitting- 
 room a handkerchief inordinately perfumed with an East- 
 ern scent lately discovered by Wilmot. 
 
 "Good heavens, Michael, what Piccadilly breezes are 
 you wafting into my respectable and sacerdotal apartment?" 
 
 "I rather like scent," explained Michael lamely. 
 
 "Well, I don't, so, for goodness' sake, don't bring any 
 more of it in here. Pah ! Phew ! It's worse than a Lenten 
 address at a fashionable church. Really, you know, these 
 people you're in with now are not at all good for you, 
 Michael." 
 
 "They're more interesting than any of the chaps at 
 school." 
 
 "Are they? There used to be a saying in my under- 
 graduate days, 'Distrust a freshman that's always seen with 
 third-year men.' No doubt the inference is often unjust, 
 but still the proverb remains." 
 
 "Ah, but these people aren't at school with me," Michael 
 observed. 
 
 "No, I wish they were. They might be licked into 
 better shape if they were," retorted the priest. 
 
 "I think you're awfully down on Wilmot just because 
 20
 
 298 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 I didn't meet him in some church set. If it comes to that, 
 I met some much bigger rotters than him at Clere." 
 
 *'My dear Michael," argued Father Viner, "the last 
 place I should have been surprised to see Master Wilmot 
 would be in a churchy set. Don't forget that, if religion 
 is a saving grace, religiosity is a constitutional weakness. 
 Can't you understand that a priest like myself, who has 
 taken the average course, public-school, 'varsity, and theo- 
 logical college, meets a thundering lot of Wilmots by the 
 way? My dear fellow, many of my best friends, many of 
 the priests you've met in my rooms, were once upon a time 
 every bit as decadent as the lilified Wilmot. They took 
 it like scarlet fever or chicken-pox, and feel all the more 
 secure now for having had it. Decadence, as our friend 
 knows it, is only a new-fangled name for green-sickness. 
 It's a healthy enough mental condition for the young, but 
 it's confoundedly dangerous for the grown-up. The first 
 pretty girl that looks his way cures it in a boy, if he's a 
 normal decent boy. I shouldn't offer any objection to your 
 behavior if you were being decadent with Mark Chator 
 or Martindale or Rigg. Good heavens, the senior curate 
 at the best East-end Mission when he was at Oxford used 
 to walk down the High leading a lobster on a silver chain, 
 and even that wasn't original, for he stole the poor little 
 fantastic idea from some precious French poet. But that 
 senior curate is a very fine fellow to-day. No, no, this 
 fellow Wilmot and all his set are very bad company for 
 you, and I do not like your being decadent with these half- 
 baked fancy cakes." 
 
 Michael, however, would not admit that Mr. Viner was 
 right, and frequented the dangerous peacock-blue room in 
 Edwardes Square more than ever. He took Chator there 
 among others, and was immensely gratified to be solemnly 
 warned at the end of the visit that he was playing with 
 hell-fire. This seemed to him an interesting and original
 
 THE YELLOW AGE 299 
 
 pastime, and he hinted to solemn, simple, spluttering old 
 Chator of more truly Satanic mysteries. 
 
 After Christmas Michael had his way and was moved 
 into the History Sixth, mainly owing to the intervention 
 of the Member for West Kensington. The History Sixth 
 was presided over by Mr. Kirkham, whose nominal aim in 
 life was the amelioration of Jacobean athletics. From the 
 fact that he wore an M.C.C. ribbon round his straw hat, 
 and an Oxford University Authentic tie, it is probable 
 that the legend of his former skill at cricket was justified. 
 In reality he was much more interested in Liberalism than 
 anything else, and persistently read Blue Books, underlining 
 the dramatic moments of Royal Commissions and chewing 
 his mustache through pages of dialog hostile to his opin- 
 ions. A rumor sped round the school that he had been 
 invited to stand for Parliament, a rumor which Michael, 
 on the strength of dining with the Member for West Ken- 
 sington, flatly contradicted. 
 
 The History Sixth class-room was a pleasant place, the 
 only class-room in the school that ever saw the sun. Its 
 windows looked out on the great green expanse of the 
 school ground, where during the deserted hours of work 
 the solitary roller moved sedately and ancient women 
 weeded the pitches. 
 
 There were only seven boys in the History Sixth. There 
 was Strang, the Captain of the Eleven, who lounged 
 through the dull Lent term and seemed, as he spread his 
 bulk over the small desk, like a half-finished statue to 
 which still adhered a fragment of uncarved stone. There 
 was Terry, the Vice-Captain of the Fifteen, and most 
 dapper half-back that ever cursed forwards. He spent his 
 time trying to persuade Strang to take an interest in 
 Noughts and Crosses. There was beak-nosed Thomson, 
 who had gained an Exhibition at Selwyn College, Cam- 
 bridge, and red-haired Mallock, w^hose father wTote colum-
 
 300 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 nar letters to The Times. Burnaby, who shocked ]\Iichael 
 very much by prophesying that a certain H. G. Wells, now 
 writing about Martian invasions, was the coming man, and 
 Railton, a weedy and disconsolate recluse, made up with 
 Michael himself the class list. 
 
 There was an atmosphere of rest about the History 
 Sixth, a leisured dignity that contrasted very delightfully 
 with the spectacled industry of the Upper Fifth. To begin 
 with, Mr. Kirkham was always ten minutes after every 
 other master in entering his class-room. This habit allowed 
 the members of his form to stroll gracefully along the 
 corridors and watch one by one the cavernous doors of 
 other class-rooms absorb their victims. Michael would often 
 go out of his way to pass Mr. Cray's room in order to see 
 with a luxurious sense of relief the intellectual convicts of 
 the Upper Fifth hurrying to their prison. Many other 
 conventions of school life were slackened in the History 
 Sixth. A slight eccentricity of attire was not considered 
 unbecoming in what was, at any rate in its own opinion, 
 a faintly literary society. The room was always open be- 
 tween morning and afternoon school, and it was not an 
 uncommon sight to see members of the form reading novels 
 in tip-tilted chairs. Most of the home work was set a 
 week in advance, which did away with the unpleasant 
 necessity of speculating on the "construe" or hurriedly 
 cribbing with a hastily peppered variety of mistakes the 
 composition of one's neighbor. Much of the work was 
 simple reading, and as for the essays, by a legal fiction 
 they were always written during the three hours devoted 
 to Mathematics. Tradition forbade any member of the 
 History Sixth to take Mathematics seriously, and Mr. 
 Gaskell, the overw^orked Mathematical master, was not 
 inclined to break this tradition. He used to wTite out a 
 problem or two on the blackboard for the sake of appear- 
 ances, and then settle down to the correction of his more
 
 THE YELLOW AGE 301 
 
 serious pupils' work, while the History Sixth devoted them- 
 selves to their more serious work. One of the great social 
 earthquakes that occasionally devastate all precedent oc- 
 curred when Mr. Gaskell was away with influenza, and 
 his substitute, an earnest )^oung novice, tried to make 
 Strang and Terry do a quadratic equation. 
 
 **But, sir, we never do Mathematics." 
 
 "Well, what are you here for?" asked the novice. 
 "What am / here for?" 
 
 "We don't know," replied the History Sixth in unison; 
 and the vendetta that followed the complaint of their 
 behavior to Mr. Kirkham made the novice's mastership 
 a burden to him during Mr. Gaskell's illness. Enraged 
 conservatism called for reprisals, until Mr. Kirkham 
 pointed out, with a felicity acquired from long perusal of 
 Parliamentary humor, "You are Jacobeans, not Jacobins," 
 and with this mild joke quenched the feud. 
 
 The effect of his transference to the History Sixth made 
 Michael more decadent than ever, for the atmosphere of 
 his new class encouraged him along the orchidaceous path 
 pointed out by Arthur Wilmot. He was not now decadent 
 from any feeling of opposition to established things, but 
 he was decadent from conviction of the inherent rightness 
 of such a state. At first the phase had manifested itself 
 in outward signs, a little absurdly; now his actual point 
 of view was veering into accord with the externals. 
 
 Sunday was a day at Edwardes Square, from which 
 Michael returned almost phosphorescent with decay. Sun- 
 day was the day on which Mr. Wilmot gathered from all 
 over London specimens of corruption that fascinated 
 Michael with their exotic and elaborate behavior. Nothing 
 seemed worth while in such an assembly except a novel 
 affectation. Everything was a pose. It was a pose to be 
 effeminate in speech and gesture; it was a pose to drink 
 absinthe; it was a pose to worship the devil; it was a
 
 302 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 pose to buy attenuated volumes of verse at an unnatural 
 price, for the sake of owning a sonnet that was left out 
 in the ordinary edition; it was a pose to admire pictures 
 that to Michael at first were more like wall papers than 
 pictures; it w^as really a pose to live at all. Conversation 
 at these delicate entertainm.ents was like the conversations 
 overheard in the anterooms of private asylums. Everyone 
 was very willowy in his movements, whether he were 
 smoking or drinking or looking for a box of matches. 
 Michael attempted to be willowy at school once, but gave 
 it up on being asked if he had fleas. 
 
 One of the main charms at first of these Sunday after- 
 noon gatherings was the way in which, one after another, 
 every one of the guests would take Michael aside and ex- 
 plain how different he (the guest) was from all the rest 
 of humanity. Michael was flattered, and used to become 
 very intense and look very soul-searching, and interject 
 sympathetic exclamations until he discovered that the con- 
 fidant usually proceeded to another corner of the room to 
 entrust someone else with his innermost heart. He became 
 cynical after a while, especially when he found that the 
 principal points of difference from the rest of the world 
 were identical in every one of the numerous guests who 
 sought his counsel and his sympathy. 
 
 However, he never became cynical enough to distrust 
 the whole school of thought and admit that Father Viner's 
 contempt was justifiable. If ever he had any doubts, he 
 was consoled by assuring himself that at any rate these 
 new friends were very artistic, and how important it was 
 to be artistic no one could realize who was not at school. 
 
 Under the pressure of his insistent temperament, Michael 
 found his collection of statuettes and ecclesiastical bric-a- 
 brac very depressing. As a youth of the Florentine Renais- 
 sance he could not congratulate himself upon his room, 
 which w^as much too much unlike either a Carpaccio in-
 
 THE YELLOW AGE 303 
 
 terior or an Aubrey Beardsley bedroom. Between these 
 two his ambition wavered. 
 
 One by one the statuettes were moved to the top of a 
 wardrobe where for a while they huddled, a dusty and 
 devoted crowd, until one by one they met martyrdom at 
 the hands of the housemaid. In their place appeared Delia 
 Robbia reliefs and terra-cotta statuettes of this or that 
 famous Greek youth. The muscular and tearful pictures 
 of Guido Reni, the bland insipidities of Bougereau soon 
 followed the statuettes, meeting a comparable martyrdom 
 by being hung in the servants' bedroom. The walls of 
 Michael's room were papered with a brown paper, which 
 was intended to be very artistic, but was really merely sad. 
 It was lightened, however, by various daring pictures in 
 black and red that, after only a very short regard, really 
 did take shape as scenes of Montmartre. There were land- 
 scapes of the Sussex downs, with a slight atmosphere of 
 Japan and landscapes of Japan that were not at all like 
 Japan, but none the less beautiful for that. The books 
 of devotion were banished to the company of superannuated 
 Latin and Greek text-books on the lower shelf of a cup- 
 board in the morning-room, whose upper shelf was stacked 
 with tinned fruits. Incense was still burnt, not as once to 
 induce prayers to ascend, but to stupefy Michael with 
 scent and warmth into an imitation of a drug-taker's list- 
 less paradise. This condition was accentuated by erecting 
 over the head of his bed a canopy of faded green satin, 
 which gave him acute aesthetic pleasure, until one night 
 it collapsed upon him in the middle of the night. Every 
 piece of upholstery in the room was covered with art linens 
 that with the marching years had ousted the art muslins 
 of Michael's childhood. He also covered with squares of 
 the same material the gas brackets, pushing them back 
 against the wall and relying for light upon candles only. 
 Notwithstanding Wilmot's talk about literature, the influ-
 
 304 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 ence of Wilmot's friends was too strong, and Michael 
 could not resist the deckle-edges of negligible poets. As 
 these were expensive, Michael's library lacked scope, and 
 he himself, reflecting his pastime, came to believe in the 
 bitterness and sweetness and bitter-sweetness of the plaint- 
 ive sinners who printed so elegantly on such permanent 
 paper the versification of their irregularity. 
 
 Irregularity was now being subjected to Michael's 
 process of idealistic alchemy, and since his conception of 
 irregularity was essentially romantic, and since he shrank 
 from sentiment, he was able to save himself, when pres- 
 ently all this decoration fell to pieces and revealed naked 
 unpleasantness. Nothing in his present phase had yet 
 moved him so actually as his brief encounter with Brother 
 Aloysius. That glimpse of a fearful and vital underworld 
 had been to him romantic without trappings; it was a 
 glimpse into an underworld to which one day he might 
 descend, since it asked no sighing for the vanished joys of 
 the past, for the rose-gardens of Rome. He began to play 
 with the idea of departing suddenly from his present life 
 and entering the spectral reality of the Seven Sisters Road, 
 treading whatever rafl[ish raddled pavement knew the hol- 
 low steps of a city's prowlers. Going home on Sunday 
 nights from the perfumed house in Edwardes Square and 
 passing quickly and apprehensively figures that materialized 
 in a circle of lamplight, he would contrast their existence 
 with what remained in his senses of stale cigarette smoke 
 and self-conscious airs and attitudes. Yet the very picture 
 he conjured of the possibility that haunted him made him 
 the more anxious to substitute for the stark descent to hell 
 the Sicilian or Satanic affectations of the luxurious mimes 
 who postured against a background of art. Much of the 
 talk at Edwardes Square concerned itself with the pastoral 
 side of school life, and Michael found himself being cross- 
 questioned by elderly faun-like men who had a conception
 
 THE YELLOW AGE 305 
 
 of an English public school that was more oriental than 
 correct. Michael vainly tried to dispel these illusions, 
 which made him resentful and, for the moment, crudely 
 normal. He felt toward them much as he felt toward 
 Garrod's attempt to cure his ignorance at Clere. These 
 were excellent fellows from whom to accept a cigarette or 
 sometimes even an invitation to lunch at a Soho restaurant, 
 but when they presumed upon his condescension and dared 
 to Include in their tainted outlook himself as a personal 
 factor, Michael shriveled with a virginal disdain. 
 
 Unreasonably to the others, Michael did not object very 
 much to Wilmot's oracular addresses on the delights of 
 youth. He felt that so much of Wllmot was in the mere 
 word, and he admired so frankly his embroideries of any 
 subject, and, above all, he liked Wilmot so much person- 
 ally that he listened to him, and was even so far Influenced 
 by him as to try to read into the commonplace of a summer 
 term all that Wilmot would suggest. 
 
 "O fortunate shepherd, to whom will you pipe to-mor- 
 row, or what slim and agile companion will you crown for 
 his prowess? O lucky youth, able to drowse in the tem- 
 pered sunlight that the elm trees give, while your friend 
 splendidly cool in his white flannels bats and bowls for 
 your delight." 
 
 "But I haven't got any particular friend that I can 
 watch," objected Michael. 
 
 "One day you will terribly regret the privileges of your 
 pastoral life." 
 
 "Do you really think I am not getting all I can out of 
 school?" demanded Michael. 
 
 "I'm sure you're not," said Wilmot. 
 
 Michael began to trouble himself over Wilmot's warning, 
 and also he began to look back with sentimental regret to 
 what had really been his happiest time, his friendship with 
 Alan. Pride kept him from approaching Alan with nothing
 
 3o6 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 to offer for nearly two years' indifference. There had 
 been no quarrel. They had merely gradually drifted apart, 
 yet it was with a deep pang of remorse that one day he 
 realized in passing the dusty Upper Fifth that Alan w^as 
 now wrestling with that imprisonment. Michael racked 
 his brains to think of some way by which he and Alan 
 might come together in their old amity, their perfect fellow- 
 ship. He sought some way that would make it natural 
 and inevitable, but no way presented itself. He could, so 
 deep was his sudden regret, have stifled his ow^n pride and 
 deliberately invited Alan to be friends; he would even 
 have risked a repulse; but with the renewal of his longing 
 for the friendship came a renewal of the old sympathy 
 and utter comprehension of Alan's most secret moods, 
 and Michael realized that his old friend would be too 
 shy to accept this strange, inexplicable revival, unless it 
 were renewed as it was begun by careless, artless inter- 
 course. 
 
 The immediate result of this looking back to an earlier 
 period was to arouse in Michael an interest in boys younger 
 than himself, and through his idealism to endow them with 
 a conscious joy of life which he fell to envying. He had a 
 desire to warn them of the enchantment under whose benign 
 and dulcet influence they lived, to warn them that soon the 
 lovely spell would be broken, and bid them make the most 
 of their stripling time. Continually he was seeing boys in 
 the lower forms whose friendship, blooming like two flowers 
 on a spray, shed a fragrance so poignant that tears came 
 springing to his eyes. He began to imagine himself very 
 old, to feel that by some unkind gift of temperament he 
 had nothing left to live for. It chanced that summer term 
 the History Sixth learned for repetition the Odes of KeatSi 
 and in the Ode on a Grecian Urn Michael found the ex- 
 pression of his mood:
 
 THE YELLOW AGE 307 
 
 Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave 
 Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; 
 Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss, 
 Though winning near the goal — yet, do not grieve; 
 She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, 
 Forever w^ilt thou love, and she be fair! 
 
 These lines were learnt in June, and for Michael they 
 enshrined immortally his yearning. Never had the fugitive 
 summer glided so fast, since never before had he sat in con- 
 templation of its flight. Until this moment he had been 
 one with the season's joy like a bird or a sunbeam, but now 
 for the first time he had the opportunity of regarding the 
 empty field during the hours of school, and of populating 
 it with the merry ghosts of the year with Caryll. All 
 through schooltime the mowing machine hummed its low 
 harmony of perishable minutes and wasted sunlight. The 
 green field was scattered with the wickets of games in 
 progress that stood luminously in golden trios, so brightly 
 did the sunny weather enhance their wood. The scoring- 
 board of the principal match stared like a stopped clock 
 with the record of the last breathless run, and, as if to 
 mock the stillness, from a distant corner came a sound of 
 batting, where at the nets the two professionals practiced 
 idly. A bluebottle buzzed upon the window-pane; pigeons 
 flapped from pinnacle to pinnacle of the chapel; sparrows 
 cheeped on a persistent note; pens scratched paper; Mr. 
 Kirkham turned a Blue Book's page at regular intervals. 
 
 Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed 
 Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu; 
 And, happy melodist, unwearied 
 Forever piping songs forever new. 
 
 Thus for him would the tranced scene forever survive. 
 
 The History Sixth were for the purposes of cricket linked 
 to the Classical Lower Sixth, but Michael did not play
 
 3o8 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 •that term. Instead, a strayed reveler, he would move 
 from game to game of the Junior School, hearing the shrill 
 encouragement and pondering the rose-red agility of a 
 Classical lower form, in triumph over minor Moderns. 
 Michael was continually trying to perceive successors to 
 himself and Alan, and he would often enter into shy col- 
 loquy with the juniors, who were awed by his solemn 
 smile, and shuffled uneasily from leg to leg. 
 
 Two boys, whom Michael finally determined should 
 stand as types of Alan and him, gradually emerged from 
 the w^hite throng of Lower School cricket. One of them 
 was indeed very like Alan, and had the same freckled smile. 
 With this pair Michael became intimate, as one becomes 
 intimate with two puppies. He would pet and scold them, 
 encourage them to be successful in their sport, and rebuke 
 them for failure. They perhaps found him entertaining, 
 and were certainly proud to be seen in conversation with 
 him, for, though Michael himself was not an athletic hero, 
 he was the companion of heroes, and round him clung the 
 shining mirage of their immortality. 
 
 Then one day, unknown to Michael, these two boys be- 
 came involved in a scandal ; the inquisition of a great public 
 school pinned them down desperately struggling, miserably 
 afraid; the rumor of their expulsion went callously round 
 the gossiping ranks of their fellows. Michael was informed 
 of their disgrace by red-haired Mallock, whose father wrote 
 columnar letters to The Times. Michael said bitter things 
 to the complacent Mallock and offered, with serious want 
 of dignity for a member of the leisurely and cultivated 
 History Sixth, to punch Mallock's damned red head. 
 
 Mallock said sneeringly that he supposed Michael sym- 
 pathized with the little beasts. Michael replied that he 
 merely sympathized with them because he was profoundly 
 sure that it was a pack of lies.
 
 THE YELLOW AGE 309 
 
 "You'd better go and tell the Old Man that, because 
 they say he's going to expel them to-day." 
 
 Michael turned pale with fury. 
 
 "I damned well will go, and when I come back I'll ram 
 you upside down in the tuckshop butter-tub." 
 
 Mallock flushed under the ignominy of this threat, and 
 muttered his conviction that Michael was talking through 
 his hat. Just then Mr. Kirkham entered the class-room, 
 and Michael immediately went up to him and asked if he 
 might go and speak to the Headmaster. 
 
 Mr. Kirkham stared with amazement, and his voice, 
 which always seemed to hesitate whether it should come 
 out through his mouth or his nose, on this occasion never 
 came out at all, but stayed in the roof of Mr. Kirkham's 
 mouth. 
 
 "Can I, sir?" Michael repeated. 
 
 "I suppose you can," said Mr. Kirkham. 
 
 The class followed Michael's exit with wide eyes; even 
 the phlegmatic Strang was so deeply moved that he sat 
 upright in his chair and tapped his head to indicate mid- 
 summer madness. 
 
 Outside in the echoing corridor, where the plaster casts 
 looked coldly down, Michael wrestled with his leaping 
 heart, forcing it into tranquillity so that he could grapple 
 with the situation he had created for himself. By the 
 Laocoon he paused. Immediately beyond was the somber 
 doorway of the Head's room. As he paused on the 
 threshold two ridiculous thoughts came to him — that Less- 
 ing's Laocoon was one of the set books, and that he would 
 rather be struggling in the coils of that huge stone snake 
 than standing thus invertebrate before this portentous 
 door. 
 
 Then Michael tapped. There was no answer but a dull 
 buzz of voices. Again Michael tapped and, beating down 
 his heart, turned the handle that seemed, as he held it, to
 
 310 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 swell to pumpkin size in his grasp. Slowly he pushed the 
 door before him, expecting to hear a bellowed summons to 
 appear, and wondering whether he could escape unknown 
 to his class-room if his nerve failed him even now. Then he 
 heard the sound of tears, and indignation drove him on- 
 ward, drove him so urgently that actually he slammed the 
 great door behind him, and made the intent company aware 
 of his presence. 
 
 "What do you want?" shouted Dr. Brownjohn. "Can't 
 you see I'm busy?" 
 
 "I want to speak to you, sir." The words actually 
 seemed to come from his mouth winged with flames, such 
 a volcano was Michael now. 
 
 "I'm busy. Go outside and wait," roared the Head- 
 master. 
 
 Michael paused to regard the scene — the two boys sob- 
 bing with painful, regular intake of breath, oblivious of 
 him; the witnesses, a sheepish crew; the school porter 
 waiting for his prey; old Mr. Caryll coughing nervously 
 and apparently on the verge of tears himself; the odious 
 Paul Pry of a Secretary nibbling his pen; and, in the back- 
 ground, other masters waiting with favorable or damning 
 testimony. 
 
 The drama of gloating authority shook Michael to the 
 very foundation of his being, and he came rapidly into the 
 middle of the room, came right up to the Headmaster, 
 until he felt engulfed in the black silk gown, and at last 
 said slowly and with simple conviction: 
 
 "I think you're all making a mistake." 
 
 When he had spoken Michael could have kicked himself 
 for not shouting furiously the torrid denunciations which 
 had come surging up for utterance. Then he immediately 
 began to talk again, to his own great surprise, calmly and 
 very reasonably. 
 
 "I know these kids — these two boys — I mean — quite
 
 THE YELLOW AGE 311 
 
 well. It's impossible for any of this to be true. I've seen 
 them a lot this term — practically every day. Really, sir, 
 you'll make a terrible mistake if you expel them. They're 
 aw^fuUy decent little chaps. They are really, sir. Of 
 course they're too frightened now to say anything for them- 
 selves. It's not fair for everybody to be set at them like 
 this." 
 
 Michael looked despairingly at the masters assembled. 
 
 "And these other boys who've been brought in to tell 
 what they know. Why, they're frightened, too. They'd 
 say anything. Why don't you, why don't you " 
 
 Michael looked round in despair, stammered, broke 
 down, and then, to his own eternal chagrin, burst into 
 tears. He moved hastily over to the window, striving to 
 pull himself together, seeing through an overpowering blur 
 the great green field in the garish sunlight. Yet his tears, 
 shameful to him, may have turned the scale, for one by 
 one the masters came forward with eager testimony of 
 good; and with every word of praise the tears rushed faster 
 and faster to Michael's eyes. Then he heard old Caryll's 
 rasping cough and broken, benignant sentences, which, with 
 all their memories, lulled his emotion to quietude again. 
 
 "Hope you'll bring it in non prohatum. Headmaster" — 
 cough — cough — "good boys both" — cough — cough — "sure 
 it's a mistake — Fane's a good boy, too — idle young rascal — 
 but a good heart" — cough — cough — "had him under me for 
 a year — know him well " 
 
 Dr. Brownjohn, with a most voluminous wave, dismissed 
 the matter. Everyone, even the Paul Pry of a Secretary, 
 went out of the room, and, as the door closed, Michael 
 heard Mr. Caryll addressing the victims. 
 
 "Now then, don't cry any more, you young boobies." 
 
 Michael's thoughts followed them upstairs to the jolly 
 class-room, and he almost smiled at the imagination of Mr. 
 Caryll's entrance and the multitudinous jokes that would
 
 312 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 demonstrate his relief at his pupils' rescue. Michael recov- 
 ered from his dream to find the Headmaster speaking to 
 him in his most rumbling bass. 
 
 "I don't know why I allowed you to interfere in this 
 disgraceful affair, boy. Um?" 
 
 "No, sir," Michael agreed. 
 
 "But, since you are here, I will take the opportunity of 
 warning you that the company you keep is very vile." 
 
 Michael looked apprehensive. 
 
 "If you think nothing is known of your habits out of 
 school, you are much mistaken. I will not have any boy 
 at my school frequenting the house of that deboshed nin- 
 compoop Wllmot." 
 
 Dr. Brownjohn's voice was now so deep that it vibrated 
 in the pit of Michael's stomach like the diapason of the 
 school organ. 
 
 "Give up that detestable association of mental impostors 
 and be a boy again. You have disappointed me during the 
 whole of your career; but you're a winning boy. Um? 
 Go back to your work." 
 
 Michael left the august room with resolves swaying in 
 his brain, wondering what he could do to repay the Old 
 Man. It was too late to take a very high place in the 
 summer examinations. Yet somehow, so passionate was his 
 gratitude, he managed to come out third. 
 
 Michael never told his mother about his adventure, but 
 in the reaction against Wllmot and all that partook of 
 decadence, and in his pleasure at having done something, 
 however clumsily, he felt a great wish to include his mother 
 in his emotion of universal love. 
 
 "Where are we going these holidays?" he asked. 
 
 "I thought perhaps you'd like to stay at your monastery 
 again," said Mrs. Fane. "I was thinking of going abroad." 
 
 Michael's face fell, and his mother was solicitously 
 penitent.
 
 THE YELLOW AGE 313 
 
 "My dearest boy, I never dreamed you would want to 
 be with me. You've always gone out on Sundays." 
 
 *'I know, I'm sorry, I won't again," Michael assured 
 her. 
 
 ''And I've made my arrangements now. I wish I'd 
 known. But why shouldn't you go and see Stella? It 
 seems a pity that you and she should grow up so much 
 apart." 
 
 "Well, I will, if you like," said Michael. 
 
 "Dearest boy, what has happened to you? You are so 
 agreeable, "^ exclaimed Mrs. Fane. 
 
 In the end it w^as arranged that Michael should accom- 
 pany Mr. Viner on his holiday in France, and afterwards 
 stay with Stella with a family at Compiegne for the rest 
 of the time. Michael went to see his mother off at Charing 
 Cross before he joined Mr. Viner. 
 
 "Darling Michael," she murmured, as the train began 
 to move slowly forward. "You're looking so well and 
 happy — just like you were two years ago. Just like " 
 
 The rest of the comparison was lost in the noise of the 
 speeding train. 
 
 21
 
 CHAPTER X 
 STELLA 
 
 MICHAEL spent a charming fortnight with Father 
 VIner in Amiens, Chartres and Rouen. The 
 early Masses to which they went along the cool, 
 empty streets of the morning, and the shadowy, candle-lit 
 Benedictions from which they came home through the 
 deepening dusk, gave to Michael at least a profound hope, 
 if not the astonishing faith of his first religious experience. 
 Sitting with the priest at the open window of their inn, 
 while down below the footsteps of the wayfarers were pat- 
 tering like leaves, Michael recaptured some of that emotion 
 of universal love which, with sacramental force, had filled 
 his heart during the wonder of transition from boyhood to 
 adolescence. He did not wish to know more about these 
 people than could be told by the sound of their progress so 
 light, so casual, so essentially becoming to the sapphirine 
 small world in which they hurried to and fro. The passion 
 of hope overwhelmed Michael's imagination with a beauty 
 that was perfectly expressed by the unseen busy populations 
 of a city's waning twilight. Love, birth, death, greed, am- 
 bition, all humanity's stress of thought and effort were 
 merged in a murmurous contentment of footfalls and faint- 
 heard voices. Michael supposed that somehow to God the 
 universe must sound much as this tall street of Rouen 
 sounded now to him at his inn window, and he realized 
 for the first time how God must love the world. Later, 
 
 314
 
 STELLA 31 s 
 
 the twilight and voices and footfalls would fade together 
 into night, and through long star-scattered silences Michael 
 would brood with a rapture that became more than hope, 
 if less than faith with restless, fiery heart. Then clocks 
 would strike sonorously; the golden window-panes would 
 waver and expire; Mr. Viner would tap his pipe upon the 
 sill, and Michael and he would follow their own great 
 shadows up into bedrooms noisy in the night-wind and 
 prophetic of sleep's immense freedom, until with the slant- 
 ing beams of dawn Michael would wake and at Mass-time 
 seek to enchain with prayers indomitable dreams. 
 
 The gravity of Michael's demeanor suited the gray town 
 in which he sojourned and, though Mr. Viner used to tease 
 him about his saintly exterior, the priest seemed to enjoy 
 his company. 
 
 "But don't look so solemn when you meet your sister, 
 or she'll think you're sighing for a niche in Chartres Cathe- 
 dral, which for a young lady emancipated from Germany 
 would be a most distressing thought." 
 
 "I'm enjoying myself," said Michael earnestly. 
 
 "My dear old chap, I'm not questioning that for a 
 moment, and personally I find your attitude consorts very 
 admirably with the mood in which these northern towns 
 of France always throw me," said Mr. Viner. 
 
 The fortnight came to an end, and to commemorate 
 this chastening interlude of a confidence and a calm w^hose 
 impermanence Michael half dreaded, half desired, he 
 bought a pair of old candlesticks for the Notting Dale 
 Mission. Michael derived a tremendous consolation from 
 this purchase, for he felt that, even if in the future he 
 should be powerless to revive this healing time, its austere 
 hours would be immortalized, mirrored somehow in the 
 candlesticks' bases as durably as if engraved upon a Grecian 
 urn. There was in this impulse nothing more sentimental
 
 3i6 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 than in his erecting last year of the small cairn to cele- 
 brate a fleeting moment of faith on the Berkshire downs. 
 
 Stella was already settled in the bosom of the French 
 family when Michael reached Compiegne, and as he drove 
 toward the Pension he began for the first time to wonder 
 what his sister would be like after these tw^o years. He 
 was inclined to suppose that she would be a problem, 
 and he already felt qualms about the behavior of her 
 projected suddenly like this from Germany into an atmos- 
 phere of romance. For Michael France always stood 
 out as typically romantic to his fancy. Spain and Italy 
 were not within his realization as yet, and Germany he 
 conceived of as a series of towns filled with the noise of 
 piano-scales and hoarse gutturals. He hoped that Stella 
 was not even now plunged into a girlish love-affair with 
 one of the idle young Frenchmen who haunted so amorously 
 the sunshine of this gay land. He even began to rehearse, 
 as his carriage jolted along the cobbled embankm.ent of the 
 Oise, a particularly scathing scene in which he coldly de- 
 nounced the importunate lover, while Stella stood abashed 
 by fraternal indignation. Then he reflected that after all 
 Stella was only fifteen and, as he remembered her, too 
 much wrapped up in a zest for public appreciation to be 
 very susceptible of private admiration. Moreover, he knew 
 that most of her time was occupied by piano-practice. An 
 emotion of pride in his accomplished sister displaced the 
 pessimism of his first thoughts. He took pleasure in the 
 imagination of her swaying the whole Pension by her 
 miraculous execution, and he began to build up the picture 
 of his entrance upon the last crashing chords of a sonata, 
 when after the applause had ceased he would modestly 
 step forward as the brother of this paragon. 
 
 The carriage was now bowling comfortably along a wide 
 tree-shaded avenue bordered on either side by stretches 
 of greenery which were dappled with children and nurse-
 
 STELLA 317 
 
 maids and sedate little girls with bobbing pigtails. Michael 
 wondered if Stella was making a discreet promenade with 
 the ladies of the family, half hoped she was, that he might 
 reach the Pension before her and gracefully welcome her 
 as she, somewhat flustered by being late for his arrival, 
 hurried up the front-door steps. Then, just as he was 
 wondering whether there would or would not be front- 
 door steps to the Pension, the cab drew up by a house 
 with a green verandah and front-garden geranium-dyed 
 to right and left of a vivid gravel path. Michael perceived, 
 with a certain disapproval, that the verandah sheltered 
 various ladies in wicker chairs. He disliked the notion of 
 carrying up his bag in the range of their cool criticism, 
 nor did he relish the conversation that would have to be 
 embarked upon with the neat maid already hurrying to 
 meet him. But most contrary to his preconceived idea of 
 arrival was the affectionate ambush laid for him by Stella 
 just when he was trying to remember whether '^chambre" 
 were masculine or feminine. Yet, even as he felt Stella's 
 dewy lips on his, and her slim fingers round his neck, he 
 reproached himself for his silly shyness, although he could 
 only say: 
 
 "Hullo, look out for my collar." 
 
 Stella laughed rippingly. 
 
 '*Oh, Michael," she cried, "I'm most frightfully glad 
 to see 3'ou, you darling old Michael." 
 
 Michael looked much alarmed at the amazing facility 
 of her affectionate greeting, and vaguely thought how much 
 easier existence must be to a girl who never seemed to be 
 hampered by any feeling of what people within earshot 
 would think of her. Yet almost immediately Stella herself 
 relapsed into shyness at the prospect of introducing 
 Michael to the family, and it was only the perfectly accom- 
 plished courtesy of Madame Regnier which saved Michael
 
 3i8 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 from summarily making up his mind that these holidays 
 were going to be a most ghastly failure. 
 
 The business of unpacking composed his feelings slightly, 
 and a tap at his door, followed by Stella's silvery demand 
 to come in, gave him a thrill of companionship. He sud- 
 denly realized, too, that he and his sister had corresponded 
 frequently during their absence, and that this queer shy- 
 ness at meeting her in person was really absurd. Stella, 
 wandering round the room with his ties on her arm, gave 
 Michael real pleasure, and she for her part seemed highly 
 delighted at the privilege of superintending his unpacking. 
 
 He noted with a sentimental fondness that she still 
 hummed, and he was very much impressed by the flowers 
 which she had arranged in the cool corners of the pleasant 
 room. On her appearance, too, as she hung over the rail 
 of his bed chatting to him gaily, he congratulated himself. 
 He liked the big apple-green bows in her chestnut hair; 
 he liked her slim white hands and large eyes; and he won- 
 dered if her smile were like his, and hoped it was, since it 
 was certainly very subtle and attractive. 
 
 "What sort of people hang out in this place?" he asked. 
 
 "Oh, nice people," Stella assured him. "Madame 
 Regnier is a darling, and she loves my playing, and Mon- 
 sieur is fearfully nice, with a gray beard. We always play 
 billiards in the evening, and drink cassis. It's lovely. 
 There are three darling old ladies, widows I think. They 
 sit and listen to me playing, and when IVe finished pay 
 me all sorts of compliments, which sound so pretty in 
 French. One of them said I was 'ravissante.' " 
 
 "Are there any kids?" asked Michael. 
 
 Stella said there were no kids, and Michael sighed his 
 relief. 
 
 "Do you practice much?" 
 
 "Oh, no, I'm having a holiday. I only practice three 
 hours a day."
 
 STELLA 319 
 
 "How much?" asked Michael. "Good lord, do you 
 call that a holiday?" 
 
 "Why, you silly old thing, of course it is," rippled 
 Stella. 
 
 Presently it was time for dejeuner, and they sat down to 
 eat in a room of shaded sunlight, watching the green 
 jalousies that glowed like beryls, and listening to a canary's 
 song. Michael was introduced to Madame Graves, 
 Madame Lamarque and Madame Charpentier, the three 
 old widows who lived at the Pension, and who all looked 
 strangely alike, with their faces and hands of aged ivory 
 and their ruffles and wristbands starched to the semblance 
 of fretted white coral. They ate mincingly in contrast to 
 Monsieur Regnier, who, guarded by a very large napkin, 
 pitchforked his food into his mouth with noisy recklessness. 
 Later in the mellow August afternoon Michael and he 
 walked solemnly round the town together, and Michael 
 wondered if he had ever before raised his hat so many 
 times. 
 
 After dinner, when the coffee and cassis had been drunk, 
 Madame Regnier invited Stella to play to them. Dusk 
 was falling in the florid French drawing-room, but so rich 
 was the approach of darkness that no lamps brooded with 
 rosy orbs, and only a lighted candle on either side of Stella 
 stabbed the gloom in which the listeners leaned quietly 
 back against the tropic tapestries of their chairs, without 
 trying to occupy themselves with books or crochet-work. 
 
 Michael sat by the scented window, watching the stars 
 twinkle, it almost seemed, in tune with the vibrant melodies 
 that Stella rang out. In the bewitching candlelight the 
 keyboard trembled and shimmered like water to a low 
 wind. Deep in the shadow the three old ladies sat in a 
 waxen ecstasy, so still that Michael wondered whether 
 they were alive. He did not know whose tunes they were 
 that Stella played; he did not know what dreams they
 
 320 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 wove for the old ladies, whether of spangled opera-house 
 or ball; he did not care, being content to watch the 
 lissome hands that from time to time went dancing away 
 on either side from the curve of Stella's straight back, 
 whether to play with raindrops in the treble or marshal 
 thunders from the bass. The candlelight sprayed her flow- 
 ing chestnut hair with a golden mist that might have been 
 an aureole over which the apple-green bows floated unsub- 
 stantial like amazing moths. 
 
 Michael continually tried to shape his ideas to the in- 
 spiration of the music, but every image that rose battling 
 for expression lost itself in a peerless stupefaction. 
 
 Then suddenly Stella stopped playing and the enchant- 
 ment was dispelled by murmurous praise and entering 
 lamplight. Stella, slim as a fountain, stood upright in 
 the center of the drawing-room, and, like a fountain, 
 swayed now this way, now that, to catch the compliments 
 so dear to her. Michael wished the three old ladies would 
 not appeal to him to indorse their so perfectly phrased 
 enthusiasm, and grew very conscious of the gradual decline 
 of "oui" into "we" as he supported their laudation. He 
 w^as glad when Monsieur Regnier proposed a game of 
 billiards, and glad to see that Stella could romp, romp so 
 heartily indeed that once or twice he had to check a whis- 
 pered rebuke. 
 
 But later on, when he said good night to her outside 
 his bedroom, he had an impulse to hug her close for the 
 unimaginable artistry of this little sister. 
 
 Michael and Stella went out next day to explore the 
 forest of Compiegne. They wandered away from the 
 geometrical forest roads into high glades and noble chases; 
 they speculated upon the whereabouts of the wild boars 
 that were hunted often, and therefore really did exist; 
 they lay deep in the bracken utterly remote in the ardent 
 emerald light, utterly quiet save for the thrum of insects
 
 STELLA 321 
 
 rising and falling. In this intimate seclusion Michael 
 found it easy enough to talk to Stella. Somehow her 
 face, magnified by the proportions of the surrounding 
 vegetation, scarcely seemed to belong to her, and Michael 
 had a sensation of a fairy fellowship, as he felt himself 
 being absorbed into her wide and strangely magical eyes. 
 Seen like this they were as overwhelmingly beautiful as 
 two flowers, holding mysteries of color and form that could 
 never be revealed save thus in an abandonment of con- 
 templation. 
 
