Book + 

I + 

The Prison House + 

“What youth, Goddess⁠—what guest + 

Of Gods or mortals?” + 

Matthew Arnold + 

“Slow on your dials the shadows creep, + 

So many hours for food and sleep, + 

So many hours till study tire, + 

So many hours for heart’s desire.” + 

Robert Bridges + 

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 furniture, 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 grey 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 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 irregularities infused certain groups with an air of deliberate consultation. From the four corners royal bars, crowned with brass, dominated their subjects. Passions, intrigues, rumours, 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 was too deeply frightened so to soothe himself, as he sat clutching the pointed ears of the grey 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. + 

“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 demeanour resisted the unreasonableness 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 behaviour 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 immemorial 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 incomprehensibly 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 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 interruption 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 everything 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. + 

“Dinnertime! 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?” + 

“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 cat’s 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 adjacent 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 banisters; then down they went, down and down and down⁠—past three doors opening into furniture-heaped rooms, past a door with upper panels of coloured glass in a design of red and amber sparrows upon a crude blue vegetation⁠—a beautiful 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 birdcages. This final staircase was even in the fullest daylight very dim and eerie, and was permeated always with a smell of burnt grease and damp cloths. Halfway down Michael shrunk 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, what 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, blowing 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 anæmic. These two watched the children eating, while they gossiped with Nurse. + 

“Isn’t Mrs. Fane coming at all, then?” enquired Cook. + 

“For a few minutes⁠—for a few minutes,” said Nurse quickly, and Michael would not have been so very suspicious 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. + 

“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 dessertspoonful 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 was compelled 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 swung them from brass hooks. + 

“How cosy 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 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 beautiful 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 this mysterious June. It came to mean a distant warmth of orange light towards which he waited 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 anæmic Annie taking 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 was 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 was ready for occupation, and the pea-green vegetation of the walls was hidden by various furniture. Nurse’s bed flanked by the two cots occupied much of its space. Round the fire was a nursery fender on which hung perpetually various cloths and clothes and blankets and sheers which, as it was summer 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 delightfully intimate experiences. They were 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 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 speculation. The night-nursery seemed always full of Nurse’s clothes. Her petticoats were usually chequered 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 wardrobe 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 countenance. That Nurse was ever young, Michael could not bring himself to believe, and daguerreotypes framed in tinfoil which she produced as evidence of youth from a square box inlaid with mother-o’-pearl, never convinced him as a chromolithograph might have convinced him. At the same time the stories of her childhood, which Nurse was sometimes persuaded to tell, were very enthralling; moreover, by the fact of her obvious antiquity, they had the dimness and mystery of old fairytales. + 

On the whole Michael was 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 ceiling 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 was 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 cosy 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, loathsome Gregory-powder with wooden cap and squat cork, wicked envelopes of grey powders and slippery bottles of castor-oil. There, too, was the liver-coloured liquorice-powder, the vile rhubarb and the deceitful senna. In fact, apart from a bag of jaded acid-drops, there were only two 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 lighthearted 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 equivalent to swallowing a large painted ball full of a combination of all the nastiest medicines in the world. 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 worktable in the window, gay with coloured silks and wools. There was a piano locked up until Michael’s first lesson, but nevertheless wonderful on account 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 gipsies 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. + 

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, recording 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 onions 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 marguerites and calceolarias⁠—the latter to Michael a very objectionable flower because, detecting in it some resemblance 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 punishment 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 heels. He held coils of picture-wire and hooks and hammers and nails and balls of wool and reels of silk and strands of art-muslin and spiders of cotton-wool and Japanese 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 walking about in the cool evening, a distant band played music, his mother would 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 tremendously surprised. After the egg would always come two delicious triangles of toast, each balancing a single strawberry from the pot of strawberry jam. After breakfast, Michael would walk round the heap of clinkers in the middle of the parched seaside garden while his mother 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 campstools 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, joining 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 seawater 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 shadows 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 who 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.” + 

“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 told 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 fairytales 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.” + 

“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 fairytale.” + 

“Is it?” he said doubtfully. + 

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 goodbye 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 evening 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 uniform, displayed on a large square of cardboard. He suffered himself to be dressed up and to have the scarlet breastplate strapped around him and the plumed helmet to be pushed over his nose and the sabre-tache to be entangled with his legs; but there was no spirit of hope and adventure 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. + 

