Sinister Street by Compton Mackenzie (great books to read TXT) 📕

“Ah, that’s touched you up, hasn’t it?” said Meats, eagerly leaning forward. “But wait a bit. What did my mother do when she came out? Went on the streets. Do you hear? On the streets, and mark you, she was a servant, a common village servant, none of your flash Empire goods. Oh, no, she never knew what it was like to go up the river on a Sunday afternoon. And she drank. Well, of course she drank. Gin was as near as she ever got to paradise. And where was I brought up? Not among the buttercups, my friend, you may lay on that. No, I was down underneath, underneath, underneath where a chap like you will never go because you’re a gentleman. And so, though, of course, you’re never likely to ruin a girl, you’ll always have your fun. Why shouldn’t you? Being a nicely brought-up young gentleman, it’s your birthright.”

“But how on earth did you ever become a monk?” asked Michael, anxious to divert the conversation away from himself.

“Well, it does sound a bit improbable, I must say. I was recommended there by a priest⁠—a nice chap called Arbuthnot who’d believe a chimney-sweep was a miller. But Manners was very sharp on to me, and I was very sharp on to Manners. Picking blackberries and emptying slops! What a game! I came with a character and left without one. Probationer was what they called me. Silly mug was what I called myself.”

“You seem to know a lot of priests,” said Michael.

“Oh, I’ve been in with parsons since I was at Sunday-school. Well, don’t look so surprised. You don’t suppose my mother wanted me hanging round all the afternoon! Now I very soon found out that one can always get round a High Church slum parson, and very often a Catholic priest by turning over a new leaf and confessing. It gets them every time, and being by nature generous, it gets their pockets. That’s why I gave up Dissenters and fashionable Vicars. Dissenters want more than they give, and fashionable Vicars are too clever. That’s why they become fashionable Vicars, I suppose,” said Meats pensively.

“But you couldn’t go on taking in even priests forever,” Michael objected.

“Ah, now I’ll tell you something. I do feel religious sometimes,” Meats declared solemnly. “And I do really want to lead a new life. But it doesn’t last. It’s like love. Never mind, perhaps I’ll be lucky enough to die when I’m working off a religious stretch. I give you my word, Fane, that often in these fits I’ve felt like committing suicide just to cheat the devil. Would you believe that?”

“I don’t think you’re as bad as you make out,” said Michael sententiously.

“Oh, yes, I am,” smiled the other. “I’m rotten bad. But I reckon the first man I meet in hell will be my father, and if it’s possible to hurt anyone down there more than they’re being hurt already, I’ll do it. But look here, I shall get the hump with this blooming conversation you’ve started me off on. Come along, drink up and have another, and tell us something about yourself.”

“Oh, there’s nothing to tell,” Michael sighed. “My existence is pretty dull after yours.”

“I suppose it is,” said Meats, as if struck by a new thought. “Everything has its compensations, as they say.”

“Frightfully dull,” Michael vowed. “Why, here am I still at school! You know I wouldn’t half mind going down underneath, as you call it, for a while. I believe I’d like it.”

“If you knew you could get up again all right,” commented Meats.

“Oh, of course,” Michael answered. “I don’t suppose Aeneas would have cared much about going down to hell, if he hadn’t been sure he could come up again quite safely.”

“Well, I don’t know your friend with the Jewish name,” said Meats. “But I’ll lay he didn’t come out much wiser than he went in if he knew he could get out all right by pressing a button and taking the first lift up.”

“Oh, well, I was only speaking figuratively,” Michael explained.

“So was I. The same here, and many of them, old chap,” retorted Meats enigmatically.

“Ah, you don’t think I’m in earnest. You think I’m fooling,” Michael complained.

“Oh, yes, I think you’d like to take a peep without letting go of Nurse’s apron,” sneered Meats.

“Well, perhaps one day you’ll see me underneath,” Michael almost threatened.

“No offence, old chap,” said Meats cordially. “It’s no good my giving you an address because it won’t last, but London isn’t very big, and we’ll run up against one another again, that’s a cert. Now I’ve got to toddle off and meet a girl.”

“Have you?” asked Michael, and his enquiry was tinged with a faint longing that the other noticed at once.

“Jealous?” enquired Meats. “Why, look at all the girls round about you. It’s up to you not to feel lonely.”

“I know,” said Michael fretfully. “But how the deuce can I tell whether they want me to talk to them?”

Meats laughed shrilly.

“What are you afraid of? Leading some innocent lamb astray?”

Again to Michael occurred the ridiculous rhyme of Bo-peep. So insistent was it that he could scarcely refrain from humming it aloud.

“Of course I’m not afraid of that,” he protested. “But how am I to tell they won’t think me a brute?”

“What would it matter if they did?” asked Meats.

“Well, I should feel a fool.”

“Oh, dear. You’re very young, aren’t you?”

“It’s nothing to do with being young,” Michael asserted. “I simply don’t want to be a cad.”

“Somebody else is to be the cad first and then it’s all right, eh?” chuckled Meats. “But it’s a shame to teaze a nice chap like you. I dare say Daisy’ll have a friend with her.”

“Is Daisy the girl you’re going to see?”

“You’ve guessed my secret,” said Meats. “Come on, I’ll introduce you.”

As Michael rose to follow Meats, he felt that he was like Faust with Mephistopheles. But Faust had asked for his youth back again.