 "Why do you stare at me, Michael?" she asked. 
 "Because I think it's funny to realize that you and I 
 are as nearly as it's possible to be the same person, and yet 
 we're as different from each other as we are from the rest 
 of people. I wonder, if you didn't know I was your 
 brother, and I didn't know you were my sister, if we should 
 have a sort of— what's the word ?— intuition about it? For 
 instance, you can play the piano, and I can't even under- 
 stand the feeling of being able to play the piano. I wish 
 we knew our father. It must be interesting to have a 
 father and a mother, and see what part of one comes from 
 
 each." 
 
 "I always think father and mother weren't married," 
 
 said Stella. 
 
 Michael blushed hotly, taken utterly aback. 
 
 "I say, my dear girl, don't say things like that. That's 
 a frightful thing to say." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Why? Why, because people would be horrified to 
 hear a little girl talking like that," Michael explained. 
 
 "Oh, I thought you meant they'd be shocked to think 
 of people not being married." 
 
 "I say, really, you know, Stella, you ought to be careful. 
 I wouldn't have thought you even knew that people some- 
 times—very seldom, though, mind— don't get married."
 
 322 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 "You funny old boy," rippled Stella. "You must think 
 I'm a sort of doll just wound up to play the piano. If I 
 didn't know that much after going to Germany, why — 
 oh, Michael, I do think you're funny." 
 
 "I was afraid these beastly foreigners would spoil you," 
 muttered Michael. 
 
 "It's not the foreigners. It's myself." 
 
 "Stella!" 
 
 "Well, I'm fifteen and a half." 
 
 "I thought girls were innocent," said Michael with dis- 
 illusion in his tone. 
 
 "Girls grow older quicker than boys." 
 
 "But I mean always innocent," persisted Michael. "I 
 don't mean all girls, of course. But — well — a girl like 
 you." 
 
 ^'Very innocent girls are usually very stupid girls," 
 Stella asserted. 
 
 Michael made a resolution to watch his sister's behavior 
 when she came back to London next year to make her first 
 public appearance at a concert. For the moment, feeling 
 overmatched, he changed the trend of his reproof. 
 
 "Well, even if you do talk about people not being 
 married, I think it's rotten to talk about mother like that." 
 
 "You stupid old thing, as if I should do it with anyone 
 but you, and I only talked about her to you because you 
 look so sort of cozy and confidential in these ferns." 
 
 "They're not ferns — they're bracken. If I thought such 
 a thing was possible," declared Michael, "I believe I'd go 
 mad. I don't think I could ever again speak to anybody 
 I knew." 
 
 "Why not, if they didn't know?" 
 
 "How like a girl! Stella, you make me feel uncomfort- 
 able, you do really." 
 
 Stella stretched her full length in the luxurious greenery. 
 
 "Well, mother never seems unhappy."
 
 STELLA 3^ 
 
 "Exactly," said Michael eagerly. ''Therefore, what you 
 think can't possibly be true. If it were, she'd always look 
 miserable." 
 
 'Well, then who was our father?" 
 
 "Don't ask me," said Michael gloomily. "I believe he's 
 in prison — or perhaps he's in an asylum, or deformed." 
 
 Stella shuddered. 
 
 "Michael, what a perfectly horrible idea. Deformed!" 
 
 "Well, wouldn't you sooner he were deformed than that 
 you were — than that — than the other idea?" Michael stam- 
 mered. 
 
 "No, I wouldn't," Stella cried. "I'd much, much, much 
 rather that mother was never married." 
 
 Michael tried to drag his mind toward the comprehen- 
 sion of this unnatural sentiment, but -the longer he regarded 
 it the worse it seemed, and with intense irony he observed 
 to Stella: 
 
 "I suppose you'll be telling me next that you're in love." 
 
 "I'm not in love just at the moment," said Stella blandly. 
 
 "Do you mean to say you have been in love?" 
 
 "A good deal," she admitted. 
 
 Michael leaped to his feet, and looked down on her 
 recumbent in the bracken. 
 
 "But only in a stupid schoolgirly way?" he gasped. 
 
 "Yes, I suppose it was," Stella paused. "But it was 
 fearfully thrilling all the same — especially in duets." 
 
 "Duets?" 
 
 "I used to read ahead, and watch where our hands would 
 come together, and then the notes used to get quite slippery 
 with excitement." 
 
 "Look here," Michael demanded, drawing himself up, 
 "are you trying to be funny?" 
 
 "No," Stella declared, rising to confront Michael. "He 
 was one of my masters. He was only about thirty, and 
 he was killed in Switzerland by an avalanche."
 
 324 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 Michael was staggered by the confession of this shocking 
 and precocious child, as one after another his chimeras rose 
 up to leer at him triumphantly. 
 
 "And did he make love to you? Did he try to kiss 
 you?" Michael choked out. 
 
 "Oh, no," said Stella. "That would have spoilt it all." 
 
 Michael sighed under a faint lightening of his load, 
 and Stella came up to him engagingly to slip her arm into 
 his. 
 
 "Don't be angry with me, Michael, because I have 
 wanted so dreadfully to be great friends with you and 
 tell you all my secrets. I want to tell you what I think 
 about when I'm playing; and, Michael, you oughtn't to 
 be angry with me, because you were simply just made to 
 be told secrets. That's why I played so well last night, I 
 was telling you a secret all the time." 
 
 "Do you know what it is, Stella?" said Michael with 
 a certain awe in his voice. "I believe our father is in 
 an asylum, and I believe you and I are both mad — not 
 raving mad, of course — but slightly mad." 
 
 "All geniuses are," said Stella earnestly. 
 
 "But we aren't geniuses." 
 
 "I am," murmured Stella in a strangely quiet little 
 voice that sounded in Michael's ears like the song of a 
 furtive melodious bird. 
 
 "Are you?" he whispered, half frightened by this asser- 
 tion, delivered under huge overarching trees in the burning 
 silence of the forest. "Who told you so?" 
 
 "I told myself so. And when I tell myself something 
 very solemnly, I can't be anything but myself, and I must 
 be speaking the truth." 
 
 "But even if you're a genius — and I suppose you might 
 be — I'm not a genius. I'm clever, but I'm not a genius." 
 
 "No, but you're the nearest person to being me and, 
 if you're not a genius, I think you can understand. Oh,
 
 STELLA 325 
 
 Michael," Stella cried, clasping his arm to her heart, "you 
 do understand, because you never laughed when I told 
 you I was a genius. I've told lots of girl-friends, and 
 they laugh and say I'm conceited." 
 
 ''Well, you are," said Michael, feeling bound not to 
 lose the opportunity of impressing Stella with disapproval 
 as v/ell as comprehension. 
 
 "I know I am. But I must be to go on being myself. 
 Oh, you darling brother, you do understand me. I've 
 longed for someone to understand me. Mother's only 
 proud of me." 
 
 "I'm not at all proud of you," said Michael crushingly. 
 
 "I don't want you to be. If you were proud of me, 
 you'd think I belonged to you, and I don't ever want to 
 belong to anybody." 
 
 "I shouldn't think you ever would," said Michael 
 encouragingly, as they paced the sensuous mossy path in a 
 rapture of avowals. "I should think you'd frighten any- 
 body except me. But why do you fall in love, then?" 
 
 "Oh, because I want to make people die with despair." 
 
 "Great Scott, you are an unearthly kid." 
 
 "Oh, I'm glad I'm unearthly," said Stella. "Fd like 
 to be a sort of Undine. I think I am. I don't think I've 
 got a soul, because when I play I go rushing out into the 
 darkness to look for my soul, and the better I play the 
 nearer I get." 
 
 Michael stopped beneath an oak-tree and surveyed this 
 extraordinary sister of his. 
 
 "Well, I always thought I was a mystic, but, good lord, 
 you're fifty times as much of a mystic as I am," he ex- 
 claimed with depressed conviction. 
 
 Suddenly Stella gave a loud scream. 
 
 "What on earth are you yelling at?" said Michael. 
 
 "Oh, Michael, look — a most enormous animal. Oh,
 
 326 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 look, oh, let me get up a tree. Oh, help me up. Push 
 me up this tree." 
 
 "It's a wild boar," declared Michael, in a tone of aston- 
 ished interest. 
 
 Stella screamed louder than ever and clung to Michael, 
 sobbing. The boar, however, went on its way, routing 
 among the herbage. 
 
 "Well, you may be a genius," said Michael, "but you're 
 an awful little funk." 
 
 "But I was frightened." 
 
 "Wild boars aren't dangerous except when they're being 
 hunted," Michael asserted positively. 
 
 Stella soon became calm under the influence of her 
 brother's equanimity. Arm-in-arm they sauntered back 
 toward Compiegne, and so for a month of serene weather 
 they sauntered every day, and every day Michael pondered 
 more and more deeply the mystery of women. He was 
 sorry to say good-bye to Stella when she w^ent back to 
 Germany, and longed for the breathless hour of her first 
 concert, wishful that all his life he might stand between 
 her and the world, the blundering wild boar of a world.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 ACTION AND REACTION 
 
 ALMOST before the confusion of a new term had 
 subsided, Michael put his name down to play- 
 football again, and it was something in the nature 
 of an occasion when in the first sweltering Middle Side 
 game he scored six tries. Already his contemporaries had 
 forgotten that he was once a fleet and promising three- 
 quarter, so that his resurrection was regarded as an authen- 
 tic apparition, startling in its unexpectedness. Michael 
 was the only person not much surprised when he was in- 
 vited by Abercrombie to play as substitute for one of the 
 seniors absent from a Big Side trial. Yet even Michael 
 was surprised when in the opening match between Classics 
 and Moderns he read his name on the notice-board as 
 sixteenth man; and when, through the continued illness 
 of the first choice, he actually found himself walking on 
 to the field between the black lines of spectators, he was 
 greatly content. Yet the finest thrill of all came when 
 in the line-out he found himself on the left wing with Alan, 
 with Alan not very unlike the old Alan even now in the 
 coveted Tyrian vest of the Classical First Fifteen. 
 
 Into that game Michael poured all he felt of savage 
 detestation for everything that the Modern side stood 
 for. Not an opponent was collared that did not in his 
 falling agony take on the likeness of Percy Garrod; not 
 a Modern half-back was hurled into touch who was not in 
 
 327
 
 328 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 Michael's imagination insolent with damnably destructive 
 theories of life. It was exhilarating, it was superb, it was 
 ineffable, the joy of seeing Alan hand off a Modern bounder 
 and swing the ball out low to him crouching vigilantly upon 
 the left. It was intoxicating, it was divine to catch the 
 ball, and with zigzag leap and plunge to tear w^ildly on 
 toward the Modern goal, to hear the Classical lower boys 
 shriek their high-voiced thrilling exhortations, to hear the 
 maledictions of the enemy ricochetting from a force of 
 speed that spun its own stability. Back went the ball to 
 Alan, shouting with flushed face on his right, just as one 
 of the Modern three-quarters, with iron grip round 
 Michael's faltering knees, fetched him crashing down. 
 
 "Good pass," cried the delighted Classical boys, and 
 'Well run, sir, well run, sir !" they roared as Alan whizzed 
 the ball along to the dapper, the elusive, the incomparable 
 Terry. "Go in, yourself," they prayed, as Terry like a 
 chamois bounded straight at the despairing full-back, then, 
 with a gasp that triumphed over the vibrant hush, checked 
 himself, and in one peerless spring breasted the shoulders 
 of the back to come thudding down upon the turf with 
 a glorious try. 
 
 Now the game swayed desperately, and with Alan ever 
 beside him Michael lived through every heroic fight of 
 man. They were at Thermopylae, stemming the Persian 
 charges with hack and thrust and sweeping cut; they were 
 at Platea with Aristides and Pausanias, vowing death 
 rather than subjugation; the body of Terry beneath a 
 weight of Modern forwards, crying, "Let me up, you 
 stinkers!" was fought for as long ago beneath the walls of 
 Troy the battle raged about the body of Patroclus. And 
 when the game was over, when the Moderns had been 
 defeated for the first time in four resentful years of scien- 
 tific domination, when the Classical Fifteen proudly strode 
 from the field, immortal in muddied Tyrian, it was easy
 
 ACTION AND REACTION 329 
 
 enough to walk across the gravel arm-in-arm with Alan 
 and, while still the noise of the contest and the cries of 
 the onlookers echoed in their ears, it was easy to span the 
 icy floes of two drifting years in one moment of careless, 
 artless intercourse. 
 
 "You'll get your Second Fifteen colors," said Alan con- 
 fidently. 
 
 ''Not this year," Michael thought. 
 
 "You'll get your Third Fifteen cap for a snip." 
 
 "Yes, I ought to get that," Michael agreed. 
 
 "Well, that's damned good, considering you haven't 
 played for two years," Alan vowed. " 
 
 And, as he spoke, IVIichael wondered if Alan had ever 
 wished for his company in the many stressful games from 
 which he had been absent. 
 
 Michael now became one of that group of happy im- 
 mortals in the entrance-hall, whose attitudes of noble ease 
 graced the hot-water pipes below the board on which 
 the news of the school fluctuated daily. This society, 
 to which nothing gave admission but a profound sense 
 of one's own right to enter it, -varied from time to time 
 only in details. As a whole composition it was immutable, 
 as permanent, as decorative and as appropriate as the 
 frieze of the Parthenon. From twenty minutes past nine 
 until twenty-seven minutes past nine, from twenty-five 
 minutes past eleven until twenty-eight minutes past eleven, 
 from ten minutes to three until two minutes to three the 
 heroes of the school met in a large familiarity whose 
 Olympian laughter awed the fearful small boy that flitted 
 uneasily past and chilled the slouching senior that rashly 
 paused to examine the notices in assertion of an unearned 
 right. Even masters entering through the swinging doors 
 seemed glad to pass beyond the range of the heroes' patron- 
 izing contemplation. 
 
 Michael found a pedestal here, and soon idealized the 
 22
 
 330 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 heedless stupidity of these immortals into a Lacedemonian 
 rigor which seemed to him very fine. He accepted their 
 unimaginative standards, their coarseness, their brutality 
 as virtues, and in them he saw the consummation of all 
 that England should cherish. He successfully destroyed 
 a legend that he was clever, and, though at first he found 
 ft difficult to combat the suspicion of aesthetic proclivities 
 and religious eccentricity, even of poetic ambitions, which 
 overshadowed his first welcome, he w^as at last able to get 
 these condoned as a blemish upon an otherwise diverting 
 personality with a tongue nimble enough to make heroes 
 guffaw. Moreover, he was a friend of Alan, w^ho with 
 his slim disdain and perfectly stoic bearing was irreproach- 
 able, and since Michael frankly admired his new friends, 
 and since he imparted just enough fantasy to their stolid 
 fellowship to lend it a faint distinction, he was very soon 
 allowed to preserve a flavor of oddity, and became In time 
 arbiter of whatever elegance they could claim. Michael 
 on his side was most anxious to conform to every prejudice 
 of the Olympians, esteeming their stolidity far above his 
 own natural demeanor, envious too of their profoundly or- 
 dinary point of view and their commonplace expression 
 of it. 
 
 Upon this assembly descended the news of war with 
 the Transvaal, and for three months at least Michael 
 shared in the febrile elation and arrogance and complacent 
 outlook of the average Englishman. The Olympians re- 
 called from early schooldays the forms of heroes who were 
 •even now gazetted to regiments on their way to the front, 
 and who but a little while ago had lounged against these 
 very hot-water pipes. Sandhurst and Woolwich candidates 
 lamented their ill-luck in being born too young, and con- 
 soled themselves with proclaiming that after all the war 
 was so easy that scarcely were they missing anything at
 
 ACTION AND REACTION 331 
 
 all. Then came the first low rumble of defeat, the first 
 tremulous breath of doubt. 
 
 Word went round that meetings were being held to 
 stop the war, and wrathfully the heroes mounted a London 
 Road Car omnibus, snatched the Union Jack from its 
 socket, and surged into Hammersmith Town Hall to yell 
 and hoot at the farouche Irishmen and dirty Socialists 
 who were mouthing their hatred of the war and exulting 
 in the unlucky capture of two regiments. The School 
 Cadet Corps could not accept the mass of recruits that 
 demanded to be enrolled. Drums were bought by sub- 
 scription, and in the armory down under the school tatoo 
 and rataplan voiced the martial spirit of St. James'. 
 
 One day Alan brought back the news that his Uncle 
 Kenneth was ordered to the front, that he would sail 
 from Southampton in a few days. Leave was granted Alan 
 to go and say good-bye and, in the patriotic fervor that 
 now burned even in the hearts of schoolmasters, Michael 
 was accorded leave to accompany him. 
 
 They traveled down to Southampton on a wet, windy 
 November day, proud to think as they sat opposite one 
 another in the gloomy railway-carriage that in some way 
 since this summons they were both more intimately con- 
 nected with the war. 
 
 In a dreary Southampton hotel they met Mrs. Ross, 
 and Michael thought that she was very beautiful and very 
 brave waiting in the chilly fly-blown dining-room of the 
 hotel. Three years of marriage scarcely seemed to have 
 altered his dear Miss Carthew; yet there was a dignity, a 
 carven stillness that Michael had never associated with 
 the figure of his governess, or perhaps it was that now he 
 was older, more capable of appreciating the noble lines of 
 this woman. 
 
 It gave Michael a sentimental pang to watch Mrs. Ross 
 presiding over their lunch as she had in the past presided
 
 332 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 over so many lunches. They spoke hardly at all of Captain 
 Ross's departure, but they talked of Nancy, and how well 
 she was doing as secretary to Lord Perham, of Mrs. Car- 
 thew^, still among the roses and plums of Cobble Place, 
 and of a hundred jolly bygone events. Mrs. Ross was 
 greatly interested to hear of Stella, and greatly amused by 
 Michael's arrangement for her future. 
 
 Then Captain Ross came in, and after a few jokes, which 
 fell very flat in the bleak dining-room — perhaps because 
 the two boys were in awe of this soldier going away to 
 the wars, or perhaps because they knew that there was 
 indeed nothing to joke about — said: 
 
 "The regiment comes in by the 2:45. We shall embark 
 at once. What's the time now?" 
 
 Everyone, even the mournful waiter, stared up at the 
 wall. It was two o'clock. 
 
 ''Half an hour before I need go down to the station," 
 said Captain Ross, and then he began to whistle very 
 quietly. The wind was getting more boisterous, and the 
 rain rattled on the windows as if, without, a menacing 
 hand flung gravel for a signal. 
 
 "Can you two boys amuse yourselves for a little while?'* 
 asked Captain Ross. 
 
 "Oh, rather," said Michael and Alan. 
 
 "I've just one or two things I wanted to say to you, 
 dear," said Captain Ross, turning to his wife. They left 
 the dining-room together. Michael and Alan sat silently 
 at the table, crumbling bread and making patterns in the 
 salt-cellar. They could hear the gaunt clock ticking away 
 on the stained wall above them. From time to time far-oflf 
 bugles sounded above the tossing wind. So they sat for 
 twenty solemn minutes. Then the husband and wife came 
 back. The bill was paid; the door of the hotel swung 
 back; the porter said, "Good luck, sir," very solemnly,
 
 ACTION AND REACTION 333 
 
 and in a minute they were walking down the street toward 
 the railway-station through the wind and rain. 
 
 "I'll see you on the dock in a moment," said Captain 
 Ross. "You'd better take a cab down and wait under 
 cover." 
 
 Thence onward for an hour or more all was noise, 
 excitement and bustle in contrast to the brooding, ominous 
 calm of the dingy hotel. Regiments were marching down 
 to the docks; bands were playing; there were drums and 
 bugles, shouts of command, clatter of horses, the occasional 
 rumble of a gun-carriage, inquiries, the sobbing of children 
 and women, oaths, the hooting of sirens, a steam-engine's 
 whistle, and at last, above everything else, was heard the 
 wail of approaching pipes. 
 
 Nearer and nearer swirled the maddening, gladdening, 
 heartrending tune they played; the Kintail Highlanders 
 were coming; they swung into view; they halted, com- 
 pany after company of them; there were shouts of com- 
 mand very close; suddenly Michael found his hand clenched 
 and saw Captain Ross's gray eyes smiling good-bye; Alan's 
 sleeve seemed to have a loose thread that wanted biting ofiE; 
 the sirens of the great transport triimpeted angrily and, 
 resounding through the sinking hearts of those w^ho were 
 not going, robbed them of whatever pluck was left. Every- 
 where in view sister, mother, and wife were held for a 
 moment by those they loved. The last man was aboard; 
 the gangway was hauled up; the screw pounded the 
 water; the ship began to glide away from the dock with 
 slow, sickening inevitableness. Upon the air danced 
 handkerchiefs, feeble fluttering envoys of the passionate 
 farewells they flung to the wind. Spellbound, intolerably 
 powerless, the watchers on shore waved and waved; smaller 
 grew the faces leaning over the rail; smaller and smaller, 
 until at last they were unrecognizable to those left behind; 
 and now the handkerchiefs were waved in a new fever
 
 334 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 of energy as if with the fading of the faces there had fallen 
 upon the assembly a fresh communal grief, a grief that, no 
 longer regarding personal heartbreaks, frantically pursued 
 the great graceful ship herself, whose prow was straining 
 for the open sea. Still, though now scarcely even were 
 human forms discernible upon the decks, the handkerchiefs 
 jigged on for horribly n>echanic gestures, as if those who 
 w^aved them were become automatons through sorrow. 
 
 Glad of the musty peace of a railway-carriage after the 
 tears and confusion of the docks, Michael and Alan and 
 Mrs. Ross spoke very little on the journey back to London. 
 
 "Aren't you going to stay the night with us at Rich- 
 mond?" Alan asked. 
 
 "No, I must get down to Cobble Place. My 4arge 
 son has already gone there with his nurse." 
 
 "Your son?" exclaimed Michael. "Oh, of course, I 
 forgot." 
 
 So Alan and he put Mrs. Ross into her train and rode 
 back together on an omnibus, proud citizens of an Empire 
 whose inspiration they had lately beheld in action. 
 
 Next morning the Olympians on their frieze were con- 
 siderably impressed by Michael's account of the stirring 
 scene at Southampton. 
 
 "Oh, the war will be over almost at once. We're not 
 taking any risks. We're sending out enough men to con- 
 quer more than the Transvaal," said the heroes wisely. 
 
 But soon there came the news of fresh defeats, and 
 when in the middle of January school reassembled there 
 were actually figures missing from the familiar composition 
 itself. Actually contemporary heroes had left, had enlisted 
 in the Volunteers and Yeomanry, were even now waiting 
 for orders and meantime self-consciously wandering round 
 the school-grounds in militant khaki. Sandhurst and Wool- 
 wich candidates passed with incredible ease; boys were com- 
 ing to school in mourning ; Old Jacobeans died bravely, and
 
 ACTION AND REACTION 335 
 
 their deaths were recorded in the school magazine; one 
 Old Jacobean gained the Victoria Cross, and everyone 
 walked from prayers very proudly upon that day. 
 
 Michael w^as still conventionally patriotic, but some- 
 times with the progress of the war a doubt would creep 
 into his mind whether this increasing blazonry of a coun- 
 try's emotion were so fine as once he had thought it, 
 whether England were losing some of her self-control under 
 reverses, and, worst of all, whether in her victories she were 
 becoming blatant. He remembered how he had been sick- 
 ened by the accounts of American hysteria during the war 
 with Spain, whose weaker cause, true to his earliest inclina- 
 tions, he had been compelled to champion. And now when 
 the tide was turning in England's favor, when every other 
 boy came to school wearing a khaki tie quartered with 
 blue or red and some of them even came tricked out with 
 Union Jack waistcoats, when the wearing of a British 
 general's head on a button and the hissing of Kruger's 
 name at a pantomime were signs of high emotion, when 
 many wastrels of his acquaintance had uniforms, and when 
 the patriotism of their friends consisted of making these 
 undignified supernumeraries drunk, Michael began to won- 
 der whether war conducted by a democracy had ever been 
 much more than a circus for the populace. 
 
 And when one bleak morning in early spring he read in 
 a fatal column that Captain Kenneth Ross had been killed 
 in action, his smouldering resentment blazed out, and as 
 he hurried to school with sickened heart and eyes in a mist 
 of welling tears, he could have cursed everyone of the 
 rosetted patriots for whose vainglory such a death paid 
 the price. Alan, as he expected, was not at school, and 
 Michael spent a restless, miserable morning. He hated 
 the idea of discussing the news with his friends of the 
 hot-w^ater pipes, and when one by one the unimaginative, 
 flaccid comments flowed easily forth upon an event that
 
 336 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 was too great for them even to hear, much less to speak 
 of, Michael's rage burst forth: 
 
 "For God's sake, you asses, don't talk so much. I'm 
 sick of this war. I'm sick of reading that a lot of decent 
 chaps have died for nothing, because it is for nothing, 
 if this country is never again going to be able to stand 
 defeat or victory. War isn't anything to admire in itself. 
 All the good of war is what it makes of the people who 
 fight, and what it makes of the people who stay at home." 
 
 The Olympians roared with laughter, and congratulated 
 Michael on his humorous oration. 
 
 "Can't you see that I'm serious, that it is important to 
 be gentlemen?" Michael shouted. 
 
 "Who says we aren't gentlemen?" demanded a very 
 vapid, but slightly bellicose hero. 
 
 "Nobody says you aren't a gentleman, you ass; at least 
 nobody sa5'S you eat peas with a knife, but, my God, if 
 you think it's decent to wear that damned awful button in 
 your coat when fellows are being killed every day for you, 
 for your pleasure, for your profit, for your existence, all 
 I can say is I don't." 
 
 Michael felt that the climax of this speech was some- 
 what weak, and he relapsed into silence, biting his nails 
 with the unexpressed rage of limp words. 
 
 "You might as well say that the School oughtn't to cheer 
 at a football match," said Abercrombie, the Captain. 
 
 "I would say so, if I thought that all the cheerers never 
 expected and never even intended to play themselves. 
 That's why professional football is so rotten." 
 
 "You were damned glad to get your Third Fifteen cap," 
 Abercrombie pointed out gruffly. 
 
 The laugh that followed this rebuke from the mightiest 
 of the immortals goaded Michael into much more than he 
 had intended to say when he began his unlucky tirade. 
 
 "Oh, was I?" he sneered. "That's just where you're
 
 ACTION AND REACTION 337 
 
 quite wrong, because, as a matter of fact, I don't intend 
 to play football any more, if School Footer is simply to be 
 a show for a lot of wasters. I'm not going to exert myself 
 like an acrobat in a ciicus, if it all means nothing." 
 
 The heroes regarded Michael with surprise and distaste; 
 they shrank from him coldly as if his unreasonable outburst 
 in some w^ay involved their honor. They laughed uncom- 
 fortably, each one hiding himself behind another's shoulders, 
 as if they mocked a madman. The bell for school rang, 
 and the heroes left him. Michael, still enraged, went 
 back to his class-room. Then he wondered if Alan would 
 hate him for having made his uncle's death an occasion 
 for this breach of a school code of manners. He supposed 
 sadly that Alan would not understand any more than the 
 others what he felt. He cursed himself for having let 
 these ordinary, obvious, fat-headed fools so impose upon 
 his imagination as to lead him to consider them worthy 
 of his respect. He had wasted three months in this society; 
 he had thought he was happy and had congratulated him- 
 self upon at last finding school endurable. School was a 
 prison, such as it always had been. He was seventeen 
 and a schoolboy. It was ignominious. At one o'clock he 
 waited for nobody, but walked quickly home to lunch, still 
 fuming with the loss of his self-control and, as he looked 
 back on the scene, of his dignity. 
 
 His mother came down to lunch with signs of a morn- 
 ing's tears, and Michael looked at her in astonishment. 
 He had not supposed that she would be much affected by 
 the death of Captain Ross, and he inquired if she had been 
 writing to Mrs. Ross. 
 
 "No, dear," said Mrs. Fane. "Why should I have 
 written to Mrs. Ross this morning?" 
 
 "Didn't you see in the paper?" Michael asked. 
 
 "See what?" 
 
 "That Captain Ross was killed in action."
 
 338 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 "Oh, no," gasped his mother, white and shuddering. 
 "Oh, Michael, how horrible, and on the same day." 
 
 ''The same day as what?" 
 
 Mrs. Fane looked at her son for a moment very intently, 
 as if she were minded to tell him something. Then the 
 parlor-maid came into the room, and she seemed to change 
 her mind, and finally said in perfectly controlled accents: 
 
 ''The same day as the announcement is made that — that 
 your old friend Lord Saxby has raised a troop of horse — 
 Saxby's horse. He is going to Africa almost at once." 
 
 "Another gentleman going to be killed for the sake of 
 these rowdy swine at home!" said Michael savagely. 
 
 "Michael! What do you mean? Don't you admire a 
 man for — for trying to do something for his country?" 
 
 "It depends on the country," Michael answered. "If 
 you think it's worth while doing anything for what England 
 is now, I don't. I wouldn't raise a finger, if London were 
 to be invaded to-morrow." 
 
 "I don't understand you, dearest boy. You're talking 
 rather like a Radical, and rather like old Conservative 
 gentlemen I remember as a girl. It's such a strange mix- 
 ture. I don't think you quite understand what you're 
 saying." 
 
 "I understand perfectly what I'm saying," Michael con- 
 tradicted. 
 
 "Well, then I don't think you ought to talk like that. 
 I don't think it's kind or considerate to me and, after 
 you've just heard about Captain Ross's death, I think it's 
 irreverent. And I thought you attached so much impor- 
 tance to reverence," Mrs. Fane added in a complaining 
 tone. 
 
 Michael was vexed by his mother's failure to understand 
 his point of view, and became harder and more perverse 
 every minute.
 
 ACTION AND REACTION 339 
 
 "Lord Saxby would be shocked to hear you talking like 
 this, shocked and horrified," she went on. 
 
 "I'm very sorry for hurting Lord Saxby's feelings," 
 said Michael with elaborate sarcasm. "But really I don't 
 see that it matters much to him what I think." 
 
 "He wants to see you before he sails," said Mrs. Fane. 
 
 "To see me? Why?" gasped Michael. "Why on earth 
 should he want to see me?" 
 
 "Well, he's — he's in a way the head of our family." 
 
 "He's not taken much interest in me up to the present. 
 It's rather odd he should want to see me now when he's 
 going away." 
 
 "Michael, don't be so bitter and horrid. Lord Saxby's 
 so kind, and he — and he — might never come back." 
 
 "Dearest mother," said Michael, "I think you're a little 
 unreasonable. Why should I go and meet a man now, 
 and perhaps grow to like him — and then say good-bye to 
 him, perhaps forever?" 
 
 "Michael, do not talk like that. You are selfish and 
 brutal. You've grown up to be perfectly heartless, although 
 you can be charming. I think you'd better not see Lord 
 Saxby. He'd be ashamed of you." 
 
 Michael rose in irritation. 
 
 "My dear mother, what on earth business is it of Lord 
 Saxby's how I behave? I don't understand what you 
 mean by being ashamed of me. I have lived all these years, 
 and I've seen Lord Saxby once. He sent me some Siamese 
 stamps and some soldiers. I daresay he's a splendid chap. 
 I know I liked him terrifically when I was a kid, and if 
 he's killed I shall be sorry — I shall be more than sorry — 
 I shall be angry, furious that for the sake of these insuffer- 
 able rowdies another decent chap is going to risk his life." 
 
 Mrs. Fane put out her hand to stop Michael's flowing 
 tirade, but he paid no attention, talking away less to her
 
 340 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 than to himself. Indeed, long before he had finished, she 
 made no pretense of listening, but merely sat crying quietly. 
 
 "I've been thinking a good deal lately about this war," 
 Michael declared. "I'm beginning to doubt whether it's 
 a just war, whether we didn't simply set out on it for 
 brag and money. I'm not sure that I want to see the 
 Boers conquered. They're a small independent nation, and 
 they have old-fashioned ideas and they're narrovv'-minded 
 Bible-worshipers, but there's something noble about them, 
 something much nobler than there is in these rotten adven- 
 turers who go out to fight them. Of course, I don't mean 
 by that people like Captain Ross or Lord Saxby. They're 
 gentlemen. They go either because it's their duty or be- 
 cause they think it's their duty. And they're the ones that 
 get killed. You don't hear of these swaggerers in khaki 
 being killed. I haven't heard yet of many of them even 
 going to the front at all. Oh, mother, I am fed up with 
 the rotten core of everything that looks so fine on the 
 outside." 
 
 Mrs. Fane was now crying loud enough to make Michael 
 stop in sudden embarrassment. 
 
 "I say, mother, don't cry. I expect I've been talking 
 nonsense," he softly told her. 
 
 "I don't know where you get these views. I was always 
 so proud of you. I thought you were charming and mys- 
 terious, and you're simply vulgar!" 
 
 "Vulgar?" echoed Michael in dismay. 
 
 Mrs. Fane nodded vehemently. 
 
 "Oh, well, if I'm vulgar, I'll go." 
 
 Michael hurried to the door. 
 
 "Where are you going?" asked his mother in alarm. 
 
 "Oh, lord, only to school. That's what makes a scene 
 like this so funny. After I've worked myself up and made 
 you angry "
 
 ACTION AND REACTION 341 
 
 "Not angry, dear. Only grieved," interrupted his 
 mother. 
 
 "You were more than grieved when you said I was 
 vulgar. At least I hope you were. But, after it's all over, 
 I go trotting ofE like a good little boy to school — to school 
 — to school. Oh, mother, what is the good of expecting 
 me to believe in the finest fellows in the world being killed 
 while I'm still at school? What's the good of making me 
 more wretched, more discontented, more alive to my own 
 futile existence by asking me now, when he's going away, 
 to make friends with Lord Saxby? Oh, darling mother, 
 can't you realize that I'm no longer a little boy who wants 
 to clap his hands at the sight of a red coat? Let me kiss 
 you, mother. I'm sorry I was vulgar, but I've minded 
 so dreadfully about Captain Ross, and it's all for nothing." 
 
 Mrs. Fane let herself be petted by her son, but she did 
 not again ask Michael to see Lord Saxby before he went 
 away to the war. 
 
 Alan was still absent at afternoon school, and Michael, 
 disdaining his place in the heroic group, passed quickly into 
 the class-room and read in Alison of Salamanca and Al- 
 buera and of the storming of Badajoz, wondering what had 
 happened to his country since those famous dates. He 
 supposed that then was the nation's zenith, for from w^hat 
 he could make out of the Crimean War, that had been as 
 little creditable to England as this miserable business of 
 the present. 
 
 In the afternoon Michael thought he would walk over 
 to Notting Dale and see Mr. Viner — perhaps he would 
 understand some of his indignation — and this evening 
 when all was quiet he must write to Mrs. Ross. On his 
 way down the Kensington Road he met Wilmot, whom 
 he had not seen since the summer, for luckily about the 
 time of the row Wilmot had been going abroad and was 
 only lately back. He recognized Wilmot's fanciful walk
 
 342 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 from a distance, and nearly crossed over to the opposite 
 pavement to avoid meeting him; but on second thoughts 
 decided he would like to hear a fresh opinion of the war. 
 
 ''Why, here's a delightful meeting," said Wilmot. "I 
 have been wondering why you didn't come round to see 
 me. You got my cards?" 
 
 "Oh, yes, rather," said Michael. 
 
 "I have been in Greece and Italy. I wish you had been 
 with me. I thought of you, as I sat in the ruined rose- 
 gardens of Paestum. You've no idea how well those 
 columns of honey-colored Travertine would become you, 
 Michael. But I'm so glad to see that you have not yet 
 clothed yourself in khaki. This toy war is so utterly ab- 
 surd. I feel as if I were living in a Christmas bazaar. 
 How dreadfully these puttees and haversacks debase even 
 the most beautiful figures. What is a haversack? It 
 sounds so Lenten, so eloquent of mortification. I have 
 discovered some charming Cyprian cigarettes. Do come 
 and let me watch you enjoy them. How young you look, 
 and yet how old!" 
 
 "I'm feeling very fit," said Michael loftily. 
 
 "How abruptly informative you are! What has hap- 
 pened to you?" 
 
 "I'm thinking about this war." 
 
 "Good gracious," cried Wilmot in mincing amazement. 
 "What an odd subject. Soon you will be telling me that 
 by moonlight j^ou brood upon the Albert Memorial. But 
 perhaps your mind is full of trophies. Perhaps you are 
 picturing to yourself in Piccadilly a second column of 
 Trajan displacing the amorous and acrobatic Cupid who 
 now presides over the painted throng. Come with me 
 some evening to the Long Bar at the Criterion, and while 
 the Maori-like barmaids titter in their devergondage, we 
 will select the victorious site and picture to ourselves the 
 Boer commanders chained like hairy Scythians to the chariot
 
 ACTION AND REACTION 343 
 
 of whatever absurd general chooses to accept the triumph 
 awarded to him by our legislative bourgeoisie." 
 
 "I think I must be getting on," said Michael. 
 
 **How urgent! You speak like Phaeton or Icarus, and 
 pray remember the calamities that befell them. But seri- 
 ously, when are you coming to see me?" 
 
 "Oh, I'm rather busy," said Michael briefly. 
 
 Wilmot looked at him curiously with his glittering eyes 
 for a moment. Then he spoke again: 
 
 "Farewell, Narcissus. Have you learnt that I was but 
 a shallow pool in which to watch your reflection? Did I 
 flatter you too much or not enough? Who shall say? 
 But you know I'm always your friend and, when this 
 love-affair is done, I shall always be interested to hear 
 the legend of it told movingly when and where you will, 
 but perhaps best of all in October when the full moon 
 lies like a huge apricot upon the chimneys of the town. 
 Farewell, Narcissus. Does she display your graces very 
 clearly ?" 
 
 'Tm not in love with anybody, if that's what you mean," 
 said Michael. 
 
 "No? But you are on the margin of a strange pool, 
 and soon you will be peeping over the bulrushes to stare 
 at yourself again." 
 
 Then Mr. Wilmot, making his pontifical and undulatory 
 adieu, passed on. 
 
 "Silly ass," said Michael to himself. "And he always 
 thinks he knows everything." 
 
 Michael turned out of the noisy main road into the 
 sylvan urbanity of Holland Walk. A haze of tender 
 diaphanous green clung to the boles of the smirched elms, 
 softening the sooty decay that made their antiquity so 
 grotesque and so dishonorable. Michael sat down for 
 a while on a bench, inhaling the immemorial perfume of 
 a London spring and listening to the loud courtship of
 
 344 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 the blackbirds in the ragged shrubberies that lined the rail- 
 ings of Holland Park. He was not made any the more 
 content with himself by this effluence of revivified effort 
 that impregnated the air around him. He was out of har- 
 mony with every impulse of the season, and felt just as 
 tightly fettered now as long ago he used to feel on walks 
 by this same line of blackened trees with Nurse to quell his 
 lightest step toward freedom. Where was Nurse now? 
 The pungent odor of privet blown along a dying w^ind of 
 March w^as quick w^ith old memories of forbidden hiding- 
 places, and he looked up, half expectant of her mummified 
 shape peering after his straying steps round the gnarled and 
 blackened trunk of the nearest elm. Michael rose quickly 
 and went on his way toward Notting Dale. This Holland 
 Walk had always been a haunted spot, not at all a place 
 to hearten one, especially where at the top it converged 
 to a silent passage between wooden palings whose twinkling 
 interstices and exudations of green slime had always been 
 queerly sinister. Even now Michael was glad when he 
 could hear again the noise of traffic in the Bayswater 
 Road. As he walked on toward Mr. Viner's house he 
 gave rein to fanciful moralizings upon these two great 
 roads on either side of the Park that ran a parallel course, 
 but never met. How foreign it all seemed on this side 
 with unfamiliar green omnibuses instead of red, with never 
 even a well-known beggar or pavement-artist. The very 
 sky had an alien look, seeming vaster somehow^ than the 
 circumscribed clouds of Kensington. Perhaps, after all, 
 the people of this intolerably surprising city were not so 
 much to be blamed for their behavior during a period of 
 war. They had nothing to hold them together, to teach 
 them to endure and enjoy, to suffer and rejoice in company. 
 These great main roads sweeping West and East with 
 multitudinous chimney-pots between were symbolic of the 
 whole muddle of existence.
 
 ACTION AND REACTION 345 
 
 "But what do I want?" Michael asked himself so loudly 
 that an errand-boy stayed his whistling and stared after 
 him until he turned the corner. 
 
