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

in such a setting. He could picture her at not so distant a time in wonderful rooms, about whose slim furniture she would move in delicate and languorous promenades. This room pleased him, because it was the one from which he would have wished to take her into the misty grandeurs he imagined for her lodging. It was a room he would always regard with affection, thinking of the canary in the brass cage and the Christmas roses blowing in the garden and the low sounds of Mrs. Gainsborough busy in her kitchen underneath. Tinderbox Lane! It was an epithalamium in itself; and as for Mulberry Cottage, it had been carried here by the fat pink loves painted on the ceiling of that Cremorne arbor in which the Captain had first imagined his gift.

So with fantastic thoughts and perfect kisses, perfect but yet ineffably vain because they expressed so little of what Michael would have had them express, the hour passed.

“We must talk of practical things,” he declared, rising from his knees.

“You always want to talk,” Lily pouted.

“I want to marry you. Do you want to marry me?”

“Yes; but it’s so difficult to do things quickly.”

“We’ll be married in a month. We’ll be married on Saint Valentine’s Day,” Michael announced.

“It’s so wet now to think of weddings.” She looked peevishly out of the window.

“You haven’t got to think about it. You’ve got to do it.”

“And it’s so dull,” she objected. “Sylvia says it’s appallingly dull. And she’s been married.”

“What has Sylvia got to do with it?” he demanded.

“Oh, well, she’s been awfully sweet to me. And after all, when mother died, what was I to do? I couldn’t bear Doris any more. She always gets on my nerves. Anyway, don’t let’s talk about marriage now. In the summer I shall feel more cheerful. I hate this weather.”

“But look here,” he persisted. “Are you in love with me?”

She nodded, yet too doubtfully to please him.

“Well, if you’re not in love with me.⁠ ⁠…”

“Oh, I am, I am! Don’t shout so, Michael. If I wasn’t awfully fond of you, I shouldn’t have made Sylvia ask you to come back. She hates men coming here.”

“Are you Sylvia’s servant?” said Michael, in exasperation.

“Don’t be stupid. Of course not.”

“It’s ridiculous,” he grumbled, “to quote her with every sentence.”

“Why you couldn’t have stayed where you were,” said Lily fretfully, “I don’t know. It was lovely sitting by the fire and being kissed. If you’re so much in love with me, I wonder you wanted to get up.”

“So, we’re not to talk any more about marriage?”

After all, he told himself, it was unreasonable of him to suppose that Lily was likely to be as impulsive as himself. Her temperament was not the same. She did not mean to discourage him.

“Don’t let’s talk about anything,” said Lily. He could not stand aloof from the arms she held wide open.

Sylvia would not be coming back for at least three days, and Michael spent all his time with Lily. He thought that Mrs. Gainsborough looked approvingly upon their love; at any rate, she never worried them. The weather was steadily unpleasant, and though he took Lily out to lunch, it never seemed worth while to stay away from Tinderbox Lane very long. One night, however, they went to the Palace, and afterward, when he asked her where she would like to go, she suggested Verrey’s. Michael had never been there before, and he was rather jealous that Lily should seem to know it so well. However, he liked to see her sitting in what he told himself was the only café in London which had escaped the cheapening of popularity and had kept its old air of the Third Empire.

As Lily was stirring her lemon-squash, her languid forearm looked very white swaying from the somber mufflings of her cloak. Something in her self-possession, a momentary hardness and disdain, made Michael suddenly suspicious.

“Do you enjoy Covent Garden balls?” he asked.

She shrugged her shoulders.

“It depends who we go with. Often I don’t care for them much. And the girls you see there are frightfully common.”

He could not bring himself to ask her straight out what he feared. If it were so, let it rest unrevealed. The knowledge would make no difference to his resolution. People began to come into the café, shaking the wet from their shoulders; and the noise of the rain was audible above the conversation.

“I wish we could have had one fine day together,” said Michael regretfully. “Do you remember when we used to go for long walks in the winter?”

“I must have been very fond of you,” Lily laughed. “I don’t think you could make me walk like that now.”

“Aren’t you so fond of me now?” he asked reproachfully.

“You ought to know,” she whispered.

All the way home the raindrops were flashing in the road like bayonets, and her cheeks were dabbled with the wet.

“Shall I come in?” Michael asked, as he waited by the door in the wall.

“Yes, come in and have something to drink, of course.”

He was stabbed by the ease of her invitation.

“Do you ask all these friends of yours to come in and have a drink after midnight?”

“I told you that Sylvia doesn’t like me to,” she said.

“But you would, if she didn’t mind?” Michael went on, torturing himself.

“How fond you are of ‘ifs,’ ” she answered. “I can’t bother to think about ‘ifs’ myself.”

If only he had the pluck to avoid allusions and come at once to grips with truth. Sharply he advised himself to let the truth alone. Already he was feeling the influence of Lily’s attitude. He wondered if, when he married her, all his activity would swoon upon Calypso like this. It was as easy to dream life away in the contemplation of a beautiful woman as in the meditation of the Oxford landscape.

“Happiness makes me inactive,” said Michael to himself. “So of course I shall never really be happy. What a paradox.”

He would not take off his overcoat. He was feeling afraid of a