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 unending 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 and took part with 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 favourite 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 of the garden, and wished poignantly that he had never spoken harshly to her, had never banished her to a wastepaper basket prison for the length of a long foggy afternoon. + 

Christmas arrived with more uniforms, with a fishmonger’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 extreme 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 night-light; Annie shyly placed before him a crystal globe that when shaken gave a wonderful reproduction of a snowstorm falling upon a weatherworn 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 stockings as well as his own socks, he felt slightly resentful towards Santa Claus for the meagre 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 Theatre that reduced Michael to a state of collapse owing to the fight between the two protagonists, 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 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 Sinbad, owing to their familiarity through earlier narratives. 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 Machonochie’s death in Argyll and of his faithful Skye terriers, 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, Jackanapes, 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 principle of a treat was its rarity. As anything that had to be asked for became a treat automatically and as the mere 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 part-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 human 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 lamppost and bruised his nose. Nanny used to jeer at him, calling him Little Johnny Head-in-air; but Michael was so much used to her derogatory 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 perambulator 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 himself 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 themselves upon his memory. He was 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 boys 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 was 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 began to run. In a moment he fell over a turret of grass and the group jeered openly. He picked himself up and fled towards 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 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 myself. Very daring I was. Out and about. Hollering after boys. 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 enquired. + 

“Oh, it wasn’t the travelling as did it. It was the excitement. 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 what he knew would be an enthralling conversation between Annie and Cook. It was hateful to be compelled to march up all 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 husband, 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 removed, 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. 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 behaviour in the crowded railway carriage, Michael came back to Carlington Road. During the space between arrival and bedtime he was gently happy in welcoming 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 tomorrow was Sunday. He had been told to sit in the dining-room in order to be out of the way 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 raindrops and the water poured along the gutters, carrying twigs 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 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 windowpanes, lying in heavy puddles about the road, a long monotonous grey 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 surrounded on the three other sides by the backs of grey houses. A poor old woman was picking groundsel with a melancholy persistence, and the torn umbrella which wavered 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 saying. He made up his mind in the beeswaxed dining-room that it was better to be a raggle-taggle wanderer than anything else. He watched the boy disappear round the farther corner, and wished that he could disappear in such company round corner after corner of the world beyond the grey house-backs. + 

The climax of this wet morning’s despair was reached when a chimney-sweep came into sight, whooping and halloaing nearer and nearer. Of the many itinerant terrors that haunted polite roads, Michael dreaded sweeps most of all. So he hastily climbed down from the chair in the 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. + 

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 two canaries, one for you and one for Stella⁠—a boy canary and a girl canary. Won’t that be fun? Love and kisses from + 

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. + 

“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 afternoon 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 what was passing on that side of the road, until at last they arrived. The canary-shop was found, and two canaries and a birdcage were bought, together with packets of seed and a bird’s bath and a pennyworth of groundsel and plantains. 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 to see how the birds bore the jolting. Sometimes they 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 splendour of their cage. + 

“Beautiful things,” said Mrs. Frith. “I’m 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 enquired. + 

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. + 

“I’m blessed if I know. There, Annie, what does anyone call a canary?” + 

“Don’t ask me, I’m 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 how I shouldn’t call neither of them nothing. Not if I was he.” + 

“Call what? Call what?” Nurse asked quickly. + 

“His new dickybirds.” + 

“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 Miss Marrows’ 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 coloured beads shut out the unscholastic 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 quarrelling and kicking 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 way 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 two years older than himself, 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: + 

“Coo! Don’t you know what a cricket is? I mean critic. You must be a kid.” + 

Michael thought this was the most extraordinary conversation 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 anyway.” + 

“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 despatched upstairs to take their places in the class above the Kindergarten for which Michael was destined and whither he followed Miss Marrow, 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-coloured face. Miss Caroline was 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 chequered mats of the same material: these, when term was over, appeared at the prize-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 was at home changed from bare beeswaxed deserts to places of perfect comfort, so rosy were the lampshades, 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 Fairytales. 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 sadness 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 scattered contents of drawers. Tomorrow she was going. It was dreadful to think of. Michael was 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?” + 