 "I don't know," he muttered in the face of a fussy 
 little woman, who jumped aside to let him pass. 
 
 Soon he was deep in one of Mr. Viner's armchairs, 
 and, without waiting even to produce one of the attenuated 
 pipes he still affected, exclaimed with desolating conviction: 
 
 "I'm absolutely sick of everything!" 
 
 "What, again?" said the priest, smiling. 
 
 "It's this war." 
 
 "You're not thinking of enlisting in the Imperial Yeo- 
 manry?" 
 
 "Oh, no, but a friend of mine— Alan Merivale's uncle — 
 has been killed. It seems all wrong." 
 
 "My dear old chap," said Mr. Viner earnestly, "I'm 
 sorry for you." 
 
 "Oh, it isn't me you've got to pity," Michael cried. 
 "I'd be glad of his death. It's the finest death a fellow 
 can have. But there's nothing fine about it, when one 
 sees these gibbering blockheads shouting and yelling about 
 nothing. I don't know what's the matter with England." 
 
 "Is England any worse than the rest of the world?'* 
 asked Mr. Viner. 
 
 "All this wearing of buttons and khaki ties!" Michael 
 groaned. 
 
 "But that's the only way the man in the street can? 
 show his devotion. You don't object to ritualism, do you? 
 You cross yourself and bow down. The church has colors 
 and lights and incense. Do all these dishonor Our Lord's 
 death?" 
 
 "That's different," said Michael. "And anyway, I 
 don't know that the comparison is much good to me now. 
 I think I've lost my faith. I am sorry to shock you, Mr. 
 Viner." ^
 
 346 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 "You don't shock me at all, my dear boy." 
 
 "Don't I?" said Michael in slightly disappointed tones. 
 
 "You forget that a priest is more difficult to shock than 
 anyone on earth." 
 
 "I like the way you take yourself as a typical priest. 
 Very few of them are like you." 
 
 "Come, that's rather a stupid remark, I think," said 
 Mr. Viner coldly. 
 
 "Is it? I'm sorry. It doesn't seem to worry you very 
 much that I've lost my faith," Michael went on in an 
 aggrieved voice. 
 
 "No, because I don't think you have. I've got a high 
 enough opinion of you to believe that, if you really had lost 
 your faith, you wouldn't plunge comfortably down into 
 one of my armchairs and give me the information in the 
 same sort of tone you'd tell me you'd forgotten to bring 
 back a book I'd lent you." 
 
 "I know you always find it very difficult to take me 
 seriously," Michael grumbled. "I suppose that's the right 
 method with people like me.'* 
 
 "I thought you'd come up to talk about the South Afri- 
 can War. If I'd known the war was so near home, I 
 shouldn't have been so frivolous," said the priest. His 
 eyes were so merry in the leaping firelight that Michael 
 was compelled against his will to smile, 
 
 "Of course, you make me laugh at the time and I 
 forget how serious I meant to be when I arrived, and it's 
 not until I'm at home again that I realize I'm no nearer 
 to what I wanted to say than when I came up," protested 
 Michael. 
 
 "I'm not the unsympathetic boor you'd make me out," 
 Mr. Viner said. 
 
 "Oh, I perfectly understand that all this heart-searching 
 becomes a nuisance. But honestly, Mr. Viner, I think I've 
 done nothing long enough."
 
 ACTION AND REACTION 347 
 
 **Then you do want to enlist?" said the priest quickly. 
 
 "Why must 'doing' mean only one thing nowadays? 
 Surely South Africa hasn't got a monopoly of whatever's 
 being done," Michael argued. ''No, I don't want to 
 enlist," he went on. "And I don't want to go into a 
 monastery, and I'm not sure that I really even want to 
 go to church again." 
 
 "Give up going for a bit," advised the priest. 
 
 Michael jumped up from the chair and walked over 
 to the bay-window, through which came a discordant sound 
 of children playing in the street outside. 
 
 "It's impossible to be serious with you. I suppose you're 
 fed up with people like me," Michael complained. "I 
 know I'm moody and irritating, but I've got a lot to 
 grumble about. I don't seem to have any natural in- 
 clination for any profession. I'm not a musical genius 
 like my young sister. That's pretty galling, you know, 
 really. After all girls can get along better than boys with- 
 out any special gifts, and she simply shines compared with 
 me. I have no father. I've no idea who I was, where 
 I came from, what I'm going to be. I keep on trying to 
 be optimistic and think everything is good and beautiful, 
 and then almost at once it turns out bad and ugly." 
 
 "Has your religion really turned out bad and ugly?" 
 asked the priest gently. 
 
 "Not right through, but here and there, yes." 
 
 "The religion itself or the people who profess it?" Mr. 
 Viner persisted. 
 
 "Doesn't it amount to the same thing ultimately?'* 
 Michael parried. "But leave out religion for the moment, 
 and consider this war. The only justification for such a 
 war is the moral effect it has on the nations engaged. Now, 
 I ask you, do you sincerely believe there has been a trace 
 of any purifying influence since we started waving Union 
 Jacks last September? It's no good; we simply have not
 
 348 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 got it in us to stand defeat or victory. At any rate, if 
 the Boers win, it will mean the preservation of something. 
 Whereas if we win, we shall just destroy everything." 
 
 "Michael, what do you think is the important thing for 
 this country at this moment?" Mr. Viner asked. 
 
 ''Well, I suppose I still think it is that the people — 
 the great mass of the nation, that is — should be happier 
 and better. No, I don't think that's it at all. I think the 
 important thing is that the people should be able to use 
 the power that's coming to them in bigger lumps every 
 day. I'd like to think it wasn't, I'd like to believe that 
 democracy always will be as it always has been — a self-made 
 failure. But against my own will I can't help believing 
 that this time democracy is going to carry everything before 
 it. And this war is going to hurry it on. Of course 
 it is. The masses will learn their power. They'll learn 
 that generals can make fools of themselves, that officers can 
 be done without, that professional soldiers can be cowards, 
 but that simply by paying we can still win. And where's 
 the money coming from? Why, from the class that tried 
 to be clever and blufE the people out of their power by 
 staging this war. Well, do you mean to tell me that it's 
 good for a democracy, this sudden realization of their om- 
 nipotence? Look here, you think I'm an excitable young 
 fool, but I tell you I've been pitching my ideals at a blank 
 wall like so many empty bottles and " 
 
 "Were they empty?" asked Mr. Viner. "Are you sure 
 they were empty? May they not have been cruses of 
 ointment the more precious for being broken?" 
 
 "Well, I wish I could keep one for myself," Michael 
 said. 
 
 "My dear boy, you'll never be able to do that. You'll 
 always be too prodigal of your ideals. I should have no 
 qualms about your future, whatever you did meanwhile. 
 And, do you know, I don't think I have many qualms about
 
 ACTION AND REACTION 349 
 
 this England of ours, however badly she behaves some- 
 times. I'm glad you recognize that the people are coming 
 into their own. I wish that you were glad, but you will 
 be one day. The Catholic religion must be a popular 
 religion. The Sabbath was made for man, you know. 
 Catholicism is God's method of throwing bottles at a 
 blank wall — but not empty bottles, Michael. On the 
 whole, I would sooner that now you were a reactionary 
 than a Dantonist. Your present attitude of mind at any 
 rate gives you the opportunity of going forward, instead 
 of going back; there will be plenty of ideals to take the 
 places of those you destroy, however priceless. And the 
 tragedy of age is not having any more bottles to 
 throw." 
 
 During these words that came soothingly from Mr. 
 Viner's firm lips Michael had settled himself down again 
 in the armchair and lighted his pipe. 
 
 "Come, now," said the priest, ''you and I have muddled 
 through our discussion long enough, let's gossip for a change. 
 What's Mark Chator doing?" 
 
 "I haven't seen much of him this term. He's still going 
 to take orders. I find old Chator's eternal simplicity and 
 goodness rather wearing. Life's pretty easy for him. I 
 wish I could get as much out of it as easily," Michael 
 answered. 
 
 "Well, I can't make any comment on that last remark 
 of yours without plunging into platitudes that would make 
 you terribly contemptuous of my struggles to avoid them. 
 But don't despise the Chators of this world." 
 
 **Oh, I don't. I envy them. Well, I must go. Thanks 
 awfully for putting up with me again." 
 
 Michael picked up his cap and hurried home. When 
 he reached Carlington Road, he was inclined to tell his 
 mother that, if she liked, he would go and visit Lord Saxby 
 before he sailed; but when it came to the point he felt
 
 350 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 too shy to reopen the subject, and decided to let the pro- 
 posal drop. 
 
 He was surprised to find that it was much easier to write 
 to Mrs. Ross about her husband than he thought it would 
 be. Whether this long and stormy day (he could scarcely 
 believe that he had only read the news about Captain Ross 
 that morning) had purged him of all complexities of emo- 
 tion, he did not know; but certainly the letter was easy 
 enough. 
 My dear Mrs. Ross: ^4 Carlington Road. 
 
 I can't tell you the sadness of to-day. I've thought 
 about you most tremendously, and I think you must be 
 gloriously proud of him. I felt angry at first, but now I 
 feel all right. You've always been so stunning to me, and 
 I've never thanked you. I do want to see you soon. I 
 shall never forget saying good-bye to Captain Ross. 
 Mother asked me to go and say good-bye to Lord Saxby. 
 I don't suppose you ever met him. He's a sort of cousin 
 of ours. But I did not want to spoil the memory of that 
 day at Southampton. I haven't seen poor old Alan yet. 
 He'll be in despair. I'm longing to see him to-morrow. 
 This is a rotten letter, but I can't write down what I feel. 
 I wish Stella had known Captain Ross. She would have 
 been able to express her feelings. 
 
 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 w^ell-loved people 
 kept trooping through the darkness, and he longed to con- 
 verse 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 cumulus 
 sustained the empyrean upon the volume of its mighty 
 curve and swell. The road before him stretched shining 
 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 em- 
 barrass 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." 
 
 351
 
 352 YOUTH^S ENCOUNTER 
 
 "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, 
 flushing. 
 
 "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 behavior created. 
 
 "The chaps seem rather sick with you," observed Alan, 
 as they strolled arm-in-arm across the school-ground not 
 yet populous with games. 
 
 "Well, they are such a set of sheep," Michael urged in 
 justification of himself. 
 
 "I thought you rather liked them." 
 
 "I did at first. I do still in a way. I do when nothing 
 matters; but that horrible line in the paper did matter 
 most awfully, and I couldn't stick their bleating. You see, 
 you're different. You just say nothing. That's all right. 
 But these fools tried to say something and couldn't. I 
 always did hate people who tried very obviously. That's
 
 ALAN 353 
 
 why I like you. You're so casual and you always seem to 
 fit." 
 
 "I don't talk, because I know if I opened my mouth I 
 should make an ass of myself," said Alan. 
 
 * 'There you are, that's w^hat I say. That's why it's 
 possible to talk to you. You see I'm a bit mad." 
 
 *'Shut up, you ass," commanded Alan, smiling. 
 
 **Oh, not very mad. And I'm not complaining. But I 
 am a little bit mad. I always have been." 
 
 *'Why? You haven't got a clot on your brain, have 
 you?" 
 
 "Oh, Great Scott, no! It's purely mental, my madness." 
 
 "Well, I think you're talking tosh," said Alan firmly. 
 
 "If j^ou go on thinking you're mad, you will be mad, 
 and then you'll be sorry. So shut up trying to horrify 
 me, because if you really were mad I should bar you," he 
 added coolly. 
 
 "All right," said Michael a little subdued, as he always 
 was by Alan's tranquil snubs. "All right. I'm not mad, 
 but I'm excitable." 
 
 "Well, you shouldn't be," said Alan. 
 
 "I can't help my character, can I?" Michael demanded. 
 
 "You're not a girl," Alan pointed out. 
 
 "Men have very strong emotions often," Michael ar- 
 gued. 
 
 "They may have them, but they don't show them. Just 
 lately you've been holding forth about the rotten way in 
 which everybody gets hysterical over this war. And now 
 you're getting hysterical over yourself, which is much 
 worse." 
 
 "Damn you, Alan, if I didn't like you so much, I 
 shouldn't listen to you," said Michael fiercely, pausing. 
 
 "Well, if I didn't like you, I shouldn't talk," answered 
 Alan simply. 
 
 As they walked on again in silence for a while, Michael
 
 354 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 continually tried to get a perspective view of his friend, 
 puzzling over his self-assurance, w^hich w^as never offensive, 
 and wondering how a person so much less clever than 
 himself could possibly make him feel so humble. Alan 
 was good-looking and well dressed; he was essentially 
 debonair; he was certainly in appearance the most attrac- 
 tive boy in the school. It always gave Michael the most 
 acute thrill of admiration to see Alan sw^inging himself 
 along so lithe and so graceful. It made him want to go 
 up and pat Alan's shoulder and say, "You fine and lovely 
 creature, go on walking forever." But mere good looks 
 were not enough to explain the influence which Alan 
 wielded, an influence which had steadily increased during 
 the period of their greatest devotion to each other, and 
 had never really ceased during the period of their compara- 
 tive estrangement. Yet, if Michael looked back on their 
 joint behavior, it had always been he who apparently led 
 and Alan who followed. 
 
 "Do you know, old chap," said Michael suddenly, "you're 
 a great responsibility to me." 
 
 "Thanks very much and all that," Alan answered, with 
 a mocking bow. 
 
 "Have you ever imagined yourself the owner of some 
 frightfully famous statue?" Michael went on earnestly. 
 
 "Why, have you?" Alan countered, with his familiar 
 look of embarrassed persiflage. 
 
 Michael, however, kept tight hold of the thread that 
 was guiding him through the labyrinth that led to the 
 arcana of Alan's disposition. 
 
 "You're the same sort of responsibility," he asserted. 
 "I always feel that if I were the owner of the Venus of 
 Milo, though I could move her about all over the place 
 and set her up wherever I liked, I should be responsible 
 to her in some way. I should feel she was looking at me,
 
 ALAN 355 
 
 and if I put her in a wrong position I should feel ashamed 
 of myself and half afraid of the statue." 
 
 "Are you trying to prove you're mad?" Alan inquired. 
 
 *'Do be serious," Michael begged, "and tell me if you 
 think you understand what I mean. Alan, you used to 
 discuss everything with me when we were kids, why won't 
 you discuss yourself now?" 
 
 Alan looked up at the sky for a moment, blinking in 
 the sun, perhaps to hide the tremor of feeling that touched 
 for one instant the corners of his mouth. Then he said: 
 
 "Do you remember years ago, when we were at East- 
 bourne and you met Uncle Kenneth for the first time, 
 he told me at dinner not to be a showman? I've always 
 remembered that remark of his, and I think it applies to 
 oneself showing off oneself as much as to showing ofE other 
 people. I think that's why I'm different from you." 
 
 Michael glanced up at this. 
 
 "You can be damned rude when you like," he mur- 
 mured. 
 
 "Well, you asked me." 
 
 "So I'm a showman?" said Michael. 
 
 "Oh, for heaven's sake don't begin to worry over it. 
 It doesn't make any odds to me what you are. I don't 
 think it ever would," he added simply, and in this avowal 
 was all that Michael craved for. Under a sudden chill 
 presentiment that before long he would test this friend 
 of his to the last red throb of his proud heart, Michael 
 took comfort from this declaration and asked no more for 
 comprehension or sympathy. Those were shifting sands 
 of feeling compared with this rock-hewn permanence of 
 Alan. He remembered the stones upon the Berkshire 
 downs, the stolid unperceiving eternal stones. Comparable 
 to them alone stood Alan. 
 
 They had turned out of the gates of the school-ground 
 by now, and were strolling heedless of direction through
 
 356 : YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 the streets of West Kensington that to Michael seemed 
 all at once strangely alluring with their display of a sedate 
 and cosy life. He could not recall that he had ever before 
 been so sensitive to the atmosphere of sunlit security w^hich 
 was radiated by these windows with their visions of rosy 
 babies bobbing and laughing, of demure and saucy maids, 
 of polished bird-cages and pots of daffodils. The white 
 steps were in tune with the billowy clouds, and the scarlet 
 pillar-box at the corner had a friendly human smile. It 
 was a doll's-house world, whose dainty offer of intimate 
 citizenship refreshed Michael's imagination like a child's 
 picture-book. 
 
 He began to reflect that the opinions of Abercrombie 
 and his friends round the hot-water pipes were wrought 
 out in such surroundings as these, and he arrived gradually 
 at a sort of compassion for them, picturing the lives of 
 small effort that would inevitably be their portion. He 
 perceived that they would bear the burden of existence in 
 the future, struggling to preserve their gentility against the 
 envy of the class beneath them and the contempt of those 
 above. These gay little houses, half of whose charm lay in 
 their similarity, were as near as they would ever come to 
 any paradise of being. Michael had experienced many 
 spasms of love for his fellow-men, and now in one of these 
 outbursts he suddenly realized himself in sympathy with 
 mediocrity. 
 
 "Rather jolly round here," said Alan. "I suppose a 
 tremendous lot of chaps from the school live about here. 
 Funny thing, if you come to think of it. Practically every- 
 body at St. James' slides into a little house like this. A 
 few go into the Army ; a few go to the 'Varsity. But this 
 is really the School." 
 
 Alan indicated an empty perambulator standing outside 
 one of the houses. 'Tunny thing if the kid that's waiting
 
 ALAN 357 
 
 for should be Captain of the School in another eighteen 
 years. I wouldn't be surprised." 
 
 Alan had just expressed so much of what Michael him- 
 self was feeling that he felt entitled to put the direct ques- 
 tion which, a moment ago, he had felt shy of asking. 
 
 "Do you feel as if you belonged to all this?" 
 
 "No," said Alan very coolly. 
 
 "Nor do I," Michael echoed. 
 
 "And that's why it was rotten of you to give yourself 
 away to Abercrombie and the other chaps," Alan went on 
 severely. 
 
 "Yes, I think it was," Michael agreed. 
 
 Then they retraced their steps unconsciously, wandering 
 along silently in the sunlight toward the school. Michael 
 did not want to converse because he was too much elated 
 by this walk, and the satisfying way in which Alan had 
 lived up to his ideal of him. He began to weave a fine 
 romance of himself and Alan going through life together 
 in a lofty self-sufficiency from which they would condescend 
 to every aspect of humanity. He was not sure whether 
 Alan would condescend so far and so widely as himself, 
 and he was not sure whether he wanted him to, whether 
 it would not always be a relief to be aware of Alan as a 
 cold, supernal sanctuary from the vulgar struggles in which 
 he foresaw his own frequent immersion. Meanwhile he 
 must make it easy for Alan by apologizing to Abercrombie 
 and the rest for his ridiculous passion of yesterday. He 
 did not wish to imperil Alan's superb aloofness by involv- 
 ing him in the acrimonious and undignified defence of a 
 friend. There should be no more outbreaks. So much 
 Michael vowed to his loyalty. However, the apology must 
 be made quickly— if possible this afternoon before school, 
 and, as they entered the school-ground again, Michael 
 looked up at the clock and said:
 
 358 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 "Do you mind if I bunk on? I've something I must 
 do before the bell goes." 
 
 Alan shook his head. 
 
 To Abercrombie and the other immortals Michael came 
 up quickly and breathlessly. 
 
 ''I say, you chaps, I'm sorry I made such an ass of my- 
 self yesterday; I felt chippy over that friend of mine being 
 killed." 
 
 ''That's all right, old bangabout," said Abercrombie 
 cordially, and the chorus guffawed their forgiveness. They 
 did more. They called him "Bangs" thereafter, commem- 
 orating, as schoolboys use, with an affectionate nickname 
 their esteem. 
 
 The next day a letter came for Michael from Mrs. Ross, 
 and impressed with all the clarity of writing much of what 
 he had dimly reached out for in his friendship with Alan. 
 He first read the letter hurriedly on his way to school in 
 the morning; but he read it a second and third time along 
 those serene and intimate streets where he and Alan had 
 walked the day before. 
 
 Cobble Place^ 
 March, 1900. 
 My dearest Michael: 
 
 You and Alan are the only people to whom I can bear 
 to write to-day. I am grieving most for my young son, 
 because he will have to grow up without his father's splen- 
 did example always before him. I won't write of my own 
 sorrow. I could not. 
 
 My husband, as you know, was very devoted to you and 
 Alan, and he had been quite worried (and so had I) that 
 you and he seemed to have grown away from one another. 
 It was a moment of true delight to him, when he read a 
 long letter from dear old Alan describing his gladness at 
 playing football again with you. Alan expresses himself 
 much less eloquently than you do, but he is as deeply fond 
 of you as I know you are of him. His letters are full of 
 you and your cleverness and popularity; and I pray that
 
 ALAN 359 
 
 all your lives you will pull together for the good. Kenneth 
 used always to admire you both so much for your ability 
 to "cope with a situation." He was shot, as you know, 
 leading his men (who adored him) into action. Ah, how 
 I wish he could lead his own little son into action. You 
 and Alan will have that responsibility now. 
 
 It is sweet of you to thank me for being so "stunning" 
 to you. It wasn't very difficult. But you know how high 
 my hopes have always been and always will be for you, and 
 I know that you will never disappoint me. There may 
 come times which, with your restless, sensitive temperament, 
 you will find very hard to bear. Always remember that 
 you have a friend in me. I have suffered very much, and 
 suffering makes the heart yearn to comfort others. Be very 
 chivalrous always, and remember that of all your ideals 
 your mother should be the highest. I hope that you'll be 
 able to come and stay with us soon after Easter. God 
 bless you, dear boy, and thank you very much for your 
 expression of the sorrow I know you share with me. 
 
 Your loving 
 
 Maud Ross. 
 
 I wonder if you remember how you used to love Don 
 Quixote as a child. Will you always be a Don Quixote, 
 however much people may laugh? It really means just 
 being a gentleman.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 SENTIMENT 
 
 BACK once more upon his pedestal in the frieze, 
 Michael devoted himself to enjoying, while still 
 they were important to his life, the conversation 
 and opinions of the immortals. He gave up worrying 
 about the war and yielded himself entirely either to the 
 blandishments of his seniority in the school or of dreams 
 about himself dt Oxford, now within sight of attainment. 
 Four more terms of school would set him free, and he had 
 ambitions to get into the Fifteen in his last year. He 
 would then be able to look back with satisfaction to the 
 accomplishment of something. He actually threw himself 
 into the rowdiest vanguard of Mafeking's celebrators, and 
 accepted the occasion as an excuse to make a noise without 
 being compelled to make the noise alone. These Baccha- 
 nalia of patriotism were very amusing, and perhaps it was a 
 good thing for the populace to be merry; moreover, since 
 he now had Alan to idealize, he could aiford to let his high 
 thoughts of England's duty and England's honor become a 
 little less stringent. 
 
 He spent much time with Alan in discussing Oxford and 
 in building up a most elaborate and logical scheme of their 
 life at the University. He w^as anxious that Alan should 
 leave the classical Lower Sixth, into which he had climbed 
 somewhat hardly, and come to join him in the leisure of 
 the History Sixth. He spoke of Strang whose captaincy 
 
 360
 
 SENTIMENT 361 
 
 of cricket shed such luster on the form, of Terry whose 
 captaincy of football next year would shed an equal luster. 
 But Alan, having found the journey to the Lower Sixth 
 so arduous, was disinclined to be cheated of the intellectual 
 eminence of the Upper Sixth which had been his Valhalla 
 so long. 
 
 Michael and Alan had been looking forward to a visit 
 to Cobble Place during the Easter holidays; but Mrs. 
 Fane was much upset by the idea of being left alone, and 
 Michael had to decline the invitation, which was a great 
 disappointment. In the end he and his mother went to 
 Bournemouth, staying rather grandly at one of the large 
 hotels, and Michael w^as able to look up some old friends, 
 including Father Moneypenny, of St. Bartholomew's; Mrs. 
 Rewins, their landlady of three years back, and Mr. Prout. 
 
 The passion-flower at Esdraelon had grown considerably, 
 but that was the only thing which showed any signs of 
 expansion, unless Mr. Prout's engagement to be married 
 could be accepted as evidence of expansion. Michael 
 thought it had a contrary effect, and whether from that 
 cause or from his own increased age he found poor Prout 
 sadly dull. It was depressing to hear that unpleasantness 
 was expected at the Easter vestry that year; Michael could 
 not recall any year in which that had not been the case. 
 It was depressing to learn that the People's Churchwarden 
 was still opposed to the Assumption. It was most depress- 
 ing of all to be informed that Prout saw no prospect of 
 being married for at least five years. Michael, having 
 failed with Prout, tried to recapture the emotion of his 
 first religious experience at St. Bartholomew's. But the 
 church, which had once seemed so inspiring, now struck 
 him as dingily and poorly designed, without any of the 
 mystery that once had made it beautiful. He wondered if 
 everything that formerly had appealed to his imagination 
 were going to turn out dross, and he made an .expedition 
 24
 
 362 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 to Chrfstchurch Priory to test this idea. Here he was re- 
 lieved to find himself able to recapture the perfect thrill 
 of his first visit, and he spent a rich day w^andering between 
 the gray church and the watery meadows nearby, about 
 whose plashy levels the green rushes were springing up in 
 the fleecy April weather. 
 
 Michael concluded that all impermanent emotions of 
 beauty proved that it was merely the emotion which had 
 created an illusion of beauty, and he was glad to have 
 discovered for himself a touchstone for aesthetic judgments 
 in the future. He would have liked to see Alan in the 
 cloistral glooms of the Priory, and thought how he would 
 have enhanced with his own eternity of classic shape the 
 knights and ladies praying there. Michael sympathized 
 with the trousered boy whom Flaxman, contrary to every 
 canon, might almost be said to have perpetrated. He felt 
 slightly muddled between classic and romantic art, and 
 could not make up his mind whether Flaxman's attempt 
 or the mediaeval sculptor's achievement were worthier of 
 admiration. He tried to apply his own test, and came to 
 the conclusion that Flaxman was really all wrong. He 
 decided that he only liked the trousered boy because the 
 figure gave him sentimental pleasure, and he was sure that 
 true classical art was not sentimental. Finally he got him- 
 self in a complete muddle, sitting among these hollow chan- 
 tries and pondering art's evaluations; so he left the Priory 
 behind him and went dreamily through the water-meadows 
 under the spell of a simple beauty that needed no analysis. 
 Oxford would be like this, he thought; a place of bells 
 and singing streams and towers against the horizon. 
 
 He waited by a stile watching the sky, of which sunset 
 had made a tranced archipelago set in a tideless sea. The 
 purple islands stood out more and more distinct against the 
 sheeted gold that lapped their indentations; then in a few 
 moments the gold went out to primrose, the purple isles
 
 SENTIMENT 363 
 
 were gray as mice, and by an imperceptible breath of time 
 became merged in a luminous green that held the young 
 moon led downward through the west by one great sul- 
 phur star. 
 
 This speculation of the sky made Michael late for dinner, 
 and gave his mother an opportunity to complain of his 
 daylong desertion of her. 
 
 "I rather wish we hadn't come to Bournemouth," said 
 Michael. "I think it's a bad place for us to choose to 
 come together. I remember last time we stayed here you 
 were always criticizing me." 
 
 **I suppose Bournemouth must have a bad eflEect on you, 
 dearest boy," said Mrs. Fane in her most gentle, most 
 discouraging voice. 
 
 Michael laughed a little bitterly. 
 
 "You're wonderful at always being able to put me in 
 the wrong," he said. 
 
 "You're sometimes not very polite, are you, nowadays? 
 But I daresay you'll grow out of this curious manner you've 
 lately adopted toward me." 
 
 "Was I rude?" asked Michael, quickly penitent. 
 "I think you were rather rude, dear," said Mrs. Fane. 
 "Of course, I don't want you never to have an opinion of 
 your own, and I quite realize that school has a disastrous 
 effect on manners, but you didn't apologize very gracefully 
 for being late for dinner, did you, dear?" 
 
 "I'm sorry. I won't ever be again," said Michael shortly. 
 Mrs. Fane sighed, and the meal progressed in silence. 
 Michael, however, could never bear to sulk, and he braced 
 himself to be pleasant. 
 
 "You ought to come over to Christchurch, mother. 
 Shall we drive over one day?" 
 
 "Well, I'm not very fond of looking at churches," said 
 Mrs. Fane. "But if you want to go, let us. I always like 
 you to do everything you want."
 
 364 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 Michael sighed at the ingenuity of his mother's method, 
 and changed the subject to their fellow-guests. 
 
 "That's rather a pretty girl, don't you think?" 
 
 "Where, dear?" asked Mrs. Fane, putting up her 
 lorgnette and staring hard at the wife of a clergyman 
 sitting across the room from their table. 
 
 "No, no, mother," said Michael, beaming with pleasure 
 at the delightful vagueness of his mother which only dis- 
 tressed him when it shrouded his own sensations. "The 
 next table — the girl in pink." 
 
 "Yes, decidedly," said Mrs. Fane. "But dreadfully 
 common. 1 can't think why those sort of people come to 
 nice hotels. I suppose they read about them in railway 
 guides." 
 
 "I don't think she's very common," said Michael. 
 
 "Well, dear, you're not quite at the best age for judging, 
 are you?" 
 
 "Hang it, mother, I'm seventeen." 
 
 "It's terrible to think of," said Mrs. Fane. "And only 
 such a little while ago you were the dearest baby boy. 
 Then Stella must be sixteen," she went on. "I think it's 
 time she came back from the Continent." 
 
 "What about her first concert?" 
 
 "Oh, I must think a lot before I settle when that is to 
 be." 
 
 "But Stella is counting on it being very soon." 
 
 "Dear children, you're both rather impetuous," said Mrs. 
 Fane, deprecating with the softness of her implied rebuke 
 the quality, and in Michael at any rate for the moment 
 quenching all ardor. 
 
 "I wonder if it's wise to let a girl be a professional 
 musician," she continued. "Dear me, children are a great 
 responsibility, especially when one is alone." 
 
 Here was an opportunity for Michael to revive the 
 subject of his father, but he had now lost the cruel frank-
 
 SENTIMENT 365 
 
 ness of childhood and shrank from the directness of the 
 personal encounter such a topic would involve. He was 
 seized with one of his fits of shy sensitiveness, and he be- 
 came suddenly so deeply embarrassed that he could scarcely 
 even bring himself to address his mother as "you." He 
 felt that he must go away by himself until he had shaken 
 off this uncomfortable sensation. He actually felt a kind 
 of immodesty in saying "you" to his mother, as if in saying 
 so much he was trespassing on the forbidden confines of 
 her individuality. It would not endure for more than an 
 hour or more, this fear of approach, this hyperesthesia of 
 contact and communication. Yet not for anything could 
 he kiss her good night and, mumbling a few bearish ex- 
 cuses, he vanished as soon as dinner was over, vowing that 
 he would cure himself of this mood by walking through 
 the pine trees and blowy darkness of the cliflfs. 
 
 As he passed through the hotel lounge, he saw the good- 
 looking girl, whom his mother had stigmatized as common, 
 waiting there wrapped up in a feathery cloak. He decided 
 that he would sit down and observe her until the sister 
 came down. He wished he knew this girl, since it would 
 be pleasant after dinner to stroll out either upon the pier 
 or to listen to the music in the Winter Garden in such 
 attractive company. Michael fancied that the girl, as she 
 walked slowly up and down the lounge, w^as conscious of 
 his glances, and he felt an adventurous excitement at his 
 heart. It would be a daring and delightful novelty to 
 speak to her. Then the sister came down, and the two 
 girls went out through the swinging doors of the hotel, 
 leaving Michael depressed and lonely. Was it a trick of 
 the lamplight, or did he really perceive her head turn out- 
 side to regard him for a moment? 
 
 During his walk along the clifiFs Michael played with 
 this idea. By the time he went to bed his mind was full 
 of this girl, and it was certainly thrilling to come down to
 
 266 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 breakfast next morning and see what blouse she was wear- 
 ing. Mrs. Fane always had breakfast in her room, so 
 Michael was free to watch this new interest over the 
 cricket matches in The Sportsman. He grew almost jealous 
 of the plates and forks and cups which existed so intimately 
 upon her table, and he derived a sentimental pleasure from 
 the thought that nothing was more likely than that to- 
 morrow there would be an exchange of cups between his 
 table and hers. He conceived the idea of chipping a piece 
 out of his own cup and watching every morning on which 
 table it would be laid, until it reached hero 
 
 At lunch Michael, as nonchalantly as he could speak, 
 asked his mother whether she did not think the pretty girl 
 dressed rather well. 
 
 "Very provincial," Mrs. Fane judged. 
 
 "But prettily, I think," persisted Michael. "And she 
 wears a different dress every day." 
 
 "Do you want to know her?" asked Mrs. Fane. 
 
 "Oh, mother, of course not," said Michael, blushing 
 hotly. 
 
 "I daresay they're very pleasant people," Mrs. Fane re- 
 marked. "I'll speak to them after lunch, and tell them how 
 anxious you are to make their acquaintance." 
 
 "I say, mother," Michael protested. "Oh, no, don't, 
 mother. I really don't want to know them." 
 
 Mrs. Fane smiled at him, and told him not to be a fool- 
 ish boy. After lunch, in her own gracious and distinguished 
 manner, which Michael always admired, Mrs. Fane spoke 
 to the two sisters and presently beckoned to Michael, who 
 crossed the room feeling rather as if he were going in to 
 bat first for his side. 
 
 "I don't think I know your name," said Mrs. Fane to 
 the elder sister. 
 
 "McDonnell — Norah McDonnell, and this is my sister 
 Kathleen."
 
 SENTIMENT 367 
 
 "Scotch?" asked Mrs. Fane vaguely and pleasantly. 
 
 "No, Irish," contradicted the younger sister. "At least 
 by extraction. McDonnell is an Irish name. But we live 
 in Burton-on-Trent. Father and mother are coming down 
 later on." 
 
 She spoke with the jerky speech of the Midlands, and 
 Michael rather wished she did not come from Burton-on- 
 Trent, not on his own account, but because his mother 
 would be able to point out to him how right she had been 
 about their provincialism. 
 
 "Are you going anywhere this evening?" Michael man- 
 aged to ask at last. 
 
 "I suppose we shall go on the pier. We usually go on 
 the pier. Eh, but it's rather dull in Bournemouth. I like 
 Llandudno better. Llandudno's fine," said the elder Miss 
 McDonnell with fervor. 
 
 Mrs. Fane came to the rescue of an awkward conversa- 
 tion by asking the Misses McDonnell if they would take 
 pity on her son and invite him to accompany them. And 
 so it was arranged. 
 
 "Happy, Michael?" asked his mother when the ladies, 
 with many smiles, had withdrawn to their rooms. 
 
 "Yes. I'm all right," said Michael. "Only I rather wish 
 you hadn't asked them so obviously. It made me feel 
 rather a fool." 
 
 "Dearest boy, they were delighted at the idea of your 
 company. They seem quite nice people, too. Only, as I 
 said, very provincial. Older, too, than I thought at first." 
 
 Michael asked how old his mother thought they were, 
 and she supposed them to be about twenty-seven and thirty. 
 Michael was inclined to protest against this high estimate, 
 but, since he had spoken to the Misses McDonnell, he felt 
 that after all his mother might be right. 
 
 In the evening his new friends came down to dinner 
 much enwrapped in feathers, and Michael thought that
 
 368 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 Kathleen looked very beautiful in the crimson lamplight 
 of the dinner table. 
 
 "How smart you are, Michael, to-night!" said Mrs. 
 Fane. 
 
 **Oh, well, I thought as I'd got my dinner jacket down 
 here I might as well put it on. I say, mother, I think I'll 
 get a tail-coat. Couldn't I have one made here?" 
 
 "Isn't that collar rather tight?" asked Mrs. Fane 
 anxiously. "And it seems dreadfully tall." 
 
 "I like tall collars with evening dress," said Michael 
 severely. 
 
 "You know best, dear, but you look perfectly miserable." 
 
 "It's only because my chin is a bit sore after shaving." 
 
 "Do you have to shave often?" inquired Mrs. Fane, 
 tenderly horrified. 
 
 "Rather often," said Michael. "About once a week 
 now." 
 
 "She has pretty hands, your lady love," said Mrs. Fane, 
 suddenly looking across to the McDonnells' table. 
 
 "I say, mother, for goodness' sake mind. She'll hear 
 you," whispered Michael. 
 
 "Oh, Michael dear, don't be so foolishly self-conscious." 
 
 After dinner Michael retired to his room, and came down 
 again smoking a cigarette. 
 
 Mrs. Fane made a little moue of surprise. 
 
 "I say, mother, don't keep on calling attention to every- 
 thing I do. You know I've smoked for ages." 
 
 "Yes, but not so very publicly, dear boy." 
 
 "Well, you don't mind, do you? I must begin some 
 time," said Michael. 
 
 "Michael, don't be cross with me. You're so deliciously 
 amusing, and so much too nice for those absurd women," 
 Mrs. Fane laughed. 
 
 Just then the Misses McDonnell appeared on the stair-
 
 SENTIMENT 369 
 
 case, and Michael frowned at his mother not to say any 
 more about them. 
 
 It was a fairly successful evening. The elder Miss 
 McDonnell bored Michael rather with a long account of 
 why her father had left Ireland, and what a blow it had 
 been to him to open a large hotel in Burton-on-Trent. He 
 was also somewhat fatigued by the catalog of Mr. 
 McDonnell's virtues, of his wit and courage and good 
 looks and shrewdness. 
 
 ''He has a really old-fashioned sense of humor," said 
 Miss McDonnell. "But then, of course, he's Irish. He's 
 accounted quite the cleverest man in Burton, but then, 
 being Irish, that's not to be wondered at." 
 
 Michael wished she would not say "wondered" as if it 
 were "wandered," and indeed he was beginning to think 
 that Miss McDonnell was a great trial, when he suddenly 
 discovered that by letting his arm hang very loosely from 
 his shoulder it was possible without the slightest hint of 
 i'ntention occasionally to touch Kathleen's hand as they 
 walked along. The careful calculation that this proceeding 
 demanded occupied his mind so fully that he was able to 
 give mechanical assents to Miss McDonnell's praise of her 
 father, and apparently at the same time impress her with 
 his own intelligence. 
 
 As the evening progressed Michael slightly increased the 
 number of times he tapped Kathleen's hand with his, and 
 after about an hour's promenade of the pier he was doing 
 a steady three taps a minute. He now began to speculate 
 whether Kathleen was aware of these taps, and, from time 
 to time, he would glance round at her over his shoulder,, 
 hopeful of catching her eyes. 
 
 "Are you admiring my sister's brooch?" asked Miss 
 McDonnell. "Eh, I think it's grand. Don't you?" 
 
 Kathleen giggled lightly at this, and asked her sister 
 how she could, and then Michael, with a boldness that on
 
 370 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 reflection made him catch his breath at the imagination of 
 it, said that while he was admiring Miss Kathleen's brooch 
 he was admiring her eyes still more. 
 
 "Oh, Mr. Fane. How can you!" exclaimed Kathleen. 
 
 "Well, he's got good taste, I'm sure," said Miss McDon- 
 nell. "But, there, after all, what can you expect from an 
 Irish girl? All Irish girls have fine eyes." 
 
 When Michael went to bed he felt that on the whole 
 he had acquitted himself that first evening with consider- 
 able success, and as he fell asleep he dreamed triumphantly 
 of a daring to-morrow. 
 
 It was an April day, whose deeps of azure sky made the 
 diverse foliage of spring burn in one ardent green. Such a 
 day spread out before his windows set Michael on fire for 
 its commemoration, and he made up his mind to propose a 
 long bicycling expedition to the two Misses McDonnell. 
 He wished that it were not necessary to invite the elder 
 sister, but not even this April morning could embolden 
 him so far as to ask Kathleen alone. Mrs. Fane smilingly 
 approved of his proposal, but suggested that on such a 
 warm day it w^ould be wiser not to start until after lunch. 
 So it was arranged, and Michael thoroughly enjoyed the 
 consciousness of escorting these girls out of Bournemouth 
 on their trim bicycles. Indeed, he enjoyed his position so 
 much that he continually looked in the shop windows, as 
 they rode past, to observe the effect, and was so much 
 charmed by the result that he crossed in front of Miss 
 McDonnell and upset her and her bicycle in the middle 
 of the town. 
 
 "Eh, that's a nuisance," said Miss McDonnell, surveying 
 bent handlebars and inner tire swelling like a toy balloon 
 along the rim. "That was quite a mishap," she added, 
 shaking the dust from her skirt. 
 
 Michael was in despair over his clumsiness, especially
 
 SENTIMENT 371 
 
 when Miss Kathleen McDonnell remarked that there went 
 the ride she'd been looking forward to all day. 
 
