Chapter IV: Unending Childhood

A FTER whooping-cough came chicken-pox, 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 window-pane 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 French-woman
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 time-table was drawn up by Madame Flauve:

Monday 10—11

11—12

12—1
French

Geography

History 2.30—4Walk Tuesday 10—11

11—12

12—1
Geography

History

French 2.30—4Walk Wednesday 10—11

11—12

12—1
History

Geography

French 2.30—4Walk Thursday 10—11

11—12

12—1
French

History

Geography 2.30—4Walk Friday 10—11

11—12

12—1
Geography

French

History 2.30—4Walk

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 second-hand 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 back-room 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 back-door 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 tumble-down 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 tumble-down 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 tumble-down
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 day-dreams 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 day-dream, 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 arm-chair. 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 for
ever 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
for ever, if for ever 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
grown-ups, 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 back-door 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 work-bag 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
Christmas-time, behind all the gaiety and gold of a main road
lay the trackless streets that were lit, it seemed, merely by
pin-points of gas, so far apart were the lamp-posts, 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
eye-glasses, 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
window-sills 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 surprize, 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 molly-coddle. No. No.”

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