“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 was shown into the drawing-room. + 

“How d’ye do, Mrs. Fane? I’ve come to ask you if you’ll go to the theatre tonight. 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?” + 

Nurse came in saying “Bedtime! Tut-tut-tut! Bedtime!” and Michael’s heart sank. + 

“There you are,” said Mr. Prescott. “Here’s Nurse to say it’s bedtime. Now do come, Mrs. Fane.” + 

“Oh, I really think I ought to stay.” + 

“Now what nonsense. Saxby will be furiously disappointed. 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 swimming 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 bedclothes and, while she rustled away from him, sobbed soundlessly for a long while. + 

In the morning he watched her go away until the warm summertime 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. + 

III + 

Fears and Fantasies + 

During whooping-cough Michael was sometimes allowed to sit in a room called the library, which was 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 Doré 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 teazing at the Kindergarten, that with the unreasonableness of Nurse and his mother’s absence made up the sum of the incomprehensible 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 adventurous field of little knights-at-arms, whose curtains were ruffled 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 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 supposed it to be because lately he had always woken 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 away 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 way 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, making Michael wonder whether they were coming through his window to claw his face. Presently, far up the street, newsboys 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 was so frightened by a succession of these murder-shouts that he got out of bed and crept forth on to 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, familiar yet unfamiliar: the kitchen door was ajar and he peered round stealthily. There was 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; while between them, bolt upright and very pale, sat Annie nervously shaving from the cheese very thin segments which 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 blackbeetles 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?” + 

“You’ve 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. + 

“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 with 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 with wet, but sometimes it would be dry and airless. This street stretched as far as one could see. It had on either side lampposts which burned with a steady staring illumination, long rows of lampposts 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 within. 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 struggled against it, he would ultimately be compelled to knock 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 grey 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 repel 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 would 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 awake. 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 apprehensively 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 varnished 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 fireplace, opposite the foot of the bed, seemed a centre for the noise of mice. How he hoped they 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 would turn very quietly on to his back, staring at the luminous ceiling where the gas-jet made a huge moon whose edges wavered perpetually. But the gas-jet itself became terrifying, when looked at too long, with its queer blue base and slim solemn shape, so melancholy, so desolate, so changeless. The ceiling would very soon become unendurable because various black marks would seem with intensest 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 grey streaks to appear at the sides in proclamation of the approach of day. Without these grey streaks the windows were unbearable, so menacing were they with the unknown infinite night behind them. The curtains, too, would quiver, and even Michael’s clothes, heaped upon a chair, would assume a worm-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 wheels of coloured lights thus evoked would circle and revolve, changing their colours in some mysterious way. These dissolving spots were a great consolation and passed the time for a little while, until the dread of fire began to come. He would fling back the clothes in a paroxysm and, heedless of any other danger, sit up with 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 out of bed to reassure himself. What might not be underneath, 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 viewless 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 wallpaper, normally a pattern of rosebuds and roses, began to move, to swim with unnatural life. The cistern upstairs began to clank; the bath began to drip. It must be blood⁠—Nanny had been murdered. The blood was dripping slowly. Michael choked with horror. Somebody was tapping at the windowpane, 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 dismay; but his tongue was dry. Underneath him a knife was being pushed through the bed. A deathwatch 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 grey. It turned from grey to dimmest silver. Hark! “Cheep, cheep, cheep, cheep!” The sparrows 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. + 

IV + 

Unending Childhood + 

After whooping-cough came chickenpox, and it was settled that Michael should leave the Kindergarten where these illnesses were caught. A French governess 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 agitation. The whole house was turned upside down: curtains were changed; floors were beeswaxed; furniture was polished; 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 natural.” + 

“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. + 

Michael wondered what his governess would be like. He never remembered to have seen Nanny so reverently excited before. + 

“I’ve 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 which 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 governess. As he lay awake in his bed on a quiet Sunday evening, 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 dressing, 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 windowpane 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 was 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 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 were 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 was saying that she had never regretted the inadequacy of the kitchen arrangements of Sixty-four until this moment; and Annie was bracing herself 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, was heard putting away her umbrella in the peacock-blue china umbrella-stand, was heard enquiring for Mrs. Fane and was announced inaudibly by Annie. + 