 "Well, you two go on and I'll walk back," Miss 
 McDonnell offered. 
 
 "Oh, but I can easily hire another machine," said 
 Michael. 
 
 "No. I'll go back. I've grazed my knee a bit badly." 
 
 Michael was so much perturbed to hear this that without 
 thinking he anxiously asked to be allowed to look, and 
 wished that the drain by which he was standing would 
 swallow him up when he realized by Kathleen's giggling 
 what he had said. 
 
 "It's all right," said Miss McDonnell kindly. "There's 
 no need to worry. I hope you'll have a pleasant ride." 
 
 "I say, it's really awfully ripping of you to be so jolly 
 good-tempered about it," Michael exclaimed. "Are you 
 sure I can't do anything?" 
 
 "No, you can just put my bicycle in the shop along 
 there, and I'll take the tram back. Mind and enjoy your- 
 selves, and don't be late." 
 
 The equable Miss McDonnell then left her sister and 
 Michael to their own devices. 
 
 They rode along in alert silence until they left Brank- 
 some behind them and came into hedgerows, where an 
 insect earned Michael's cordial gratitude by invading his 
 eye. He jumped off his bicycle immediately and called for 
 Kathleen's aid, and as he stood in the quiet lane, with the 
 girl's face close to his and her hand brushing his cheeks, 
 Michael felt himself to be indeed a favorite of fortune. 
 
 "There it is, Mr. Fane," said Miss Kathleen McDonnell. 
 And, though he tried to be sceptical for a while of the 
 insect's discovery, he was bound to admit the evidence of 
 the handkerchief. 
 
 "Thanks awfully," said Michael. "And, I say, I wish
 
 372 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 you wouldn't call me Mr. Fane. You know my Christian 
 name." 
 
 "Oh, but I'd feel shy to call you Michael," said Miss 
 McDonnell. 
 
 "Not if I called you Kathleen," Michael suggested, and 
 felt inclined to shake his own hand in congratulation of 
 his own magnificent daring. 
 
 "Well, I must say one thing. You don't waste much 
 time. I think you're a bit of a flirt, you know," said Kath- 
 leen. 
 
 "A flirt," Michael echoed. "Oh, I say, do you really 
 think so?" 
 
 "I'm afraid I do," murmured Kathleen. "Shall we go 
 on again?" 
 
 They rode along in renewed silence for several miles, 
 and then they suddenly came upon Poole Harbor lying 
 below them, washed in the tremulous golden airs of the 
 afternoon. 
 
 "I say, how ripping!" cried Michael, leaping from his 
 machine and flinging it away from him against a bank of 
 vivid grass. "We must sit down here for a bit." 
 
 "It is pretty," said Kathleen. "It's almost like a pic- 
 ture." 
 
 "I'm glad you're fond of beautiful things," said Michael 
 earnestly. 
 
 "Well, one can't help it, can one?" sighed Kathleen. 
 
 "Some people can," said Michael darkly. "There's 
 rather a good place to sit over there," he added, pointing 
 to a broken gate that marked the entrance to an oak wood, 
 and he faintly touched the sleeve of Kathleen's blouse to 
 guide her toward the chosen spot. 
 
 Then they sat leaning against the gate, she idly plucking 
 sun-faded primroses, he brooding upon the nearness of her 
 hand. In such universal placidity it could not be wrong 
 to hold that hand wasting itself amid small energies.
 
 SENTIMENT 373 
 
 Without looking into her eyes, without turning his gaze 
 from the great tranquil water before him, Michael took 
 her hand in his so lightly that save for the pulsing of his 
 heart he scarcely knew he held it. So he sat breathless, 
 enduring pins and needles, tolerating the uncertain pil- 
 grimage of ants rather than move an inch and break the 
 yielding spell which made her his. 
 
 "Are you holding my hand?" she asked, after they had 
 sat a long while pensively. 
 
 "I suppose I am," said Michael. Then he turned and, 
 with full-blooded cheeks and swimming eyes, met un- 
 abashed Kathleen's demure and faintly mocking glance. 
 
 "Do you think you ought to?" she inquired. 
 
 "I haven't thought anything about that," said Michael. 
 "I simply thought I wanted to." 
 
 "You're rather old for your age," she went on, with an 
 inflection of teasing surprise in her soft voice. "How old 
 are you?" 
 
 "Seventeen," said Michael simply. 
 
 "Goodness!" cried Kathleen, withdrawing her hand 
 suddenly. "And I wonder how old you think I am?" 
 
 "I suppose you're about twenty-five." 
 
 Kathleen got up and said in a brisk voice that destroyed 
 all Michael's bravery, "Come, let's be getting back. Norah 
 will be thinking I'm lost." 
 
 Just when they were nearing the outskirts of Branksome, 
 Kathleen dismounted suddenly and said: 
 
 "I suppose you'll be surprised when I tell you I'm en- 
 gaged to be married?" 
 
 "Are you?" faltered Michael; and the road swam be- 
 fore him. 
 
 "At least I'm only engaged secretly, because my fiance 
 is poor. He's coming down soon. I'd like you to meet 
 him."
 
 374 YOUTH^S ENCOUNTER 
 
 "I should like to meet him very much," said Michael 
 politely. 
 
 "You won't tell anybody what I've told you?" 
 
 ''Good lord, no. Perhaps I might be of some use," said 
 Michael. **You know, in arranging meetings." 
 
 "Eh, you're a nice boy," exclaimed Kathleen suddenly. 
 
 And Michael was not perfectly sure whether he thought 
 himself a hero or a martyr. 
 
 Mrs. Fane was very much diverted by Michael's account 
 of Miss McDonnell's accident, and teased him gaily about 
 Kathleen. Michael would assume an expression of mystery, 
 as if indeed he had been entrusted with the dark secrets 
 of a young woman's mind; but the more mysterious he 
 looked the more his mother laughed. In his own heart 
 he cultivated assiduously his devotion, and regretted most 
 poignantly that each new blouse and each chosen evening 
 dress was not for him. He used to watch Kathleen at 
 dinner, and depress himself with the imagination of her 
 spirit roaming out over the broad Midlands to meet her 
 lover. He never made the effort to conjure up the lover, 
 but preferred to picture him and Kathleen gathering 
 like vague shapes upon the immeasurable territories of 
 the soul. 
 
 Then one morning Kathleen took him aside after break- 
 fast to question his steadfastness. 
 
 "Were you in earnest about what you said?'* she asked. 
 
 "Of course I was," Michael affirmed. 
 
 "He's come down. He's staying in rooms. Why don't 
 you ask me to go out for a bicycle ride?" 
 
 "Well, will you?" Michael dutifully invited. 
 
 "I'm so excited," said Kathleen, fluttering off to tell 
 her sister of this engagement to go riding with Michael. 
 
 In about half an hour they stood outside the small red 
 brick house which cabined the bold spirit of Michael's 
 depressed fancies.
 
 SENTIMENT 375 
 
 "You'll come in and say 'how do you do'?" suggested 
 Kathleen. 
 
 "I suppose I'd better," Michael agreed. 
 
 They entered together the little efflorescent parlor of 
 the house. 
 
 ''This is my fiance — Mr. Walter Trimble," Kathleen 
 proudly announced. 
 
 "Pleased to meet you," said Mr. Trimble. "Kath tells 
 me you're on to do us a good turn." 
 
 Michael looked at Mr. Trimble, resolutely anxious to 
 find in him the creator of Kathleen's noble destiny. He 
 saw a thick-set young man in a splendidly fitting, but ill- 
 cut blue serge suit; he saw a dark mustache of silky lux- 
 uriance growing amid regular features; in fact, he saw 
 someone that might have stepped from one of the grandiose 
 frames of that efflorescent little room. But he was Kath- 
 leen's choice, and Michael refused to let himself feel at all 
 disappointed. 
 
 "I think it's bad luck not to be able to marry, if one 
 wants to," said Michael deeply. 
 
 "You're right," Mr. Trimble agreed. "That's why I 
 want Kath here to marry me first and tell her dad after- 
 wards." 
 
 "I only wish I dared," sighed Kathleen. "Well, if 
 we're going to have our walk we'd better be getting along. 
 Will I meet you by the side gate into the Winter Garden 
 at a quarter to one?" 
 
 "Right-o," said Michael. 
 
 "I wonder if you'd lend Mr. Trimble your bicycle?" 
 
 "Of course," said Michael. 
 
 "Because we could get out of the town a bit," sug- 
 gested Kathleen. "And that's always pleasanter." 
 
 Michael spent a dull morning in wandering about 
 Bournemouth, while Kathleen and her Trimble probably 
 rode along the same road he and she had gone a few days
 
 376 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 back. He tried to console himself with thoughts of self- 
 sacrifice, and he took a morbid delight in the imagination 
 of the pleasure he had made possible for others. But un- 
 deniably his own morning was dreary, and not even could 
 Swinburne's canorous Triumph of Time do much more 
 than echo somewhat sadly through the resonant emptiness 
 of his self-constructed prison, whose windows opened on to 
 a sentimental if circumscribed view of unattainable sweet- 
 ness. 
 
 Michael sat on a bench in a sophisticated pine grove and, 
 having lighted a cigarette, put out the match with his 
 sighing exhalation of "O love, my love, and no love for 
 me." It was wonderful to Michael how perfectly Swin- 
 burne expressed his despair. "O love, my love, had you 
 loved but me." And why had she not loved him? Why 
 did she prefer Trimble? Did Trimble ever read Swin- 
 burne? Could Trimble sit like this smoking calmly a 
 cigarette and breathing out deathless lines of love's despair? 
 Michael began to feel a little sorry for Kathleen, almost 
 as sorry for her as he felt for himself. Soon the Easter 
 holidays would be over, and he would go back to school. 
 He began to wonder whether he would wear the marks of 
 suffering on his countenance, and whether his friends would 
 eye him curiously, asking themselves in whispers what man 
 this was that came among them with so sad and noble an 
 expression of resignation. As Michael thought of Trimble 
 and Kathleen meeting in Burton-on-Trent and daily grow- 
 ing nearer to each other in love, he became certain that his 
 grief would indeed be manifest. He pictured himself sit- 
 ting in the sunlit serene class-room of the History Sixth, a 
 listless figure of despair, an object of wondering, whisper- 
 ing compassion. And so his life would lose itself in a 
 monotone of discontent. Gray distances of time presented 
 themselves to him with a terrible menace of loneliness; the 
 future was worse than ever, a barren waste whose horizon
 
 SENTIMENT 377 
 
 would never darken to the silhouette of Kathleen coming 
 toward him with open arms. Never would he hold her 
 hand again; never would he touch those lips at all; never 
 would he even know what dresses she wore in summer. 
 "O love, my love, and no love for me." 
 
 When Michael met Kathleen by the side gate of the 
 Winter Gardens, and received his bicycle back from Trim- 
 ble, he suddenly wondered whether Kathleen had told her 
 betrothed that another had held her hand. Michael rather 
 hoped she had, and that the news of it had made Trimble 
 jealous. Trimble, however, seemed particularly pleased 
 with himself, and invited Michael to spend the afternoon 
 with him, which Michael promised to do, if his mother did 
 not want his com.pany. 
 
 ''Well, did you have a decent morning?" Michael in- 
 quired of Kathleen, as together they rode toward their 
 hotel. 
 
 "Oh, we had a grand time; we sat down where you and 
 me sat the other day." 
 
 Michael nearly mounted the pavement at this news, and 
 looked very gloomy. 
 
 "What's the matter?" Kathleen pursued. "You're not 
 put out, are you?" 
 
 "Oh, no, not at all," said Michael sardonically. "All 
 the same, I think you might have turned off and gone an- 
 other road. I sat and thought of you all the morning. 
 But I don't mind really," he added, remembering that at 
 any rate for Kathleen he must remain that chivalrous and 
 selfless being which had been created by the loan of a 
 bicycle. "I'm glad you enjoyed yourself. I always want 
 you to be happy. All my life I shall want that." 
 
 Michael was surprised to find how much more eloquent 
 
 he was in the throes of disappointment than he had ever 
 
 been through the prompting of passion. He wished that 
 
 the hotel were not already in sight, for he felt that he 
 
 25
 
 378 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 could easily say much more about his renunciation, and 
 indeed he made up his mind to do so at the first oppor- 
 tunity. In the afternoon he told his mother he was going 
 to pay a visit to Father Moneypenny. He did not tell her 
 about Trimble, because he feared her teasing; although 
 he tried to deceive himself that the lie was due to his 
 loyalty to Kathleen. 
 
 ''What shall we do?" asked Trimble. "Shall we toddle 
 round to the Shades and have a drink?" 
 
 "Just as you like," Michael said. 
 
 "Well, I'm on for a drink. It's easier to talk down at 
 the Shades than in here." 
 
 Michael wondered why, but he accepted a cigar, and 
 with Trimble sought the speech-compelling Shades. 
 
 "It's like this," Trimble began, when they were seated 
 on the worn leather of the corner lounge. "I took a fancy 
 to you right off. Eh, I'm from the North, and I may be a 
 bit blunt, but by gum I liked you, and that's how it is. 
 Yes. I'm going to talk to you the same as I might to my 
 own brother, only I haven't got one." 
 
 Michael looked a little apprehensive of the sack of con- 
 fidences that would presently be emptied over his head, and, 
 seeking perhaps to turn Trimble from his intention, asked 
 him to guess his age. 
 
 "Well, I suppose you're anything from twenty-two to 
 twenty-three." 
 
 Michael choked over his lemon-and-dash before he an- 
 nounced grimly that he was seventeen. 
 
 "Get out," said Trimble sceptically. "You're more than 
 that. Seventeen? Eh, I wouldn't have thought it. Never 
 mind, I said I was going to tell you. And by gum I will, 
 if you say next you haven't been weaned." 
 
 Michael resented the freedom of this expression and 
 knitted his eyebrows in momentary distaste. 
 
 "It's like this," Mr. Trimble began again, "I made up
 
 SENTIMENT 379 
 
 my mind to-day that Kath's the lass for me. Now am I 
 right? That's what I want to ask you. Am I right?" 
 
 "I suppose if you're in love with her and she's in love 
 with you, yes," said Michael. 
 
 "Well, she is. Now you wouldn't think she was passion- 
 ate, would you? You'd say she was a bit of ice, wouldn't 
 you? Well, by gum I tell you, lad, she's a furnace. 
 Would you believe that?" Mr. Trimble leaned back tri- 
 umphantly. 
 
 Michael did not know what comment to make on this 
 information, and took another sip of his lemon-and-dash. 
 
 "Well, now what I say is — and I'm not a chap who's 
 flung round a great deal with the girls — what I say is," 
 Trimble went on, banging the marble table before him, 
 "it's not fair on a lass to play around like this, and so I've 
 made up my mind to marry her. Am I right? By gum, 
 lad, I know I'm right." 
 
 "I think you are," said Michael solemnly. "And I think 
 you're awfully lucky." 
 
 "Lucky?" echoed Trimble. "I'm lucky enough, if it 
 wasn't for her domned old father. The lass is fine, but 
 him — well, if I was to tell you what he is, you'd say I was 
 using language. So it's like this. I want Kath to marry 
 me down here. I'll get the license. I've saved up a hun- 
 dred pounds. I'm earning two hundred a year now. Am 
 I right?" 
 
 "Perfectly right," said Michael earnestly, who, now that 
 Trimble was showing himself to possess real fervor of soul, 
 was ready to support him, even at the cost of his own 
 suffering. He envied Trimble his freedom from the tram- 
 mels of education, which for such a long while would pre- 
 vent himself from taking such a step as marriage by license. 
 Indeed, Michael scarcely thought he ever would take such 
 a step now, since it was unlikely that anyone with Kath- 
 leen's attraction would lure him on to such a deed.
 
 38o YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 Trimble's determination certainly went a long way to 
 excuse the failings of his outer person in Michael's eyes, 
 and, indeed, as he pledged him a stirrup-cup of lemon-and- 
 dash, Trimble and Young Lochinvar were not seriously 
 distinct in Michael's imaginative anticipation of the exploit. 
 
 So all day and every day for ten days Michael presum- 
 ably spent his time with Kathleen, notwithstanding Mrs. 
 Fane's tenderly malicious teasing, notwithstanding the elder 
 Miss McDonnell's growing chill, and notwithstanding sev- 
 eral very pointed questions from the interfering old spin- 
 sters and knitters in the sun of the hotel gardens. That 
 actually he spent his time alone in w^atching slow-handed 
 clocks creep on toward a quarter-to-one or a quarter-to-five 
 or a quarter-to-seven, filled Michael daily more full with 
 the spiritual rewards of his sacrifice. He had never known 
 before the luxury of grief, and he had no idea w^hat a 
 variety of becoming attitudes could be wrought of sadness, 
 and not merely attitudes, but veritable dramas. One of 
 the most heroically poignant of these was founded on the 
 moment when Kathleen should ask him to be godfather to 
 her first-born. "No, no," Michael would exclaim. "Don't 
 ask me to do that. I have suffered enough." And Kath- 
 leen would remorsefully and silently steal from the dusky 
 room a-flicker w^ith sad firelight, leaving Michael a prey 
 to his own noble thoughts. There was another drama 
 scarcely less moving, in which the first-born died, and 
 IMichael, on hearing the news, took the night express to 
 Burton in order to speak words of hope above the little 
 duplicate of Trimble now forever still in his cradle. Some- 
 times in the more expansive moments of Michael's celibacy 
 Trimble and Kathleen would lose all their mone)^ and 
 Michael, again taking the night express to Burton-on- 
 Trent, would offer to adopt about half a dozen duplicates 
 of Trimble. 
 
 Finally the morning of the marriage arrived, and
 
 SENTIMENT 381 
 
 Michael, feeling that this was an excellent opportunity to 
 have the first of his dramas staged in reality, declined to be 
 present. His refusal was a little less dramatic than he had 
 intended, because Kathleen was too much excited by her 
 own reckless behavior to act up. While Michael waited 
 for the ceremony's conclusion, he began a poem called "Re- 
 nunciation." Unfortunately the marriage service was very 
 much faster than his Muse, and he never got further than 
 half the opening line, "If I renounce." Michael, how^ever, 
 ascribed his failure to a little girl who would persist in 
 bouncing a tennis ball near his seat in the gardens. 
 
 The wedding was only concluded just in time, because 
 Mr. and Mrs. McDonnell arrived on the following day 
 and Michael's expeditions with Kathleen were immediately 
 forbidden. Possibly the equable Miss McDonnell had been 
 faintly alarmed for her sister's good name. At any rate 
 she had certainly been annoyed by her continuous neglect. 
 
 Michael, however, had a long interview with Trimble, 
 and managed to warn Kathleen that her husband was 
 going to present himself after dinner. Trimble and he had 
 thought this was more likely to suit Mr. McDonnell's 
 digestion than an after-breakfast confession. Michael ex- 
 pressed himself perfectly willing to take all the blame, and 
 privately made up his mind that, if Mr. McDonnell tried 
 to be "too funny," he would summ.on his mother to "polish 
 him off" with the vision of her manifest superiority. 
 
 Somewhat to Michael's chagrin his share in the matter 
 was overlooked by Mr. McDonnell, and the oration he 
 had prepared to quell the long-lipped Irish father was never 
 delivered. Whatever scenes of domestic strife occurred 
 occurred without Michael's assistance, and he was not a 
 little dismayed to be told by Kathleen in the morning that 
 all had passed off well, but that in the circumstances her 
 father had thought they had better leave Bournemouth at 
 once.
 
 382 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 "You're going?" stammered Michael. 
 
 'Yes. We must be getting back. It's all been so sudden, 
 and Walter's coming into the business, and eh, I'm as 
 happ3^ as the day is long." 
 
 Michael watched them all depart, and, after a few brave 
 good-byes and three flutters from Kathleen's handkerchief, 
 turned sadly back into the large, unfriendly hotel. He 
 knew the number of Kathleen's room, and, in an access of 
 despair that was, however, not so overwhelming as to pre- 
 clude all self-consciousness, he wandered down the corridor 
 and peeped into the late haunt of his love. The floor was 
 littered with tissue paper, broken cardboard boxes, empty 
 toilet bottles, and all the disarray of departure. Michael 
 caught his breath at the sudden revelation of this aban- 
 doned room's appeal. Here was the end of Kathleen's 
 maidenhood; here still lingered the allurement of her 
 presence; but Trimble could never see this last virginal 
 abode, this elusive shrine that Michael wished he could 
 hire for sentimental meditations. Along the corridor came 
 the sound of a dustpan. He looked round hastily for one 
 souvenir of Kathleen, and perceived still moist from her 
 last quick ablution a piece of soap. He seized it quickly 
 and surrendered the room to the destructive personality of 
 the housemaid. 
 
 "Well, dear," asked Mrs. Fane at lunch, "did your lady- 
 love give you anything to commemorate your help? Dar- 
 ling Michael, you must have made a delicious knight- 
 errant." 
 
 "Oh, no, she didn't give me anything," said Michael. 
 "Why should she?" 
 
 Then he blushed, thinking of the soap that was even 
 now enshrined in a drawer and scenting his handkerchiefs 
 and ties. He wondered if Alan would understand the 
 imperishable effluence ■ from that slim cenotaph of soap.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 ARABESQUE 
 
 IN the air of the Easter holidays that year there must 
 have been something unusually amorous even for 
 April, for w^hen Michael came back to school he 
 found that most of his friends and contemporaries had been 
 wounded by love's darts. Alan, to be sure, returned un- 
 scathed, but as he had been resting in the comparatively 
 cloistral seclusion of Cobble Place, Michael did not count 
 his v^'hole heart much honor to anything except his lack of 
 opportunity. Everybody else had come back in possession 
 of girls; some even had acquired photographs. There was 
 talk of gloves and handkerchiefs, of flowers and fans, but 
 nobody, as far as Michael could cautiously ascertain, had 
 thought of soap; and he congratulated himself upon his 
 relic. Also, apparently, all his friends in their pursuit of 
 Eastertide nymphs had been successful, and he began to 
 take credit to himself for being unlucky. His refusal (to 
 this already had come Kathleen's suddenly withdrawn 
 hand) gave him a peculiar interest, and those of his friends 
 in whom he confided looked at him with awe, and listened 
 respectfully to his legend of despair. 
 
 Beneath the hawthorns on the golden afternoons and 
 lingering topaz eves of May, Michael would wait for Alan 
 to finish his game of cricket, and between lazily applauded 
 strokes and catches he would tell the tale of Kathleen to 
 his fellows: 
 
 383
 
 384 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 "I asked her to wait for me. Of course she was older 
 than me. I said I was ready to marry her when I was 
 twenty-one, but there w^as another chap, a decent fellow, 
 devilish handsome, too. He was frightfully rich, and so 
 she agreed to elope with him. I helped them no end. I 
 told her father he simply must not attempt to interfere. 
 But, of course, I was frightfully cut up — oh, absolutely 
 knocked out. We're all of us unlucky in love in our family. 
 My sister was in love with an Austrian who was killed by 
 an avalanche. I don't suppose I shall ever be in love again. 
 They say you never really fall in love more than once in 
 your life. I feel a good deal older this term. I suppose I 
 look ... oh, well hit indeed — run it out, and again, sir, 
 and again .... !" 
 
 So Michael would break oE the tale of his love, until 
 one of his listeners would seek to learn more of passion's 
 frets and fevers. 
 
 "But, Bangs, what about the day she eloped? What 
 did you do?" 
 
 ''I wrote poetry," Michael would answer. 
 
 "Great Scott, that's a bit of a swat, isn't it?" they mar- 
 veled. 
 
 "Yes, it's a bit difficult," Michael would agree. "Only, 
 of course, I only write vers litre. No rhymes or anything." 
 
 And then an argument would arise as to whether poetry 
 without rhymes could fairly be called poetry at ail. This 
 argument, or another like it, would last until the cricket 
 stopped, when Michael and his fellows would stroll into 
 the pavilion and examine the scoring-book or criticize the 
 conduct of the game. 
 
 It was a pleasant time, that summer term, and life moved 
 on very equably for Michael, notwithstanding his Easter- 
 tide heartbreak. Alan caused him a little trouble by his 
 indifference to anything but cricket, and one Sunday, when 
 May had deepened into June, Michael took him to task
 
 ARABESQUE 385 
 
 for his attitude. Alan had asked Michael over to Rich- 
 mond for the week-end, and the two of them had punted 
 down the river toward Kew. They had moored their boat 
 under a weeping willow about the time when the bells for 
 church begin to chime across the level water-meadows. 
 
 "Alan, aren't you ever going to fall in love?" Michael 
 began. 
 
 "Why should I?" Alan countered in his usual way. 
 
 "I don't know. I think it's time you did," said Michael. 
 "You've no idea how much older it makes you feel. And 
 I suppose you don't want to remain a kid forever. Be- 
 cause, you know, old chap, you are an awful kid beside 
 me." 
 
 "Thanks very much," said Alan. "I believe you're ex- 
 actly one month older, as a matter of fact." 
 
 "Yes, in actual time," said Michael earnestly. "But in 
 experience I'm years older than you." 
 
 "That must be why you're such a rotten field," com- 
 mented Alan. "After forty the joints get stiff." 
 
 "Oh, chuck being funny," said Michael severely. "I'm 
 in earnest. Now you know as well as I do that last term 
 and the term before I was miserable. Well, look at me 
 now. I'm absolutely happy." 
 
 "I thought you were so frightfully depressed," said 
 Alan, twinkling. "I thought you'd had an unlucky love 
 affair. It seems to take you differently from the way it 
 takes most people." 
 
 "Oh, of course, I was miserable," Michael explained. 
 "But now I'm happy in her happiness. That's love." 
 
 Alan burst out laughing, and Michael observed that if 
 he intended to receive his confidences in such a flippant 
 way he would in future take care to be more secretive. 
 
 "I'm showing you what a lot I care about you," Michael 
 went on in tones of deepest injury, "by telling you about 
 myself. I think it's rather rotten of you to laugh."
 
 386 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 **But youVe told everybody," Alan pointed out. 
 
 Michael took another tack, and explained to Alan that 
 he wanted the spur of his companionship in everything. 
 
 "It would be so ripping if we were both in love," he 
 sighed. "Honestly, Alan, don't you feel I'm much more 
 developed since last term? I say, you played awfully well 
 yesterday against Dulford Second. If you go on improving 
 at the rate you are now, I don't see why you shouldn't get 
 your Blue at Oxford. By Jove, you know, in eighteen 
 months we shall be at Oxford. Are you keen?" 
 
 "Frightfully keen," said Alan. "Especially if I haven't 
 got to be in love all the time.'^ 
 
 "I'm not going to argue with you any more," Michael 
 announced. "But you're making a jolly big mistake. Still, 
 of course, I do understand about your cricket, and I daresay 
 love might make you a bit boss-eyed. Perhaps when footer 
 begins again next term I shall get over this perpetual long- 
 ing I have for Kathleen. You've no idea how awful I felt 
 when she said she loved Trimble. He was rather a 
 bounder, too, but of course I had to help them. I say, 
 Alan, do you remember Dora and Winnie?" 
 
 "Rather," said Alan, smiling. "We made pretty good 
 asses of ourselves over them. Do you remember how fed 
 up Nancy got?" 
 
 So, very easily, the conversation drifted into reminiscences 
 of earlier days, until the sky w^as quilted with rose-tipped 
 pearly clouds. Then they swung a Japanese lantern in the 
 prow and worked up-stream toward Richmond clustering 
 dark against the west, while an ivory moon shimmered on 
 the dying azure of the day behind. 
 
 Throughout June the image of Kathleen became grad- 
 ually fainter and fainter with each materialization that 
 Michael evoked. Then one evening before dinner he found 
 that the maid had forgotten to put a fresh cake of soap in 
 the dish. It was a question of ringing the bell or of cal-
 
 ARABESQUE 387 
 
 lously using Kathleen's commemorative tablet. Michael 
 went to his drawer and, as he slowly washed his hands, 
 he washed from his mind the few insignificant outlines of 
 Kathleen that were printed there. The soap was Trefle 
 Incarnat, and somewhat cynically Michael relished the 
 savor of it, and even made up his mind to buy a full fat 
 cake when this one should be finished. Kathleen, however, 
 even in the fragrant moment of her annihilation, had her 
 revenge, for Michael experienced a return of the old rest- 
 lessness and discontent that was not mitigated by Alan's 
 increasing preoccupation with cricket. He did not com- 
 plain of this, for he respected the quest of School Colors, 
 and was proud for Alan. At the same time something 
 must be done to while away these warm summer evenings 
 until at Basingstead Minor, where his mother had delight- 
 fully agreed to take a cottage for the summer, he and Alan 
 could revive old days at Cobble Place. 
 
 One evening Michael went out about nine o'clock to 
 post a letter and, finding the evening velvety and calm, 
 strolled on through the enticing streets of twilight. The 
 violet shadows in which the white caps and aprons of gos- 
 siping maids took on a mothlike immaterial beauty, the 
 gliding, enraptured lovers, the scent of freshly watered 
 flower-boxes, the stars winking between the chimney-pots, 
 and all the drowsy alertness of a fine London dusk drew 
 him on to turn each new corner as it arrived, until he saw 
 the sky stained with dull gold from the reflection of the 
 lively crater of the Earl's Court Exhibition, and heard over 
 the vague, intervening noises music that was sometimes 
 clearly melodious, sometimes a mere confusion of spasmodic 
 sound. 
 
 Michael suddenly thought he would like to spend his 
 evening at the Exhibition, and wondered to himself why 
 he had never thought of going there casually like this, why 
 always he had considered it necessary to devote a hot after-
 
 388 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 noon and flurried evening to its exploitation. By the en- 
 trance he met a fellow-Jacobean, one Drake, whose accen- 
 tuated mannishness, however disagreeable in the proximity 
 of the school, might be valuable at the Exhibition. Michael 
 therefore accepted his boisterous greeting pleasantly enough, 
 and they passed through the turnstiles together. 
 
 "I'll introduce you to a smart girl, if you like," Drake 
 offered, as they paused undecided between the attractions 
 of two portions of the Exhibition. "She sells Turkish 
 Delight by the Cave of the Four Winds. Very O.T., my 
 boy," Drake went on. 
 
 "Do you mean " Michael began. 
 
 "What? Rather," said Drake. "I've been home to 
 her place." 
 
 "No joking?" Michael asked. 
 
 "Yes," affirmed Drake with a triumphant inhalation of 
 sibilant breath. 
 
 "Rather lucky, wasn't it?" Michael asked. "I mean to 
 say, it was rather lucky to meet her." 
 
 "She might take you home," suggested Drake, examining 
 Michael critically. 
 
 "But I mightn't like her," Michael expostulated. 
 
 "Good lord," exclaimed Drake, struck by a point of 
 view that was obviously dismaying in its novelty, "you 
 don't mean to say you'd bother about that, if you could?" 
 
 "Well, I rather think I should," Michael admitted. "I 
 think I'd want to be in love." 
 
 "You are an extraordinary chap," said Drake. "Now 
 if I were dead nuts on a girl, the last thing I'd think of 
 would be that." 
 
 They walked along silently, each one pondering the 
 other's incomprehensibleness, until they came to the stall 
 presided over by Miss Mabel Bannerman, who in Michael's 
 opinion bore a curious resemblance to the Turkish Delight 
 she sold. With the knowledge of her he had obtained from
 
 ARABESQUE 389 
 
 Drake, Michael regarded Miss Bannerman very much as 
 he would have looked at an animal in the Zoological Gar- 
 dens with whose habits he had formed a previous acquaint- 
 anceship through a book of natural history. He tried to 
 perceive beyond her sachet-like hands and watery blue eyes 
 and spongy hair and full-blown breast the fascination 
 which had made her man's common property. Then he 
 looked at Drake, and came to the conclusion that the 
 problem was not worth the difficulty of solution. 
 
 "I think I'll be getting back," said Michael awkwardly. 
 
 "Why, it's not ten," gasped Drake. "Don't be an ass. 
 Mabel gets out at eleven, and we can take her home. 
 Can't we, Mabel?" 
 
 "Sauce!" Mabel archly snapped. 
 
 This savory monosyllable disposed of Michael's hesita- 
 tion, and, as the personality of Mabel cloyed him with a 
 sudden nausea, like her own Turkish Delight, he left her 
 to Drake without another word and went home to bed. 
 
 The night was hot and drew Michael from vain attempts 
 at sleep to the open window where, as he sat thinking, 
 a strange visionary survey of the evening, a survey that 
 he himself could scarcely account for, was conjured up. 
 He had not been aware at the time of much more than 
 Drake and the Turkish Delight stall. Now he realized 
 that he too craved for a Mabel, not a peony of a woman 
 who could be flaunted like a vulgar buttonhole, but a 
 more shy, a more subtle creature, yet conquerable. Then, 
 as Michael stared out over the housetops at the brooding 
 pavilion of sky which enclosed the hectic city, he began 
 to recall the numberless glances, the countless attitudes, 
 all the sensuous phantasmagoria of the Exhibition's popu- 
 lation. He remembered a slim hand, a slanting eye, lips 
 translucent in a burst of light. He caught at scents that, 
 always fugitive, were now utterly incommunicable; he 
 trembled at the remembrance of some contact in a crowd
 
 390 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 that had been at once divinely intimate and unendurably 
 remote. The illusion of all the city's sleepers calling to 
 him became more and more vivid under each stifling 
 breath of the night. Somewhere beneath that sable diadem 
 of chimney-tops she lay, that lovely girl of his desire. He 
 would not picture her too clearly lest he should destroy 
 the charm of this amazing omnipotence of longing. He 
 would be content to enfold the imagination of her, and at 
 dawn let her slip from his arms like a cloud. He would 
 sit all the night-time at his window, aware of kisses. Was 
 this the emotion that prompted poets to their verses? 
 Michael broke his trance to search for paper and pencil, 
 and wrote ecstatically. 
 
 In the morning, when he read what he had written, 
 he hastily tore it up, and made up his mind that the Earl's 
 Court Exhibition would feed his fire more satisfactorily 
 than bad verses. Half a guinea would buy a season-ticket, 
 and July should be a pageant of sensations. 
 
 Every night Michael went to Earl's Court Exhibition, 
 and here a hundred brilliant but evanescent flames were 
 kindled in his heart, just as in the gardens every night for 
 three hours the fairy-lamps spangled the edge of the paths 
 in threads of many-tinted lights. Michael always went 
 alone, because he did not desire any but his own discoveries 
 to reward his excited speculation. At first he merely 
 enjoyed the sensation of the slow stream of people that 
 continually went up and down, or strolled backward and 
 forward, or circled round the bandstand that was set 
 out like a great gaudy coronet upon the parterres of lobelias 
 and geraniums and calceolarias that with nightfall came 
 to seem brocaded cushions. 
 
 It was a time profitable with a thousand reflections, 
 this crowded hour of the promenade. There were always 
 the mesmeric sighing of silk skirts and the ceaseless mur- 
 mur of conversation; there were the noise of the band and
 
 ARABESQUE 391 
 
 the tapping of canes; there was, in fact, a regularitj^ of 
 sound which was as infinitely soothing as breaking waves 
 or a wind-ruffled wood. There were the sudden provoca- 
 tive glances that flashed as impersonally as precious stones, 
 and yet lanced forth a thrill that no faceted gem could 
 give. There were hands whose white knuckles, as they 
 rippled over Michael's hands in some momentary pressure 
 of the throng, gave him a sense of being an instrument 
 upon which a chord had been clearly struck. There were 
 strands of hair that floated against his cheeks with a strange, 
 but exquisitely elusive intimacy of communication. It was 
 all very intoxicating and very sensuous; but the spell crept 
 over him as imperceptibly as if he were merely yielding 
 himself to the influence of a beautiful landscape, as if he 
 were lotus-eating In a solitude created by numbers. 
 
 Michael, however, was not content to dream away in 
 a crowd these passionate nights of July; and after a while 
 he set out to find adventures in the great bazaar of the 
 Exhibition, wandering through the golden corridors and 
 arcades with a queer sense of suppressed expectancy. So 
 many fantastic trades w^re carried on here, that it was 
 natural to endow the girls behind the counters w^ith a 
 more romantic life than that of ordinary and anaemic 
 shop-assistants. Even Miss Mabel Bannerman amid her 
 Turkish Delight came to seem less crude in such surround- 
 ings, and Michael once or twice had thoughts of prosecut- 
 ing his acquaintanceship ; for as yet he had not been able to 
 bring himself to converse with any of the numerous girls, 
 so much more attractive than Mabel, who were haunting 
 him with their suggestion of a strange potentiality. 
 
 Michael wandered on past the palmists who went in 
 and out of their tapestried tents; past the physiognomists 
 and phrenologists and graphologists; past the vendors of 
 scents and silver; past the languid w^omen who spread 
 out their golden rugs from Samarcand; past the oriental
 
 392 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 shops fuming with odorous pastilles, where lamps encrusted 
 in deep-hued jew^els of glass glimmered richly; past that 
 slant-eyed cigarette-seller with the crimson fez crowning 
 her dark hair. 
 
 July was nearing its end; the holidays were in sight; 
 and still Michael had got on farther with his ambitions; 
 still at the last moment he would pass on and neglect 
 some perfect opportunity for speech. He used to rail at 
 his cowardice, and repeat to himself all his academic knowl- 
 edge of frail womanhood. He even took the trouble to 
 consult the Ars Amatoria, and was so much impressed by 
 Ovid's prescription for behavior at a circus that he deter- 
 mined to follow his advice. To put his theory into prac- 
 tice, Michael selected a booth where seals performed for 
 humanity at sixpence a head. But all his resolutions ended 
 in sitting mildly amused by the entertainment in a condition 
 of absolute decorum. 
 
 School broke up with the usual explosion of self-con- 
 gratulatory rhetoric from which Michael, owing to his 
 Exhibition ticket, failed to emerge with any calf-bound 
 souvenir of intellectual achievement. He minded this less 
 than his own pusillanimous behavior on the brink of 
 experience. It made him desperate to think that in two 
 days he would be at Basingstead with his mother and Alan 
 and Mrs. Ross, remote even from utterly the pretence of 
 temptation. 
 
 ''Dearest Michael, you really must get your things 
 together," expostulated Mrs. Fane, when he announced 
 his intention of going round to the Exhibition as usual on 
 the night before they were to leave town. 
 
 ''Well, mother, I can pack when I come in, and I do 
 want to get all I can out of this 'season.' You see it will 
 be absolutely wasted for August and half September." 
 
 "Michael," said Mrs. Fane suddenly, "you're not keep- 
 ing anything from me?"
 
 ARABESQUE 393 
 
 "Good gracious, no. What makes you ask?" Michael 
 demanded, blushing. 
 
 "I was afraid that perhaps some horrid girl might have 
 got hold of you," said Mrs. Fane. 
 
 "Why, would you mind very much?" asked Michael, 
 with a curious hopefulness that his mother would pursue 
 the subject, as if by so doing she would give him an oppor- 
 tunity of regarding himself and his behavior objectively. 
 
 "I don't know that I should mind very much," said 
 Mrs. Fane, "if I thought you were quite certain not to 
 do anything foolish." Then she seemed to correct the laxity 
 of her point of view, and substituted, "anything that you 
 might regret." 
 
 "What could I regret?" asked Michael, seeking to 
 drive his mother onto the rocks of frankness. 
 
 "Surely you know what better than I can tell you. 
 Don't you?" The note of interrogation caught the wind, 
 and Mrs. Fane sailed ofiE on the starboard tack. 
 
 "But as long as you're not keeping anything from me," 
 she went on, "I don't mind. So go out, dear child, and 
 enjoy yourself by all means. But don't be very late." 
 
 "I never am," said Michael quickly, and a little resent- 
 fully as he thought of his very decorous homecomings. 
 
 "I know you're not. You're really a very dear fellow," 
 his mother murmured, now safe in port. 
 
 So at nine o'clock as usual Michael passed through the 
 turnstiles and began his feverish progress across the Exhibi- 
 tion grounds, trying as he had never tried before to screw 
 himself up to the pitch of the experience he craved. 
 
 He was standing by one of the entrances to the Court 
 of Marvels, struggling with his self-consciousness and egg- 
 ing himself on to be bold on this his last night, when he 
 heard himself accosted as Mr. Michael Fane. He looked 
 round and saw a man whom he instantly recognized, but 
 for the moment could not name. 
 2G
 
 394 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 "It is Mr. Michael Fane?" the stranger asked. "You 
 don't remember me? I met you at Clere Abbey." 
 
