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

settle down. There are exceptions, of course: they take to drink. I must say I’m greatly pleased with these long-spurred columbines.”

Michael thought she had finished the discussion of his marriage, but suddenly she said:

“I thought I told you to come and see me when you went down from Oxford.”

“I ought to have come,” Michael agreed rather humbly. He always felt inclined to propitiate the old lady.

“Here we have the lamentable result. Marriage at twenty-three.”

“Alan married at twenty-three,” he pointed out.

“Two fools don’t make a wise-man,” said Mrs. Carthew.

“He’s very happy.”

“He would be satisfied with much less than you, and he has married a delightful girl.”

“I’m going to marry a delightful girl.”

The old lady made no reply. Nor did she comment again upon his prospect of happiness.

In mid-May, after a visit of nearly a month, Michael left Cobble Place and went to stay at Plashers Mead. Guy Hazlewood was the only friend he still had who could not possibly have come into contact with Lily or her former surroundings. Moreover, Guy was deep in love himself, and he had been very sympathetic when he wrote to Michael about his engagement.

“Do I intrude upon your May idyll?” Michael asked.

“My dear chap, don’t be so absurd. But why aren’t you married? You’re as bad as me.”

“Why aren’t you married?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Guy sighed. “Everybody seems to be conspiring to put it off.”

They were sitting in Guy’s green library. The windows wide open let in across the sound of the burbling stream the warm air of the lucid May night, where bats and owls and evejars flew across the face of the decrescent moon.

“It’s this dreamy country in which you live,” said Michael.

“What about you? You’ve let people put off your marriage.”

“Only for another two months,” Michael explained.

“You see I’m down to one hundred and fifty pounds a year now,” Guy muttered. “I can’t marry on that, and I can’t leave this place, and her people can’t afford to make her an allowance. They think I ought to go away and work at journalism. However, I’m not going to worry you with my troubles.”

Guy was a good deal with Pauline every day: Michael wrote long letters to Lily and read poetry.

“Browning?” asked Guy one afternoon, looking over Michael’s shoulder.

“Yes; The Statue and The Bust.”

“Oh, don’t remind me of that poem. It haunts me,” Guy declared.

A week passed. There was no moon now, and the nights grew warmer. It was weather to make lovers happy, but Guy seemed worried. He would not come for walks with Michael through the dark and scented water-meadows, and Michael used to think that often at night he was meeting Pauline. It made him jealous to imagine them lost in this amaranthine profundity. They were happy now, if through all their lives they should never be happy again. Yet Guy was obviously fretted: he was getting spoiled by good fortune. “And I have had about a fortnight of incomplete happiness,” Michael said to himself. Supposing that a calamity fell upon him during this delay. He would never cease to regret his weakness in granting his mother’s request: he would hate Stella for having interfered: his life would be miserable forever. Yet what calamity did he fear? In a sudden apprehension, he struck a match and read her last letter:

1 Ararat House,
Island Road, W.

My dear,

It’s getting awfully dull in London. Miss Harper asked me to call her “Mabel.” Rather cheek, I thought, don’t you think so? But she’s really awfully decent. I can’t write a long letter because we’re going to the Palace. I say, do buck up and come back to London, I’m getting bored. Love and kisses.

Lily.

What’s the good of writing “kisses”?

What indeed was the good of writing “kisses”? Michael thought, as the match fizzed out in the dewy grass at his feet. It was not fair to treat Lily like this. He had captured her from life with Sylvia, because he had meant to marry her at once. Now he had left her alone in that flat with a woman he did not know at all. Whatever people might say against Lily, she was very patient and trustful. “She must love me a good deal,” Michael said. “Or she wouldn’t stand this casual treatment.”

Pauline came to tea next day with her sisters Margaret and Monica. Michael had an idea that she did not like him very much. She talked shyly and breathlessly to him; and he, embarrassed by her shyness, answered in monosyllables.

“Pauline is rather jealous of you,” said Guy that evening, as they sat in the library.

“Jealous of me?” Michael was amazed.

“She has some fantastic idea that you don’t approve of our engagement. Of course, I told her what nonsense she was thinking; but she vowed that this afternoon you showed quite plainly your disapproval of her. She insists that you are very cold and severe.”

“I’m afraid I was very dull,” Michael confessed apologetically. “But I was really envying you and her for being together in May.”

“Together!” Guy repeated. “It’s the object of everyone in Wychford to keep us apart!”

“Do tell her I’m not cold,” Michael begged. “And say how lovely I think her; for really, Guy, she is very lovely and strange. She is a fairy’s child.”

“She is, she is,” Guy said. “Sometimes I’m nearly off my head with the sense of responsibility I have for her happiness. I wonder and wonder until I’m nearly crazed.”

“I’m feeling responsible just now about Lily. I’ve never told you, Guy, but you may hear from other people that I’ve made what is called a mésalliance. Of course, Lily has been.⁠ ⁠…” He stumbled. He could find no words that would not humiliate himself and her. “Guy, come up with me tomorrow and meet her. It’s not fair to leave her like this,” he suddenly proclaimed.

“I don’t think I can come away.”

“Oh, yes, you can. Of course. You must,” Michael urged.

“Pauline will be more jealous of you than ever, if I do.”

“For one