PART ONE

I

Wilfred Pell stole down-stairs carrying his shoes. With infinite care he turned the handle of the front door, his heart in his mouth. When one pressed down a catch in the lock, it permitted the outside handle to turn; and one could come in again. He sat down in the vestibule to put on his shoes. There was also an outer door, closed when the family went to bed. This had an ordinary lock, and the key was in it. It had been Wilfred’s intention to lock this door, and carry the key with him; but in the act of doing so the thought struck him: Suppose there was a fire? How would his Aunts get out?

He had not much of an opinion of the presence of mind of those ladies. They might very well stand there rattling the door, and burn up before they recollected the basement door. Or the way to the basement might be cut off. He pictured flames billowing up the basement stairs. No! let them take the chance of robbery in preference to incineration. He left both doors unlocked behind him. Sometimes the policeman on beat tried the basement gates as he passed through the block; but Wilfred had never seen him mount the stoops to try the front doors. On the sidewalk there was a horrible moment as he passed within range of Aunt May’s windows over the drawing-room, then safety.

This was not his first sortie at ten o’clock. It was a way of release from the torment of his thoughts that he had discovered. That is, if he remembered it in time. Once the misery had him fairly in its grip he was helpless. It was this business of becoming a man. Sometimes he went for a walk early in the morning; but everybody knew about that; he could not hug the secret deliciously to his breast. Anyhow morning walks were for light hearts, he thought, with a gentle swell of self-pity. Night for him! How wistfully he looked back towards the cool zone of childhood. What happened to you was not pleasant. He had noticed a funny thing; if he had said to himself during the day: To-night I will sneak out—there was no virtue in it; he carried his earthiness with him. But if while he was in his bed he yielded suddenly to the impulse; and arose and dressed; a sort of miracle occurred; he forgot himself.

It was so to-night. The night took him. He was thrilled by the double line of still houses fronting each other; each house with its windows fixed unswervingly on its adversary across the street; the oblique stoop rails like beards; the cornices like eyebrows. And overhead the stars, deathless flowers in a meadow. Wilfred felt that he belonged. He was as much the street’s as that cat creeping across, its belly hugging the asphalt. Like the cat he was all eyes, ears and nose; the thinking part of him had stopped working. He made a feint at the cat; and chuckled aloud at the creature’s precipitate loss of dignity. Gee! how good it was to be out!