 "Brother Aloysius!" Michael exclaimed, and as he 
 uttered the high-sounding religious appellation he almost 
 laughed at the incongruity of it in connection with this 
 slightly overdressed and dissolute-looking person he so 
 entitled. 
 
 "Well, not exactly, old chap. At least not in this get- 
 up. Meats is my name." 
 
 "Oh, yes," said Michael vaguely. There seemed no 
 other comment on such a name, and Mr. Meats himself 
 appeared sensitive to the implication of uncertainty, for he 
 made haste to put Michael at ease by commenting on its 
 oddity. 
 
 "I suppose you're thinking it's a damned funny exchange 
 for Brother Aloysius. But a fellow can't help his name, 
 and that's a fact." 
 
 "You've left the Abbey then?" inquired Michael. 
 
 "Oh, lord, yes. Soon after you went. It was no place 
 for me. Manners O. S. B. gave me the push pretty quick. 
 And I don't blame him. Well, w^hat are you doing? Have 
 a drink? Or have you got to meet your best girl? My, 
 you've grown since I saw you last. Quite the Johnny 
 nowadays. But I spotted you all right. Something about 
 your eyes that would be very hard to forget." 
 
 Michael thought that, if it came to unforgettable eyes, 
 the eyes of Mr. Meats w^ould stand as much chance of 
 perpetual remembrance as any, since their unholy light 
 would surely set any heart beating with the breathless 
 imagination of sheer wickedness. 
 
 "Yes, I have got funny eyes, haven't I?" said Meats 
 in complacent realization of Michael's thoughts. And as 
 he spoke he seemed consciously to exercise their vile charm, 
 so that his irises kindled slowly with lambent blue flames. 
 
 "Come on, let's have this drink," urged Meats, and
 
 ARABESQUE 395 
 
 he led the way to a scattered group of green tables. They 
 sat down, and Michael ordered a lemon-squash. 
 
 "Very good drink, too," commented Meats. "I think 
 I'll have the same, Rosie," he said to the girl who served 
 them. 
 
 "Do you know that girl?" Michael asked. 
 
 "Used to. About three years ago. She's gone off 
 though," said Meats indifferently. 
 
 Michael, to hide his astonishment at the contemptuous 
 suggestion of damaged goods, inquired what Meats had 
 been doing since he left the monastery. 
 
 "Want to know?" asked Meats. 
 
 Michael assured him that he did. 
 
 "You're rather interested in me, aren't you? Well, I 
 can tell you a few things and that's a fact. I don't suppose 
 that there's anybody in London who could tell you more. 
 But you might be shocked." 
 
 "Oh, shut up!" scoffed Michael, blushing with indigna- 
 tion. 
 
 Then began the shameless narration of the late Brother 
 Aloysius, whom various attainments had enabled to gain 
 an equal profit from religion and vice. Sometimes as 
 Michael listened to the adventures he was reminded of 
 Benvenuto Cellini or Casanova, but almost immediately 
 the comparison would be shattered by a sudden sancti- 
 monious blasphemy which he found nauseating. More- 
 over, he disliked the sly procurer that continually leered 
 through the man's personality. 
 
 "You seem to have done a lot of dirty work for other 
 people," Michael bluntly observed at last. 
 
 "My dear old chap," replied Meats, "of course I have. 
 You see, in this world there are lots of people who can 
 always square their own consciences, if the worst of what 
 they want to do is done for them behind the scenes as it 
 were. You never yet heard a man confess that he ruined
 
 396 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 a girl. Now, did you? Why, I've heard the most shocking 
 out-and-outers anyone could wish to meet brag that they've 
 done everything, and then turn up their eyes and thank 
 God they've ahvays respected real purity. Well, I never 
 respected anything or anybody. And why should I? 
 I never had a chance. "Who was my mother? A servant. 
 Who was my father? A minister, a Nonconformist min- 
 ister in Wales. And what did the old tyke do? VvHiy, he 
 took the case to court and swore my mother was out for 
 blackmail. So she went to prison, and he came smirking 
 home behind the village band; and all the old women in 
 the place hung out Union Jacks to show they believed in 
 him. And then his wife gave a party." 
 
 Michael looked horrified and felt horrified at this reve- 
 lation of vileness, and yet, all the time he was listening, 
 through some grotesquery of his nerves he was aware of 
 thinking to himself the jingle of Little Bo-peep. 
 
 "Ah, that's touched you up, hasn't it?" said Meats, 
 eagerly leaning forward. "But wait a bit. What did my 
 mother do when she came out? Went on the streets. Do 
 you hear? On the streets, and, mark you, she was a servant, 
 a common village servant, none of your flash Empire goods. 
 Oh, no, she never knew what it was like to go up the river 
 on a Sunday afternoon. And she drank. Weil, of course 
 she drank. Gin was as near as she ever got to paradise. 
 And where was I brought up? Not among the buttercups, 
 my friend, you may lay on that. No, I was down under- 
 neath, underneath, underneath where a chap like you will 
 never go because you're a gentleman. And so, though, of 
 course, you're never likely to ruin a girl, you'll always have 
 your fun. Why shouldn't you? Being a nicely brought-up 
 young gentleman, it's your birthright." 
 
 "But how on earth did you ever become a monk?" 
 asked Michael, anxious to divert the conversation away 
 from himself.
 
 ARABESQUE 397 
 
 "Well, it does sound a bit improbable, I must say. 
 I was recommended there by a priest — a nice chap called 
 Arbuthnot, who'd believe a chimney-sweep was a miller. 
 But Manners was very sharp on to me, and I was very 
 sharp on to Manners. Picking blackberries and emptying 
 slops! What a game! I came with a character and left 
 without one. Probationer was what they called me. Silly 
 mug was what I called myself." 
 
 "You seem to know a lot of priests," said Michael. 
 
 "Oh, I've been in with parsons since I was at Sunday- 
 school. Well, don't look so surprised. You don't suppose 
 my mother wanted me hanging round all the afternoon. 
 Now I very soon found out that one can always get round 
 a High Church slum parson, and very often a Catholic 
 priest by turning over a new leaf and confessing. It gets 
 them every time and, being by nature generous, it gets 
 their pockets. That's why I gave up Dissenters and fashion- 
 able vicars. Dissenters want more than they give, and 
 fashionable vicars are too clever. That's why they become 
 fashionable vicars, I suppose," said Meats pensively. 
 
 "But you couldn't go on taking in even priests forever," 
 Michael objected. 
 
 "Ah, now I'll tell you something. I do feel religious 
 sometimes," Meats declared solemnly. "And I do really 
 want to lead a new life. But it doesn't last. It's like love. 
 Never mind, perhaps I'll be lucky enough to die when I'm 
 working off a religious stretch. I give you my word, Fane, 
 that often in these fits I've felt like committing suicide 
 just to cheat the devil. Would you believe that?" 
 
 "I don't think you're as bad as you make out," said 
 Michael sententiously. 
 
 "Oh, yes, I am," smiled the other. "I'm rotten bad. 
 But I reckon the first man I meet in hell will be my father, 
 and if it's possible to hurt anyone down there more than 
 they're being hurt already, I'll do it. But look here, I shall
 
 398 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 get the hump with this blooming conversation you've started 
 me off on. Come along, drink up and have another, and 
 tell us something about yourself." 
 
 "Oh, there's nothing to tell," Michael sighed. "My 
 existence is pretty dull, after yours." 
 
 "I suppose it is," said Meats, as if struck by a new 
 thought. "Everything has its compensations, as they say." 
 
 "Frightfully dull," Michael vowed. "Why, here am I 
 still at school! You know I wouldn't half mind going 
 down underneath, as you call it, for a while. I believe I'd 
 like it." 
 
 "If you knew you could get up again all right." com- 
 mented Meats. 
 
 "Oh, of course," Michael answered. "I don't suppose 
 .^neas would have cared much about going down to hell, 
 if he hadn't been sure he could come up again quite 
 safely." 
 
 "Well, I don't know your friend with the Jewish name," 
 said Meats. "But I'll lay he didn't come out much wiser 
 than he went in if he knew he could get out all right by 
 pressing a button and taking the first lift up." 
 
 "Oh, well, I was only speaking figuratively," Michael 
 explained. 
 
 "So was I. The same here and many of them, old chap," 
 retorted Meats enigmatically. 
 
 "Ah, you don't think I'm in earnest. You think Vm 
 fooling," Michael complained. 
 
 "Oh, yes, I think you'd like to take a peep without 
 letting go of Nurse's apron," sneered Meats. 
 
 "Well, perhaps one day you'll see me underneath," 
 Michael almost threatened. 
 
 "No offence, old chap," said Meats cordially. "It's no 
 good my giving you an address because it won't last, but 
 London isn't very big, and we'll run up against one another
 
 ARABESQUE 399 
 
 again, that's a cert. Now I've got to toddle o£E and meet 
 a girl." 
 
 "Have you?" asked Michael, and his inquiry was tinged 
 with a faint longing that the other noticed at once. 
 
 "Jealous?" inquired Meats. "Why, look at all the girls 
 round about you. It's up to you not to feel lonely." 
 
 "I know," said Michael fretfully. "But how the deuce 
 can I tell whether they want me to talk to them?" 
 
 Meats laughed shrilly. 
 
 "What are you afraid of? Leading some innocent lamb 
 astray?" 
 
 Again to Michael occurred the ridiculous rhyme of Bo- 
 peep. So insistent was it that he could scarcely refrain 
 from humming it aloud. 
 
 "Of course I'm not afraid of that," he protested. "But 
 how am I to tell they won't think me a brute ?" 
 
 "What would it matter if they did?" asked Meats. 
 
 "Well, I should feel a fool." 
 
 "Oh, dear. You're very young, aren't you?" 
 
 "It's nothing to do with being young," Michael asserted. 
 "I simply don't want to be a cad." 
 
 "Somebody else is to be the cad first and then it's all 
 right, eh?" chuckled Meats. "But it's a shame to tease 
 a nice chap like you. I daresay Daisy '11 have a friend with 
 her." 
 
 "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 Mext half-hour passed in a whirl. Michael was
 
 400 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 conscious of a slim brunette in black and scarlet, and of a 
 fairy-like figure by her side in a dress of shimmering 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 
 embarrassments. 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 re- 
 proachful. 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 balustrade stuck to his 
 parched hands; the stairs creaked grotesquely to his breath- 
 less 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 passed; and he looked back compassionately, as
 
 ARABESQUE 401 
 
 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 un- 
 coiling 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 
 GRAY 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 traveled 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 assured 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 attitude she would adopt toward 
 his adventure. With so stirring a word did he enhance 
 what otherwise would have seemed base. His mother evi- 
 
 402
 
 GRAY EYES 403 
 
 dently was aware of a tension in this ridiculously circum- 
 scribed 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 re- 
 lationship 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 behavior would 
 surely find a root in the heart of the handsome woman who 
 traveled 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 lustrous gray eyes 
 was his own mother. He thought of his friends' homes 
 that were presided over by dumpy women in black silk with 
 graying hair. Even Alan's mother, astonishingly 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
 
 404 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 picture that he had once dearly loved, a picture by Flax- 
 man of Hera and Athene driving down from Olympus to 
 help the Greeks. AcvKwXevos "iiprj — that w^as his mother, 
 and y\avK(07n<s "'KOrjxrq — 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 goddesses' descent — avro^tarat hi ttvXch /jlvkov ovpavoi 
 as ^x'^v'^QpaL. At the same time, for all his high quota- 
 tions, 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 substitute for the Hours. 
 
 The country air was still sweet between the hazel hedge- 
 rows, although the grass was drouthy and the scabious 
 blooms were already gray 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 quin- 
 tessence of holiday airs through all the marching years of 
 boyhood. It was haunted by the memory of all the glad 
 anticipations 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 pro- 
 phetic of how many pastoral days. The butterflies, brown 
 and white and tortoiseshell, 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 per- 
 ception did not exist. Inanimate, however, was scarcely
 
 GRAY EYES 405 
 
 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 
 friendship, and partly to test, but chiefly to allay his dread, 
 he took Alan's arm with a gesture of almost fierce posses- 
 sion. He was relieved to find that Alan's touch was still 
 primed with consolation, that companionship with him still 
 soothed the turbulence of his own spirit reaching out to 
 grasp what could never be expressed in words, and there- 
 fore 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 class 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 be- 
 hind. 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 sum- 
 mer holidays of school, however complete with the quiet 
 contentment of familiar pleasures, would for himself grow 
 slowly irksome with deferred excitement. 
 
 But as the green miles slowly unfolded themselves, as 
 the dauntless yellow amoret still swung from a lissome 
 stem, as Alan spoke of the river and the gray tower on the 
 hill, Michael saw the fretful colors of the Exhibition grow 
 dim; and, when dreaming in the haze of the slumberous 
 afternoon they perceived the village and heard the mys- 
 terious murmur of human tranquillity, Michael's heart 
 overflowed with gratitude for the sight of Alan by his 
 side. Then the church-clock that struck a timeless hour 
 sounded for him one of those moments whose significance
 
 4o6 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 would resist eternally whatever lying experience should 
 endeavor to assail the truth which had made of one flashing 
 scene a revelation. 
 
 Michael was ineffably refreshed by his vision of the 
 imperishable substance of human friendship, and he could 
 not but jeer at himself now for having a little while back 
 put Alan into the domain of objects inanimate. 
 
 "There's your cottage," said Alan. "It's practically next 
 door to Cobble Place. Rather decent, eh?" 
 
 Michael could not say how decent he thought it, nor 
 how decent he thought Alan. 
 
 "I vote we go up tho river after tea," he suggested. 
 
 "Rather," said Alan. "I expect you'll come round to 
 tea with us. Don't be long unpacking." 
 
 "I shan't, you bet," said Michael. 
 
 Nor was he, and after a few minutes he and his mother 
 were sitting in the drawing-room at Cobble Place, eating a 
 tea that must have been very nearly the same as an un- 
 forgettable tea of nine years ago. Mrs. Carthew did not 
 seem quite so old; nor indeed did anybody, and as for 
 Joan and May Carthew, they were still girls. Yet even 
 when he and Alan had stayed down here for the wedding 
 only four years ago, Michael had always been conscious of 
 everybody's age. And now he was curiously aware of every- 
 body's youth. He supposed vaguely that all this change of 
 outlook was due to his own remarkable precocity and rapid 
 advance ; but nevertheless he still ate with all the heartiness 
 of childhood. 
 
 After tea Mrs. Ross with much tact took up Michael by 
 himself to see her son and, spared the necessity of comment, 
 Michael solemnly regarded the fair-haired boy of two who 
 was squeaking an India rubber horse for his mother's 
 benefit. 
 
 "O you attractive son of mine," Mrs. Ross sighed in a 
 whisper.
 
 GRAY EYES 407 
 
 "He's an awfully sportive kid," Michael said. 
 
 Then he suddenly remembered that he had not seen 
 Mrs. Ross since her husband was killed. Yet from this 
 chintz-hung room whose casements were flooded with the 
 amber of the westering sun, how far off seemed fatal Africa. 
 He remembered also that to this very same gay room he had 
 long ago gone with Miss Carthew after tea, that here in a 
 ribboned bed he had first heard the news of her coming to 
 live at 64 Carlington Road. 
 
 "We must have a long talk together soon," said Mrs. 
 Ross, seeming to divine his thoughts. "But I expect you're 
 anxious to revive old memories and visit old haunts with 
 Alan. I'm going to stay here and talk to Kenneth while 
 Nurse has her tea." 
 
 Michael lingered for a moment in the doorway to watch 
 the two. Then he said abruptly, breathlessly: 
 
 "Mrs. Ross, I think painters and sculptors are lucky 
 fellows. I'd like to paint you now. I wish one could 
 understand the way people look, when one's young. But 
 I'm just beginning to realize how lucky I was when you 
 came to us. And yet I used to be ashamed of having a 
 governess. Still, I believe I did appreciate you, even when 
 I was eight." 
 
 Then he fled, and to cover his retreat sang out loudly 
 for Alan all the way downstairs. 
 
 "I say. Aunt Enid wants to talk to you," said Alan. 
 
 "Aunt Enid?" Michael echoed. 
 
 "Mrs. Carthew," Alan explained. 
 
 "I vote we go for a walk afterwards, don't you?" 
 Michael suggested. 
 
 "Rather," said Alan. "I'll shout for you, when I think 
 you've jawed long enough." 
 
 Michael found Mrs. Carthew in her sun-colored garden, 
 cutting down the withering lupins whose silky seed-pods 
 were strewn all about the paths.
 
 4o8 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 "Can you spare ten minutes for an old friend?" asked 
 Mrs. Carthew. 
 
 Michael thought how tremendously wise she looked, 
 and, lest he should be held to be staring unduly, he bent 
 down to sweep together the shimmering seed-pods, while 
 Mrs. Carthew snipped away, talking in sentences that 
 matched the quick snick-a-snack of her weapon. 
 
 "I must say you've grown up into an attractive youth. 
 Let me see, you must be seventeen and a half. I suppose 
 you think yourself a man now? Dear me, these lupins 
 should have been cut back a fortnight ago. And now I 
 have destroyed a hollyhock. Tut-tut, I'm getting very 
 blind. What did you think of Maud's son? A healthy, 
 rosy child, and not at all amenable to discipline, I'm glad 
 to say. Well, are you enjoying school?" 
 
 The old lady paused with her scissors gaping, and looked 
 shrewdly at Michael. 
 
 "I'm getting rather fed up with it," Michael admitted. 
 "It goes on for such a long time. It wasn't so bad this 
 term though." 
 
 Then he remembered that whatever pleasures had miti- 
 gated the exasperation of school last term were decidedly 
 unscholastic, and he blushed. 
 
 "I simply loathed it for a time," he added. 
 
 "Alan informs me he acquired his First Eleven cap this 
 term and will be in the First Fifteen as Lord Treasurer or 
 something," Mrs. Carthew went on. "Naturally he must 
 enjoy this shower of honors. Alan is decidedly typical of 
 the better class of unthinking young Englishmen. He is 
 pleasant to look at — a little colt-like perhaps, but that will 
 soon wear off. My own dear boy was very like him, and 
 Maud's dear husband was much the same. You, I'm afraid, 
 think too much, Michael." 
 
 "Oh, no, I don't think very much," said Michael, dis-
 
 GRAY EYES 409 
 
 claiming philosophy, and greatly afraid that Mrs. Carthew 
 was supposing him a prig. 
 
 "You needn't be ashamed of thinking," she said. "After 
 all, the amount you think now won't seriously disorganize 
 the world. But you seem to me old for your age, much 
 older than Alan for instance, and though your conversa- 
 tion with me at any rate is not mature, nevertheless you 
 convey somehow an impression of maturity that I cannot 
 quite account for." 
 
 Michael could not understand why, when for the first 
 time he was confronted with somebody who gave his pre- 
 cocity its due, he was unable to discuss it eagerly and volu- 
 minously, why he should half resent being considered older 
 than Alan. 
 
 "Don't look so cross with me," Mrs. Carthew com- 
 manded. "I am an old woman, and I have a perfect right 
 to say what I please to you. Besides, you and I have had 
 many conversations, and I take a great interest in you. 
 What are you going to be?" 
 
 "Well, that's what I can't find out," said Michael 
 desperately. "I know what I'm not going to be, and that's 
 all." 
 
 "That's a good deal, I think," said Mrs. Carthew. 
 "Pray tell me what professions you have condemned." 
 
 "I'm not going into the Army. I'm not going into the 
 Civil Service. I'm not going to be a doctor or a lawyer." 
 
 "Or a parson?" asked Mrs. Carthew, crunching through 
 so many lupin stalks at once that they fell with a rattle on 
 to the path. 
 
 "Well, I have thought about being a parson," Michael 
 slowly granted. "But I don't think parsons ought to 
 marry." 
 
 "Good gracious," exclaimed Mrs. Carthew, "you're surely 
 
 not engaged?" 
 27
 
 410 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 "Oh, no," said Michael; but he felt extremely flattered 
 by the imputation. "Still, I might want to be." 
 
 "Then you're in love," decided Mrs. Carthew. "No 
 wonder you look so careworn. I suppose she's nearly thirty 
 and has promised to wait until you come of age. I can 
 picture her. If I had my stick with me I could draw her 
 on the gravel. A melon stuck on a bell-glass, I'll be 
 bound." 
 
 "I'm not in love, and if I were in love," said Michael 
 with dignity, "I certainly shouldn't be in love w^ith anyone 
 like that. But I could be in love at any moment, and so I 
 don't think I shall be a parson." 
 
 "You've got plenty of time," said Mrs. Carthew. "Alan 
 says you're going to Oxford next year." 
 
 Michael's heart leapt — next year had never before seemed 
 so imminent. 
 
 "I suppose you'll say that I'm an ignorant and foolish 
 old woman, if I attempt to give you advice about Oxford; 
 but I gave you advice once about school, and I'll do the 
 same again. To begin with, I think you'll find having been 
 to St. James' a handicap. I have an old friend, the wife of 
 a don, who assures me that many of the boys who go up 
 from your school suffer at Oxford from their selfish incuba- 
 tion by Dr. Brownjohn. They're fit for killing too soon. 
 In fact, they have been forced." 
 
 "Ah, but I saw that for myself," said Michael. "I had 
 a row wnth Brownjohn about my future." 
 
 "How delighted I am to hear that!" said Mrs. Carthew. 
 "I think that I'll cut back the delphiniums also. Then 
 you're not going in for a scholarship?" 
 
 "No," said Michael. "I don't want to be hampered, 
 and I think my mother's got plenty of money. But Alan's 
 going to get a scholarship." 
 
 "Yes, that is unfortunately necessary," said Mrs. Car- 
 thew. "Still, Alan is sufficiently typical of the public-
 
 GRAY EYES 411 
 
 school spirit — an odious expression yet always unavoidable 
 — to carry off the burden. If you were poor, I should 
 advise you to buy overcoats. Three smart overcoats are 
 an equipment for a poor man. But I needn't dwell on 
 social ruses in your case. Remember that going to Oxford 
 is like going to school. Be normal and inconspicuous at 
 first; and when you have established yourself as an utterly 
 undistinguished )'oung creature, you can career into what- 
 ever absurdities of thought, action or attire you will. 
 In your first year establish your sanity; in your second 
 year display your charm; and in your third year do what- 
 ever you like. Now there is Alan calling, and we'll leave 
 the paths strewn with these cut stalks as a memento mori 
 to the gardener. What a charming woman your mother is. 
 She has that exquisite vagueness which, when allied with 
 good breeding, is perfectly irresistible, at any rate to a 
 practical and worldly old woman like me. But then I've 
 had an immense amount of time in which to tidy up. 
 Pleasant hours to you down here. It's delightful to hear 
 about the place the sound of boys laughing and shouting." 
 Michael left Mrs. Carthew, rather undecided as to what 
 exactly she thought of him or Alan or anybody else. As he 
 walked over the lawn that w^ent sloping down to the 
 stream, he experienced a revulsion from the interest he took 
 in listening to what people thought about him, and he now 
 began to feel an almost morbid sensitiveness to the opinion 
 of others. This destroyed some of the peace which he had 
 sought and cherished down here in the country. He began 
 to wonder if that wise old lady had been laughing at him, 
 whether all she said had been an implied criticism of his 
 attitude toward existence. Her praise must have been 
 grave irony; her endorsement of his behavior had been 
 disguised reproof. She really admired Alan, and had only 
 been trying as gently as possible to make him come into 
 line with her nephew. He himself must seem to her ec-
 
 412 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 centric, undignified, a flamboyant sort of creature whom 
 she pitied and whose errors she wished to remedy. Michael 
 was mortified by his retrospect of the conversation, and felt 
 inclined when he saw Alan to make an excuse and retire 
 from his society, until his self-esteem had recovered from 
 the rebuke that had lately been inflicted. Indeed, it called 
 for a great effort on Michael's part to embark in the canoe 
 with his paragon and sit face to face without betraying 
 the wound that was damaging his own sense of personality. 
 
 "You had a very long jaw with Aunt Enid," said Alan. 
 "I thought you were never coming. She polished me ofiE 
 in about three minutes." 
 
 Michael looked darkly at Alan for a moment before he 
 asked with ungracious accentuation what on earth Alan 
 and Mrs. Carthew had talked about. 
 
 "She was rather down on me," said Alan. "I think she 
 must have thought I was putting on side about getting my 
 Eleven." 
 
 Michael was greatly relieved to hear this, and his brow 
 cleared as he inquired what was wrong. 
 
 "Well, I can't remember her exact words," Alan went 
 on. "But she said I must be careful not to grow up into a 
 strong, silent Englishman, because their day was done. She 
 practically told me I was rather an ass, and pretended to be 
 fearfully surprised when she heard I was going to try for 
 a scholarship at Oxford. She was squashing slugs all the 
 time she was talking, and I could do nothing but look a 
 bigger fool than ever and count the slugs. I ventured 
 to remark once that most people thought it was a good 
 thing to be keen on games, and she said half the world 
 was composed of fools which accounted for the preponder- 
 ation — I mean preponderance — of pink on the map. She 
 said it always looked like an advertisement of successful 
 fox-hunting. And when I carefully pointed out that I'd 
 never all my life had a chance to hunt, she said 'Mere's
 
 GRAY EYES 413 
 
 the pity.' I couldn't make out what she was driving at; 
 so, feeling rather a worm, I shot off as soon as I could. 
 What did she say to you?" 
 
 "Oh, nothing much," said Michael triumphantly. "She*s 
 a rum old girl, but rather decent." 
 
 ''She's too clever for me," said Alan, shaking his head. 
 "It's like batting to a pro." 
 
 Then from the complexities of feminine judgment, the 
 conversation glided easily like the canoe toward a discus- 
 sion of the umpire's decision last term in giving Alan out 
 l.b.w. to a ball that pitched at least two feet away from 
 the off stump. 
 
 "It was rotten," said Alan fervidly. 
 
 "It was putrid," Michael agreed. 
 
 To avoid the difficulty of a first night in a strange cot- 
 tage, Mrs. Fane and Michael had supper at Cobble Place; 
 and after a jolly evening spent in looking for pencils to 
 play games that nobody could ever recollect in all their 
 rich perfection of potential incidents, Michael and Mrs. 
 Fane walked with leisurely paces back to Woodbine Cot- 
 tage through a sweet-savored moonless night. 
 
 Michael enjoyed the intimate good night beneath so 
 small a roof, and wished that Stella were with them. He 
 lay awake, reading from each in turn of the tower of books 
 he had erected by his bedside to fortify himself against 
 sleeplessness. It was a queer enough mixture — Swinburne, 
 Keats, Matthew Arnold, Robinson Crusoe, Half-hours with 
 the Mystics, Tom Brown's Schooldays, Daudet's Sappho, 
 the second volume of The Savoy, The Green Carnation, 
 Holy Living and Dying; and as each time he changed 
 his mind and took another volume, on the gabled ceiling 
 the monstrous shadow that was himself filled him with 
 a dreadful uncertainty. After an Tiour or so, he went to 
 sit by the low window, leaning out and seeming to hear 
 the dark world revolve in its course. Stars shook them-
 
 414 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 selves clear from great rustling trees, and were in time en- 
 meshed by others. The waning moon came up behind a 
 rounded hill. A breeze fluttered down the dusty road and 
 was silent. 
 
 Michael fell to wondering whether he could ever bring 
 himself in tune with these slow progressions of nature, 
 whether he could renounce after one haggard spell of ex- 
 perience the mazy stir of transitory emotions that danced 
 always beyond this dream. An Half-hour with St. John of 
 the Cross made him ask himself whether this were the dark 
 night of the soul through which he was passing. But he 
 had never traveled yet, nor was he traveling now. He 
 was simply sitting quiescent, allowing himself to be passed. 
 These calm and stately figures of humanity whom he ad- 
 mired in their seclusion had only reached it after long strife. 
 Mrs. Carthew had lost a husband and a son, had seen her 
 daughter leave her house as a governess. Joan and May 
 had for many years sunk their hopes in tending their 
 mother. Nancy was away earning money, and would be 
 entitled to retire here one day. Mrs. Ross had endured 
 himself and Stella for several years, had married and lost 
 her husband, and had borne a child. All these had won 
 their timeless repose and their serene uncloying ease. They 
 were not fossils, but perdurable images of stone. And his 
 mother, she was — he stopped his reverie. Of his mother 
 he knew nothing. Outside the dust stirred in the road 
 fretfully; a malaise was in the night air. Michael shivered 
 and went back to bed, and as he turned to blow out his 
 candle he saw above him huge and menacing his own 
 shadow. A cock crowed. 
 
 "Silly ass," muttered Michael. "He thinks it's already 
 morning," and turning over after a dreamless sleep he 
 found it was morning. So he rose and dressed himself 
 serenely for a long sunburnt day. 
 
 On his way up the road to call for Alan he met the
 
 GRAY EYES 41 S 
 
 postman, who in answer to his inquiries handed him a 
 letter from South Africa stamped all over with mysterious 
 official abbreviations. He took it up to his mother curi- 
 ously. 
 
 At lunch he asked her about the news from the war. 
 
 "Yes, dear, I had a letter," she murmured. 
 
 "From Lord Saxby, I suppose?" 
 
 "Yes, dear." 
 
 "Anything interesting?" Michael persisted. 
 
 "Oh, no, it's only about marches and not being able to 
 wash properly." 
 
 "I thought it might be interesting," Michael speculated. 
 
 "No, dear. It wouldn't interest you," said Mrs. Fane 
 in her tone of gentle discouragement. 
 
 "I don't want to be inquisitive," said Michael resent- 
 fully. 
 
 "No, dear, Fm sure you don't," his mother softly agreed. 
 
 The holidays ran their pastoral course of sun and rain, of 
 clouds and winds, until the last week arrived with Septem- 
 ber in her most majestic mood of flawless halcyon. These 
 were days that more than any hitherto enhanced for Michael 
 the reverence he felt for the household of Cobble Place. 
 These were days when Mrs. Carthew stepped wisely along 
 her flowery enclosure, pondering the plums and peaches 
 on the warm walls that in a transcendency of mellow sun- 
 light almost took on the texture of living sunburnt flesh. 
 These were days when Joan and May Carthew went down 
 the village street with great bunches of Michaelmas daisies, 
 of phloxes and Japanese anemones, or sat beneath the mul- 
 berry tree, sewing in the bee-drowsed air. 
 
 At the foot of the hill beyond the stream was a straggling 
 wind-frayed apple-orchard, fresh pasturage for lambs in 
 spring, and now in September a jolly haunt for the young 
 son of Mrs. Ross. Here one afternoon, when Alan was 
 away at Basingstead Major playing the last cricket match
 
 41 6 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 of the year, Michael plunged down in the grass beside her. 
 
 They sat for a while in silence, and Mrs. Ross seemed 
 to Michael to be waiting for him to speak first, as if by her 
 own attitude of mute expectation she could lure him on 
 to express himself more openly than by direct question 
 and shy answer. He felt the air pregnant with confidences, 
 and kept urging himself on to begin the statement and 
 revelation of his character, sure that whatever he desired 
 to ask must be asked now while he was perhaps for the 
 last time liable to this grave woman's influence, conscious 
 of the security of goodness, envious of the maternity of 
 peace. This gray-eyed woman seemed to sit above him 
 like a proud eagle, careless of homage, never to be caught, 
 never to be tamed, a figure for worship and inspiration. 
 Michael wondered why all the women who awed him had 
 gray eyes. Blue eyes fired his senses, striking sparks and 
 kindling answering flames from his own blue eyes. Brown 
 eyes left him indifferent. But gray eyes absorbed his very 
 being, whether they were lustrous and violet-shaded like 
 his mother's and Stella's, or whether like Mrs. Ross's they 
 were soft as gray sea-water that in a moment could change 
 to the iron-bound rocks they were so near. 
 
 Still Michael did not speak, but watched Mrs. Ross 
 solemnly hand back to the rosy child sitting beside her in 
 the grass the fallen apples that he would always fling from 
 him exuberantly, panting the while at laughter's highest 
 pitch. 
 
 "I wonder if I ever laughed like that," said Michael. 
 
 "You were a very serious little boy, when I first knew 
 you," Mrs. Ross told him. 
 
 "I must have been rather depressing," Michael sighed. 
 
 "No, indeed you were not, dear Michael," she answered. 
 "You had much too much personality." 
 
 "Have I now?" Michael asked sharply. 
 
 "Yes, of course you have."
 
 GRAY EYES 417 
 
 "Well, what gives it to me?" 
 
 "Surely personality is something that is born with one. 
 Personality can't be made," said Mrs. Ross. 
 
 "You don't think experience has got anything to do with 
 it?" Michael pressed. 
 
 "I think experience makes the setting, and according 
 to the experience the personality is perfected or debased, 
 but nothing can destroy personality, not even death," she 
 murmured, far away for a moment from this orchard. 
 
 "Which would you say had the stronger personality — 
 Alan or I ?" asked Michael. 
 
 "I should say you had," said Mrs. Ross. "Or at any 
 rate you have a personality that will affect a large number 
 of people, either favorably or unfavorably." 
 
 "But Alan influences me more than I influence him," 
 Michael argued. 
 
 "That may be," Mrs. Ross admitted. "Though I think 
 your influence over Alan is very strong in this way. I 
 think Alan is always very eager to see you at your best, 
 and probably as your friendship goes on he will be more 
 solicitous for you than for himself. I should say that he 
 would be likely to sink himself in you. I wonder if you 
 realize what a passionately loyal soul he is." 
 
 Michael flushed with pleasure at this appreciation of his 
 friend, and his ambition went flying over to Basingstead 
 Major to inspire Alan to bat his best. Then he burst 
 forth in praise of him ; 'he spoke of his changelessness, his 
 freedom from moods, his candor and toleration and modesty. 
 
 "But the terrible thing is," said Michael suddenly, "that 
 I always feel that without noticing it I shall one day leave 
 Alan behind." 
 
 "But when you turn back, you'll find him just the same, 
 don't forget; and you may be glad that he did not come 
 with you. You may be glad that from his slowness you can 
 find an indication of the road that I'm sure you yourself
 
 41 8 YOUTH^S ENCOUNTER 
 
 will one day try to take. Alan will travel by it all his life. 
 You'll travel by it ultimately. Alan will never really 
 appreciate its beauty. You will. That will be your recom- 
 pense for what you suffer before you find it." 
 
 Mrs. Ross, as if to conceal emotion, turned quickly to 
 romp with her son. Then she looked at Michael: 
 
 ''And haven't you already once or twice left Alan be- 
 hind?" 
 
 Suddenly to Michael her gray eyes seemed accusing. 
 
 "Yes, I suppose I have," he granted. "But isn't that 
 the reason why my personality aiiects more people than his? 
 You said just now that experience was only the setting, but 
 I'm sure in my case it's more than a mere setting." 
 
 And even as he spoke all his experience seemed to cloud 
 his brow, knitting and lining it with perplexed wrinkles. 
 
 "Mrs. Ross, you won't think me very rude if I say you 
 always remind me of Pallas Athene? You always have, 
 you know. At first it was just a vague outward resem- 
 blance, because you're tall and sort of cool-looking, and I 
 really think your nose is rather Greek, if you don't mind 
 my saying so." 
 
 "Oh, Michael," Mrs. Ross smiled. "I think you're 
 even more unalterable than Alan. I seem to see you as 
 a little boy again, when you talk like that." 
 
 Michael, however, was too keen on the scent of his 
 comparison to be put of? by smiles, and he went on eagerly: 
 
 "Now I realize that you actually are like Athene. You're 
 one of those people who seem to have sprung into the world 
 fully armed. I can't imagine that you were ever young." 
 
 Mrs. Ross laughed outright at this. 
 
 "Wait a minute," cried Michael. "Or ever old for 
 that matter. And you know all about me. No, you 
 needn't shake your head like that. Because you do." 
 
 Young Kenneth was so much roused by Michael's tri- 
 umphant asseverations that he began to shout and kick in
 
 GRAY EYES 419 
 
 delighted tune and fling the apples from him with a vigor 
 that he had never yet reached. 
 
 "You know," Michael continued breathlessly, while the 
 boy on the grass gurgled his endorsement of every word. 
 "You know that I'm old for my age, that I've already 
 done things that other chaps at school only whisper about." 
 
 He stopped suddenly, for the gray eyes had become like 
 rocks and, though the baby still panted ecstatically, there 
 fell a chill. 
 
 "I'm very sorry to hear it," said Mrs. Ross. 
 
 "Well, why did you lead me on to confide in you?" 
 said Michael sullenly. "I thought you would sympathize." 
 
 "Michael, I apologize," she said, melting. "I didn't 
 mean to hurt your feelings. I daresay — ah, Michael, you 
 see how easily all my shining armor falls to pieces." 
 
 "Another broken bottle," Michael muttered. 
 
 He got up abruptly and, though there were tears in his 
 eyes, she could not win him back. 
 
 "Dear old boy, do tell me. Don't make the mistake 
 of going back into yourself, because I failed you for a 
 moment." 
 
 Mrs. Ross held out her hand, but Michael walked away. 
 
 "You don't understand," he turned to say. "You 
 couldn't understand. And I don't v/ant you to be able to 
 understand. You mustn't think I'm sulking, or being rude, 
 and really I'd rather you didn't understand. That boy of 
 yours won't ever want you to understand. I don't think 
 he'll ever do anything that isn't perfectly comprehensible." 
 
 "Michael," said Mrs. Ross, "don't be so bitter. You'll 
 be sorry soon." 
 
 "Soon?" asked Michael, fiercely. "Soon? Why soon? 
 What's going to happen to make me sorry soon? Some- 
 thing is going to happen. I know. I feel it." 
 
 He fled through the wind-frayed orchard up the hillside. 
 "With his back against the tower called Grogg's Folly he
 
 420 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 looked over four counties and vowed he would go heedless 
 of everything that stood between him and experience. He 
 would deny himself nothing; he would prove to the hilt 
 everything. 
 
 "I must know," he wrung out of himself. "Everything 
 that has happened must have happened for some reason. 
 I will believe that. I can't believe in God until I can 
 believe in myself. And how can I believe in myself yet?" 
 
 The four counties under September's munificence mocked 
 him with their calm. 
 
 "I know that all these people at Cobble Place are all 
 right," he groaned. *'I know that, just as I know Virgil is 
 a great poet. But I never knew Virgil was great until 
 I read Swinburne. Oh, I want to be calm and splendid 
 and proud of myself, but I want to understand life while 
 I'm alive. I want to believe in immortality, but in case 
 I never can be convinced of it I want to be convinced 
 of something. Everything seems to be tumbling down 
 nowadays. What's so absurd is that nobody can understand 
 anybody else, let alone the universe. Mrs. Ross can under- 
 stand why I like Alan, but she can't understand why I 
 want love. Viner can understand why I get depressed, 
 but he can't understand why I can't be cured immediately. 
 Wilmot could understand why I wanted to read his rotten 
 books, but he can't understand why the South African 
 war upset me. And so on with everybody. I'm determined 
 to understand everybody," Michael vowed, "even if I 
 can't have faith," he sighed to the four counties.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 BLUE EYES 
 
 MICHAEL managed to avoid during the rest of the 
 week any reference, direct or indirect, to his in- 
 terrupted conversation with Mrs. Ross, though 
 he fancied a reproachfulness in her manner toward him, 
 especially at the moment of saying good-bye. He was not 
 therefore much surprised to receive a letter from her soon 
 after he was back in Carlington Road. 
 
 Cobble Place^ 
 
 September i8th. 
 My dear Michael: 
 
 I have blamed myself entirely for what happened the 
 other day. I should have been honored by your confidence, 
 and I cannot think why a wretched old-fashioned priggish- 
 ness should have shown itself just when I least wished it 
 would. I confess I was shocked for a moment, and perhaps 
 I horridly imagined more than you meant to imply. If I 
 had paused to think, I should have known that your desire 
 to confide in me was alone enough to prove that you were 
 fully conscious of the effect of anything you may have 
 done. And after all in any sin — forgive me if I'm using 
 too strong a word under a misapprehension — it is the effect 
 which counts most deeply. 
 
 I'm inclined to think that in all you do through life, you 
 will chiefly have to think of the effect of it on other people. 
 I believe that you yourself are one of those characters that 
 never radically deteriorate. This is rather a dangerous 
 statement to make to anyone so young as you are. But 
 
 421
 
 422 YOUTH^S ENCOUNTER 
 
 I'm sure you are wise enough not to use ft in justification 
 of any wrong impulse. Do always remember, my dear boy, 
 that however unscathed you feel yourself to be, you must 
 never assume that to be the case with anyone else. I am 
 really dreadfully distressed to think that by my own want 
 of sympathy on a crucial occasion I have had to try to put 
 into a letter what could only have been hammered out in a 
 long talk. And we did hammer out something the other 
 day. Or am I too optimistic? Write to me some time 
 and reassure me a little, for I'm truly worried about you, 
 and so indignant with my stupid self. Best love from us 
 all, 
 
 Your affectionate 
 
 Maud Ross. 
 