Michael’s heart sank when he beheld a fat young Frenchwoman with a bilious complexion and little pig’s 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. + 

When the lessons began (or rather before they began) a timetable was drawn up by Madame Flauve: + 

Monday + 

{ + 

10⁠–⁠11 + 

French + 

2:30⁠–⁠4 + 

Walk + 

11⁠–⁠12 + 

Geography + 

12⁠–⁠1 + 

History + 

Tuesday + 

{ + 

10⁠–⁠11 + 

Geography + 

2:30⁠–⁠4 + 

Walk + 

11⁠–⁠12 + 

History + 

12⁠–⁠1 + 

French + 

Wednesday + 

{ + 

10⁠–⁠11 + 

History + 

2:30⁠–⁠4 + 

Walk + 

11⁠–⁠12 + 

Geography + 

12⁠–⁠1 + 

French + 

Thursday + 

{ + 

10⁠–⁠11 + 

French + 

2:30⁠–⁠4 + 

Walk + 

11⁠–⁠12 + 

History + 

12⁠–⁠1 + 

Geography + 

Friday + 

{ + 

10⁠–⁠11 + 

Geography + 

2:30⁠–⁠4 + 

Walk + 

11⁠–⁠12 + 

French + 

12⁠–⁠1 + 

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 tête-à-tête on dull food and a languishing conversation. + 

“Madam indeed,” Nurse would sniff, 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 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 with his governess. He was always taken to a secondhand 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 was engaged 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-à-fait charmant, mais charmant, mon petit. Il était si aimable, si gentil et d’un cœur très très 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 enquiries from Nurse that evening. Nanny was horrified, and said plainly that she considered this governess no better 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 Miss Marrows’ 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 miniature cage in which he kept a fly. All the other boys were 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 professed herself shocked by the cruelty of it and begged him to release the fly, asserting that she would find him a substitute 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 with one of her own hairs and showed Michael how by cunningly twisting this hair, the coal would gain the appearance of 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 grey eyes and light brown glinting hair. Michael did not exactly feel jealous of his sister, but he had an emotion of disappointment 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 compose 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 were 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 companion, should have to share her love with such an insidious rival. Curious men with long hair came to the house, apparently just to see Stella; for they took no notice at all 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 unintelligible 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 worship. 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 was 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 declare. “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 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 grey 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 backroom of Miss Marrow’s. Besides, Michael’s music lessons were now particularly 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 superintendence 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 backdoor on secret errands. Stella in the charge of Annie was perfectly happy upstairs, and Nurse resented very strongly Michael’s enquiries 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 speculated often upon her destination. She would always return very cheerful and would often bring him home small presents⁠—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 neighbouring 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 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 companion 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 morning-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 occurred, 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 hammering with chisels at enormous statues including representations 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 tumbledown 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 tumbledown 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 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 tumbledown 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 advertisements: then followed a dull line of iron railings with rusty pineapples on top of each of them. These were bounded at each end by gates that were marked “Private. No Thoroughfare,” 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 kerb 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 shrubberies, had to be passed, and all the way Michael used to hum to himself for company and diversion and encouragement. The only interesting event was a pavement-artist, and he was very often not there. It was an exasperating 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 began 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 unreasonableness, 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 daydreams 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. + 

“Time for tea,” she would mutter. “Time for bed,” she would chatter. Always it was time for something unpleasant. + 

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 breathless 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 appeared 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, ‘Fine 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. + 

“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 favourite daydream, and he used to fancy Mrs. Frith tossed in a blanket like Sancho Panza. What company she would be, and it would be possible with two donkeys. 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 coloured 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. Hopkins, 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 which she and Mr. Hopkins and Flossie would presently depart from Carlington Road. + 

“Are you going away?” Michael asked, aghast. + 

“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 went 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 we 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 armchair. 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 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. Certaintly 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 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 vulgarity; 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 gloomier 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 weather 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-fashioned nonsense in all her life. + 

