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

business about mother and⁠ ⁠… Lord Saxby ought, I suppose, to make me feel more of a worm than ever, but it doesn’t. Ever since the first shock, I’ve been feeling prouder and prouder. I can’t make it out.”

Then suddenly Michael flushed.

“I say, I wonder how many of our friends have known all the time? Mrs. Carthew and Mrs. Ross both know. I feel sure by what they’ve said. And yet I wonder if Mrs. Ross does know. She’s so strict in her notions that⁠ ⁠… I wonder⁠ ⁠… and yet I suppose she isn’t so strict as I thought she was. Perhaps I was wrong.”

“What are you talking about?” Stella asked.

“Oh, something that happened at Cobble Place. It’s not important enough to tell you.”

“What I’m wondering,” said Stella, “is what mother was like when she was my age. She didn’t say anything about her family. But I suppose we can ask her some time. I’m really rather glad I’m not ‘Lady Stella Fane.’ It would be ridiculous for a great pianist to be ‘Lady Something.’ ”

“You wouldn’t have been Lady Stella Fane,” Michael contradicted. “You would have been Lady Stella Cunningham. Cunningham was the family name. I remember reading about it all when I was interested in Legitimists.”

“What are they?” Stella asked. “The opposite of illegitimate?”

Michael explained the difference, and he was glad that the word “illegitimate” should first occur like this. The pain of its utterance seemed mitigated somehow by the explanation.

“It’s an extraordinary thing,” Michael began, “but, do you know, Stella, that all the agony of seeing Lily flirting seems to have died away, and I feel a sort of contempt⁠ ⁠… for myself, I mean. Flirting sounds such a loathsome word after what we’ve just listened to. Alan was right, I believe. I shall have to tell Alan about all this. I wonder if it will make any difference to him. But of course it won’t. Nothing makes any difference to Alan.”

“It’s about time I met him,” said Stella.

“Why, haven’t you?” Michael exclaimed. “Nor you have. Great Scott! I’ve been so desperately miserable over Lily that I’ve never asked Alan here once. Oh, I will, though.”

“I say, oughtn’t we to go up to mother?” said Stella.

“Would she like us to?” Michael wondered.

“Oh, yes, I’m sure she would.”

“But I can’t express what I feel,” Michael complained. “And it will be absurd to go and stand in front of her like two dummies.”

“I’ll say something,” Stella promised; and, “Mother,” she said, “come and hear me play to you.”

The music-room, with its spare and austere decoration, seemed to Michael a fit place for the quiet contemplation of the tale of love he had lately heard.

Whatever of false shame, of self-consciousness, of shock remained was driven away by Stella’s triumphant music. It was as if he were sitting beneath a mountain waterfall that, graceful and unsubstantial as windblown tresses, was yet most incomparably strong, and wrought an ice-cold, a stern purification.

Then Stella played with healing gentleness, and Michael in the darkness kissed his mother and stole away to bed, not to dream of Lily that night, not to toss enfevered, but quietly to lie awake, devising how to show his mother that he loved her as much now as he had loved her in the dim sunlight of most early childhood.

About ten days later Mrs. Fane came to Michael and Stella with a letter.

“I want to read you something,” she said. “Your father’s last letter has come.”

“We are in Pretoria now, and I think the war will soon be over. But of course there’s a lot to be done yet. I’m feeling seedy tonight, and I’m rather sighing for England. I wonder if I’m going to be ill. I have a presentiment that things are going wrong with me⁠—at least not wrong, because in a way I would be glad. No, I wouldn’t, that reads as if I were afraid to keep going.

“I keep thinking of Michael and Stella. Michael must be told soon. He must forgive me for leaving him no name. I keep thinking of those Siamese stamps he asked for when I last saw him. I wish I’d seen him again before I went. But I dare say you were right. He would have guessed who I was, and he might have gone away resentful.”

Michael looked at his mother, and thanked her implicitly for excusing him. He was glad that his father had not known he had declined to see him.

“I don’t worry so much over Stella. If she really has the stuff in her to make the name you think she will, she does not need any name but her own. But it maddens me to think that Michael is cut out of everything. I can scarcely bear to realize that I am the last. I’m glad he’s going to Oxford, and I’m very glad that he chose St. Mary’s. I was only up at Christ Church a year, and St. Mary’s was a much smaller college in those days. Now of course it’s absolutely one of the best. Whatever Michael wants to do he will be able to do, thank God. I don’t expect, from what you tell me of him, he’ll choose the Service. However, he’ll do what he likes. When I come back, I must see him and I shall be able to explain what will perhaps strike him at first as the injustice of his position. I dare say he’ll think less hardly of me when I’ve told him all the circumstances. Poor old chap! I feel that I’ve been selfish, and yet.⁠ ⁠…

“I wonder if I’m going to be ill. I feel rotten. But don’t worry. Only, if by any chance I can’t write again, will you give my love to the children, and say I hope they’ll not hate the thought of me? That piano was the best Prescott could get. I hope Stella is pleased with it.”

“Thanks awfully for reading us that,” said Michael.

XX Music

Mrs. Fane, having momentarily lifted the veil that all these years had