 Michael merely pondered this letter coldly. He was still 
 under the influence of the disappointment, and when he 
 answered Mrs. Ross he answered her without regard to 
 any wound he might inflict. 
 
 64 Carlington Road^ 
 Sunday. 
 Dear Mrs. Ross: 
 
 Please don't bother any more about it. I ought to have 
 known better. I don't think it was such a very crucial 
 occasion. The weather is frightfully hot, and I don't feel 
 much like playing footer this term. I'm reading Dante, 
 not in Italian, of course. London is as near the Inferno 
 as anything, I should think. It's horribly hot. Excuse 
 this short letter, but I've nothing to say. 
 
 Yours affectionately, 
 
 Michael. 
 
 Mrs. Ross made one more brief attempt to recapture him, 
 but Michael put her off with the most superficial gossip of 
 school-life, and she did not try again. He meant to play 
 football, notwithstanding the hot weather, but, finding that 
 his boots were worn out, he continually put off buying 
 another pair and let himself drift into October before he
 
 BLUE EYES 423 
 
 began. Then he hurt his leg, and had to stop for a while. 
 This spoiled his faint chance for the First Fifteen, and in 
 the end he gave up football altogether without much regret. 
 
 Games were a great impediment after all, when October's 
 thin blue skies and sheen of pearl-soft airs led him on to 
 dream along the autumnal streets. Sometimes he would 
 wander by himself through the groves of Hyde Park and 
 Kensington Gardens, or on some secluded green chair he 
 would sit reading Verlaine, while continuously about him 
 the slow leaves of the great planes swooped and fluttered 
 down ambiguously like silent birds. 
 
 One Saturday afternoon he was sitting thus when 
 through the silver fog that on every side wrought the 
 ultimate dissolution of the view Michael saw the slim figure 
 of a girl walking among the trees. His mind was gay 
 with Verlaine's delicate and fantastic songs, and this slim 
 girl, as she moved wraith-like over the ground marbled 
 with fallen leaves, seemed to express the cadence of the 
 verse which had been sighing across the printed page. 
 
 The girl with dow^ncast glance walked on, seeming to 
 follow her path softly as one might follow through em- 
 broidery a thread of silk, and as she drew nearer to 
 Michael out of the fog's enchantment she lost none of her 
 indefinite charm; but she seemed still exquisite and silver- 
 dewed. There was no one else in sight, and now already 
 Michael could hear the lisping of her steps; then a breath 
 of air among the tree-tops more remote sent floating, sway- 
 ing, fluttering about her a flight of leaves. She paused, 
 startled by the sudden shower, and at that moment the 
 down-going autumnal sun glanced wanly through the 
 glades and lighted her gossamer-gold hair with kindred 
 gleams. The girl resumed her dreaming progress, and 
 Michael now frankly stared in a rapture. She was dressed 
 in deepest green boxcloth, and the heavy folds that clung to 
 that lissome form made her ankles behind great pompons of
 
 424 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 black silk seem astonishingly slender. One hand was 
 masked by a small mufF of astrakhan; the other curled 
 behind to gather close her skirt. Her hair tied back with 
 a black bow sprayed her tall neck with its beaten gold. 
 She came along downcast until she was within a few feet 
 of Michael; then she looked at him. He smiled, and her 
 mouth when she answered him with answering smile was 
 like a flower whose petals have been faintly stirred. In- 
 deed it was scarcely a smile, scarcely more than a tremor, 
 but her eyes deepened suddenly, and Michael drawn into 
 their dusky blue exclaimed simply: 
 
 "I say, I've been watching you for a long time." 
 
 *'I don't think you ought to talk to me like this in Ken- 
 sington Gardens. Why, there's not a soul in sight. And I 
 oughtn't to let you talk." 
 
 Her voice was low with a provocative indolence of tone, 
 and while she spoke her lips scarcely moved, so that their 
 shape was never for an instant lost, and the words seemed 
 to escape like unwilling fugitives. 
 
 ''What are you reading?" she idly asked, tapping 
 Michael's book with her muff. 
 
 "Verlaine." 
 
 "French?" 
 
 He nodded, and she pouted in delicious disapproval of 
 his learned choice. 
 
 "Fancy reading French unless you've got to." 
 
 "But I enjoy these poems," Michael declared. "As a 
 matter of fact you're just like them. At least you were 
 when I saw you first in the distance. Now you're more 
 real somehow." 
 
 Her gaze had wandered during his comparison and 
 Michael, a little hurt by her inattention, asked if she were 
 expecting somebody. 
 
 "Oh, no. I just came out for a walk. I get a headache
 
 BLUE EYES 425 
 
 if I stay in all the afternoon. Now I must go on. Good- 
 bye." 
 
 She scattered with a light kick the little heap of leaves 
 that during their conversation she had been amassing, and 
 with a half-mocking wave of her muff prepared to leave 
 him. 
 
 "I say, don't tear off," Michael begged. "Where do 
 you live?" 
 
 "Oh, a long way from here," she said. 
 
 "But where?" 
 
 "West Kensington." 
 
 "So do I," cried Michael, thinking to himself that all the 
 gods of luck and love were fighting on his side this after- 
 noon. "We'll walk home together." 
 
 "Shall we?" murmured the girl, poised on bent toes as 
 if she were minded to flee from him in a breath. 
 
 "Oh, we must," vowed Michael. 
 
 "But I mustn't dawdle," she protested. 
 
 "Of course not," he affirmed with almost an inflexion 
 of puritanical rigor. 
 
 "You're leaving your book, stupid," she laughed, as he 
 rose to take his place by her side. 
 
 "I wouldn't have minded, because all that's in that book 
 is in you," he declared. "I think I'll leave it behind for a 
 lark." 
 
 She ran back lightly and opened it to see whether his 
 name were on the front page. 
 
 "Michael Fane," she murmured. "What does 'ex libris* 
 mean?" Yet even as she asked the question her concen- 
 tration failed, and she seemed not to hear his answer. 
 
 "You didn't really want to know, you funny girl," said 
 Michael. 
 
 "Know what?" she echoed, blinking round at him over 
 
 her shoulder as they walked on. 
 
 "The meaning of 'ex libris.' " 
 28
 
 426 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 "But I found out your name," she challenged. "And 
 you don't know mine." 
 
 "What is it?" Michael dutifully asked. 
 
 "I don't think I'll tell you." 
 
 "Ah, do." 
 
 "Well, then, it's Lily — and I've got a sister called Doris.'^ 
 
 "How old are you?" 
 
 "How old do you think?" 
 
 "Seventeen?" Michael hazarded. 
 
 She nodded. It was on the tip of his tongue to claim 
 kinship on the score of their similar years, but discretion 
 defeated honesty, and he said aloofly, gazing up at the sky: 
 
 "I'm nineteen and a half." 
 
 She told him more as they mingled with the crowds in 
 Kensington High Street, that her mother was Mrs. Haden, 
 who recited in public sometimes, that her sister Doris 
 wanted to go on the stage, and that they lived in Trelawny 
 Road. 
 
 "I know Trelawny Road," Michael interjected, and in 
 the gathering crowds she was perforce closer to him, so 
 that he was fain to guide her gently past the glittering 
 shops, immensely conscious of the texture of her dress. 
 They emerged into wider, emptier pavements, and the wind 
 came chilly down from Camden Hill, so that she held 
 her muff against her cheek, framing its faint rose. Twi- 
 light drew them closer, and Michael, wishful of an even 
 less frequented pavement, suggested they should cross the 
 road by Holland Park. A moment she paused while a 
 scarlet omnibus clattered past, then she ran swiftly to where 
 the trees overhung the railings. It was exhilarating to 
 follow her over the w^ooden road that answ^ered to his 
 footsteps like castanets, and as he caught up with her to 
 fondle her bent arm. Their walk died away to a saunter, 
 while the street-lamps beamed upon them with longer in- 
 tervals of dark between each succeeding lampshine. More
 
 BLUE EYES 427 
 
 slowly still they moved toward West Kensington and 
 parting. Her arm was twined round his like ivy, and 
 their two hands came together like leaves. At last the 
 turning she must take appeared on the other side of the 
 road, and again she ran and again he caught her arm. 
 But this time it was still warm with long contact and 
 divinely familiar, since but for a moment had it been re- 
 linquished. The dim side-street enfolded them, and no 
 dismaying passers-by startled their intercourse. 
 
 "But soon it will be Trelawny Road," she whisperea. 
 "Then kiss me quickly," said Michael. "Lily, you 
 must." 
 
 It was in the midmost gloom between two lamps that 
 they kissed first. 
 "Lily, once again." 
 "No, no," she whispered. 
 
 "But you're mine," he called exultantly. "You are. 
 You know you are." 
 
 "Perhaps," she whispered, but, even as his arms drew her 
 toward him, she slipped from his embrace, laughed very 
 low and sweet, bounded forward, waved her muff, ran 
 swiftly to the next lamp-post, paused and blew him kisses, 
 then vanished round the corner of her road. 
 
 But a long time ago they had said they would meet 
 to-morrow, and as Michael stood in a maze all the clocks 
 in the w^orld ding-donged in his ears the hour of the tryst. 
 There was only one thing to do for the expression of 
 his joy, and that was to run as hard as he could. So he 
 ran, and when he saw two coal-holes, he would jump from 
 one to the other, rejoicing in the ring of their metal covers. 
 And all the time out of breath he kept saying, "I'm in 
 love, in love, in love." 
 
 Every passer-by into whose eyes he looked seemed to have 
 the most beautiful expression; every poor man seemed to 
 demand that he should stay a while from his own joy to
 
 428 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 comfort him. The lamp-posts bloomed like tropic flowers, 
 swaying and nodding languorously. Every house took on a 
 look of the most unutterable completeness; the horses gal- 
 loped like Arabian barbs; policemen expanded like benefi- 
 cent genii; errand boys whistled like nightingales; all 
 familiarity was enchanted, and seven-leagued boots took 
 him forward as easily as if he traveled a world subdued 
 to the effortless transitions of sleep. Carlington Road 
 stretched before him bright, kindly, beckoning to his ingress. 
 Against the lighted entrance-hall of Number 64 Michael 
 saw the red and amber sparrows like humming-birds, ruby- 
 throated, topaz-winged. The parlor-maid's cap and apron 
 were of snow^, and the banisters of sandalwood. 
 
 Michael w^ent to bed early that he might meet her in 
 dreams, but still for a long time he sat by his window peer- 
 ing at the tawny moon, while at intervals trains went 
 quickly past sparkling and swift as lighted fuses. The 
 scent of leaves lying in the gardens all along Carlington 
 Road was vital with the airs from which she had been 
 evoked that afternoon, and his only regret was that his 
 bedroom looked out on precisely the opposite direction from 
 that w^here now she was sleeping. Then he himself became 
 envious of sleep, and undressed quickly like one who stands 
 hot-footed by a lake's edge, eager for the water's cool. 
 
 Michael met Lily next day by the dusky corner of a 
 street whose gradual loss of outline he had w^atched occur 
 through a patient hour. It was not that Lily was late, 
 but that Michael was so early. Yet in his present mood 
 of elation he could enjoy communion even with bricks and 
 mortar. He used every guileful ruse to cheat time of his 
 determined moment. He would walk along with closed 
 eyes for ten paces and with open eyes for ten paces, the 
 convention with himself, almost the wager, being that Lily 
 should appear while his eyes were closed. It would have 
 been truly disappointing had she swung round the corner
 
 BLUE EYES 429 
 
 while his eyes were open. But as it still lacked half an 
 hour of her appointment, there was not much fear of that. 
 Then, as really her time drew near, a tenser game was 
 played, by which Lily was to appear when his left foot 
 was advanced. This match between odd and even lasted 
 until in all its straightness of perfect division six o'clock 
 was inscribed upon his watch. No other hour could so 
 well have suited her form. 
 
 Now began the best game of all, since it was played less 
 with himself than with fortune. Michael went to the next 
 turning, and, hiding himself from the view of Trelawny 
 Road, only allowed himself to peep at each decade. At 
 a hundred and sixty-three he said "She's in sight," one hun- 
 dred and sixty-four, "she's coming." The century was 
 eliminated, too cumbersome for his fiery enumeration. 
 Sixty-five, "I know she is." Sixty-six, sixty-seven, sixty- 
 eight, sixty-nine! One hundred and seventy was said 
 slowly, with an exquisite dragging deliberation. Then 
 Michael could look, and there she was with muff signaling 
 through the azure mists of twilight. 
 
 "I say, I told mother about you," murmured Lily. "And 
 she said, Why didn't you ask him to come in to tea?' But 
 of course she doesn't know I'm meeting you this evening. 
 I'm supposed to be going to church." 
 
 Michael's heart leaped at the thought that soon he would 
 be able to see her in her own home among her own belong- 
 mgs, so that in future no conjured picture of her would 
 be incomplete. 
 
 "Rather decent of your mother," he said. 
 
 "Oh, well, she's got to be very easy-going and all that, 
 though of course she doesn't like us to get talked about! 
 What shall we do now?" 
 
 "Walk about, I suppose," said Michael. "Unless we 
 get on top of a bus and ride somewhere? Why not ride
 
 430 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 up to Hammersmith Broadway and then walk along the 
 towing-path ?" 
 
 They found a seat full in the fore wind's face, but yet 
 the ride w^as all too short, and almost by the time Michael 
 had finished securing the waterproof rug in which they sat 
 incapable of movement, so tightly w^re they braced in, it 
 was time to undo it again and dismount. While the church 
 bells were ringing, they crossed Hammersmith Suspension 
 Bridge ethereal in the creeping river-mist and faintly mo- 
 tionable like a ship at anchor. Then they wandered by the 
 river that lapped the dead reeds and gurgled along the base 
 of the shelving clay bank. The wind drearily stirred the 
 osier-beds, and from time to time the dull tread of in- 
 definite passing forms was heard upon the sodden path. 
 Michael could feel the humid fog lying upon Lily's sleeve, 
 and when he drew her cheek to his own it was bedewed 
 with the falling night. But when their lips met, the mois- 
 ture and October chill were all consumed, and like a burn- 
 ing rose she flamed upon his vision. Words to express his 
 adoration tumbled around him like nightmare speech, eva- 
 sive, mocking, grotesquely inadequate. 
 
 * 'There are no words to say how much I love to hold 
 you, Lily," he complained. "It's like holding a flower. 
 And even in the dark I can see your eyes." 
 
 "I can't see yours," she murmured, and therefore nestled 
 closer. "I like you to kiss me," she sighed. 
 
 ''Oh, why do you?" Michael asked. "Why me?" 
 
 "You're nice," she less than whispered. 
 
 "Lily, I do love you." 
 
 And Michael bit his lip at the close of "love" for the 
 sweet pain of making the foolish word more powerful, 
 more long. 
 
 "What a funny husky voice," she murmured in her own 
 deep indolent tones.
 
 BLUE EYES 431 
 
 "Do you like me to call you 'darling' or 'dearest' best?" 
 he asked. 
 
 "Both." 
 
 "Ah, but which do you like best?" 
 
 To Michael the two words were like melodies which he 
 had lately learned to play. Indeed they seemed to him his 
 own melodies never played before, and he was eager for 
 Lily to pronounce judgment. 
 
 "Why do you ask questions?" she wondered. 
 
 "Say 'dearest' to me," Michael begged. 
 
 "No, no," she blushed against his heart. 
 
 "But say which you like best," he urged. "Darling or 
 dearest?" 
 
 "Well, darling," she pouted. 
 
 "You've said it," cried Michael rapturously. "Now you 
 can say it of your own accord. Oh, Lily, say it when you 
 kiss me." 
 
 "But supposing I never kiss you ever again?" asked 
 Lily, pulling away from his arms. "And besides we must 
 go back." 
 
 "Well, we needn't hurry." 
 
 "Not if you come at once," she agreed. 
 
 One more kiss, one more gliding dreaming walk, one 
 more pause to bid the river farewell from the towering 
 bridge, one more wrestle with the waterproof-rug, one 
 more slow, lingering and then suddenly swift escaping fin- 
 ger, one more wave of the muff, one last aerial salutation, 
 and she was gone till Wednesday. 
 
 Michael was left alone between the tall thin houses of 
 Kensington, but beneath his feet he seemed to feel the 
 world swing round through space; and all the tall thin 
 houses, all the fluted lamp-posts, all the clustering chimney- 
 pots reeled about him in the ecstasy of his aroused exist- 
 ence.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 LILY 
 
 WHEN Michael came into the dining-room after 
 he had left Lily, his mother said: 
 ''Dearest boy, what have you been doing? 
 Your eyes are shining like stars." 
 
 Here was the opportunity to tell her about Lily, but 
 Michael could not avail himself of it. These last two days 
 seemed as yet too incomplete for revelation. Somehow he 
 felt that he was creating a work of art, and that to tell his 
 mother of conception or progress would be to spoil the 
 perfection of his impulse. There was only one person on 
 earth to whom he could confide this cataclysmic experience, 
 and that was Alan. He and Alan had dreamed enough to- 
 gether in the past to make him unashamed to announce at 
 last his foothold on reality. But supposing Alan were to 
 laugh, as he had laughed over the absurdity of Kathleen? 
 Such a reception of his news would ruin their friendship; 
 and yet if their friendship could not endure the tale of true 
 love, was it not already ruined? He must tell Alan, at 
 whatever cost. And where should he tell him? Such a 
 secret must not be lightly entrusted. Time and place must 
 come harmoniously, befalling with that rare felicity which 
 salutes the inevitable hours of a human life. 
 
 "Mother," said Michael, "would you mind if I stayed 
 the night over at Richmond?" 
 
 "To-night?" Mrs. Fane echoed in astonishment. 
 432
 
 LILY 433 
 
 'Well, perhaps not to-night," conceded Michael un- 
 willingly. "But to-morrow night?" 
 
 "To-morrow night by all means," Mrs. Fane agreed. 
 /'Nothing has happened?" she asked anxiously. "You 
 seem so flushed and strange." 
 
 "I'm just the same as usual," Michael declared. "It's 
 hot in this room. I think I'll take a short walk." 
 
 "But you've been out all the afternoon," Mrs. Fane 
 protested. 
 
 "Oh, well, I've nothing to do at home." 
 
 "You're not feverish?" 
 
 "No, no, mother," Michael affirmed, disengaging his 
 parched hand from her solicitous touch. "But you know 
 I often feel restless." 
 
 She released him, tenderly smiling; and for one moment 
 he nearly threw himself down beside her, covetous of child- 
 hood's petting. But the impulse spent itself before he 
 acted upon it, and soon he was wandering toward 
 Trelawny Road. How empty the corner of it looked, how 
 stark and melancholy soared the gray houses guarding its 
 consecrated entrance, how solitary shone the lamp-posts, 
 and how sadly echoed the footsteps of people going home. 
 Yet only three hours ago they had met on this very flag- 
 stone that must almost have palpitated to the pressure of 
 her shoes. 
 
 Michael walked on until he stood opposite her house. 
 There was a light in the bay window by the front door; 
 perhaps she would come out to post a letter. O breathless 
 thought! Surely he heard the sound of a turning handle. 
 Ah, why had he not begged her to draw aside the blind at 
 a fixed time that he could be cured of his longing by the 
 vision of her darling form against the pane? How bitter 
 was the irony of her sitting behind that brooding window- 
 pane, unconscious of him. Two days must crawl past be- 
 fore she would meet him again, before he would touch her
 
 434 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 hand, look actually into her eyes, watch every quiver and 
 curve of her mouth. Places would be enriched with the 
 sight of her, while he ached with the torment of love. 
 School must drag through ten intolerable hours; he must 
 chatter with people unaware of her; and she must live 
 two days apart from his life, two days whose irresponsible 
 minutes and loveless occupations made him burn with 
 jealousy of time itself. 
 
 Suddenly the door of Lily's house opened, and Michael 
 felt the blood course through his body, flooding his heart, 
 swaying his very soul. There was a voice in the glimmering 
 hall, but not her voice. Nor was it her form that hurried 
 down the steps. It was only the infinitely fortunate maid- 
 servant, whose progress to the letter-box he watched with 
 a sickening disappointment. There went one who every 
 day could see Lily. Every morning she was privileged to 
 wake her from her rose-fired sleep. Every night she could 
 gossip with her outside the magical door of her room. Lily 
 must sometimes descend into the kitchen, and there they 
 must talk. And yet the idiotic creature was staring curi- 
 ously at some unutterably dull policeman, and wasting 
 moments she did not appreciate. Then a leaping thought 
 came to Michael, that if she wasted enough time Lily 
 might look round the front door in search of her. But too 
 soon for such an event the maid-servant pattered back; the 
 door slammed; and only the window-panes of dull gold 
 brooded immutably. How long before Lily went up to 
 bed? And did she sleep in a room that fronted the road? 
 Michael could bear it no longer and turned away from 
 the exasperation of her withlield presence; and he made up 
 his mind that he must know every detail of her daily life 
 before he again came sighing ineffectively like this in the 
 night-time. 
 
 Michael was vexed to find that he could not even con- 
 jure Lily to his side in sleep, but that even there he must
 
 LILY 435 
 
 be surrounded by the tiresome people of ordinary life. 
 However, there was always a delicious moment, just before 
 he lost complete consciousness, when the image of her dis- 
 solved and materialized elusively above the nebulous con- 
 fines of semi-reality; while always at the very instant of 
 awakening he was aware of her moth-winged kisses trem- 
 bling upon the first liquid flash of daylight. 
 
 In the quarter Michael suggested to Alan that he 
 should come back to Richmond with him, and when Alan 
 looked a little astonished at this Monday night proposal, 
 he explained that he had a lot to talk over. 
 
 "I nearly came over at nine o'clock last night," Michael 
 announced. 
 
 Alan seemed to realize that it must indeed be something 
 of importance and could scarcely wait for the time when 
 they should be fast alone and primed for confidences. 
 
 After dinner Michael proposed a walk up Richmond 
 Hill, and, without any appearance of strategy, managed 
 to persuade Alan to rest awhile on one of the seats along 
 the Terrace. In this late autumnal time there was no view 
 of the Thames gleaming beneath the sorcery of a summer 
 night. There was nothing now but a vast airiness of mist 
 damascening the blades of light with which the street-lamps 
 pierced the darkness. 
 
 "Pretty wet," said Alan distastefully patting the seat. 
 
 "We needn't stay long, but it's rather ripping, don't you 
 think?" Michael urged. "Alan, do you remember once 
 we sat here on a night before exams at the end of a summer 
 term?" 
 
 "Yes, but it was a jolly sight warmer than it is now," 
 said Alan. 
 
 "I know. We were in 'whites,' " said Michael pen- 
 sively. "Alan, I'm in love. I am really. You mustn't 
 laugh. I was a fool over that first girl, but now I am in 
 love. Alan, she's only seventeen, and she has hair the color
 
 436 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 of that rather thick honey you get at chemists. Only it 
 isn't thick, but as foamy as a lemon-sponge. And her 
 mouth is truly a bow and her voice is gloriously deep and 
 exciting, and her eyes are the most extraordinary blue — 
 as blue as ink in a bottle when you hold it up to the light, 
 and her chin is in two pieces, rather like yours, and her 
 ankles — well — her ankles are absolutely divine. The ex- 
 traordinary luck is that she loves mc, and I want you to 
 meet her. I'm describing her very accurately like this 
 because I don't want you to think I'm raving or quoting 
 poetry. You see, j^ou don't appreciate poetry, or I could 
 describe her much better." 
 
 "I do appreciate poetry," protested Alan. 
 
 "Oh, I know you like Kipling and Adam Lindsay Gor- 
 don, but I mean real poetry. Well, I'm not going to argue 
 about that. But, Alan, you must be sympathetic and be- 
 lieve that I really am in love. She has a sister called 
 Doris. I haven't met her yet, but she's sure to be lovely, 
 and I think you ought to fall in love with her. Now 
 wouldn't that be splendid? Alan, yoa do believe I'm in 
 love this time?" 
 
 Michael paused anxiously. 
 
 "I suppose you must be," said Alan slowly. 
 
 ''And you're glad?" asked Michael a little wistfully. 
 
 "What's going to happen?" Alan wondered. 
 
 "Well, of course not much can happen just now. Not 
 much can happen while one is still at school," Michael 
 went on. "But don't let's talk about what is going to be. 
 Let's talk about what is now." 
 
 Alan looked at him reproachfully. 
 
 "You used to enjoy talking about the future." 
 
 "Because it used always to be more interesting," Michael 
 explained. 
 
 Alan rose from the seat and, taking Michael's arm, drew 
 him down the hill.
 
 LILY 437 
 
 "And will you come and meet her sister?" Michael 
 asked. 
 
 ''I expect so," said Alan. 
 
 ^'Hurrah!" cried the lover. 
 
 "I suppose this means the end of football, the end of 
 cricket, in fact, the end of school as far as you're con- 
 cerned," Alan complained. "I wish you'd waited a little." 
 
 "I told you I was years older than you," Michael 
 pointed out, involuntarily making excuses. 
 
 "Only because you would encourage yourself to think so. 
 Well, I hope everything will go well. I hope you won't 
 take it into your head to think you've got to marry her 
 immediately, or any rot like that." 
 
 "Don't be an ass," said Michael. 
 
 "Well, you're such an impulsive devil. By Jove, the 
 fellow that first called you 'Bangs' was a bit of a spotter." 
 
 "It w^as Abercrombie," Michael reminded him. 
 
 "I should think that was the only clever thing he ever 
 did in his life," said Alan. 
 
 "Why, I thought you considered him no end of a good 
 man." 
 
 "He was a good forward and a good deep field," Alan 
 granted. "But that doesn't make him Shakespeare." 
 
 Thence onward war, or rather sport, the schoolboys' 
 substitute, ousted love from the conversation, and very soon 
 solo whist with Mr. and Mrs. Merivale disposed of both. 
 
 On Tuesday night Michael, in a fever of enthusiasm for 
 Wednesday's approach, wrote a letter to Stella. 
 
 64 Carlington Road^ 
 
 October, 1900. 
 My dear Stella: 
 
 After this you needn't grouse about my letters being 
 dull, and you can consider yourself jolly honored because 
 I'm writing to tell you that I'm in love. Her name is Lily 
 Haden. Only, of course, please don't go shouting this all
 
 438 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 over Germany, and don't write a gushing letter to mother, 
 who doesn't know anything about it. 1 shouldn't tell you 
 if you were in London, and don't write back and tell me 
 that you're in love with some long-haired dancing-master 
 or one-eyed banjo-player, because I know now what love 
 is, and it's nothing like what you think it is. 
 
 Lily is fair — not just fair like a doll, but frightfully 
 fair. In fact, her hair is like bubbling champagne. I met 
 her in Kensington Gardens. It was truly romantic, not a 
 silly, giggling, gone-on-a-girl sort of meeting. I hope 
 you're getting on with your music. I shall introduce Lily 
 to you just before your first concert, and then if you can't 
 play, well, you never will. You might write me a letter 
 and say what you think of my news. Not a gushing letter, 
 of course, but as sensible as you can make it. 
 
 Your loving brother, 
 
 Michael. 
 
 Michael had meant to say much more to Stella, but ink 
 and paper seemed to violate the secluded airs in which Lily 
 had her being. However, Stella would understand by his 
 writing at all that he was in deadly earnest, and she was 
 unearthly enough to supply what was missing from his 
 account. 
 
 Meanwhile to-morrow was Wednesday, the mate of 
 Saturday, and certainly of all the days in the week his 
 second favorite. Monday, of course, was vile. Tuesday 
 was colorless. Thursday was nearly as bad as Monday. 
 Friday was irksome and only a little less insipid than 
 Tuesday. Sunday had many disadvantages. Saturday was 
 without doubt the best day, and Wednesday was next best, 
 for though it was not a half holiday, as long ago it had been 
 at Randell House, it had never quite lost its suggestion of 
 holiday. Wednesday — the very word said slowly had a 
 rich individuality. Wednesday — how promptly it sprang 
 to the lips for any occasion of festivity that did not require 
 full-blown reckless Saturday. Monday was dull red. 
 Tuesday was cream-colored. Thursday was dingy purple.
 
 LILY 439 
 
 Friday was a harsh scarlet, but Wednesday was vivid apple- 
 green, or was it a clear cool blue? One or the other. 
 
 So, tantalizing himself by not allowing a single thought 
 of Lily while he was undressing, Michael achieved bed 
 very easily. Here all trivialities were dismissed, and, like 
 one who falls asleep when a star is shining through his 
 window-pane, Michael feel asleep, with Lily radiant above 
 the horizon. 
 
 It was rather a disappointing Wednesday, for Lily said 
 she could not stay out more than a minute, since her mother 
 was indoors and would wonder what she was doing. How- 
 ever, on Saturday she would see Michael again, and an- 
 nounce to her mother that she was going to see him, so that 
 on Sunday Michael could be invited to tea. 
 
 "And then, if mother likes you, why you can often come 
 in," Lily pointed out. "That is, if you want to." 
 
 "Saturday," sighed Michael. 
 
 "Well, don't spoil the few minutes we've got by being 
 miserable." 
 
 "But I can't kiss you." 
 
 "Think how much nicer it will be when we can kiss," 
 said Lily philosophically. 
 
 "I don't believe you care a damn whether we kiss or 
 not," said Michael. 
 
 "Don't I?" murmured Lily, quickly touching his hand 
 and as quickly withdrawing it to the prison of the muff. 
 
 "Ah, do you, Lily?" Michael throbbed out. 
 
 "Of course. Now I must go. Good-bye. Don't forget 
 Saturday in the Gardens, where we met last time. Good- 
 bye, good-bye, good-bye!" She was running from him 
 backward, forbidding with a wave his sudden step toward 
 her. "No, if you dare to move, I shan't meet you on 
 Saturday. Be good, be good." 
 
 By her corner she paused, stood on tiptoe for one
 
 440 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 provocative instant, blew a kiss, laughed her elfin laugh 
 and vanished more swift than any Ariel. 
 
 "Damn!" cried Michael sorely, and forthwith set out 
 to walk round West Kensington at five miles an hour, until 
 his chagrin, his disappointment and his heartsick emptiness 
 were conquered, or, at any rate, sufficiently humbled to 
 make him secure against unmanly tears. 
 
 When Saturday finally did arrive, Michael did not sit 
 reading Verlaine, but wandered from tree-trunk to tree- 
 trunk like Orlando in despair. Then Lily came at last 
 sedately, and brought the good new^ that to-morrow 
 Michael should come to tea at her house. 
 
 "But where does your mother think we met?" he asked 
 in perplexity. 
 
 "Oh, I told her it was in Kensington Gardens," said 
 Lily carelessly. 
 
 "But doesn't she think I must be an awful bounder?" 
 
 "Why, you silly, I told her you were at St. James' 
 School." 
 
 "But I never told you I was at school," exclaimed 
 Michael somewhat aghast. 
 
 "I know you didn't, and you never told me that you 
 weren't eighteen yet." 
 
 "I am in a month or two," said Michael. "But, good 
 lord, who have you been talking to?" 
 
 "Ah, that's the greatest secret in the world," laughed 
 Lily. 
 
 "Oh, no, do tell me." 
 
 "Well, I know a boy called Drake who knows you." 
 
 "That beast!" cried Michael. 
 
 "I think he's quite a nice boy. He lives next door to us 
 and " 
 
 Michael kicked angrily the dead leaves lying about his 
 feet, and almost choked with astonished fury. 
 
 "Why, my dear girl, he's absolutely barred. He's as
 
 LILY 441^ 
 
 unpopular as anybody I know. I hope you won't discuss 
 me with that hulking brute. What the deuce right has he 
 got to tell you anything about me?" 
 
 "Because I asked him, and you needn't look so enraged, 
 because if you want to know why you're coming to tea, it's 
 because I asked Arthur " 
 
 "Who's Arthur?" growled Michael. 
 
 "Arthur Drake." 
 
 "Go on," said Michael icily. 
 
 "I shan't go on, if you look like that." 
 
 "I can't help how I look. I don't carry a glass round 
 with me," said Michael. "So I suppose this worm Drake 
 had the cheek to tell your mother I was all right. Drake! 
 Wait till I see the brute on Monday morning." 
 
 "Well, if you take my advice," said Lily, "you'll be nice 
 to him, because he's supposed to have introduced us." 
 
 "What lies! What lies!" Michael stamped. 
 
 "You told me a lie about your age," Lily retorted. "And 
 I've told mother a lie on your account, so you needn't be 
 so particular. And if you think you're going to make me 
 cry you're not." 
 
 She sat down on a seat and looked out at the bare wood- 
 land with sullen eyes. 
 
 "Has Drake ever dared to make love to you?" demanded 
 Michael. 
 
 "That's my business," said Lily. "You've no right to 
 ask me questions like that." 
 
 Michael looked at her, so adorable even now, and, sud- 
 denly throwing his dignity to the dead leaves, he sat close 
 beside her caressingly. 
 
 "Darling Lily," he whispered, "it was my fault. I lied 
 first. I don't care how much you talked about me. I don't 
 care about anything but you. I'll even say Drake is a 
 decent chap — though he really isn't even moderately decent.
 
 442 YOUTH^S ENCOUNTER 
 
 Lily, we had such a rotten Wednesday, and to-day ought 
 to be perfect. Will you forgive me? Will you?" 
 
 And the quarrel was over. 
 
 ''But you don't care anything about Drake?" Michael 
 asked, when half an hour had dreamed itself away. 
 
 "Of course not," she reassured him. "Arthur likes 
 Doris better than me." 
 
 "But he mustn't like Doris," said Michael eagerly. "At 
 least she mustn't like him. Because I've got a friend — at 
 least three million times as decent as Drake, who wants to 
 be in love with Doris, or rather he will want to be when 
 he sees her." 
 
 "Why, you haven't seen Doris yourself yet," laughed 
 Lily. 
 
 "Oh, of course my plan may all come to nothing," 
 Michael admitted. "But, look here, I vote we don't bother 
 about anybody else in the world but ourselves for the rest 
 of the afternoon." 
 
 Nor did they. 
 
 "Shall I wear a top-hat to-morrow?" Michael asked 
 even in the very poignancy of farewell. "I mean — will 
 your mother prefer it?" 
 
 "Oh, no, the people who come to tea with us on Sunday 
 are mostly artists and actors," decided Lily judicially. 
 
 "Do lots of people come then?" asked Michael, quickly 
 jealous. 
 
 "A good many." 
 
 "I might as well have fallen in love with one of the 
 Royal Family," sighed Michael in despair. 
 
 "What do you mean?" 
 
 "Well, I never can see you alone," he declared. 
 
 "Wh)'^, we've had the whole of this afternoon," she told 
 him. 
 
 "Do you call sitting in the middle of Kensington Gardens
 
 LILY 443_ 
 
 being alone? Why, it was crammed with people," he 
 ejaculated in disgust. 
 
 "I must go, I must go, I must go," Lily whispered, and 
 almost seemed to be preening her wings in the lamplight 
 before she flew away. 
 
 "I say, what number is Drake's house?" Michael asked, 
 with a consummate affectation of casual inquiry. 
 
 She told him laughingly, and, in a most malicious hurry, 
 would not even linger a moment to ask him why he wanted 
 to know. Coldly and deliberately Michael, after dinner, 
 rang the bell of Drake's house. 
 
 "Is — er — Master Arthur at home?" he asked the maid. 
 
 "Master Arthur," she cried. "Someone to see you." 
 
 "Hullo, Bangs," shouted Drake, emerging effusively 
 from a doorway. 
 
 "Oh, hullo," said Michael loftily. *'I thought I'd call 
 to see if you felt like coming out." 
 
 "Right-o," said Drake. "Wait half a tick while I tell 
 my mater. Come in, and meet my people." 
 
 "Oh, no," said Michael. "I'm beastly untidy." 
 
 He would condescend to Drake for the sake of his love, 
 but he did not think that love demanded the sacrifice of 
 condescending to a possibly more expansive acquaintance 
 with Drake's family. 
 
 "So you've met the fair Lily," Drake said, as they 
 strolled along. "Pretty smart, what, my boy?" 
 
 "I'm going to tea with them to-morrow," Michael in- 
 formed him. 
 
 "Mrs. Haden's a bit thick," said Drake confidentially. 
 "And Doris is of a very coming-on disposition." 
 
 Michael thought of Alan and sighed ; then he thought of 
 himself listening to this and he was humiliated. 
 
 "But Lily is a bit stand-offish," said Drake. "Of course 
 I never could stand very fair girls myself. I say, talking of 
 girls, there's a girl in Sherringham Road, well — she's an
 
 444 YOUTH^S ENCOUNTER 
 
 actress's French maid, as a matter of fact, but, my gad, if 
 you like cayenne, you ought to come along with me, and 
 I'll introduce you. She'll be alone now. Are you on?" 
 
 "Oh, thanks very much," said Michael. *'But I must 
 get back. Good-night, Drake." 
 
 "Well, you're a nice chap to ask a fellow to come out. 
 Come on, don't be an ass. Her name's Marie." 
 
 "I don't care if her name's Marie or Mabel or what it 
 is," Michael declared in exasperation. "I'm sorry. I've 
 got to go home. Thanks for coming out." 
 
 He turned abruptly and walked off, leaving Drake to 
 apostrophize his eccentricity and seek consolation with 
 Marie. 
 
 On Sunday afternoon Michael, torn between a desire to 
 arrive before the crowd of artists and actors who thronged 
 the house, and an unwillingness to obtrude upon the Sab- 
 bath lethargy of half-past three o'clock, set out with beat- 
 ing heart to invade Lily's home. Love made him reckless 
 and luck rewarded him, for w^hen he inquired for Mrs. 
 Haden the maid told him that only Miss Lily was in. 
 
 "Who shall I say?" she asked. 
 
 "Mr. Fane." 
 
 "Step this way, please. Miss Lily's down in the morning- 
 room." 
 
 And this so brief and so bald a colloquy danced in letters 
 of fire across the darkling descent of the enclosed stairs 
 down to the ground floor. 
 
 "Someone to see you, Miss Lily." 
 
 Not Iris could have delivered a richer message. 
 
 Deep in a wicker chair by a dull red fire sat Lily with 
 open book upon her delicate dress of lavender. The door 
 closed; the daylight of the gray October afternoon seemed 
 already to have fled this room. Dusky in a corner stood a 
 great doll's house, somewhat sad like a real house that has 
 been left long untenanted.
 
 LILY _445 
 
 "Well, now we're alone enough," murmured Lily. 
 
 He knelt beside her chair and let his head fall upon her 
 silken shoulder. 
 
 "I'm glad you're in your own room," Michael sighed in 
 answer. 
 
 Outside, a muffin-man went ringing through the somber 
 Sabbath chill; and sometimes, disturbing the monotonous 
 railings above the area, absurd legs were seen hurrying to 
 their social tasks. No other sign was given of a life that 
 went on unaware of these two on whom time showered 
 twenty golden minutes. 
 
 "Mother and Doris w^ill be back at four," Lily said. "Is 
 my face flushed?" 
 
 Fresh carnations would have seemed faded near her, 
 when she looked at Michael for an answer. 
 
 "Only very slightly," he reassured her. 
 
 "Come up to the drawing-room," she commanded. 
 
 "Can I look at your dolls' house?" Michael asked. 
 
 "That old thing," said Lily scornfully. 
 
 Reverently he pulled aside the front of the battered 
 dwelling-place, and saw the minute furniture higgledy- 
 piggledy. 
 
 "I wonder if anyone has ever thought of burning an old 
 dolls' house," said Michael thoughtfully. "It would be 
 rather a rag. I've got an old toy fire-engine somewhere at 
 home." 
 
 "You baby," said Lily. 
 
 "Well, it depresses me to see that dolls' house all disused 
 and upside down and no good any more. My kiddy sister 
 gave hers to a hospital. What a pity I never thought of 
 burning that," sighed Michael regretfully. "I say, some 
 time we must explore this room. It reminds me of all sorts 
 of things." 
 
 "What sort of things?" asked Lily indifferently. 
 
 "Oh, being a kid."
 
 446 YOUTH^S ENCOUNTER 
 
 "Well, I don't want to be reminded of that," said Lily. 
 "I wish I was older than I am." 
 
 "Oh, so do I," said Michael. "I don't want to be a kid 
 again." 
 