During that November the fogs were very bad and, as 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 street 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 possible 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 behaviour 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 grownups, 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, grown-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 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. Honour 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 another man’s wife? At present he could not imagine himself 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 would not be necessary to lie when grown up, because one could not then be punished. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’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 bedroom 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 favourable 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 backdoor 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 wintry days that even to be sent by Nurse to fetch her thimble or workbag 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? Suppose 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 Hammersmith 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 melancholy city in the world. Even at Christmastime, behind all the gaiety and gold of a main road lay the trackless streets that were lit, it seemed, merely by pinpoints of gas, so far apart were the lampposts, 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, 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 gentleman with gold-rimmed eyeglasses, alighted at the corner and actually turned down Carlington Road. Michael was horrified 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 people 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 loneliness 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 lustre and became drab and dark and skimpy. His cheeks lost their rose-red, and black lines ringed his large and sombre 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 behaviour 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 Carlington 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 Botany, 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 windowsills 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, Virginia 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 protection. He liked to lie in bed during the sparrow-thronged mornings of spring and fancy how the birds must enjoy 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 mollycoddle. No. No.” + 

“I really must see about a nice governess for you,” said Mrs. Fane. Nurse sniffed ominously. + 

V + 

The First Fairy Princess + 

Miss Carthew’s arrival widened very considerably 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 grotesque 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 gradually 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 and good nights, the gay shopping walks and all the joys which belonged to him and her, stood threatening and inevitable 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 Miss Marrows’ 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,” commented Nanny. “Tut-tut. It might be the Queen of England. She’ll be here quite soon enough for everyone, I dare say.” + 

It fell out that Miss Carthew was to arrive on Valentine 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 company Michael set out to a neighbouring 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 exquisite 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 with the Valentine of his own free choice. + 

“I will have that one,” he added. “It’s my money.” + 

“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 suddenly 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 outraged 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 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 insistently 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 defiantly. He banged it so violently that presently the drum, already worn very thin, burst. Michael was furious and immediately proceeded to twang an over-varnished 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 demeanour 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 down the lid. Stella must have withdrawn her fingers in time, for there was no sign of any pinch or bruise 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 crybaby. 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 always grumble about my humming. You are a crybaby. + 

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 inarticulate 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 words 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 Day, and Michael hugged himself with the thought of her taking off her mackintosh 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 sitting opposite to his new governess. + 

It was not so much by these lessons that Michael’s outlook was widened as by the conversations he enjoyed with Miss Carthew during their afternoon walks. 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 numberless pleasant qualities. If she promised anything, the promise 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 problem 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 enquired. + 

“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.” + 

“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 was 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 possibilities of disaster and crime. On the afternoon walks would be told stories of Miss Carthew’s youth in the West Country, of cliffs and seabirds 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 winding path edged with white stones down to the foot of the cliff. Day and night great ships used to sail from the harbour, some outward bound with the crew singing in the cool airs of a summer morning, some homeward bound, battered 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, however, must have been that father who could sit for hours and never tell the same tale twice, but hold all who heard him entranced with a narrative of hostile Indians, of Chinese junks, of cannibals and wrecks and mutinies 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 Carthews 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 certainly pay Mrs. Carthew a visit. He would 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?” + 

“Yes, to St. James’ Preparatory School,” Miss Carthew assured him. + 

In consideration of Michael’s swiftly approaching adventure, 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, however 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 passing away the summer holidays in her society. To be sure, for the end of the time he had been invited by Mrs. Carthew’s own thin writing to spend a week with her in Hampshire; 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 goodbye 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 happen, or for any of the uncomfortable contingencies to which seaside travellers 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 pretend that he did not belong to Nurse, and hope sincerely 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 were 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 liked to have killed Mr. Wagland when he offered him the half of his hymnbook. 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 Hampshire alone. This seemed to him the most astonishing adventure of his life. He surveyed his existence from the earliest dawn 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 world of men. He would have to enquire of porters and guards; he would have to be polite without being prodded to ladies sitting opposite. No doubt they would ask questions 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 for 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 drouth 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 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 springtime. It was really like flying to sit up here. For the first time Michael flung wide 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 maneuvering before his advance. Michael shouted and kept a swift course, remembering Don Quixote and laughing when 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 teacups 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 trip him up and roll him all 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 teatime 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 teacups 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 grey 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 finished. Nevertheless it had made him very 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. + 

