Sinister Street by Compton Mackenzie (great books to read TXT) 📕

speak to you, but you’d gone before I could manage it. Where have you been all these years? Once I went to Trelawny Road, but the house was empty.” He could not tell her that Drake had been the first to bring him news of her.

“It’s years since I was there,” said Lily. “Years and years.” She turned to call her friend, and the pierrette with the rose pompons came closer to be introduced.

“Miss Sylvia Scarlett: Mr. Michael Fane. Aren’t I good to remember your name quite correctly?” Michael thought that her mouth for a moment was utterly scornful. “What made you come here? Have you got a friend with you?”

Michael explained that he was alone, and that his visit here was an accident.

“Why did you come?” he asked.

“Oh, something to do,” said Lily. “We live near here.”

“So do I,” said Michael hastily.

“Do you?” Her eyebrows went up in what he imagined was an expression of rather cruel interrogation. “This is a silly sort of a show. Still, even Covent Garden is dull now.”

Michael thought what a fool he had been not to include Covent Garden in his search. How well he might have known she would go there.

“Where’s Doris?” he asked.

Lily shrugged her shoulders.

“I never see anything of her nowadays. She married an actor. I don’t often get letters from home, do I, Sylvia?”

The pierrette with rose pompons, who ever since her introduction had still been standing outside the conversation, now raised her mask. Michael liked her face. She had merry eyes, and a wide nose rather Slavonic. Next to Lily she seemed almost dumpy.

“Letters, my dear,” she exclaimed, in a very deep voice, “Who wants letters?”

The music of a waltz was beginning, and Michael asked Lily if she would dance with him. She looked at Sylvia.

“I don’t think.⁠ ⁠…”

“Oh, what rot, Lily! Of course you can dance.”

Michael gave her a grateful smile.

In a moment Lily had lowered her mask, and they were waltzing together.

“My gad, how gloriously you waltz!” he whispered. “Did we ever dance together five years ago?”

She shrugged her shoulders, and he felt the faint movement tremble through the imponderable form he held.

“Lily, I’ve been looking for you since June,” he sighed.

“You’re breaking step,” she said. Though her mask was down, Michael was sure that she was frowning at him.

“Lily, why are you so cold with me? Have you forgotten?”

“What?”

“Why, everything!” Michael gasped.

“You’re absolutely out of time now,” she said sternly.

They waltzed for a while in silence, and Michael felt like a midge spinning upon a dazzle.

“Do you remember when we met in Kensington Gardens?” he ventured. “I remember you had black pompons on your shoes then, and now you have pale blue pompons on your dress.”

She was not answering him.

“It’s funny you should still be living near me,” he went on. “I suppose you’re angry with me because I suddenly never saw you again. That was partly your mother’s fault.”

She looked at him in faint perplexity, swaying to the melody of the waltz. Michael thought he had blundered in betraying himself as so obviously lovestruck now. He must be seeming to her like that absurd and sentimental boy of five years ago. Perhaps she was despising him, for she could compare him with other men. Ejaculations of wonder at her beauty would no longer serve, with all the experience she might bring to mock them. She was smiling at him now, and the mask she wore made the smile seem a sneer. He grew so angry with her suddenly that almost he stopped in the swing of the dance to shake her.

“But it was much more your fault,” he said savagely. “Do you remember Drake?”

She shook her head; then she corrected herself.

“Oh, yes. Arthur Drake who lived next door to us.”

“Well, I saw you in the garden from his window. You were being kissed by some terrible bounder. That was jolly for me. Why did you do that? Couldn’t you say ‘no’? Were you too lazy?”

Michael thought she moved closer to him as they danced.

“Answer me, will you; answer me, I say. Were you too lazy to resist, or did you enjoy being cheapened by that insufferable brute you were flirting with?”

Michael in his rage of remembrance twisted her hand. But she made no gesture, nor uttered any sound of pain. Instead she sank closer to his arms, and as the dance rolled on, he told himself triumphantly that, while she was with him, she was his again.

What did the past matter?

“Ah, Lily, you love me still! I’ll ask no more questions. Am I out of step?”

“No, not now,” she whispered, and he saw that her face was pale with the swoon of their dancing.

“Take off that silly mask,” he commanded. “Take it off and give it to me. I can hold you with one arm.”

She obeyed him, and with a tremendous exultation he swung her round, as if indeed he were carrying her to the edge of the world. The mask no longer veiled her face; her eyelids drooped, clouding her eyes; her lips were parted: she was now dead white. Michael crooked her left arm until he could touch her shoulder.

“Look at me. Look at me. The dance will soon be over.”

She opened her eyes, and into their depths of dusky blue he danced and danced until, waking with the end of the music, he found himself and Lily close to Sylvia Scarlett, who was laughing at them where she stood in the corner of the room under a canopy of holly.

Lily was for the rest of the evening herself as Michael had always known her. She had always been superficially indifferent to anything that was happening round her, and she behaved at this carnival as if it were a street full of dull people among whom by chance she was walking. Nor with her companions was she much more alert, though when she danced with Michael her indifference became a passionate languor. Soon after midnight both the girls declared they were tired of the