 Upstairs in the drawing-room it was still fairly light, but 
 the backs of the gray houses opposite and the groups of 
 ghostly trees that filmed the leaden air seemed to call for 
 curtains to be drawn across the contemplation of their 
 melancholy. Yet before they sat down by the crackling 
 fire Michael and Lily stood with their cheeks against the 
 cold w^indow-panes in a luxury of bodeful silence. 
 
 "No, you're not to sit so close now," Lily ordained, when 
 by a joint impulse they turned to inhabit the room in which 
 they had been standing. Michael saw a large photograph 
 album and seized it. 
 
 "No, you're not to look in that," Lily cried. 
 
 "Why not?" he asked, holding it high above his head. 
 
 "Because I don't want you to," said Lily. "Put it 
 down." 
 
 "I want to see if there are any photographs of you when 
 you were a kid." 
 
 "Well, I don't want you to see them," Lily persisted. 
 
 In the middle of a struggle for possession of the album 
 Mrs. Haden and Doris came in, and Michael felt rather 
 foolish. 
 
 "What a dreadfully noisy girl you are, Lily," said Mrs. 
 Haden. "And is this your friend Mr. Fane? How d'ye 
 do?" 
 
 "I'm afraid it was my fault," said Michael. "I was 
 trying to bag the photograph album." 
 
 "Oh, Lily hates anyone to see that picture of her," Doris 
 interposed. "She's so conceited, and just because " 
 
 "Shut up, you beast," cried Lily. 
 
 "Her legs "
 
 - • LILY 447 
 
 "Doris!" interposed Mrs. Haden. "You must remember 
 you're grown up now." 
 
 "Mother, can't I burn the photograph?" said Lily. 
 
 "No, she's not to, mother," Doris interrupted. "She's 
 not to, is she? You jealous thing. You'd love to burn it 
 because it's good of me." 
 
 "Well, really," said Mrs. Haden, "what Mr. Fane can 
 be thinking of you two girls, I shouldn't like to guess." 
 
 The quarrel over the album died down as easily as it had 
 begun, and the entrance of the tea adjusted the conversation 
 to a less excited plane. 
 
 Mrs. Haden was a woman whom Michael could not help 
 liking, for her open, breezy manner and a certain large- 
 handed toleration which suited her loud, deep voice. But 
 he was inclined to deprecate her obviously dyed hair and 
 the plentifulness of pink powder; nor could he at first 
 detect in her any likeness to Lily who, though Mrs. Haden 
 persistently reproached her as a noisy girl, stood for Michael 
 as the slim embodiment of a subtle and easy tranquillity. 
 Gradually, however, during the afternoon he perceived 
 slight resemblances between the mother and daughter that 
 showed them vaguely alike, as much alike, at any rate, as an 
 elk and a roedeer. 
 
 Doris Haden was much less fair than Lily, though she 
 could only have been called dark in comparison with her 
 sister. She had a high complexion, wide, almond-shaped 
 eyes of a very mutable hazel, and a ripe, sanguine mouth. 
 She was dressed in a coat and skirt of crushed strawberry 
 frieze, whose cool folds seemed to enhance her slightly exotic 
 air. Michael could not help doubting whether she and 
 Alan were perfectly suited to one another. He could not 
 imagine that she would not care for him, but he wondered 
 about Alan's feelings; and Drake's overnight description 
 stuck unpleasantly in his mind with a sensation of disloyalty 
 to Lily, whose sister after all Doris was.
 
 448 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 They were not left very long without visitors, for one by 
 one young men came in with a self-possession and an as- 
 sumption of familiarity that Michael resented very much, 
 and all the more deeply because he felt himself at a dis- 
 advantage. He wondered if Lily were despising him, and 
 wished that she would not catch hold of these detestable 
 young men by the lapels of their coats, or submit to their 
 throaty persiflage. Once when the most absolutely self- 
 possessed of all, a tall, thin creature with black fuzzy hair 
 and stilted joints, pulled Lily on to his knee to talk to him, 
 Michael nearly dived through the window in a fury of 
 resentment. 
 
 All these young men seemed to him to revel in their bad 
 taste, and their conversation, half theatrical, half artistic, 
 was of a character that he could not enter into. Mrs. 
 Haden's loud laugh rang out over the clatter of teacups; 
 Doris walked about the room smoking a cigarette and hum- 
 ming songs; Lily moved from group to group w^ith a non- 
 chalance that seriously perturbed Michael, who retired more 
 and more deeply behind a spreading palm in the darkest 
 corner of the room. Yet he could not tear himself away 
 from the fascination of watching Lily's grace; he could not 
 surrender her to these marionettes of vulgar fashion; he 
 could not go coldly out into the Sabbath night without the 
 consolation of first hustling these intruders before him. 
 
 The afternoon drew on to real dusk; the gas was 
 lighted; songs were sung and music was played. All these 
 young men seemed accomplished performers of insignificant 
 arts. Mrs. Haden recited, and in this drawing-room her 
 heightened air and accentuated voice made Michael blush. 
 Doris went upstairs for a moment and presently came down 
 in a Spanish dancing dress, in which she swayed about and 
 rattled castanets and banged a tambourine, while the young 
 men sat round and applauded through the smoke of their 
 cigarettes. These cigarettes began to affect Michael's
 
 LILY 449 
 
 nerves. Wherever he looked he could see their flattened 
 corpses occupying nooks. They w^ere in the flow^er-pots ; 
 they littered the grate; they were strewn on brass ash- 
 trays; and even here and there on uninflammable and level 
 spots they stood up like little rakish mummies slowly and 
 acridly cremating themselves. Michael wondered uneasily 
 what Lily was going to do to entertain these voracious 
 listeners. He hoped she would not debase her beauty by 
 dancing on the hearthrug like her sister. In the end, Lily 
 was persuaded to sing, and her voice, very low and sweet, 
 singing some bygone coon song, was tremendously ap- 
 plauded. 
 
 Supper time drew on, and at last the parlor-maid came 
 in and inquired with a martyred air how many she should 
 lay for. 
 
 "You must all stay to supper," cried Mrs. Haden in 
 deafening hospitality. "Everybody. Mr. Fane, you'll stay, 
 won't you?" 
 
 "Oh, thanks very much," said Michael shyly, and wished 
 that these confounded young men would not all look at him 
 as if they had perceived him suddenly for the first time.. 
 Everybody seemed, as a matter of course, to help to get 
 supper ready, and Michael found himself being bumped 
 about and handed plates and knives and glasses, and salad 
 bowls. Even at supper he found himself as far as it was 
 possible to be from Lily, and he thought that never in his 
 life had food tasted so absolutely of nothing. But the 
 evening came to an end, and Michael was consoled for his 
 purgatory by Mrs. Haden's invitation to call whenever he 
 liked. In the hall, too, Lily came out to see him off, and 
 he besought her anxiously to assure him truthfully that to 
 all these young men she was indifferent. 
 
 "Of course, I don't care for any of them. Why, you 
 silly, they all think I'm still a little girl." 
 
 Then since a friendly draught had closed the drawing-
 
 450 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 room door, she kissed him; and he forgot all that had 
 happened before, and sailed home on thoughts that carried 
 him high above the iron-bound sadness of the Sunday night. 
 Some time early in the week came a letter from Stella in 
 answer to his, and when Michael read it he wished that 
 Stella would come home, since only she seemed to appre- 
 ciate what love meant. Yet Stella was even younger than 
 Lily. 
 
 Darling Michael; 
 
 Stuttgart^ 
 
 Sunday. 
 
 I'm writing a sonata about Lily. It's not very good, 
 unfortunately, so you'll never be able to hear it. But after 
 all, as you don't understand music, perhaps I will let you 
 hear it. I wish you had told me more about Lily. I think 
 she's lucky. You must be simply a perfect person to be in 
 love with. Most boys are so silly. That's why only men 
 of at least thirty attract me. But of course if I could find 
 someone younger who would be content to love me and not 
 mind whether I loved him, I should prefer that. You say 
 I don't know what love is. How silly you are, Michael. 
 Now isnt it thrilling to take Lily's hand? I do know 
 what love is. But don't look shocked, because if you can 
 still look shocked, you don't know what love is. Don't 
 forget I'm seventeen next month, and don't forget I'm a 
 girl as well as Lily. Lily is a good name for her, if she 
 is very fair. I expect she really has cendre hair. I hope 
 she's rather tall and delicate-looking. I hope she's a violin 
 sort of girl, or like those -notes half-way up the treble. It 
 must have been perfect when you met her. I can just 
 imagine you, especially if you like October as much as I 
 do. Did the leaves come falling down all round you when 
 you kissed her? Oh, Michael, it must have been enchant- 
 ing. I want to come back soon, soon, soon, and see this 
 Lily of yours. Will she like me? Is she fond of music? 
 
 I must have my first concert next summer. Mother 
 must not put me off. Why doesn't she let me come home 
 now'^ There's some reason for it, I believe. Thank good-
 
 LILY 451 
 
 ness, you'll have left school soon. You must be sick of it, 
 especially since you've fallen in love. 
 
 I think of you meeting Lily when I play Schumann, and 
 when I play Chopin I think of you walking about under- 
 neath her window, and when I play Beethoven I think of 
 you kissing her. 
 
 Darling Michael, I love you more than ever. Be inter- 
 ested in me still, because I'm not interested in anybody 
 but you except of course myself and my music. 
 
 Oh, do bring Lily to my first concert, and I'll see you 
 two alone of all the people in the Hall, and play you so 
 close together that you'll nearly faint. Now you think 
 I'm gushing, I suppose, so I'll shut up. 
 
 With a most tremendous amount of love. 
 
 Your delightful sister, 
 
 Stella. 
 
 ''I wonder if she ought to write like that," said Michael 
 to himself. "Oh, well, I don't see why she shouldn't." 
 
 Certainly as one grew older a sister became a most val- 
 uable property.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD 
 
 TO Michael it seemed almost incredible that school 
 should be able to continue as the great background 
 against which his love stood out like a delicate 
 scene carved by the artist's caprice in an obscure corner 
 of a strenuous and heroic decoration. Michael was hardly 
 less conscious of school on Lily's account, and in class he 
 dreamed neither more nor less than formerly; but his 
 dreams partook more of ecstasy than those nebulous pic- 
 tures inspired by the ambitions and ideals and books of 
 youth's progress. Nevertheless in the most ultimate refine- 
 ment of meditation school weighed down his spirit. It is 
 true that games had finally departed from the realm of his 
 consideration, but equally with games much extravagance 
 of intellect and many morbid pleasures had gone out of 
 cultivation. Balancing loss with gain, he found himself at 
 the close of his last autumn term with a surer foothold on 
 the rock-hewn foundations of truth. 
 
 Michael called truth whatever of emotion or action or 
 reaction or reason or contemplation survived the destruction 
 he was dealing out to the litter of idols that were beginning 
 to encumber his passage, many of which he thought he had 
 already destroyed when he had merely covered them with 
 a new coat of gilt. During this period he began to enjoy 
 Wordsworth, to whom he came by way of Matthew 
 Arnold, like a wayfarer who crosses green fields and finds 
 
 452
 
 EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD 453 
 
 that mountains are faint upon the horizon. A successful 
 lover, as he called himself, he began to despise anything in 
 his reading of poetry that could not measure its power with 
 the great commonplaces of human thought. 
 
 The Christmas holidays came as a relief from the burden 
 of spending so much of his time in an atmosphere from 
 which he was sure he had drained the last draught of 
 health-giving breath. Michael no longer regarded, save in 
 a contemptuous aside, the microcosm of school ; the pleasures 
 of seniority had staled; the whole business was now a 
 tedious sort of mental quarantine. If he had not had Lily 
 to occupy his leisure, he would have expired of restless 
 inanition; and he wondered that the world went on allow- 
 ing youth's load of education to be encumbered by a dead- 
 weight of superfluous information. Alan, for instance, had 
 managed to obtain a scholarship some time in late Decem- 
 ber, and would henceforth devote himself to meditating on 
 cricket for one term and playing it hard for another term. 
 It would be nine months before he went to Oxford, and 
 for nine months he would live in a state of mental catalepsy 
 fed despairingly by the masters of the Upper Sixth with the 
 few poor last facts they could scrape together from their 
 own time-impoverished store. Michael, in view of Alan's 
 necessity for gaining this scholarship, had never tried to 
 lure him toward Doris and a share in his own fortune. 
 But he resolved that during the following term he would 
 do his best to galvanize Alan out of the catalepsy that he 
 woefully foresaw was imminent. 
 
 Meanwhile the Christmas holidays were here, and 
 Michael, on their first night, vowed all their leisure to Lily. 
 
 There was time now for expeditions farther afield than 
 Kensington Gardens, which in winter seemed to have lost 
 some of their pastoral air. The naked trees no longer 
 veiled the houses, and the city with its dingy railings and 
 dingy people and mud-splashed omnibuses was always an
 
 454 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 intrusion. Moreover, fellow-Jacobeans used to haunt their 
 privacy; and often when it was fogg>^ in London, out in 
 the country there was winter sunlight. 
 
 These were days whose clarity and silence seemed to call 
 for love's fearless analysis, and under a sky of turquoise so 
 faintly blue that scarcely even at the zenith could it survive 
 the silver dazzle of the low January sun, Michael and Lily 
 would swing from Barnet into Finchley with Michael 
 talking all the way. 
 
 ''Why do you love me?" he would flash. 
 
 "Because I do." 
 
 *'Oh, can't you think of any better reason than that?" 
 
 "Because — because — oh, Michael, I don't want to think 
 of reasons," Lily would declare. 
 
 "You are determined to marry me?" Michael would 
 flash again. 
 
 "Yes, some day." 
 
 "You don't think you'll fall in love with anybody else?" 
 
 "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 en- 
 gulfed their path, the uneasy warmth of the overarching 
 trees would draw them very close, while hushed endear- 
 ments took them slowly into lamp-shine. 
 
 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
 
 EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD 455 
 
 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 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 Sussex Downs would never be hallowed by the associa- 
 tions 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 innumer- 
 able porings to the texture of Japanese 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 squab- 
 bles and favorite colors 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 snatch her on a dying cadence of 
 Verlaine out of the opalescent vistas of October trees; but
 
 456 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 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 enthu- 
 siasm 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 of me all the time I'm away from you?" 
 Michael asked. 
 
 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 over- 
 come 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 expe- 
 ditions with Lily. The general laxity tended to obscure 
 his own outlook, and he had no desire to state even to him- 
 self 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.
 
 EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD 457 
 
 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 v^ith Lily 
 w^as her refusal to allov^^ him to take her out alone at night, 
 but she had no objection to his escorting Doris and Lily 
 together to the theater; nor did she oppose Michael's plan 
 to celebrate the last night of the holidays by inviting Alan 
 to make a quartet for the Drury Lane pantomime. Alan 
 had only just come back from skating in Switzerland v^ith 
 his father, and he could not refuse to join Michael's party, 
 although he said he w^as ''off girls" at the moment. 
 
 "You alwrays 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 thrown 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 compli- 
 ment. 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 
 30
 
 458 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 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 possi- 
 bly attach himself to Doris. 
 
 Michael's own drive enthralled him. The hot theater 
 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 passionate. 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 ruflfling bird; she sighed 
 and threw a fevered hand upon his shoulder. 
 
 "Michael, why do you make me love you so?" she mur- 
 mured, 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 con- 
 sciousness 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
 
 EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD 459 
 
 street, silent, hand in hand, until the other cab swung round 
 the corner. Alan and Michael watched the two girls dis- 
 appear through the flickering door^vay, and then they 
 strolled back toward Carlington Road, where Alan was 
 
 spending the night. r t -i v» 
 
 ''Well?" asked Michael. "What do you think of Lilyr 
 
 *'I think she's very pretty." 
 
 "And Doris?" 
 
 '1 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?" . , ,xn, » 
 
 "Yes. I thought Mrs. Haden rather awful. Whats 
 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 makes any difference to me and 
 
 T ']\r " 
 
 "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.
 
 46o YOUTH^S ENCOUNTER 
 
 "Yes ... I think I do. I think it's better to live than 
 to stagnate as you're doing." 
 
 "What does your mother say?" Alan asked. 
 
 "I haven't told her anything about Lily." 
 
 "No, because you're not in earnest. And, if \^ou're in 
 earnest, Lily isn't." 
 
 "What the devil do you knovi^ about her?" Michael 
 angrily demanded. 
 
 "I know enough to see you're both behaving like a couple 
 of reckless kids," Alan retorted. 
 
 "Damn you!" cried Michael in exasperation. "I wish 
 you wouldn't try to interfere with what doesn't after all 
 concern you very much." 
 
 "You insisted on introducing me," Alan pointed out. 
 
 "Because I thought it would be a rag if we were both in 
 love with sisters. But you're turning into a machine. Since 
 you've swatted up into the Upper Sixth, you've turned into 
 a very good imitation of the prigs you associate with. Every- 
 body isn't like you. Some people develop. ... I could 
 have been just like you if I had cared to be. I could have 
 been Captain of the School and Scholar of Balliol Vv-ith my 
 nose ground down to d and cav, hammering out tenth-rate 
 Latin lyrics and reading Theocritus with the amusing parts 
 left out. But what's the good of arguing with you? You're 
 perfectly content, and you think you can be as priggish as 
 you like, as long as you conceal it by making fifty runs in 
 the Dulford match. I suppose you consider my behavior 
 unwholesome at eighteen. Well, I daresay it is by your 
 standards. But are your standards worth anything? I 
 doubt it. I think they're fine up to a point. I'm perfectly 
 willing to admit that we behaved like a pair of little blight- 
 ers with those girls at Eastbourne. But this is something 
 altogether different." 
 
 "We shall see," said Alan simply. "I'm not going to 
 quarrel with you. So shut up."
 
 EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD 461 
 
 Michael walked along in silence, angry with himself for 
 having caused this ill feeling by his obstinacy in making an 
 unsuitable introduction, and angry with Alan because he 
 would accentuate by his attitude the mistake. 
 
 By the steps of his house Michael stopped and looked at 
 Alan severely. 
 
 "This is the last time I shall attempt to cure you," he 
 announced. 
 
 "All right," said Alan with perfect equanimity. "You 
 can do anything you like but quarrel. You needn't talk to 
 me or look at me or think about me until you want to. I 
 shall feel a bit bored, of course, but, oh, my dear old chap, 
 do get over this love-sickness soon." 
 
 "This isn't like that silly affair at Bournemouth last 
 Easter," Michael challenged. 
 
 "I know that, my dear chap. I wish it was." 
 
 With the subject of love finally sealed between him and 
 Alan, Michael receded farther and farther from the world 
 of school. He condescended indeed to occupy a distinguished 
 position by the hot-water pipes of the entrance-hall, where 
 his aloofness and ability to judge men and gods made him a 
 popular, if slightly incomprehensible, figure. Toward all 
 the masters he emanated a compassion which he really felt 
 very deeply. Those whom he liked he conversed with as 
 equals; those whom he disliked he talked to as inferiors. 
 But he pitied both sections. In class he was polite, but 
 somewhat remote, though he missed very few opportunities 
 of implicitly deriding the Liberal views of Mr. Kirkham. 
 The whole school with its ant-like energy, whose ultimate 
 object and obvious result were alike inscrutable to Michael, 
 just idly amused him, and he reserved for Lily all his zest 
 in life. 
 
 The Lent term passed away with parsimonious February 
 sunlight, with March lying gray upon the houses until it 
 proclaimed itself suddenly in a booming London gale. The
 
 462 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 Easter holidays arrived, and Mrs. Fane determined to go to 
 Germany and see Stella. Would Michael come? Michael 
 pleaded many disturbed plans of cricket practice ; of matric- 
 ulation at St. Mary's College, Oxford; of working for the 
 English Literature Prize; of anything indeed but his desire 
 to see with Lily April break to May. In the end he had 
 his own way, and Mrs. Fane went to the Continent without 
 his escort. 
 
 Lily was never eager for the discussions and the con- 
 tingencies and the doubts of love; in all their walks it had 
 been Michael who flashed the questions, she who let slip 
 her answers. The strange fatigue of spring made much less 
 difference to her than to him, and however insistent he was 
 for her kisses she never denied him. Michael tried to feel 
 that the acquiescence of the hard, the reasonable, the intel- 
 lectual side of him to April's passionate indulgence merely 
 showed that he was more surely and more sanely growing 
 deeper in love with Lily every day. Sometimes he had 
 slight tremors of malaise, a sensation of weakening fibers, 
 and dim stirrings of responsibility; but too strong for them 
 was his heartsease, too precious w^as Lily's rose-bloomed 
 grace of submission. The more sharply imminent her form 
 became upon his thought, the more surely deathless did he 
 suppose his love. Michael's mind was always framing 
 moments in eternity, and of all these moments the sight of 
 her lying upon the vivid grass, the slim, the pastoral, the 
 fair immortal girl stood unparagoned by any. There was 
 no landscape that Lily did not make more inevitably com- 
 posed. There was no place of which she did not become 
 tutelary, whether she lay among the primroses that starred 
 the steep brown banks of woodland or whether she fronted 
 the great sunshine of the open country; but most of all 
 when she sat in cowslips, looking over arched knees at the 
 wind.
 
 EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD 463 
 
 Michael fell into the way of talking to her as if he were 
 playing upon Dorian pipes the tale of his love: 
 
 "I must buy you a ring, Lily. What ring shall I buy 
 for you ? Rings are all so dull. Perhaps your hands would 
 look wrong with a ring, unless I could find a star-sapphire 
 set in silver. I thought you were lovely in autumn, but I 
 think you are more lovely in spring. How the days are 
 going by; it will soon be May. Lily, if you had the choice 
 of everything in the world, what would you choose?" 
 
 "I would choose to do nothing." 
 
 "If you had the choice of all the people in the world, 
 would you choose me?" 
 
 "Yes. Of course." 
 
 "Lily, you make me curiously lazy. I want never again 
 to do anything but sit in the sun with you. Why can't we 
 stay like this forever?" 
 
 "I shouldn't mind." 
 
 "I wish that you could be turned into a primrose, and 
 that I could be turned into a hazel-bush looking down at 
 you forever. Or I wish you could be a cowslip and I could 
 be a plume of grass. Lily, why is it that the longer I know 
 you the less you say?" 
 
 "You talk enough for both," said Lily. 
 
 "I talk less to you than to anyone. I really only want to 
 look at you, you lovely thing." 
 
 But the Easter holidays were almost over, and Michael 
 had to go to Oxford for his matriculation. On their last 
 long day together, Lily and he went to Hampton Court 
 and dreamed the sad time away. When twilight was falling 
 Michael said he had a sovereign to spend on whatever they 
 liked best to do. Why should they not have dinner on a 
 balcony over the river, and after dinner drive all the way 
 home in a hansom cab? 
 
 So they sat grandly on the chilly balcony and had dinner, 
 until Lily in her thin frock was cold.
 
 464 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 "But never mind," said Michael. 'Til hold you close 
 to me all the way to London." 
 
 They found their driver and told him where to go. The 
 man was very much pleased to think he had a fare all the 
 way to London, and asked Michael if he wanted to drive 
 fast. 
 
 "No, rather slow, if anything," said Michael. 
 
 The fragrant miles went slowly past, and all the way 
 they drove between the white orchards, and all the way like 
 a spray of bloom Lily was his. Past the orchards they went, 
 past the twinkling roadside houses, past the gates where the 
 shadows of lovers fell across the road, past the breaking limes 
 and lilac, past the tulips stifE and dark in the moonlight, 
 through the high narrow street of Brentford, past Kew 
 Bridge and the slow trams with their dim people nodding, 
 through Chiswick and into Hammersmith where a piano- 
 organ was playing and the golden streets were noisy. It 
 was Doris who opened the door. 
 
 "Eleven o'clock," she said. "Mother's rather angry." 
 
 "You'd better not come in," said Lily to Michael. 
 "She'll be all right again by next week, when you come 
 back." 
 
 "Oh, no, I'll come in," he insisted. "I'd rather explain 
 why we're so late." 
 
 "It's no use arguing with mother when she's unreason- 
 able," said Lily. "I shall go up to bed; I don't want to 
 have a row." 
 
 "That's right," Doris sneered. "Always take the shortest 
 and easiest way. You are a coward." 
 
 "Oh, shut up," said Lily, and without another word 
 went upstairs. 
 
 "You've spoilt her," said Doris. "Well, are you going 
 to see mother? She isn't in a very pleasant mood, I warn 
 you." 
 
 "She's never been angry before," said Michael hopelessly.
 
 EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD 465 
 
 "Well, she has really," Doris explained. "Only she's 
 vented it on me." 
 
 "I say, I'm awfully sorry. I had no idea " Michael 
 
 began. 
 
 "Oh, don't apologize," said Doris. "I'm used to it. 
 Thank God, I'm going on the stage next year; and then 
 Lily and mother will be able to squabble to their heart's 
 content." 
 
 Mrs. Haden was sitting in what was called The Cosy 
 Corner; and she treated Michael's entrance with exagger- 
 ated politeness. 
 
 "Won't you sit down? It's rather late, but do sit 
 down.*' 
 
 All the time she was speaking the plate-rack above The 
 Cosy Corner was catching the back of her hair, and 
 Michael wondered how long it would be before she noticed 
 this. 
 
 "Really, I think it's very wrong of you to bring my 
 daughter home at this hour," Mrs. Haden clattered. "I'm 
 sure nobody likes young people to enjoy themselves more 
 than I do. But eleven o'clock! Where is Lily now?" 
 
 "Gone to bed," said Doris, w^ho seized the opportunity 
 to depart also. 
 
 "I'm awfully sorry, Mrs. Haden," said Michael awk- 
 wardly. "But, as it was my last night, I suggested driving 
 back from Hampton Court. It was all my fault; I do 
 hope you won't be angry with Lily." 
 
 "But I am angry with Lily," said Mrs. Haden. "Very 
 angry. She's old enough to know better, and you're old 
 enough to know better. How will people think I'm bring- 
 ing up my daughters, if they return at midnight with young 
 men in hansoms? I never heard of such a thing. You're 
 presuming on your age. You've no business to compromise 
 a girl like this." 
 
 "Compromise?" stammered Michael.
 
 466 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 "None of the young people but you has ever ventured 
 to behave like this," Mrs. Haden w^ent on with sharply 
 metallic voice. "Not one of them. And, goodness knows, 
 every Sunday the house is full of them." 
 
 "But they don't come to see Lily," Michael pointed out. 
 "They come to see you." 
 
 "Are you trying to be rude to me?" Mrs. Haden asked. 
 
 "No, no," Michael assured her. "And, honestly, Mrs. 
 Haden, I didn't think you minded me taking Lily out." 
 
 "But what's going to happen?" Mrs. Haden demanded. 
 
 "Well — I — I suppose I want to marry Lily." 
 
 Michael w^ondered if this statement sounded as absurd 
 to Mrs. Haden as it sounded to himself. 
 
 "What nonsense!" she snapped. "What utter non- 
 sense! A schoolboy talking such nonsense. Marriage 
 indeed! You know as w^ell as I do that you've never 
 thought about such a step." 
 
 "But I have," said Michael. "Very often, as it happens." 
 
 "Then you mustn't go out with Lily again. Why, it's 
 worse than I thought. I'm horrified." 
 
 "Do you mean I'm never to come here again?" Michael 
 asked in despair. 
 
 "Come occasionally," said Mrs. Haden. "But only 
 occasionally." 
 
 "All right. Thanks," said Michael, feeling stunned by 
 this unexpected rebuke. "Good night, Mrs. Haden." 
 
 In the hall he found Doris. 
 
 "Well?" she asked. 
 
 "Your mother says I'm only to come occasionally." 
 
 "Oh, that won't last," said Doris encouragingly. 
 
 "Yes, but I'm not sure that she isn't right," said Michael. 
 "Oh, Doris, damn. I wish I couldn't alw^ays see other 
 people's point of view\" 
 
 "Mother often has fits of violent morality," said Doris. 
 "And then we always catch it. But really tjiey don't last."
 
 EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD 467 
 
 "Doris, you don't understand. It isn't your mother's 
 disapproval I'm worrying over. It's myself. Lily might 
 have waited to say good night," Michael murmured miser- 
 ably. 
 
 But straight upon his complaint he saw Lily leaning over 
 from the landing above and blowing kisses, and he felt more 
 calm. 
 
 "Don't worry too much about Lily," whispered Doris, 
 as she held the door open for him. 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "I shouldn't, that's all," she said enigmatically, and closed 
 the door very gently. 
 
 At the time Michael was not conscious of any deep im- 
 pression made by the visit to Oxford for his matriculation; 
 he was too much worried by the puzzle of his future con- 
 duct with regard to Lily. He felt dull in the rooms where 
 he spent two nights alone; he felt shy among the forty or 
 fifty boys from other public schools ; he was glad to go back 
 to London. Vaguely the tall gray tower remained in his 
 mind, and vaguely the cool Gothic seemed to offer a shelter 
 from the problems of behavior, but that was all. 
 
 When he returned, the torment of Lily's desired presence 
 became more acute. His mother wrote to say that she would 
 not be back for three days, and the only conclusion was the 
 hint that most probably Stella would come back with her. 
 
 Meanwhile this was Saturday, and school did not begin 
 until Tuesday. Time after time Michael set out toward 
 Trelawny Road; time after time he checked himself and 
 fought his way home again. Mrs. Haden had been right; 
 he had behaved badly. Lily was too young to bear the 
 burden of their passionate love. And was she happy with- 
 out him? Was she sighing for him? Or would she forget 
 him and resume an existence undisturbed by him? But 
 the thought of wasted time, of her hours again unoccupied,
 
 468 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 of her footsteps walking to places ignorant of him was in- 
 tolerable. 
 
 Sunday came round, and Michael thought that he would 
 fling himself into the stream of callers; but the idea of 
 doing so became humiliating, and instead he circled drearily- 
 round the neighboring roads, circled in wide curves, and 
 sometimes even swooped into the forbidden diameter of 
 Trelawny Road. But always, before he could bring himself 
 to pass her very door, he would turn back into his circle 
 and the melancholy Sabbath sunlight of May. 
 
 Twilight no more entranced him, and the lovers leaning 
 over to one another languorously in their endearments, 
 moving with intertwined arms and measured steps between 
 the wine-dark houses, annoyed him with their fatuous com- 
 placency and their bland eyes. He wanted her, his slim 
 and silent Lily, who blossomed in the night-time like a 
 flower. Her wrists w^ere cool as porcelain and the contact 
 of her form swaying to his progress was light as silk. Every- 
 one else had their contentment, and he must endure 
 wretchedly without the visible expression of his beauty. 
 It was not yet too late to see her; and Michael circled 
 nearer to Trelawny Road. This time he came to Lily's 
 house; he paused within sound of laughter upon the easeful 
 step; and then again he turned away and walked furiously 
 on through the empty Sabbath streets. 
 
 In his room, when it was now too late to think of calling, 
 Michael laughed at himself for being so sensitive to Mrs. 
 Haden's reproaches. He told himself that all she said was 
 due to the irritation of the moment, that to-morrow he 
 must go again as if nothing had happened, that people 
 had no right to interfere between lovers. But then, in all 
 its florid bulk, St. James' School rose up, and Michael 
 admitted to himself that to the world he was merely a 
 foolish schoolboy. He, the dauntless lover, must be chained 
 to a desk for five hours every day. A boy and girl affair!
 
 EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD 469 
 
 Michael ground his teeth with exasperation. He must 
 simply prove by renouncing for a term his part in Lily's 
 life that he was a schoolboy by an accident of time. A man 
 is as old as he feels ! He would see Lily once more, and tell 
 her that for the sake of their ultimate happiness he would 
 give her up for the term of his bondage. Other great and 
 romantic lovers had done the same; they may not have 
 gone to school, but they had accepted menial tasks for the 
 sake of their love. 
 
 Yet in the very middle of the night, when the thickest 
 darkness seemed to stifle self-deception, Michael knew that 
 he had bowed to authority so easily because his conscience 
 had already told him what Mrs. Haden so crudely hinted. 
 When he was independent of school it would be different. 
 Michael made up his mind that the utmost magnanimity 
 would be possible if he could see Lily once to tell her of his 
 resolution. But on the next day Lily was out, and Mrs. 
 Haden talked to him instead. 
 
 "I've forbidden Lily to go out with you alone," she said. 
 "And I would prefer that you only came here when I am 
 in the house." 
 
 "I was going to suggest that I shouldn't come at all until 
 July — until after I had left school, in fact," answ^ered 
 Michael. 
 
 "Perhaps that would be best. Then you and Lily will 
 be more sensible." 
 
 "Good-bye," said Michael hurriedly, for he felt that he 
 must get out of this stifling room, away from this over- 
 whelming woman with her loud voice and dyed hair and 
 worldly-wise morality. Then he had a sudden conception 
 of himself as part of a scene, perceiving himself in the role 
 of the banished lover nobly renouncing all. "I won't write 
 to her. I won't make any attempt to see her," he offered. 
 
 "You'll understand," said Mrs. Haden, "that I'm afraid 
 of — that I think," she corrected, "it is quite likely that
 
 470 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 Lily is just as bad for you as you are for Lily. But of 
 course the real reason I feel I ought to interfere is on 
 account of what people say. If Mr. Haden were not in 
 Burmah ... it would be different." 
 
 Michael pitied himself profoundly for the rest of that 
 day; but after a long luxury of noble grief the image of 
 Lily came to agitate and disconcert his acquiescence, and 
 the insurgent fevers of love goaded his solitude. 
 
 Mrs. Fane and Stella returned during the first week of 
 school. The great Steinway grand that came laboriously 
 in through the unsashed window of the third story gave 
 Michael, as it lay like a boulder over Carlington Road, a 
 wonderful sense of Stella's establishment at home. Stella's 
 music-room was next to his bedroom, and when in her 
 nightgown she came to practice in the six o'clock sunshine 
 Michael thought her music seemed the very voice of day. 
 
 So joyously did the rills and ripples and fountains of her 
 harmony rouse him from sleep that he refrained from 
 criticizing her apparel, and sat contented in the sunlight 
 to listen. 
 
 Suddenly Stella wheeled round and said: 
 
 "Do tell me about Lily." 
 
 "Well, there's been rather a row," Michael began. 
 
 "You see, I took her to Hampton Court and we drove 
 
 . . ." Michael stopped, and for the first time he obtained 
 
 a cold clear view of his behavior, when he found he was 
 
 hesitating to tell Stella lest he might set her a bad example. 
 
 "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,
 
 EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD 471 
 
 one hand went trilling in scale toward tiie 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 bass. 
 
 "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 w^ould suppose. 
 And really I don't think you ought to practice in your night- 
 gown."
 
 472 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 "Oh, Michael, if I practiced 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 
 ow^ning to himself that in her white nightgown, straight- 
 backed against the shimmering ebony instrument, little in- 
 deed 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 the torment of Lily's withheld presence. As a 
 month went by, the image of her gained in elusive beauty, 
 and the desire to see became a madness. He tried to evade 
 his promise by haunting the places she would be likely to 
 frequent, but he never saw her. He wondered if she could 
 be in London, and he nearly wrote to ask. There was no 
 consolation to be gained from books; there was no senti- 
 ment to be culled from the spots they had known together. 
 He wanted herself, her fragility, her swooning kisses, her- 
 self, herself. She was the consummation of idyllic life, the 
 life he longed for, the passionate life of beauty expressed 
 in her. Stella had her music; Alan had his cricket; Mrs. 
 Ross had her son; and he must have Lily. How damnable 
 were these silver nights of June, how their fragrance, musk- 
 like even here in London, fretted him with the imagination 
 of wasted beauty. These summer nights demanded love; 
 they enraged him with their uselessness. 
 
 "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.
 
 EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD 473 
 
 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 plentitude of color 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-glass 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 
 31
 
 474 YOUTH^S ENCOUNTER 
 
 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 un- 
 utterably beneath the rest of mankind was he already in- 
 clined to estimate himself. Stella opened wide her gray 
 eyes when she greeted his pale disheartened return. 
 
 ''Feeling ill?" she asked. 
 
 *Tm feeling a worthless brute," said Michael, plunging 
 into a dejected acquiescence in the worst that could be said 
 about him. 
 
 "Tell me," whispered Stella. "Ah, do." 
 
 "I've found out that Lily is quite ready to flirt with any- 
 body. With anybody!" 
 
 "What a beastly girl!" Stella flamed. 
 
 "Well, you can't expect her to remain true to a creature 
 like me," said Michael, declaring his self-abasement. 
 
 "A creature like you?" cried Stella. "Why, Michael, 
 how can you be so absurd? If you speak of yourself like 
 that, I shall begin to think you are *a creature' as you call 
 yourself. Ah, no, but you're not, Michael. It's this Lily 
 who is the creature. Oh, don't I know her, the insipid 
 
 475
 
 476 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 puss! A silly little doll that lets everybody pull her about. 
 I hate weak girls. How I despise them !" 
 
 "But you despise boys, Stella," Michael reminded her. 
 "And this chap she was flirting with w^as much older than 
 me. Perhaps Lily is like you, and prefers older men." 
 
 Michael had no heart left even to maintain his stand 
 against Stella's alarming opinions and prejudices so frankly 
 expressed. 
 
 "Like me," Stella cried, stamping her foot. "Like me! 
 How dare you compare her with me? I'm not a doll. 
 Do you think anyone has ever dared to kiss me?" 
 
 "I'm sorry," said Michael. "But you talk so very 
 daringly that I shouldn't be surprised by anything you told 
 me. At the same time I can't help sympathizing with Lily. 
 It must have been dull to be in love with a schoolboy — an 
 awkward lout of eighteen." 
 
 "Michael! I will not hear you speak of yourself like 
 that. I'm ashamed of you. How can you be so weak? Be 
 proud. Oh, Michael, do be proud — it's the only thing on 
 earth worth being." 
 
 Stella stood dominant before him. Her gray eyes flashed ; 
 her proud, upcurving mouth was slightly curled: her chin 
 was like the chin of a marble goddess, and yet with that 
 brown hair lapping her wide shoulders, with those long 
 legs, lean-flanked and supple, she was more like some heroic 
 boy. 
 
 "Yes, you can be proud enough," said Michael. "But 
 you've got something to be proud of. What have I got?" 
 
 "You've got me," said Stella fiercely. 
 
 "Why, yes, I suppose I have," Michael softly agreed. 
 "Let's talk about your first appearance." 
 
 "I was talking about it to mother when a man called 
 Prescott came." 
 
 "Prescott?" said Michael. "I seem to have heard mother
 
 PARENTS 477 
 
 speak about him. I wonder when it was. A long time 
 ago, though." 
 
 "Well, whoever he was," said Stella, "he brought mother 
 bad news." 
 
 "How do you know?" 
 
 "Have you ever seen mother cry?" 
 
 "Yes, once," said Michael. "It was when I was talking 
 through my hat about the war." 
 
 "I've never seen her cry," said Stella pensively. "Until 
 to-day." 
 
 Michael forgot about his own distress in the thought of 
 his mother, and he sat hushed all through the evening, 
 while Stella played in the darkness. Mrs. Fane went up 
 to her own room immediately she came in that night, and 
 the next morning, which was Saturday, Michael listlessly 
 took the paper out to read in the garden, while he waited 
 for Stella to dress herself so that they could go out together 
 and avoid the house over which seemed to impend calamity. 
 
 Opening the paper, Michael saw an obituary notice of the 
 Earl of Saxby. He scanned the news, only half absorbing it : 
 
 "In another column will be found the details — enteric — 
 adds another famous name to the lamentable toll of this 
 war — the late nobleman did not go into society much of 
 late years — formerly Captain in the Welsh Guards — born 
 i860 — married Lady Emmeline MacDonald, daughter of 
 the Earl of Syke, K.t. — raised corps of Mounted Infantry 
 (Saxby's Horse) — great traveler — unfortunately no heir to 
 the title which becomes extinct." 
 
 Michael guessed the cause of his mother's unhappiness 
 of yesterday. He went upstairs and told Stella. 
 
 "I suppose mother was in love with him," she said. 
 
 "I suppose she was," Michael agreed. "I wish I hadn't 
 refused to say good-bye to him. It seems rather horrible 
 now." 
 
 Mrs. Fane had left word that she would not be home
 
 478 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 until after dinner, and Michael and Stella sat apprehensive 
 and silent in the drawing-room. Sometimes they would 
 toss backward and forward to each other reassuring words, 
 while outside the livid evening of ochreous oppressive clouds 
 and ashen pavements slowly dislustred into a night swollen 
 with undelivered rain and baffled thunders. } 
 
 About nine o'clock Mrs. Fane came home. She stood for • 
 a moment in the doorway of the room, palely regarding her ■ 
 children. She seemed undecided about something, but after 
 a long pause she sat down between them and began to 
 speak : 
 
 "Something has happened, dear children, that I think 
 you ought to know about before you grow any older." 
 
