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

an hour at a time to his naive theories of life. Grainger seemed to shed rays of positive goodness, and Michael found that he exercised over this splendid piece of youth a fascination which to himself was surprising.

“Great Scott, you are an odd chap,” Grainger once ejaculated.

“Why?”

“Why, you’re a clever devil, aren’t you, and you don’t seem to do anything. Have I talked a lot of rot?”

“A good deal,” Michael admitted. “At least, it would be rot if I talked it, but it would be ridiculous if you talked in any other way.”

“You are a curious chap. I can’t make you out.”

“Why should you?” asked Michael. “You were never sent into this world to puzzle out things. You were sent here to sprawl across it just as you’re sprawling across that sofa. When you go down, you’ll go into the Egyptian Civil Service and you’ll sprawl across the Sahara in exactly the same way. I rather wish I were like you. It must be quite comfortable to sit down heavily and unconcernedly on a lot of people. I can’t imagine a more delightful mattress; only I should feel them wriggling under me.”

“I suppose you’re a Radical. They say you are,” Grainger lazily announced through puffed-out fumes of tobacco.

“I suppose I might be,” said Michael, “if I wanted to proclaim myself anything at all, but I’d much rather watch you sprawling effectively and proclaiming yourself a supporter of Conservatism. I’ve really very little inclination to criticize people like you. It’s only in books I think you’re a little boring.”

Term wore on, and a pleasurable anticipation was lent to the coming vacation by a letter which Michael received from his mother.

Carlington Road,

November 20th.

Dearest Michael,

I’m so glad you’re still enjoying Oxford. I quite agree with you it would be better for me to wait a little while before I visit you, though I expect I should behave myself perfectly well. You’ll be glad to hear that I’ve got rid of this tiresome house. I’ve sold it to a retired Colonel⁠—such an objectionable old man, and I’m really so pleased he’s bought it. It has been a most worrying autumn because the people next door were continually complaining of Stella’s piano, and really Carlington Road has become impossible. Such an air of living next door, and whenever I look out of the window the maid is shaking a mat and looking up to see if I’m interested. We must try to settle on a new house when you’re back in town. We’ll stay in a hotel for a while. Stella has had to take a studio, which I do not approve of her doing, and I cannot bear to see the piano going continually in and out of the house. There are so many things I want to talk to you about⁠—money, and whether you would like to go to Paris during the holidays. I daresay we could find a house at some other time.

Your loving

Mother.

From Stella about the same time, Michael also received a letter.

My dear old Michael,

I seem to have made really a personal success at my concert, and I’ve taken a studio here because the man next door⁠—a most frightful bounder⁠—said the noise I made went through and through his wife. As she’s nearly as big round as the world, I wasn’t flattered. Mother is getting very fussy, and all sorts of strange women come to the house and talk about some society for dealing with Life with a capital letter. I think we’re going to be rather well off, and Mother wants to live in a house she’s seen in Park Street, but I want to take a house in Cheyne Walk. I hope you like Cheyne Walk, because this house has got a splendid studio in the garden and I thought with some mauve brocades it would look perfectly lovely. There’s a very good paneled room that you could have, and of course the studio would be half yours. I am working at a Franck concerto. I’m being painted by rather a nice youth, at least he would be nice, if he weren’t so much like a corpse. I suppose you’ll condescend to ask me down to Oxford next term.

Yours ever,

Stella.

P.S.⁠—I’ve come to the conclusion that mere brilliancy of execution isn’t enough. Academic perfection is all very well, but I don’t think I shall appear in public again until I’ve lived a little. I really think life is rather exciting⁠—unless it’s spelt with a capital letter.

Michael was glad that there seemed a prospect of employing his vacation in abolishing the thin red house in Carlington Road. He felt he would have found it queerly shriveled after the spaciousness of Oxford. He was sufficiently far along in his first term to be able to feel the privilege of possessing the High, and he could think of no other word to describe the sensation of walking down that street in company with Lonsdale and Grainger and others of his friends.

Term drew to a close, and Michael determined to mark the occasion by giving a dinner in which he thought he would try the effect of his friends all together. Hitherto the celebrations of the freshmen had been casual entertainments arranged haphazard out of the idle chattering groups in the lodge. This dinner was to be carefully thought out and balanced to the extreme of nice adjustment. This terminal dinner might, Michael thought, almost become with him a regular function, so that people would learn to speak with interest and respect of Fane’s terminal dinners. In a way, it would be tantamount to forming a club, a club strictly subjective, indeed so personal in character as really to preclude the employment of the sociable world. At any rate, putting aside all dreams of the future, Michael made up his mind to try the effect of the first. It should be held in the Mitre, he decided, since