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

low and sweet singing some bygone coon song, was tremendously applauded.

Suppertime drew on, and at last the parlourmaid came in and enquired with a martyred air how many she should lay for.

“You must all stay to supper,” cried Mrs. Haden in deafening hospitality. “Everybody. Mr. Fane, you’ll stay, won’t you?”

“Oh, thanks very much,” said Michael shyly, and wished that these confounded young men would not all look at him as if they had perceived him suddenly for the first time. Everybody seemed as a matter of course to help to get supper ready, and Michael found himself being bumped about and handed plates and knives and glasses and salad-bowls. Even at supper he found himself as far as it was possible to be from Lily, and he thought that never in his life had food tasted so absolutely of nothing. But the evening came to an end, and Michael was consoled for his purgatory by Mrs. Haden’s invitation to call whenever he liked. In the hall too Lily came out to see him off, and he besought her anxiously to assure him truthfully that to all these young men she was indifferent.

“Of course, I don’t care for any of them. Why, you silly, they all think I’m still a little girl.”

Then since a friendly draught had closed the drawing-room door, she kissed him; and he forgot all that had happened before, and sailed home on thoughts that carried him high above the iron-bound sadness of the Sunday night.

Some time early in the week came a letter from Stella in answer to his, and when Michael read it he wished that Stella would come home, since only she seemed to appreciate what love meant. Yet Stella was even younger than Lily.

Stuttgart,

Sunday.

Darling Michael,

I’m writing a sonata about Lily. It’s not very good unfortunately, so you’ll never be able to hear it. But after all, as you don’t understand music, perhaps I will let you hear it. I wish you had told me more about Lily. I think she’s lucky. You must be simply a perfect person to be in love with. Most boys are so silly. That’s why only men of at least thirty attract me. But of course if I could find someone younger who would be content to love me and not mind whether I loved him, I should prefer that. You say I don’t know what love is. How silly you are, Michael. Now isn’t it thrilling to take Lily’s hand? I do know what love is. But don’t look shocked, because if you can still look shocked, you don’t know what love is. Don’t forget I’m seventeen next month, and don’t forget I’m a girl as well as Lily. Lily is a good name for her, if she is very fair. I expect she really has cendré hair. I hope she’s rather tall and delicate-looking. I hope she’s a violin sort of girl, or like those notes halfway up the treble. It must have been perfect when you met her. I can just imagine you, especially if you like October as much as I do. Did the leaves come falling down all round you, when you kissed her? Oh, Michael, it must have been enchanting. I want to come back soon, soon, soon, and see this Lily of yours. Will she like me? Is she fond of music?

I must have my first concert next summer. Mother must not put me off. Why doesn’t she let me come home now? There’s some reason for it, I believe. Thank goodness, you’ll have left school soon. You must be sick of it, especially since you’ve fallen in love.

I think of you meeting Lily when I play Schumann, and when I play Chopin I think of you walking about underneath her window, and when I play Beethoven I think of you kissing her.

Darling Michael, I love you more than ever. Be interested in me still, because I’m not interested in anybody but you, except, of course, myself and my music.

Oh, do bring Lily to my first concert, and I’ll see you two alone of all the people in the Hall and play you so close together that you’ll nearly faint. Now you think I’m gushing, I suppose, so I’ll shut up.

With a most tremendous amount of love,

Your delightful sister,

Stella.

“I wonder if she ought to write like that,” said Michael to himself. “Oh, well, I don’t see why she shouldn’t.”

Certainly as one grew older a sister became a most valuable property.

XVIII Eighteen Years Old

To Michael it seemed almost incredible that school should be able to continue as the great background against which his love stood out like a delicate scene carved by the artist’s caprice in an obscure corner of a strenuous and heroic decoration. Michael was hardly less conscious of school on Lily’s account, and in class he dreamed neither more nor less than formerly; but his dreams partook more of ecstasy than those nebulous pictures inspired by the ambitions and ideals and books of youth’s progress. Nevertheless in the most ultimate refinement of meditation school weighed down his spirit. It is true that games had finally departed from the realm of his consideration, but equally with games much extravagance of intellect and many morbid pleasures had gone out of cultivation. Balancing loss with gain, he found himself at the close of his last autumn term with a surer foothold on the rock-hewn foundations of truth.

Michael called truth whatever of emotion or action or reaction or reason or contemplation survived the destruction he was dealing out to the litter of idols that were beginning to encumber his passage, many of which he thought he had already destroyed when he had merely covered them with a new coat of gilt. During this period he began to enjoy Wordsworth, to whom he came by way of Matthew Arnold, like a wayfarer who crosses green fields and finds that mountains are faint upon the horizon. A successful