"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? Something is going to happen. I know. I feel it."
He fled through the wind-frayed orchard up the hill-side. With his back against the tower called Grogg"s Folly he 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 G.o.d, 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 n.o.body can understand anybody else, let alone the universe. Mrs. Ross can understand 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 interrupted conversation with Mrs. Ross, though he fancied a reproachfulness in her manner towards him, especially at the moment of saying good-bye. He was not therefore much surprized to receive a letter from her soon after he was back in Carlington Road.
COBBLE PLACE,
_September 18th._
_My dear Michael,_
_I have blamed myself entirely for what happened the other day. I should have been honoured by your confidence, and I cannot think why a wretched old-fashioned priggishness 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 I"m sure you are wise enough not to use it in justification of any wrong impulse. Do always remember, my dear boy, that however unscathed you feel yourself to be, you must never a.s.sume 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 rea.s.sure 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 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 downcast glance walked on, seeming to follow her path softly as one might follow through embroidery 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, swaying, 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 box-cloth, and the heavy folds that clung to that lissome form made her ankles behind great pompons of black silk seem astonishingly slender. One hand was masked by a small m.u.f.f 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. Indeed, 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 Kensington 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 m.u.f.f.
"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 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 ama.s.sing, and with a half-mocking wave of her m.u.f.f 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 G.o.ds of luck and love were fighting on his side this afternoon. "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.