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

happier at the House all the same,” Alan said. “He’d find his own set there.”

“But so he can at St. Mary’s.”

“Then it isn’t a democracy,” Alan stoutly maintained.

“I say, Alan,” exclaimed Michael, in surprise. “You’re getting quite a logician.”

“Well, you always persist in treating me like an idiot,” said Alan. “But I am reading Honor Mods. It’s a swat, but I’ve got to get some sort of a class.”

“You’ll probably get a first,” said Michael.

Yet how curious it was to think of Alan, whom he still regarded as chiefly a good-looking and capable athlete, taking a first class in a school he himself had indolently passed over. Of course he would never take a first. He was too much occupied with the perfection of new leg-breaks. And what would he do after his degree, his third in greats? A third was the utmost Michael mentally allowed him in the Final Schools.

“I suppose you’ll ultimately try for the Indian Civil?” Michael asked. “Do you remember when we used to lie awake talking in bed at Carlington Road? It was always going to be me who did everything intellectual; you were always the sportsman.”

“I am still. Michael, I think I’ve got a chance of my blue this year. If I can keep that leg-break,” he added fervidly. “There’s no slow right-hander of much class in the Varsity. I worked like a navvy at that leg-break last vac.”

“I thought you were grinding for Mods,” Michael reminded him, with a smile.

“I worked like a navvy at Mods,” said Alan.

“You’ll be a proconsul, I really believe.” Michael looked admiringly at his friend. “And do you know, Alan, in appearance you’re turning into a regular viking.”

“I meant to have my hair cut yesterday,” said Alan, in grave and reflective self-reproof.

“It’s not your hair,” cried Michael. “It’s your whole personality. I never appreciated you until this moment.”

“I think you talk more rot nowadays than you used to talk even,” said Alan. “So long, I must go back and work.”

The tall figure with the dull gold hair curling out from the green cap of Harris tweed faded away in the November fog that was traveling in swift and smoky undulations through the Oxford streets. What a strangely attractive walk Alan had always had, and now it had gained something of determination, whether from leg-breaks or logic Michael did not know. But the result was a truer grace in the poise of his neck; a longer and more supple swing from his tapering flanks.

Michael went on up the High and stood for a moment, watching the confusion caused by the fog at Carfax, listening to the fretful tinkles of the numerous bicycles and the jangling of the trams and the shouts of the paperboys. Then he walked down Cornmarket Street past the shops splashing through the humid coils of vapor their lights upon the townspeople, loiterers and purchasers who thronged the pavements. Undergraduates strolled along, linked arm in arm and perpetually staring. How faithfully each group resembled its forerunners and successors. All had the same fresh complexions, the same ample green coats of Harris tweed, the same gray flannel trousers. Only in the casual acknowledgments of his greeting when he recognized acquaintances was there the least variation, since some would nod or toss their heads, others would shudder with their chins, and a few would raise their arms in a fanlike gesture of social benediction. Michael turned round into the Broad where the fog made mysterious even the tea-tray gothic of Balliol, and Trinity with its municipal ampelopsis. A spectral cabman saluted him interrogatively from the murk. A fox-terrier went yapping down the street at the heels of a don’s wife hurrying back to Banbury Road. A belated paperboy yelled, “Varsity and Blackheath Result,” hastening toward a more profitable traffic. The fog grew denser every minute, and Michael turned round into Turl Street past many-windowed Exeter and the monastic silence of Lincoln. There was time to turn aside and visit Lampard’s bookshop. There was time to buy that Glossary of Ducange which he must have, and perhaps that red and golden Dictionary of Welby Pugin which he ought to have, and ultimately, as it turned out, there was time to buy half a dozen more great volumes whose connection with medieval history was not too remote to give an excuse to Michael, if excuse were needed, for their purchase. Seven o’clock chimed suddenly, and Michael hurried to college, snatched a black coat and a gown out of Venner’s and just avoided the sconce for being more than a quarter of an hour late for hall.

Michael was glad he had not missed hall that night. In Lampard’s alluring case of treasures he had been tempted to linger on until too late, and then to take with him two or three new books and in their entertainment to eat a solitary and meditative dinner at Buol’s. But it would have been a pity to have missed hall when the electric light failed abruptly and when everybody had just helped themselves to baked potatoes. It would have been sad not to have seen the Scholars’ table so splendidly wrecked or heard the volleys of laughter resounding through the darkness.

“By gad,” said Lonsdale, when the light was restored and the second year leaned over their table in triumphant exhaustion. “Did you see that bad man Carben combing the potatoes out of his hair with a fork? I say, Porcher,” he said to his old scout who was waiting at the table, “do bring us some baked potatoes.”

“Isn’t there none left?” inquired Porcher. “Mr. Lonsdale, sir, you’d better keep a bit quiet. The Sub-Warden’s looking very savage⁠—very savage indeed.”

At this moment Maurice Avery came hurrying in to dinner.

“Oh, sconce him!” shouted everybody. “It’s nearly five-and-twenty past.”

“Couldn’t help it,” said Maurice very importantly. “Just been seeing the first number of the O.L.G. through the press.”

“By gad,” said Lonsdale. “It’s a way we have in the Buffs and the Forty Two’th. Look here, have