VI + 

The Enchanted Palace + 

The dun pony ambled through the lanes to the village of Basingstead 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 teacake and chocolate cake and macaroons, 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-cosy 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 were 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 Blücher 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 wallpaper 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-coloured 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 with creamy ovals of fruit, already rose-flushed with summer. 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 Japanese 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 backwards and forwards, 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 grey 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 tomorrow, 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 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 drawing-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 treasures of their bedrooms, the butterfly collections, the sword of Captain Carthew, the dirk of their brother the midshipman, 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 grey 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 trapdoor 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 ruffled his hair and crimsoned his cheeks. He could see the fantail pigeons of Cobble Place circling below. He could look down on the wood and the river they had just crossed. He could see the garden and his dearest Miss Carthew walking on the lawn. + 

“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 tower were not called Grogg’s Folly, and very soon Nancy and he, shouting and laughing, were running at full speed down the hill towards 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 enjoyment; 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 parlourmaid’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 tomorrow night he would be in Carlington Road among brass knobs and Venetian blinds and lampposts and sounds of London. Then came a great surprise that took 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 when Miss Carthew seemed to grow quite tired of trying to explain the difference. + 

“Will you teach her the piano now?” he enquired. + 

“Oh dear, no. I’m not clever enough to do that.” + 

“But you teach me.” + 

“That’s different. 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 wonderful.” + 

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. + 

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 I’m 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 it⁠—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 was 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 questions. 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 afternoons he spent in Carlington Road, trying to pick up information about St. James’ Preparatory School from the boys 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.” + 

“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 was the sum of Rodber’s advice, and presently Michael was stationed as signalman by the junction which was a pillar-box, while Rodber went off at express speed, bound for the next station which was a lamppost. 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 excruciatingly 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 behaviour. 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, humiliating 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 tomorrow 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 a disgraceful ignorance, and so he said that he would see Rodber in the “break” tomorrow. He asked Miss Carthew when 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. + 

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 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 contemptuous glances at the boy who had introduced her. Michael was very glad indeed that he had let Miss Carthew turn back. + 

VII + 

Randell House + 

The preliminaries of Michael’s career at St. James’ Preparatory School passed in a dreamlike confusion of thought and action. First of all he waited anxiously in the Headmaster’s study in an atmosphere of morocco-leather and large wastepaper baskets. Like every other room in which Michael had waited, whether of dentist 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 towards 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. + 

Cornelia Juliam amat. + 

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, almost before he knew what was happening, was carried in a torrent of boys towards the playground. Michael had never felt supreme loneliness, even at night, until he stood in the middle of that green prairie of recreation, distinguishing 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 wondering 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, young Fane,” he went on, and Michael, somewhat perturbed 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 photographers 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. Supposing we ambush them.” + 

“How?” enquired the commander. + 

“Why, supposing we put young Fane and two or three more new kids by the tuckshop door and tell them to run towards 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 towards 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 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 would like to remain perfectly ordinary, and very slowly by an inconspicuous and gradual growth he would thus arrive in time at the dignity and honour 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 for afternoon school in a somewhat elated frame of mind, and when he turned into the schoolyard, 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 chestnut 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. + 

