Chapter V: The First Fairy Princess

M ISS 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 arm-chair, 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 new-comer 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 cry-baby. 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 cry-baby.

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 sea-birds 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 good-bye 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 hymn-book. 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.
Bumble-bees 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 spring-time. 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
hill-side in answer to distant holloas from the picnic party,
he saw before him a flock of sheep manœuvring 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 tea-cups 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 tea-time 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 tea-cups 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 country-side.
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.