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

and crimson hawthorn. Seldom did Socrates have better than a most listless audience or St. Paul the most inaccurate geographers, when on the upper river the punt was held against the bank by paddles fast in the mud; for there, as one lay at ease, the world became a world of tall-growing grasses, and the noise of life no more than the monotony of a river’s lapping, or along the level water meadows a faint sibilance of wind. This was the season when supper was eaten by figures in silhouette against the sunset, figures that afterward drifted slowly down to college under the tree-entangled stars and flitting assiduous bats, with no sound all the way but the rustle of a bird’s wing in the bushes and the fizz of a lighted match dropped idly over the side of the canoe. This was the season when for a long while people sat talking at open windows, and from the Warden’s garden came sweetly up the scent of May flowers.

Sometimes Michael went to the Parks to watch Alan play in one or two of the early trial matches, and sometimes they sat in the window of Alan’s room looking out into Christ Church meadows. Nothing that was important was ever spoken during these dreaming nights, and if Michael tried to bring the conversation round to Stella, Alan would always talk of leg-drives and the problems that perpetually presented themselves to cover-point. Yet the evenings were always to Michael in retrospect valuable, betokening a period of perfect happiness from the lighting of the first pipe to the eating of the last meringue.

Eights Week drew near, and Michael decided after much deliberation that he would not ask either his mother or Stella to take part in the festival. One of his reasons, only very grudgingly admitted, for not inviting Stella was his fear lest Alan might be put into the shade by certain more brilliant friends whom he would feel bound to introduce to her. Having made up his own mind that Alan represented the perfection of normal youth, he was unwilling to admit dangerous competitors. Besides, though by now he had managed to rid himself of most of his self-consciousness, he was not sure he felt equal to charging the battery of eyes that mounted guard in the lodge. The almost savage criticism of friends and relatives indulged in by the freshmen’s table was more than he could equably contemplate for his own mother and sister.

So Eights Week arrived with Michael unencumbered and delightfully free to stand in the lodge and watch the embarrassed youth, usually so debonair and self-possessed, herding a long trail of gay sisters and cousins toward his room where even now waited the inevitable salmon mayonnaise. Lonsdale in a moment of filial enthusiasm had invited his father and mother and only sister to come up, and afterward had spent two days of lavish regret for the rashness of the undertaking.

“After all, they can only spend the day,” he sighed hopefully to Michael, “You’ll come and help me through lunch, won’t you, and we’ll rush them off by the first train possible after the first division is rowed. I was an ass to ask them. You won’t mind being bored a bit by my governor? I believe he’s considered quite a clever man.”

Michael, remembering that Lord Cleveden had been a distinguished diplomatist, was prepared to accept his son’s estimate.

“They’re arriving devilish early,” said Lonsdale, coming up to Michael’s room with an anxious face on the night before.

Ever since his fatal display of affection, he had taken to posting, as it were, bulletins of the sad event on Michael’s door.

“Would you be frightfully bored if I asked you to come down to the station and meet them? It will be impossible for me to talk to the three of them at once. I think you’d better talk about wine to the governor. It’ll buck him rather to think his port has been appreciated. Tell him how screwed we made the bobby that night when we were climbing in late from that binge on the Cher, and let down glass after glass of the governor’s port from Tommy’s rooms in Parsons’ Quad.”

Michael promised to do his best to entertain the father, and without fail to support the son at the ceremony of meeting his people next morning.

“I say, you’ve come frightfully early,” Lonsdale exclaimed, as Lord and Lady Cleveden with his sister Sylvia alighted from the train.

“Well, we can walk round my old college,” suggested Lord Cleveden cheerfully. “I scarcely ever have an opportunity to get up to Oxford nowadays.”

“I say, I’m awfully sorry to let you in for this,” Lonsdale whispered to Michael. “Don’t encourage the governor to do too much buzzing around at the House. Tell him the mayonnaise is getting cold or something.”

Soon they arrived at Christ Church, and Michael rather enjoyed walking round with Lord Cleveden and listening to his stately anecdotes of bygone adventure in these majestic quadrangles.

“I wonder if Lord Saxby was up in your time?” asked Michael as they stood in Peckwater.

“Yes, knew him well. In fact, he was a connection of mine. Poor chap, he died in South Africa. Where did you meet him? He never went about much.”

“Oh, I met him with a chap called Prescott,” said Michael hurriedly.

“Dick Prescott? Good gracious!” Lord Cleveden exclaimed, “I haven’t seen him for years. What an extraordinary mess poor Saxby made of his life, to be sure.”

“Did he?” asked Michael, well aware of the question’s folly, but incapable of not asking it.

“Terrible! Terrible! But it was never a public scandal.”

“Oh,” gulped Michael humbly, wishful he had never asked Lord Cleveden about his father.

“I can’t remember whether my old rooms were on that staircase or this one. Saxby’s I think were on this, but mine surely were on that one. Let’s go up and ask the present owner to let us look in,” Lord Cleveden proposed, peering the while in amiable doubt at the two staircases.

“Oh, no, I