“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 crosswise. 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 forward for the honour 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 on to 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 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 suppose 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 prejudices 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 Company, the District Railway against the Metropolitan Railway; 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 pocketknife 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, sucking gelatines and satin pralines and chocolate creams and raspberry noyau. As for the masters, he was always ready to hear scandalous rumours 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 towards 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 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 towards 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 celebration 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 sentiment 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 snowball 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 snowball alleged to contain a stone, and the bitterness between them grew sharper. Then Oxford won the boat-race, and Buckley cut Michael publicly. Finally, owing 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 distinctly, “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 goodbye 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 without making any difference in the life of Sixty-four, save by a convenient shifting about of the upstair rooms. The old night-nursery was redecorated and became for many years Michael’s bedroom. Miss Carthew slept in 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 neighbourhood 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 was 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 English 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 colours 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 dark green and Rodber looked dangerously swift in black and yellow. Every evening there was steady practice under Rodber, either in canvas shoes from lamppost to lamppost or, during the actual week before the sports, in spiked running-shoes on the grass-track, with corks to grip and a temperamental stopwatch 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 included a gas explosion at Number 78, when the front door was blown across the street and flattened a passerby against the opposite wall. There was a burglary at Number 33 and the housemaid at Number 56 fell backwards from the dining-room windowsill 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 enjoyed 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 what 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 walked about the Leas warning people against the association, until 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 jellyfish while he was paddling, and read Treasure Island in the depths of his own particular 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 masculine 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 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 with 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 moustache fiercely curling and a rigid back that bent inwards like a bow and a magnificent ebony walking-stick and a gruff voice. General Mace seemed to take a fancy to Michael and actually 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 from the lodgings and ran all the way to the General’s house on the Leas, and walked about and fidgeted 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 an uniform of canary-yellow. Every morning Michael walked about Folkestone with General Mace, and one morning they turned into a toyshop 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 when he saw a small penny box containing twelve very tiny soldiers. Michael was in a quandary. For seven 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 would be the wiser choice, Michael was racked by indecision and after a long debate chose the original two boxes and played with his Highlanders for several years to come. + 

“Quite right,” said the General when they reached the sunlight from the dusty little toyshop. “Quite right. Quality before quantity, sir. I’m glad to see you have so much common sense.” + 

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 exaggerated, 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 splendour 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. “Goodbye.” + 

“Goodbye,” said Michael. + 

They saluted each other ceremoniously, and parted. The next day Michael was in London, and after a depressing 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 pantomimes. + 

VIII + 

Siamese Stamps + 

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 directed 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 wore combinations instead of pants and vest. Combinations were held to be the depth of effeminacy, and Avery often enquired when 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. 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 what 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 Charterhouse, 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 examinations. Meanwhile, if he found Greek irregular verbs and 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 choosing 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 nowadays.” + 

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 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 behaviour 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 behaviour; 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 suggest 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 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, grey-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 behaviour. 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 suggested. + 

Michael shrugged his shoulders feeling powerless to contend 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, fatheaded then,” Michael proposed as a euphemism. + 

“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 Carthew. + 

“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 disappointed.” + 

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—particularly 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 Norton 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 neighbourhood. 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 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 observe nailed to Michael’s bedroom wall the filthiest cap she had ever seen. + 

Apart from the battles there were the luxurious camps, where cigarettes at five a penny were smoked to the last puff 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 silhouetted 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, arrows 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 complication. 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 between 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 coming, 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 complicate 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 signalling.” + 

“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 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 secured, the greater part of Michael’s leisure was mysteriously 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 5 ft. by 4 ft. greenhouse. All the romance of commerce was 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 averages and records. All sorts of periodicals were taken in⁠—Cricket, The Cricketer, Cricketing amongst 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’ portraits some of these figures acquired a conceivable personality; 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 a wicket. That they wore moustaches, 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 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 autumn term with Stories from the Odyssey by Professor Church and a chestnut that was 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 twenty-fourer it smashed was a contest long talked of in circles where Conquerors were played. Michael much regretted that the etiquette of the Lent term, which substituted peg-tops for Conquerors, should prevent his chestnut reaching four figures. 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 mentioned, save as vanities and toys of early youth. However, he swapped the nine hundred and sixty-sixer for seven white mice and a slowworm in spirits of wine belonging to Norton; 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 Hampshire to spend a fortnight at Carlington Road, and the holidays were spent in a fever of theatres 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 encomium tried to take a fresh view of Stella and was able sincerely to admit that, compared with many other little girls of the neighbourhood, Stella was fairly pretty. He decided 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 injunction 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 sitting 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 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 Cavalry, 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 smelt like the inside of the South Kensington 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 ever 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 footman 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.” + 

“My God, Valérie,” 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 was 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 gentleman. + 

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. “Because 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 I’m 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 wonderful 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. + 

“By gad, Valérie, 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. Fane. + 

“Perhaps I was,” Lord Saxby sighed. “Well, Valérie⁠—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.” + 

“Valérie, 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 afterwards dozens of boxes of all kinds of soldiers arrived, and unused sets not merely of Siamese, but of North American Tercentenaries and Borneos and Labuans and many others. + 

