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

“Why do you object?” Michael asked curiously. “I never knew you thought about religion at all, except so far as occasionally to escort your mother politely to Matins, and that was after all to oblige her more than God. Besides, you’re reading Greats, and I always thought that the Greats people in their fourth year abstained from anything like a definite opinion for fear of losing their First.”

“I may not have a definite opinion about Christianity,” said Alan. “But Catholicism is ridiculous, anyway⁠—it doesn’t suit English people.”

“There you’re treading on the heels of the School of Modern History which you affect to despise. You really don’t know, if I may say so, what could or could not suit the English people unless you know what has or has not suited them.”

“Why don’t you become a Catholic yourself,” challenged Alan, “if you’re so keen on them?”

“For a logician,” said Michael, “your conclusion is bad, being entirely unrelated to any of our premises. Secondly, were I inclined to label myself as anything, I should be disposed to label myself as a Catholic already.”

“Oh, I know that affectation!” scoffed Alan.

“Well, the net result of our commentary is that you, like everybody else, object to Mrs. Ross changing her opinions, because you don’t like it. Her position is negligible, the springs of action being religious. Now if my mother went over to Rome I should be rather bucked on her account.”

“My dear chap, if you don’t mind my saying so,” suggested Alan as apologetically as his outraged conventionality would allow, “your mother has always been rather given to⁠—er⁠—all sorts of new cults, and it wouldn’t be so⁠—er⁠—noticeable in her case. But supposing Stella⁠—”

Michael looked at him sharply.

“Supposing Stella did?” he asked.

“Oh, of course she’s artistic and she’s traveled and⁠—oh, well, I don’t know⁠—Stella’s different.”

At any rate, thought Michael, he was still in love with Stella. She was evidently beyond criticism.

“You needn’t worry,” said Michael. “I don’t think she ever will.”

“You didn’t think Aunt Maud ever would,” Alan pointed out.

“And, great scott, it’s still absolutely incredible,” Michael murmured.

Although in the face of Alan’s prejudice Michael had felt very strongly that Mrs. Ross had done well by her change of communion, or rather by her submission to a communion, for he never could remember her as perfervid in favor of any before, at the same time to himself he rather regretted the step, since it destroyed for him that idea he had kept of her as one who stood gravely holding the balance. He dreaded a little the effect upon her of a sudden plunge into Catholicism, just as he had felt uneasy when eight or nine years ago Alan had first propounded the theory of his uncle being in love with her. Michael remembered how the suggestion had faintly shocked his conception of Miss Carthew. It was a little disconcerting to have to justify herself to Nancy, or indeed to anyone. It seemed to weaken her status. Moreover, his own deep-implanted notion of “going over to Rome” as the act of a weakling and a weathercock was hard to allay. His own gray image of Pallas Athene seemed now to be decked with meretricious roses. He was curious to know what his mother would think about the news. Mrs. Fane received it as calmly as if he had told her Mrs. Ross had taken up palmistry; to her Catholicism was only one of the numberless fads that made life amusing. As for Stella, she did not comment on the news at all. She was too much occupied with the diversions of the autumn season. Yet Stella was careful to impress on Michael that her new mode of life had not been dictated by any experience in Vienna.

“Don’t think I’m drowning care,” she wrote. “I made a damned fool of myself and luckily you’re almost the only person who knows anything about it. I’ve wiped it out as completely as a composition I’ve learned and played and done with. Really I find this pottering life that mother and I lead very good for my music. I’m managing to store up a reserve of feeling. The Schumann recitals were in some ways my best efforts so far. Just now I’m absolutely mad about dancing and fencing; and as mother’s life is entirely devoted to the theory of physical culture at this exact moment, we’re both happy.”

Michael told Alan what Stella said about dancing and fencing, and he was therefore not surprised when Alan informed him, with the air of one who really has discovered something truly worth while, that there was a Sword club at Oxford.

“Hadn’t you better join as well next term?” he suggested. “Rather good ecker, I fancy.”

“Much better than golf,” said Michael.

“Oh, rather,” Alan agreed, in lofty innocence of any hidden allusion to his resolve of last summer.

For the Christmas vacation Michael went to Scotland, partly because he wanted to brace himself sharply for the last two terms of his Oxford time, but more because he had the luxurious fancy to stay in some town very remote from Oxford, there meditating on her spires like gray and graceful shapes of mist made perdurable forever. Hitherto Oxford had called him back, as to a refuge most severe, from places whose warmth or sensuousness or gaiety was making her cold beauty the more desirable. Now Michael wished to come back for so nearly his ultimate visit as to a tender city of melting outlines. Therefore to fulfill this vision of return he refused Guy Hazlewood’s invitation to Plashers Mead. It seemed to him that no city nearer than Aberdeen would give him the joy of charging southward in the train, back to the moist heart of England and that wan aggregation of immaterial domes and spires.

Aberdeen was spare and harsh enough even for Michael’s mood, and there for nearly five weeks of northeasterly weather he worked at political economy. It was a very profitable vacation; and that superb and frozen city of granite indifferent to the howling