 Mrs. Fane paused again and stared before her, seeming 
 to be reaching out for strength to continue. Michael and 
 Stella sat breathless as the air of the night. Mrs. Fane's 
 white kid gloves fell to the floor softly like the petals of a 
 blown rose, and, as if she missed their companionship in 
 the stress of explication, she went on more rapidly. 
 
 "Lord Saxby has died in the Transvaal of enteric fever, 
 and I think you both ought to know that Lord Saxby was 
 your father." 
 
 When his mother said this, the blood rushed to Michael's 
 face and then immediately receded, so that his eyelids, as 
 they closed over his eyes to shield them from the room's 
 suddenly intense light, glowed greenly; and, when he looked 
 again an,vwhere save directly at his mother, his heart seemed 
 to have been crushed between ice. The room itself went 
 swinging up in loops out of reach of his intelligence, that 
 vainly strove to bring it back to familiar conditions. The 
 nightmare passed; the drawing-room regained its shape and 
 orderly tranquillity; the story went on. 
 
 "I have often wished to tell you, Michael, in particular,'* 
 said his mother, looking at him with great gray eyes whose 
 lustrous intensity cooled his first pained sensation of shame-
 
 PARENTS 479 
 
 fulness. ''Years ago, when you were the dearest little boy, 
 and when I was young and rather lonely sometimes, I longed 
 to tell you. But it would not have been fair to weigh you 
 down with knowledge that you certainly could not have 
 grasped then. I thought it was kinder to escape from your 
 questions, even when you said that your father looked like 
 a prince." 
 
 "Did I?" Michael asked, and he fell to wondering why 
 he had spoken and why his voice sounded so exactly the 
 same as usual. 
 
 "You see . . . of course ... I was never married to 
 your father. You must not blame him, because he wanted 
 to marry me always, but Lady Saxby wouldn't divorce him. 
 I daresay she had a right to nurse her injury. She is still 
 alive. She lives in an old Scottish castle. Your father gave 
 up nearly all his time to me. That was why you were 
 both alone so much. You must forgive me for that, if you 
 can. But I knew, as time went on, that we should never 
 be married, and . . . Your father only saw you once, dear- 
 est Stella, when you were very tiny. You remember, 
 Michael, when you saw him. He loved you so much, for 
 of course, except in name, you were his heir. He wanted 
 to have you to live with him. He loved you." 
 
 "I suppose that's why I liked him so tremendously," said 
 Michael. 
 
 "Did you, dearest boy?" said Mrs. Fane, and the tears 
 were in her gray eyes. "Ah, how dear it is of you to say 
 that." 
 
 "Mother, I can't tell you how sorry I am I never went 
 to say good-bye. I shall never forgive myself," said 
 Michael. "I shall never forgive myself." 
 
 "But you must. It was my fault," said his mother. "I 
 daresay I asked you tactlessly. I was so much upset at the 
 time that I only thought about myself." 
 
 "Why did he go?" asked Stella suddenly.
 
 480 YOUTH^S ENCOUNTER 
 
 "Well, that was my fault. I was always so dreadfully 
 worried over the way in which I had spoilt his life that 
 when he thought he ought to go and fight for his country 
 I could not bear to dissuade him. You see, having no heir, 
 he was always fretting and fretting about the extinction 
 of his family, and he had a fancy that the last of his name 
 should do something for his country. He had given up his 
 country for me, and I knew that if he went to the war 
 he would feel that he had paid the debt. I never minded 
 so much that we weren't married, but I always minded the 
 feeling that I had robbed him by my love. He was such a 
 very dear fellow. He was always so good and patient, 
 when I begged him not to see you both. That was his 
 greatest sorrow. But it wouldn't have been fair to you, 
 dear children. You must not blame me for that. I knew 
 it was better that you should be brought up in ignorance. 
 It was, wasn't it?" she asked wistfully. 
 
 "Better," Michael murmured. 
 
 "Better," Stella echoed. 
 
 Mrs. Fane stood up, and Michael beheld her tall, tragical 
 form with a reverence he had never felt for anything. 
 
 "Children, you must forgive me," she said. 
 
 And then simply, with repose and exquisite fitness, she 
 left Michael and Stella to themselves. By the door Stella 
 overtook her. 
 
 "Mother darling," she cried. "You know we adore you. 
 You do, don't you?" 
 
 Mrs. Fane smiled, and Michael thought he would cherish 
 that smile to the end of his life. 
 
 "Well?" said Michael, when Stella and he were sitting 
 alone again. 
 
 "Of course, I've known for years it was something like 
 this," said Stella. 
 
 "I can't think why I never guessed. I ought to have 
 guessed easily," Michael said. "But somehow one never
 
 PARENTS 481 
 
 thinks of anything like this in connection with one's own 
 mother." 
 
 "Or sister," murmured Stella, looking up at a spot on 
 the ceiling. 
 
 "I wish I could kick myself for not having said good-bye 
 to him," Michael declared. "That comes of talking too 
 much. I talked much too much then. Talking destroys 
 action. What a beast I was. Lily and I look rather small 
 now, don't we?" he went on. "When you think of the 
 amount that mother must have suffered all these years, it 
 just makes Lily and me look like illustrations in a book. 
 It's a curious thing that this business about mother and 
 . . . Lord Saxby ought, I suppose, to make me feel more 
 of a worm than ever, but it doesn't. Ever since the first 
 shock, I've been feeling prouder and prouder. I can't make 
 it out." 
 
 Then suddenly Michael flushed. 
 
 "I say, I wonder how many of our friends have known 
 all the time? Mrs. Carthew and Mrs. Ross both know. I 
 feel sure by what they've said. And yet I wonder if Mrs. 
 Ross does know. She's so strict in her notions that ... I 
 wonder . . . and yet I suppose she isn't so strict as I thought 
 she was. Perhaps I was wrong." 
 
 "What are you talking about?" Stella asked. 
 "Oh, something that happened at Cobble Place. It's 
 not important enough to tell you." 
 
 "What I'm wondering," said" Stella, "is what mother 
 was like when she was my age. She didn't say anything 
 about her family. But I suppose we can ask her some time. 
 I'm really rather glad I'm not 'Lady Stella Fane.' It 
 would be ridiculous for a great pianist to be 'Lady Some- 
 thing.' " 
 
 "You wouldn't have been Lady Stella Fane," Michael 
 contradicted. "You would have been Lady Stella Cun- 
 ningham. Cunningham was the family name. I remember
 
 482 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 reading about it all when I was interested in Legitimists." 
 
 "What are they?" Stella asked. "The opposite of ille- 
 gitimate?" 
 
 Michael explained the difference, and he was glad that 
 the word "illegitimate" should first occur like this. The 
 pain of its utterance seemed mitigated, somehow by the 
 explanation. 
 
 "It's an extraordinary thing," Michael began, "but, do 
 you know, Stella, that all the agony of seeing Lily flirting 
 seems to have died away, and I feel a sort of contempt 
 . . . for myself, I mean. Flirting sounds such a loath- 
 some word after what we've just listened to. Alan was 
 right, I believe. I shall have to tell Alan about all this. 
 I wonder if it will make any difference to him. But of 
 course it won't. Nothing makes any difference to Alan." 
 
 "It's about time I met him," said Stella. 
 
 "Why, haven't you?" Michael exclaimed. "Nor you 
 have. Great Scott! I've been so desperately miserable 
 over Lily that I've never asked Alan here once. Oh, I 
 will, though." 
 
 "I say, oughtn't we to go up to mother?" said Stella. 
 
 "Would she like us to?" Michael wondered. 
 
 "Oh, yes, I'm sure she would." 
 
 "But I can't express what I feel," Michael complained. 
 "And it will be absurd to go and stand in front of her 
 like two dummies." 
 
 "I'll say something," Stella promised; and, "Mother," 
 she asked, "come and hear me play to you." 
 
 The music-room, with its spare and austere decoration, 
 seemed to Michael a fit place for the quiet contemplation 
 of the tale of love he had lately heard. 
 
 Whatever of false shame, of self-consciousness, of shock 
 remained was driven away by Stella's triumphant music. 
 It was as if he were sitting beneath a mountain waterfall 
 that, graceful and unsubstantial as wind-blown tresses, was
 
 PARENTS 483 
 
 yet most incomparably strong, and wrought an ice-cold, a 
 stern purification. 
 
 Then Stella played with healing gentleness, and Michael 
 in the darkness kissed his mother and stole away to bed, 
 not to dream of Lily that night, not to toss enfevered, but 
 quietly to lie awake devising how to show his mother that 
 he loved her as much now as he had loved her in the dim 
 sunlight of most early childhood. 
 
 About ten days later Mrs. Fane came to Michael and 
 Stella with a letter. 
 
 "I want to read you something," she said. "Your 
 father's last letter has come." 
 
 "We are in Pretoria now, and I think the war will soon 
 be over. But of course there's a lot to be done yet. I'm 
 feeling seedy to-night, and I'm rather sighing for England. 
 I wonder if I'm going to be ill. I have a presentiment 
 that things are going wrong with me — at least not wrong, 
 because in a way I would be glad. No, I wouldn't, that 
 reads as if I were afraid to keep going. 
 
 "I keep thinking of Michael and Stella. Michael must 
 be told soon. He must forgive me for leaving him no 
 name. I keep thinking of those Siamese stamps he asked 
 for when I last saw him. I wish I'd seen him again before 
 I went. But I daresay you were right. He would have 
 guessed who I was, and he might have gone away resent- 
 ful." 
 
 Michael looked at his mother, and thanked her implicitly 
 for excusing him. He was glad that his father had not 
 known he had declined to see him. 
 
 "I don't worry so much over Stella. If she really has 
 the stuff in her to make the name you think she will, she 
 does not need any name but her own. But it maddens me 
 to think that Michael is cut out of everything. I can 
 scarcely bear to realize that I am the last. I'm glad he's 
 going to Oxford, and I'm very glad that he chose St.
 
 484 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 Mary's. I was only up at Christ Church a year, and St. 
 Mary's was a much smaller college in those days. Now of 
 course it's absolutely one of the best. Whatever Michael 
 wants to do he will be able to do, thank God. I don't 
 expect, from what you tell me of him, he'll choose the 
 Service. However, he'll do what he likes. When I come 
 back, I must see him, and I shall be able to explain what 
 will perhaps strike him at first as the injustice of his posi- 
 tion. I daresay he'll think less hardly of me when I've 
 told him all the circumstances. Poor old chap! I feel 
 that I've been selfish, and yet . . . 
 
 "I wonder if I'm going to be ill. I feel rotten. But 
 don't worry. Only, if by any chance I can't write again, 
 will you give my love to the children, and say I hope they'll 
 not hate the thought of me. That piano was the best 
 Prescott could get. I hope Stella is pleased with it." 
 
 "Thanks awfully for reading us that," said Michael.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 MUSIC 
 
 MRS. FANE, having momentarily lifted the veil 
 that all these years had hidden her personality 
 from Michael and Stella, dropped it very swiftly 
 again. Only the greatest emotion could have given her the 
 courage to make that avowal of her life. During the days 
 that elapsed between the revelation and the reading of Lord 
 Saxby's last letter, she had lived very much apart from her 
 children, so that the spectacle of her solitary grief had been 
 deeply impressed upon their sensibility. 
 
 Michael was reminded by her attitude of those long 
 vigils formerly sustained by ladies of noble birth before 
 they departed into a convent to pray, eternally remote from 
 the world. He himself became endowed with a strange 
 courage by the contemplation of his mother's tragical immo- 
 bility. He found in her the expression of those most voice- 
 less ideals of austere conduct that until this vision of resig- 
 nation had always seemed doomed to sink broken-winged to 
 earth. The thought of Lily in this mood became an intru- 
 sion, and he told himself that, even if it were possible to 
 seek the sweet unrest of her presence, beneath the somber 
 spell of this more classic sorrow he would have shunned 
 that lovely and romantic girl. Michael's own realization 
 of the circumstances of his birth occupied a very small part 
 of his thoughts. His mind was fixed upon the aspect of 
 his mother mute and heavy-lidded from the remembrance 
 
 485
 
 486 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 of that soldier dead in Africa. Michael felt no outrage 
 of fate in these events. He was glad that death should 
 have brought to his father the contentment of his country's 
 honor, that in the grace of reconciliation he should be healed 
 of his thwarted life. Nor could Michael resent that news 
 of death which could ennoble his mother with this placidity 
 of comprehension, this staid and haughty mien of sorrow. 
 And he was grateful, too, that death should upon his own 
 brow dry the fever dew of passion 
 
 But when she read that last letter, Mrs. Fane 
 strangely resumed her ordinary self. She was always so 
 finely invested with dignity, so exquisitely sheathed in her 
 repose, Michael scarcely realized that now, after she had 
 read the letter, the vision of her grief was once more veiled 
 against him by that faintly discouraging, tenderly deliberate 
 withdrawal of her personality, and that she was still as 
 seclusive as when from his childhood she had concealed the 
 sight of her love, living in her own rose-misted and im- 
 penetrable privacy. 
 
 It was Stella who by a sudden request first roused 
 Michael to the realization that his mother was herself 
 again. 
 
 ''Mother," she said, "what about my first concert? The 
 season is getting late." 
 
 "Dearest Stella," Mrs. Fane replied, "I think you can 
 scarcely make your appearance so soon after your father's 
 death." 
 
 "But, mother, I'm sure he wouldn't have minded. And 
 after all very few people would know," Stella persisted. 
 
 "But I should prefer that you waited for a while," said 
 Mrs. Fane, gently reproachful. "You forget that we are 
 in mourning." 
 
 For Michael somehow the conventional expression seemed 
 to disturb the divinity of his mother's carven woe. The 
 world suddenly intervened.
 
 MUSIC 487 
 
 "Well, I don't think I ought to wait for ever," said 
 Stella. 
 
 "Darling child, I wonder why you should think it neces- 
 sary to exaggerate so foolishly," said Mrs. Fane. 
 
 "But I'm so longing to begin," Stella went on. 
 
 "I don't know that anybody has ever suggested you 
 shouldn't begin," Mrs. Fane observed. "But there is a 
 difference between your recklessness and my more carefully 
 considered plans." 
 
 "Mother, will you agree to a definite date?" Stella de- 
 manded. 
 
 "By all means, dear child, if you will try to be a little 
 less boisterous and impetuous. For one thing, I never 
 knew you were ready to begin at once like this." 
 
 "Oh, mother, after all these years and years of practic- 
 ing!" Stella protested. 
 
 "But are you ready?" Mrs. Fane inquired in soft sur- 
 prise. "Really ready? Then why not this autumn? Why 
 not October?" 
 
 "Before I go up to Oxford," said Michael quickly. 
 
 Stella was immediately and vividly alert w^ith plans for 
 her concert. 
 
 "I don't think any of the smaller halls. Couldn't I 
 appear first at one of the big orchestral concerts at King's 
 Hall? I w^ould like to play a concerto . . . Chopin, I 
 think, and nothing else. Then later on I could have a con- 
 cert all to myself, and play Schumann, and perhaps some 
 Brahms." 
 
 So in the end it was settled after numberless interviews, 
 letters, fixtures, cancellations, and all the fuming impedi- 
 ments of art's first presentation at the court of the world. 
 
 The affairs and arrangements connected with Stella's 
 career seemed to Michael the proper distraction for his 
 mother and sister during his last two or three weeks of 
 school, before they could leave London. Mrs. Fane had
 
 488 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 suggested they should go to Switzerland in August, staying 
 at Lucerne, so that Stella would not be hindered in her 
 steady practice. 
 
 Michael's last week at school was a curiously unreal ex- 
 perience. As fast as he marshaled the correct sentiments 
 with which to approach the last hours of a routine that had 
 continued for ten years, so fast did they break up in futile 
 disorder. He had really passed beyond the domain of 
 school some time ago when he was always with Lily. It 
 was impossible after that gradual secession, all the more 
 final because it had been so gradual, to gather together now 
 a crowd of associations for the sole purpose of effecting 
 a violent and summary wrench. Indeed, the one action 
 that gave him the expected pang of sentiment was w^hen 
 he went to surrender across the counter of the book-room 
 the key of his locker. The number was seventy-five. In 
 very early days Michael had been proud of possessing, 
 through a happy accident, a locker on the ground-floor very 
 close to the entrance-hall. His junior contemporaries were 
 usually banished to remote corridors in the six-hundreds, 
 waiting eagerly to inherit from departed seniors the more 
 convenient lockers dow^nstairs. But Michael from the day 
 he first heard by the cast of the Laocoon the shufliie of 
 quick feet along the corridor had owned the most con- 
 venient locker in all the school. At the last moment 
 Michael thought he would forfeit the half-crown long ago 
 deposited and keep the key, but in the end he, with the 
 rest of his departing contemporaries, callously accepted the 
 more useful half-crown. 
 
 School broke up in a sudden heartless confusion, and 
 Michael for the last time stood gossiping outside the school- 
 doors at five o'clock. For a minute he felt an absurd desire 
 to pick up a stone and fling it through the window of the 
 nearest class-room, not from any spirit of indignation, but
 
 MUSIC 489 
 
 merely to assure himself of a physical freedom that he had 
 not yet realized. 
 
 "Where are you going for the holidays, Bangs?" some- 
 one asked. 
 
 "Switzerland." 
 
 "Hope you'll have a good time. See you next — oh, by 
 Jove, I shan't though. Good-bj^e, hope you'll have good 
 luck." 
 
 "Thanks," said Michael, and he had a fleeting view of 
 himself relegated to the past, one of that scattered host — 
 
 Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks 
 In Vallombrosa — 
 
 Old Jacobeans, ghostly, innumerable, whose desks like 
 tombstones would bear for a little while the perishable ink 
 of their own idle epitaphs. 
 
 Lucerne was airless; the avenue of pollarded limes 
 sheltered a depressed bulk of dusty tourists; the atmos- 
 phere was impregnated with bourgeois exclamations; the 
 very surface of the lake was swarming with humanity, 
 noisy with the click of rowlocks, and with the gutturals 
 that seemed to praise fitly such a theatrical setting. 
 
 Mrs. Fane wondered why they had come to Switzerland, 
 but still she asked Michael and Stella whether they would 
 like to venture higher. Michael, perceiving the hordes of 
 Teutonic nomads who were sweeping up into the heart of 
 the mountains, thought that Switzerland in August would 
 be impossible whatever lonely height they gained. They 
 moved to Geneva, whose silver-pointed beauty for a while 
 deceived them, but soon both he and Stella became restless 
 and irritable. 
 
 "Switzerland is like sitting in a train and traveling 
 through glorious country," said Michael. "It's all right 
 for a journey, but it becomes frightfully tiring. And, 
 32
 
 490 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 mother, I do hate the sensation that all these people round 
 are feeling compelled to enjoy themselves. It's like a hearty 
 choral service." 
 
 "It's like an oratorio," said Stella. "I can't play a 
 note here. The very existence of these mobs is deafening." 
 
 "Well, I don't mind where we go," said Mrs. Fane. 
 'Tm not enjoying these peculiar tourists myself. Shall we 
 go to the Italian lakes? I used to like them very much. 
 I've spent many happy days there." 
 
 "I'd rather go to France," said Michael. "Only don't 
 let's go far. Let's go to Lyons and find out some small 
 place in the country. I was talking to a decent chap — not 
 a tourist — who said there were delightful little red-roofed 
 towns in the Lyonnais." 
 
 So they left Switzerland and went to Lyons, where, sit- 
 ting under the shade of trees by the tumbling blue Rhone, 
 they settled with a polite agent to take a small house near 
 Chatillon. 
 
 Hither a piano followed them, and here for seven weeks 
 they lived, each one lost in sun-dyed dreams. 
 
 "I knew we should like this," Michael said to Stella, as 
 they leaned against tubs of rosy oleanders on a lizard- 
 streaked wall, and watched some great white oxen go 
 smoothly by. "I like this heart of France better than 
 Brittany or Normandy. But I hope mother won't be 
 bored here." 
 
 "There are plenty of books," said Stella. "And anyway 
 she wants to lie back and think, and it's impossible to 
 think except in the sun." 
 
 The oxen were still in sight along the road that wound 
 upward to where Chatillon clustered red upon its rounded 
 hill. 
 
 "It doesn't look like a real town," said Michael. "It's 
 really not different from the red sunbaked earth all about 
 here. I feel it would be almost a pity ever to walk up that
 
 MUSIC 491 
 
 road and find it is a town. I vote we never go quite close, 
 but just sit here and watch it changing color all through 
 the day. I never want to move out of this garden." 
 
 "I can't walk about much," said Stella. "Because I 
 simply must practice and practice and practice and prac- 
 tice." 
 
 They always woke up early in the morning, and Michael 
 used to watch Chatillon purple-bloomed with the shadow 
 of the fled night, then hazy crimson for a few minutes 
 until the sun came high enough to give it back the rich 
 burnt reds of the day. All through the morning Michael 
 used to sit among the peach trees of the garden, while 
 Stella played. All through the morning he used to read 
 novel after novel of ephemeral fame that here on the un- 
 disturbed shelves had acquired a certain permanence. In 
 the afternoon Stella and he used to wander through the 
 vineyards down to a shallow brown stream bordered by 
 poplars and acacias, or in sun-steeped oak woods idly chase 
 the long lizards splendid with their black and yellow loz- 
 enges and shimmering green mail. 
 
 Once in a village at harvest-time, when the market place 
 was a fathom deep in golden corn, they helped in the 
 threshing, and once, when the grain had been stored, they 
 danced here with joyful country-folk under the moon. 
 
 During tea-time they would sit with their mother beneath 
 an almond tree, while beyond in sunlit air vibrant with the 
 glad cicadas, butterflies wantoned with the oleanders, or 
 upon the wall preened their slow fans. Later, they would 
 pace a walk bordered by tawny tea-roses, and out of the 
 globed melons they would scent the garnered warmth of 
 the day floating forth to mingle with the sweet breath of 
 eve. Now was the hour to climb the small hill behind the 
 peach trees. Here across the mighty valley of the Saone 
 they could see a hundred miles away the Alps riding across 
 the horizon, light as clouds. And on the other side over
 
 492 
 
 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 their own little house lay Chatillon cherry-bright in the 
 sunset, then damson-dark for a while, until it turned to a 
 velvet gloom prickled with points of gold and slashed with 
 orange stains. 
 
 Michael and Stella always went to bed when the land- 
 scape had faded out. But often Michael would sit for a 
 long time and pore upon the rustling, the dark, the moth- 
 haunted night; or if the moon were up he would in fancies 
 swim out upon her buoyant watery sheen. 
 
 Sometimes, as he sat among the peach trees, a thought of 
 Lily w^ould come to him; and he would imagine her form 
 swinging round the corner. The leaves and sunlight, while 
 he dreamed of her, dappled the unread pages of his book. 
 He would picture himself with Lily on these sunny uplands 
 of the Lyonnais, and gradually she lost her urban actuality; 
 gradually the disillusionment of her behavior was forgotten. 
 With the obliteration of Lily's failure the anguish for her 
 bodily form faded out, and Michael began to mould her to 
 an incorporeal idea of first love. In this clear air she stood 
 before him recreated, as if the purifying sun, which was 
 burning him to the likeness of the earth around, had been 
 able at the same time to burn that idea of young love to a 
 slim Etruscan shape which could thrill him forever with 
 its beauty, but nevermore fret him with the urgency of 
 desire. He was glad he had not spoken to her again after 
 that garden interlude; and, though his heart would have 
 leapt to see her motionable and swaying to his glances as 
 she came delicately toward him through the peach trees, 
 Michael felt that somehow he would not kiss her, but that 
 he would rather lead her gravely to the hill-top and set 
 her near him to stay forever still, forever young, forever 
 fair. 
 
 So all through that summer the sun burned Michael, 
 while day by day the white unhurried oxen moved, slow as 
 clouds, up the hill toward the town. But Michael never
 
 MUSIC 493 
 
 followed their shambling steps, and therefore he never 
 destroyed his dream of Chatillon. 
 
 As the time drew nearer and nearer for Stella's concert, 
 she practiced more incessantly. Nor would she walk now 
 with Michael through the vineyards down to the shallow 
 poplar-shadowed stream. Michael was seized with a 
 reverence for her tireless concentration, and he never tried 
 to make her break this rule of work, but would always 
 wander away by himself. 
 
 One day, when he was lying on a parched upland ridge, 
 Michael had a vision of Alan in green England. Suddenly 
 he realized that in a few weeks they would be setting out 
 together for Oxford. The dazzling azure sky of France 
 lightened to the blown softness of an English April. 
 Cloistral he saw Oxford, and by the base of St. Mary's 
 Tower the people, small as emmets, hurrying. The roofs 
 and spires were wet with rain, and bells w^ere ringing. He 
 saw the faces of all those who from various schools would 
 encounter with him the grayness and the grace of Oxford, 
 and among them was Alan. 
 
 How familiar Oxford seemed after all! 
 
 The principal fact that struck Michael about Stella in 
 these days of practicing for her concert was her capacity 
 for renouncing all extravagance of speech and her steady 
 withdrawal from everything that did not bear directly 
 on her work. She no longer talked of her brilliance; she 
 no longer tried to astonish Michael with predictions of 
 genius; she became curiously and impressively diligent, and, 
 without conveying an idea of easy self-confidence, she man- 
 aged to make Michael feel perfectly sure of her success. 
 
 During the latter half of September Michael went to 
 stay with Alan at Richmond, partly because with the near- 
 ness of Stella's appearance he began to feel nervous, and 
 partly because he found speculation about Oxford in Alan's 
 company a very diverting pursuit. From Richmond he
 
 494 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 went up at the end of the month in order to pass Respon- 
 sions without difficulty. On the sixth of October was the 
 concert at King's Hall. 
 
 Michael had spent a good deal of time in sending letters 
 to all the friends he could think of, inviting their attendance 
 on this occasion of importance. He even wrote to Wilmot 
 and many of the people he had met at Edwardes Square. 
 Everyone must help in Stella's triumph. 
 
 At the beginning of October Mrs. Ross arrived at the 
 Merivales' house, and for the first time since their con- 
 versation in the orchard she and Michael met. He was shy 
 at first, but Mrs. Ross was so plainly anxious to show that 
 she regarded him as affectionately as ever that Michael 
 found himself able to resume his intimacy at once. How- 
 ever, since Stella was always uppermost in his thoughts, 
 he did not test Mrs. Ross with any more surprising ad- 
 missions. 
 
 On the night before the concert Mr. and Mrs. Merivale, 
 Mrs. Ross, Alan and Michael sat in the drawing-room, 
 talking over the concert from every point of view. 
 
 "Of course she'll be a success," said Mr. Merivale, and 
 managed to implicate himself as usual in a network of bad 
 puns that demanded the heartiest reprobation from his 
 listeners. 
 
 "Dear little girl," said Mrs. Merivale placidly. "How 
 nice it is to see children doing things." 
 
 "Of course she'll be a success," Alan vowed. "You've 
 only got to look at her to see that. By gad, what an off- 
 drive she w^ould have had, if she'd only been a boy." 
 
 Michael looked at Alan quickly. This was the first time 
 he had ever heard him praise a girl of his own accord. He 
 made up his mind to ask Stella when her concert was over 
 how Alan had impressed her. 
 
 "Dear Michael," said Mrs. Ross earnestly, "you must 
 not worry about Stella. Don't you remember how years
 
 MUSIC 495 
 
 ago I said she would be a great pianist? And you were so 
 amusing about it, because you would insist that you didn't 
 like her playing." 
 
 "Nor I did," said Michael in laughing defence of himself 
 at eight years old. '1 used to think it was the most melan- 
 choly noise on earth. Sometimes I think so now, when 
 Stella wraps herself up in endless scales. By Jove," he 
 suddenly exclaimed, "what's the time?" 
 
 "Half-past eight nearly. Why?" Alan asked. 
 
 "I forgot to write and tell Viner to come. It's not very 
 late. I think I'll go over to Notting Hill now, and ask 
 him. I haven't been to see him much lately, and he was 
 always awfully decent to me." 
 
 Mr. Viner was reading in his smoke-hung room. 
 
 "Hullo," he said. "You've not been near me for almost 
 a year." 
 
 "I know," said Michael apologetically. "I feel rather 
 a brute. Some time I'll tell you why." 
 
 Then suddenly Michael wondered if the priest knew 
 about Lord Saxby, and he felt shy of him. He felt that he 
 could not talk intimately to him until he had told him 
 about the circumstances of his birth. 
 
 "Is that what's been keeping you away?" asked the 
 priest. "Because, let me tell you, I've known all about you 
 for some years. And look here, Michael, don't get into 
 your head that you've got to make this sort of announce- 
 ment every time you form a new friendship." 
 
 "Oh, that wasn't the reason I kept away," said Michael. 
 "But I don't want to talk about myself. I want to talk 
 about my sister. She's going to play at the King's Hall 
 concert to-morrow night. You will come, won't you?" 
 
 "Of course I will," said the priest. 
 
 "Thanks, and — er — if you could think about her when 
 you're saying Mass to-morrow morning, why, I'd rather
 
 496 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 like to serve you, if I may. I must tear back now," Michael 
 added. "Good-night." 
 
 "Good-night," said the priest, and as Michael turned in 
 the doorway his smile was like a benediction. 
 
 Very early on the next morning through the curdled 
 October mists Michael went over to Notting Hill again. 
 The Mission Church stood obscurely amid a press of mean 
 houses and, as Michael hurried along the fetid narrow 
 thoroughfare, the bell for Mass was clanging among the 
 fog and smoke. Here and there women were belaboring 
 their doorsteps with mangy mats or leaning with grimed 
 elbows on their sills in depressed anticipation of a day's 
 drudgery. From bedridden rooms came the sound of chil- 
 dren wailing and fighting over breakfast. Lean cats nosed 
 in the garbage strewn along the gutters. 
 
 The Mission Church smelt strongly of soap and stale 
 incense, and in the frore atmosphere the colored pictures 
 on the walls looked more than usually crude and violent. 
 It was the Octave of St. Michael and All Angels, and the 
 white chrysanthemums on the altar were beginning to turn 
 brown. There was not a large congregation — two sisters 
 of mercy, three or four pious and dowdy maiden ladies 
 and the sacristan. It was more than two years since Michael 
 had served at Mass, and he was glad and grateful to find 
 that every small ceremony still seemed sincere and fit and 
 inevitable. There was an exquisite morning stillness in 
 this small tawdry church, and Michael thought how strange 
 it was that in this festering corner of the city it was 
 possible to create so profound a sense of mystery. What- 
 ever emotion he gained of peace and reconciliation and 
 brooding holiness he vowed to Stella and to her fame and 
 to her joy. 
 
 After Mass Michael went back to breakfast with Mr. 
 Viner and, as they sat talking about Oxford, Michael 
 thought how various Oxford was compared with school,
 
 MUSIC 497 
 
 how many different kinds of people would be appropriate 
 to their surroundings, and he began with some of the ardor 
 that he had given hitherto to envy of life to covet all vari- 
 eties of intellectual experience. What a wonderfully sug- 
 gestive word was University, and how exciting it was to 
 see Viner tabulating introductions for his benefit. 
 
 Michael sat by himself at the concert. During the 
 afternoon he had talked to Stella for a few minutes, but 
 she had seemed more than ever immeasurably remote from 
 conversation, and Michael had contented himself with 
 offering stock phrases of encouragement and exhortation. 
 He went early to King's Hall and sat high up in the 
 topmost corner looking down on the orchestra. Gradually 
 through the bluish mist the indefinite audience thickened, 
 and their accumulated voices echoed less and less. The 
 members of the orchestra had not yet entered, but their 
 music-stands stood about with a ridiculous likeness to human 
 beings. In the middle was Stella's piano black and lifeless, 
 a little ominous in its naked and insistent and faintly 
 shining ebon solemnity. One of the orchestra threaded his 
 way through the chairs to where the drums stood in a 
 bizarre group. From time to time this lonely human figure 
 struck his instruments to test their pitch, and the low 
 boom sounded hollowly above the murmurous audience. 
 
 A general accession of light took place, and now suddenly 
 the empty platform was filled with nonchalant men who 
 gossiped while they made discordant sounds upon their 
 instruments. The conductor came in and bowed. The 
 audience clapped. There was a momentary hush, followed 
 by a sharp rat-tat of the baton, and the Third Leonora 
 Overture began. 
 
 To Michael the music was a blur. It was soundless 
 beside his own beating heart, his heart that thudded on and 
 on, on and on, while the faces of the audience receded 
 farther and farther through the increasing haze. The
 
 498 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 Overture was finished. From the hall that every moment 
 seemed to grow darker came a sound of ghostly applause. 
 Michael looked at his program in a fever. What was this 
 unpronounceable German composition, this Tonic Poem that 
 must be played before Stella's turn would arrive? It 
 seemed to go on forever in a most barbaric and amorphous 
 din; with corybantic crashings, with brazen fanfares and 
 stinging cymbals it flung itself against the audience, while 
 the wood-wind howled and the violins were harsh as cats. 
 Michael brooded unreceptive; he had a sense of mon- 
 strous loneliness; he could think of nothing. The noise 
 overpowered his beating heart, and he began to count 
 absurdly, while he bit his nails or shivered in alternations 
 of fire and snow. Then his program fluttered down onto 
 the head of a bald violoncellist, and the ensuing shock of 
 self-consciousness, that was mingled with a violent desire 
 to laugh very loudly, restored him to his normal calm. 
 The Tonic Poem shrieked and tore itself to death. The 
 World became very quiet. 
 
 There was a gradual flap of rising applause, and it was 
 Stella who, tall and white, was being handed across the 
 platform. It was Stella who was sitting white and rigid at 
 the black piano that suddenly seemed to have shrunk into 
 a puny insignificance. It was Stella whose fingers were 
 causing those rills of melody to flow. She paused, while 
 the orchestra took up their part, and then again the rills 
 began to flow, gently, fiercely, madly, sadly, wildly. Now 
 she seemed to contend against the mighty odds of innumer- 
 able rival instruments; now her own frail instrument 
 seemed to flag; now she was gaining strength; her cool 
 clear harmonies were subduing this welter of violins, this 
 tempest of horns and clarionets, this menace of bass-viols 
 and drums. The audience was extinguished like a candle. 
 The orchestra seemed inspired by the angry forces of nature 
 herself. The bows of the violins whitened and flickered like
 
 MUSIC 499 
 
 willows in a storm, and yet amid this almost intolerable 
 movement Stella sat still as a figure of eternal stone. A 
 faint smile curved more sharply her lips; the black bows 
 in her hair trembled against her white dress ; her wonderful 
 hands went galloping away to right and left of her straight 
 back. Plangent as music itself, serene as sculpture, with 
 smiling lips magically crimson, adorably human, she finished 
 her first concerto. And while she bowed to the audience 
 and to the orchestra and the great shaggy conductor, Michael 
 saw ridiculous teardrops bedewing his sleeve, not because 
 he had been moved by the music, but because he was unable 
 to shake by the hand every single person in King's Hall 
 who was now applauding his sister. 
 
 It was not until Beethoven's somber knock at the opening 
 of the Fifth Symphony that Michael began to dream upon 
 the deeps of great music, that his thoughts liberated from 
 anxiety went straying into time. Stella, when for a little 
 while he had reveled in her success, was forgotten, and the 
 people in this hall, listening, listening, began to move him 
 with their unimaginable variety. Near him were lovers 
 who in this symphony were fast imparadised ; their hands 
 were interlaced ; visibly they swayed nearer to each other 
 on the waves of melody. Old men were near him, solitary 
 old men listening, listening . . . old men who at the sum- 
 mons of these ringing notes were traversing their past that 
 otherwise might have stayed forever unvoyageable. 
 
 Michael sometimes craved for Lily's company, wished 
 that he could clasp her to him and swoon away upon these 
 blinding chords. But she was banished from this world of 
 music, she who had betrayed the beauty of love. There 
 was something more noble in this music than the memory 
 of a slim and lovely girl and of her flower-soft kisses. The 
 world itself surely seemed to travel the faster for this urgent 
 sj^mphony. Michael was spinning face to face with the 
 spinning stars.
 
 500 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 And then some thread of simple melody would bring 
 him back to the green world and the little memories of his 
 boyhood. Now more than ever did it seem worth while to 
 live on earth. He recognized, as if suddenly he had come 
 dow^n from incredible heights, familiar faces in the audience. 
 He saw his mother with Mrs. Ross beside her, two figures 
 that amid all this intoxication of speeding life must for- 
 ever mourn. Now, while the flood of music was sounding 
 in his ears, he wished that he could fly down through this 
 dim hall, and tell them, as they sat there in black w^ith 
 memories beside them, how well he loved them, how much 
 he honored them, how eagerly he demanded from them 
 pride in himself. 
 
 After the first emotions of the mighty music had worn 
 themselves out, Michael's imagination began to wander 
 rapidly. At one point the bassoons became very active, 
 and he was somehow reminded of Mr. Neech. He was 
 puzzled for a while to account for this association of an 
 old form-master with the noise of bassoons. For he heard 
 the loud bassoon. Out of the past came the vision of old 
 Neech w^agging the tail of his gown as he strode back- 
 ward and forward over the floor of the Shell class-room. 
 The luedding-guest here beat his breast. For he heard 
 the loud bassoon. Out of the past came the shrill sound 
 of boys' ruining The Ancient Mariner, and Michael heard 
 again the outraged apostrophes of Mr. Neech. He began 
 to create from his fancy of Mr. Neech a grotesque symbol 
 of public-school education. Certainly he was the only mas- 
 ter who had taught him anything. Yet he had probably 
 tried less to teach earnestly than any other master. Why 
 did this image of Mr. Neech materialize whenever his 
 thoughts went back to school? Years had passed since he 
 had enjoyed the Shell. He had never talked intimately to 
 Neech; indeed, he had scarcely held any communication 
 with him since he left his form. The influence of Neech
 
 MUSIC 501 
 
 must have depended on a personality that demanded from 
 his pupils a stoic bearing, a sense of humor, a capacity for 
 inquisitiveness, an idea of continuity. He could not re- 
 member that any of these qualities had been appreciated 
 by himself until he had entered the Shell. Michael re- 
 gretted very deeply that on the day before he left school 
 he had not thanked Neech for his existence. How nebulous 
 already most of his other masters seemed. Only Neech 
 stood out clear-cut as the intagliation of a sardonyx. 
 
 Meditation upon Neech took Michael ofE to Thackeray. 
 He had been reading Pendennis lately, and the book had 
 given him much the same sensation of finality as his old 
 form-master, and, as Michael thought of Thackeray, he 
 began to speculate upon the difference between Michael 
 Fane and the fourteenth Earl of Saxbj^ Yet he was rather 
 glad that after all he was not the fourteenth Earl of Saxby. 
 It w^ould be interesting to see how his theories of good- 
 breeding w^ere carried out by himself as a nobody with old 
 blood in his veins. He would like to test the common talk 
 that rank was an accident, that old families, old faiths, old 
 education, old customs, old manners, old thoughts, old 
 books, were all so much moonshine. Michael wondered 
 whether it were so, w^hether indeed all men if born with 
 equal chances would not display equal qualities. He did 
 not believe it — he hated the doctrine. Yet people in all 
 their variety called to him still, and as he surveyed the 
 audience he was aware from time to time of a great 
 !onging to involve himself in the web of humanity. He 
 was glad that he had not removed himself from the world 
 like Chator. Chator! He must go down to Clere and 
 see how Chator was getting on as a monk. He had not 
 even thought of Chator for a year. But after all Oxford 
 had a monastic intention, and Michael believed that from 
 Oxford he would gain as much austerity of attitude as 
 Chator would acquire from the rule of St. Benedict. And
 
 502 YOUTH'S ENCOUNTER 
 
 when he left Oxford, he would explore humanity. He would 
 travel through the world and through the underworld and 
 apply always his standard of ... of what? What was 
 his standard? A classic permanence, a classic simplicity 
 and inevitableness ? 
 
 The symphony stopped. He must hurry out and con- 
 gratulate Stella. What a possession she was; what an 
 excitement her career would be. How he would love to 
 control her extravagance, and, even as he controlled it, 
 how he would admire it. And his mother had talked of 
 taking a house in Chelsea. What various interests were 
 springing into existence. He must not forget to ask Alan 
 what train he was going by to Oxford. They must arrive 
 together. He had not yet bought his china. His china! 
 His pictures! His books! His rooms in college. Life was 
 really astonishing. 
 
 The concert was over, and as Michael came swirling 
 down the stairs on the flood of people going home he had 
 a strange sensation of life beginning all over again. 
 
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