Sinister Street Volume Ii Part 75

If you aren't afraid of being beaten, why are you afraid to let me see Lily?

I dare you to let me see her. Be sporting.

Yours,

M. F.

To Lily he wrote:

Darling,

Meet me outside South Kensington Station any time from twelve to three.

Michael.

Alone, of course.

Next day he waited three hours and a half for Lily, but she did not come. All the time he spent in a second-hand bookshop with one eye on the street. When he got home, he found a note from Sylvia:

Come to-morrow at twelve.

S. S.

Michael crumpled up the note and flung it triumphantly into the waste-paper basket.

"I thought I should sting you into giving way," he exclaimed.

Mrs. Gainsborough opened the door to him, when he arrived.

"They've gone away, the demons!" was what she said.

Michael was conscious of the garden rimmed with h.o.a.r-frost stretching behind her in a vista; and as he stared at this silver sparkling desert he realized that Sylvia had inflicted upon him a crus.h.i.+ng humiliation.

"Where have they gone?" he asked blankly.

"Oh, they never tell me where they get to. But they took their luggage.

There's a note for you from Sylvia. Come in, and I'll give it to you."

Michael followed her drearily along the gravel path.

"We shall be having the snowdrops before we know where we are," Mrs.

Gainsborough said.

"Very soon," he agreed. He would have a.s.sented if she had foretold begonias to-morrow morning.

In the sitting-room Michael saw Sylvia's note, a bleak little envelope waiting for him on that table-cloth. Mrs. Gainsborough left him to read it alone. The old silence of the room haunted him again now, the silence that was so much intensified by the canary hopping about his cage.

Almost he decided to throw the letter unread into the fire.

From every corner of the room the message of Sylvia's hostility was stretching out toward him. "Sweet," said the canary. Michael tore open the envelope and read:

Perhaps you'll admit that my influence is as strong as yours. You'd much better give her up. In a way, I'm rather sorry for you, but not enough to make me hand over Lily to you. Do realize, my dear young thing, that you aren't even beginning to understand women. I admit that there's precious little to understand in Lily. And for that very reason, when even you begin to see through her beauty, you'll hate her. Now _I_ hate to think of this happening. She's a thousand times better off with me than she ever could be with you.

Perhaps my maternal instinct has gone off the lines a bit and fixed itself on Lily. And yet I don't think it's anything so sickly as sentimental mothering. No, I believe I just like to sit and look at her. Lily's rather cross with me for taking her away from "such a nice boy." Does that please you? And doesn't it exactly describe you? However, I won't crow. Don't break the l.u.s.ters, when you read this. They belong to Fatty. What I suggest for you is a walk in Kensington Gardens to the refrain of "Blast the whole b.l.o.o.d.y world!" Now look shocked, my little Vandyck.

S. S.

Michael tore the letter up. He did not want to read and re-read it for the rest of the day. His eyelids were p.r.i.c.king unpleasantly, and he went out to find Mrs. Gainsborough. He was really sensitive that even a room should witness such a discomfiture. The landlady was downstairs in the kitchen, where he had not yet been. In this room of copper pots and pans, with only the garden in view, she might have been a farmer's wife.

"Sit down," she said. "And make yourself at home."

"Will you sit down?" Michael asked.

"Oh, well, yes, if it's any pleasure to you." She took off her ap.r.o.n and seated herself, smoothing the bombasine skirt over her knees.

A tabby cat purred between them; a kettle was singing; and there was a smell of allspice.

"You really don't know where the girls have gone?" Michael began.

"No more than you do," she a.s.sured him. "But that Sylvia is really a Turk."

"I suppose Lily didn't tell you that I used to know her six years ago?"

he asked.

"Oh, yes, she talked about you a lot. A good deal more than Miss Sylvia liked, that's a sure thing."

"Well, do you think it's fair for Sylvia to carry her off like this? I want to marry Lily, Mrs. Gainsborough."

"There, only fancy what a daring that Sylvia has. She's a nice girl, and very high-spirited, but she _is_ a Miss Dictatorial."

Michael felt encouraged by Mrs. Gainsborough's att.i.tude, and he made up his mind to throw himself upon her mercy. Sentiment would be his only weapon, and he found some irony in the reflection that he had set out this morning to be a brutal cynic in his treatment of the situation.

"Do you think it's fair to try to prevent Lily from marrying me? You know as well as I do that the life she's leading now isn't going to be the best life possible for her. You're a woman of the world, Mrs.

Gainsborough----"

"I was once," she corrected. "And a very naughty world it was, too."

"You were glad, weren't you, when the Captain brought you to this house?

You were glad to feel secure? You would have married him?"

"No, I wouldn't marry him. I preferred to be as I am. Still that's nothing for Lily to go by. She's more suited for marriage than what I was."

"Don't you think," Michael went on eagerly, "that if after six years I'm longing to marry her, I ought to marry her? I know that she might be much worse off than she is, but equally she might be much better off.

Look here, Mrs. Gainsborough, it's up to you. You've got to make it possible for me to see her. You've got to."

"But if I do anything like that," said Mrs. Gainsborough, "it means I have an unpleasantness with Sylvia. That girl's a regular heathen when she turns nasty. I should be left all alone in my little house. And what with Spring coming on and all, and the flowers looking so nice in the garden, I should feel very much the square peg in the round hole."

"Lily and I would come and see you," he promised. "And I don't think Sylvia would leave you. She'd never find another house like Mulberry Cottage or another landlady like you."

"Yes, I daresay; but you can't tell these things. Once she's in her tantrums, there's no saying what will happen. And, besides, I don't know what you want me to do."