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

among all these undergraduates, as I felt in my first week. Perhaps she’s thinking what schoolboys they all are, and how infinitely youthful they appear beside those wild and worldly-wise Bohemians to whose company she has been accustomed for so long. I long to tell her that these undergraduates are really so much wiser, even if literature means Mr. Soapy Sponge’s Sporting Tour, and art The Soul’s Awakening, and religion putting on a bowler to go and have a hot breakfast at the O.U.D.S. after chapel, and politics the fag-ends of paternal or rather ancestral opinion, and life a hot bath and changing after a foxhunt or a grouse-drive.”

Farther conversation was stopped by Wedderburn driving everybody down to supper with pastoral exhortations in his deepest bass. Michael, after his talk with Mrs. Ross, was relieved to find himself next to Lonsdale and sheltered by a quivering rampart of jellies from more exacting company.

“These Basutos aren’t so bad when you talk to them,” said Lonsdale. “Comeragh was at m’tutor’s. I wonder if he still collects bugs. I rather like that man Hazlewood. I thought him a bit sidy at first, but he’s rather keen on fishing. I don’t think much of the girl that Trinity man⁠—what’s his name⁠—Stewart has roped in. She looks like something left over from a needlework stall. I say, your sister jolly well knows how to punch a piano. Topping, what? Mossy’s been very much on the spot tonight. He and Wedders are behaving like a couple of theatrical managers. Why didn’t Alan Merivale turn up? I was talking to some of the cricket push at the Club, and it doesn’t look a hundred quid to a tanner on his Blue. Bad luck. He’s a very good egg.”

Michael listened vaguely to Lonsdale’s babble. He was watching the passage of the cigars and cigarettes down the table. Thank heaven, Stella had let the cigars go by.

The party of 196 Holywell broke up. Outside in the shadowy street of gables they stood laughing and talking for a moment. Guy Hazlewood, Comeragh and Anstruther looked down from the windows at their parting guests.

“It’s been awfully ripping,” these murmured to their hosts. The hosts beamed down.

“We’ve been awfully bucked up by everything. Special vote of thanks to Miss Fane.”

“You ought all to get Firsts now,” said Wedderburn.

Then he and Lonsdale and Michael and Maurice set off with Stella and Mrs. Ross to the High Street rooms. In different directions the rest of the party vanished on echoing footsteps into the moon-bright spaces, into the dark and narrow entries. Voices faint and silvery rippled along the spellbound airs of the May night. The echoing footsteps died out to whispers. There was a whizzing of innumerable clocks, and midnight began to clang.

“We must hurry,” said the escort, and they ran off down the High toward St. Mary’s, reaching the lodge on the final stroke.

“Shall I come up to your rooms for a bit?” Maurice suggested to Michael.

“I’m rather tired,” objected Michael, who divined that Maurice was going to talk at great length about Stella.

He was too jealous of Alan’s absence that evening to want to hear Maurice’s facile enthusiasm.

XI Sympathy

Mrs. Ross and Stella left Oxford two days after the party, and Michael was really glad to be relieved of the dread that Stella in order to assert her independence of personality would try to smash the glass of fashion and dint the mold of form. Really he thought the two occasions during her visit on which he liked her best and admired her most were when she was standing on the station platform. Here she was expressed by that city of spires confusing with added beauty that clear sky of Summer. Here, too, her personality seemed to add an appropriate foreground to the scene, to promise the interpretation that her music would give, a promise, however, that Michael felt she had somehow belied.

Alan dropped out of the Varsity Eleven the following week, and he was in a very gloomy mood when Michael paid him a visit of condolence.

“These hard wickets have finished me off,” he sighed. “I shall take up golf, I think.”

The bag of clubs he had brought up on his first day was lying covered with gray fluff under the bed.

“Oh, no, don’t play golf,” protested Michael, “you’ve got two more years to get your Blue and all your life to play golf, which is a rotten game and has ruined Varsity cricket.”

“But one can be alone at golf,” said Alan.

“Alone?” repeated Michael. “Why on earth should you want to play an outdoor game alone?”

“Because I get depressed sometimes,” Alan explained. “What good am I?”

Michael began to laugh.

“It’s nothing to laugh at,” said Alan sadly. “I’ve been thinking of my future. I shall never have enough money to marry. I shall never get my Blue. I shall get a fourth in Greats. Perhaps I shan’t even get into the Egyptian Civil Service. I expect I shall end as a bank clerk. Playing cricket for a suburban club on Saturday afternoons. That’s all I see before me. When is Stella going to Vienna?”

“I don’t know that she is going,” said Michael. “She always talks a great deal about things which don’t always come off.”

“I was rather surprised she seemed to like that man Avery so much,” Alan said. “But I suppose he pretended to know an awful lot about music. I don’t think I care for him.”

“Some people don’t,” Michael admitted. “I think women always like him, though.”

“Yes, I should think they did,” Alan agreed bitterly. “Sorry I’m so depressing. Have a meringue or something.”

“Alan, why, are you in love with Stella?” Michael challenged.

“What made you think I was?” countered Alan, looking alarmed.

“It’s pretty obvious,” Michael said. “And curiously enough I can quite understand it. Generally, of course, a brother finds it difficult to understand what other people can see in his sister, but I’m never surprised when they fall in love with Stella.”

“A good many have?” asked Alan, and