Sinister Street Volume Ii Part 81

I'll meet you if you send me a wire. I've no influence over Michael any more. You're the only person who can stop it. He's so sweet about her. She's rather lovely to look at, I must say. Lots of love from Alan and from me.

Your loving

Stella.

Michael was touched by Lonsdale's att.i.tude. It showed, he thought, an exquisite sensitiveness, and he was grateful for it. Stella had certainly been very active: but he had foreseen all of this. Nothing was going to alter his determination. He waited gloomily for his mother to come down. Of all antagonists she would be the hardest to combat in argument, because he was debarred from referring to so much that had weighed heavily with him in his decision. His mother was upstairs such a very short time that Michael realized with a smile how deeply she must have been moved. Nothing but this marriage of his had ever brought her downstairs so rapidly from taking off her things.

"Have you read Stella's letter?" she asked.

He nodded.

"Well, of course you see that the whole business must be stopped at once. It's dreadful for you to hear all these things, and I know you must be suffering, dearest boy; but you ought to be obliged to Stella and not resent her interference."

"I see that you feel bound to apologize for her," Michael observed.

"Now, that is so bitter."

He shrugged his shoulders.

"I feel rather bitter that she should come charging up to town to find out things I know already."

"Michael! You knew about Lonsdale?"

"I didn't know about him in particular, but I knew that there had been people. That's one of the reasons I'm going to marry her."

"But you'll lose all your friends. It would be impossible for you to go on knowing Lonsdale, for instance."

"Marriage seems to destroy friendships in any case," Michael said. "You couldn't have a better example of that than Stella and Alan. I daresay I shall be able to make new friends."

"But, darling boy," she said pleadingly, "your position will be so terribly ambiguous. Here you are with everything that you can possibly want, with any career you choose open to you. And you let yourself be dragged down by this horrible creature!"

"Mother, believe me, you're getting a very distorted idea of Lily. She's beautiful, you know; and if she's not so clever as Stella, I'm rather glad of it. I don't think I want a clever wife. At any rate, she hasn't committed the sin of being common. She won't disgrace you outwardly, and if Stella hadn't gone round raking up all this abominable information about her you would have liked her very much."

"My dearest boy, you are very young, but you surely aren't too young to know that it's impossible to marry a woman whose past is not without reproach."

"But, mother, you ..." he stopped himself abruptly, and looked out of the window in embarra.s.sment. Yet his mother seemed quite unconscious that she was using a weapon which could be turned against herself.

"Will nothing persuade you? Oh, why did d.i.c.k Prescott kill himself? I knew at the time that something like this would happen. You won't marry her, you won't, will you?"

"Yes, mother. I'm going to," he said coldly.

"But why so impetuously?" she asked. "Why won't you wait a little time?"

"There's no object in waiting while Stella rakes up a few more facts."

"If only your father were alive!" she exclaimed. "It would have shocked him so inexpressibly."

"He felt so strongly the unwisdom of marriage, didn't he?" Michael said, and wished he could have bitten his tongue out.

She had risen from her chair, and seemed to tower above him in tragical and heroic dignity of reproach:

"I could never have believed you would say such a thing to me."

"I'm awfully sorry," he murmured. "It was inexcusable."

"Michael," she pleaded, coming to him sorrowfully, "won't you give up this marriage?"

He was touched by her manner so gently despairing after his sneer.

"Mother, I must keep faith with myself."

"Only with yourself? Then she doesn't care for you? And you're not thinking of _her?_"

"Of course she cares for me."

"But she'd get over it almost at once?"

"Perhaps," he admitted.

"Do you trust her? Do you believe she will be able to be a good woman?"

"That will be my look-out," he said impatiently. "If she fails, it will be my fault. It's always the man's fault. Always."

"Very well," said his mother resignedly. "I can say no more, can I? You must do as you like."

The sudden withdrawal of her opposition softened him as nothing else would have done. He compared the sweetness of her resignation with his own sneer of a minute ago. He felt anxious to do something that would show his penitence.

"Mother, I hate to wound you. But I must be true to what I have worked out for myself. I must marry Lily. Apart from a mad love I have for her, there is a deeper cause, a reason that's bound up with my whole theory of behavior, my whole att.i.tude toward existence. I could not back out of this marriage."

"Is all your chivalry to be devoted to the service of Lily?" she asked.

He felt grateful to her for the name. When his mother no longer called her "this girl," half his resentment fled. The situation concerned the happiness of human beings again; there were no longer prejudices or abstractions of morality to obscure it.

"Not at all, mother. I would do anything for you."

"Except not marry her."

"That wouldn't be a sacrifice worth making," he argued. "Because if I did that I should destroy myself to myself, and what was left of me wouldn't be a complete Michael. It wouldn't be your son."

"Will you postpone your marriage, say for three months?"

He hesitated. How could he refuse her this?

"Not merely for your own sake," she urged; "but for all our sakes. We shall all see things more clearly and pleasantly, perhaps, in three months' time."

He was conquered by the implication of justice for Lily.

"I won't marry her for three months," he promised.