“I say,” Michael gasped, “he’s a ripper, isn’t he? What 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 ripping.” + 

“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. + 

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. Vernon was an equally popular master, deep-voiced, heavy-moustached, hook-nosed. In fact it was impossible to say which of the two one liked the better. Mr. Lodge at once produced 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, Rutherford 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 businesslike 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 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 excitement 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 cafés 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 travelling coats and not at all too much tired to sip grenadine sucrée and to crunch Petit Beurre biscuits. Michael thought grenadine sucrée was just as nice as it looked and turned to Hands, a skull-headed boy who was sitting next to him: + 

“I 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 passersby slouch across the windblown 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 advertisements, until they reached their boat and went to bed. In the morning when Michael woke up, the steamer was pitching and rolling: everything in the cabin was lying in a jumble on the floor, and Rutherford and Hargreaves were sitting up in their bunks wideawake. Rutherford was the oldest boy of the party and he was soon going in for his 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 returned 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 exhilarating 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 grey 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 interfere 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 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 between 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 overwhelming vegetation 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 boys 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 amusements 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, Hargreaves and Jubb postponed all exploration for the present. 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. + 

“I’m sure it’s haunted,” said Michael. “I never felt so funny, not exactly frightened, you know, but sort of frightened.” + 

“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 mildewed 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.” + 

In a moment Hands and Michael were half sliding, half climbing down a cliff. The lower they went, the faster they travelled and soon they were sliding all the way, because 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. “I’m getting jolly bumped. Look out, Hands, you kicked my neck, you ass.” + 

“I can’t help it,” gasped Hands. “I’m absolutely slipping, and if I try to catch hold, I scratch myself.” + 

They were 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, apparently 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, towards the rippling tide. The sand-hoppers buzzed about their ankles: Hands tripped over a jellyfish and fell into several others: seagulls 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 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 towards the black point of cliff 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 wanted to be the first to enter under its jagged arch. Already he could see the silver sand shimmering 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 towards the light. + 

“Good lummy!” said Hands, when Michael came up to him. “Whatever’s the matter? You’re simply frightfully 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 the 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. + 

“You’re making it up,” scoffed Hands. + 

“No, I’m not,” said Michael. “Look here, don’t say anything to the others about that cave. Promise.” + 

Hands promised silence; and he and Michael soon discovered a pathway up the cliff. When they reached the garden, it was a deeper green than ever in the falling twilight, and they did not care to linger far from the house. It was a relief to hear voices and to see Rutherford, Hargreaves 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 tumbledown 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 morning at eight o’clock there were great bowls of café 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 déjeuner 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 marketplace. Or they would stroll down to the quays and watch the shipping and practise their French on sailors looking more like pirates than ordinary sailors. + 

Once, while Michael was 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 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 convent was rather like the inside of an aquarium, but he enjoyed 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, before you knew where you were. Hang it all, remember I’m responsible for your safety and never again get into conversation 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 harmless than this Capuchin friar with the sore on his lip. However, 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 perceived 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 worked 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 where the bullfrogs croaked. Michael would construe the tale of Deucalion and Pyrrha to Mr. Lodge, while Mr. Vernon lay on his back and smoked a large pipe. Then a White Admiral butterfly would soar round the oak trees, and Ovid would be thrown behind them like Deucalion’s stones; while Michael and Mr. Vernon and Mr. Lodge maneuvered and shouted and ran up and down, until the White Admiral was either safely bottled with the cyanide of potassium or soared away 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 butterflies more definitely than by anything else. Michael thought that France was a much better place for collecting them than England. Scarce Swallowtails and Ordinary Swallowtails 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 a long expedition to Bluebeard’s Castle on the other side of the Loire, and, while they sat in a garden café, drinking their grenadine sucrée, hundreds of Silver-washed Fritillaries appeared 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 Fritillaries 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,” commanded Michael. + 

He tore along up the darkening drive, careless of ghosts or travelling 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 pronounced 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 were over. Michael had to leave in advance 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 Michael safely to London. Michael could scarcely believe that this Rutherford was a boy, so tall was he, such a heavy black moustache 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 tumbledown 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 Sundays 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 scholarship 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, walking 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 Laocoön. + 