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

“Where have you been?” Stella demanded. “We go to Richmond. We send frantic wires to you to join us on the river, and when we come back you’re gone. Where have you been?”

“I’ve been away,” Michael answered, with a certain amount of embarrassment.

“My dear old Michael, we never supposed you’d been hiding in the cistern-cupboard for a fortnight,” said Stella, striking three chords of cheerful contempt.

“I believe he went back to Oxford,” suggested Alan.

“I am going up tomorrow,” Michael said. “When is your Viva?”

“Next week. Where are you going to stay?”

“In college, if I can get hold of a room.”

“Bother Oxford,” interrupted Stella. “We want to know where you’ve been this fortnight.”

“You do,” Alan corrected.

“I’ll tell you both later on,” Michael volunteered. “Just at present I suppose you won’t grudge me a secret. People who are engaged to be married should show a very special altruism toward people who are not.”

“Michael, I will not have you being important and carrying about a secret with you,” Stella declared.

“You can manage either me or Alan,” Michael offered. “But you simply shall not manage both of us. Personally, I recommend you to break-in Alan.”

With evasive banter he succeeded in postponing the revelation of what he was, as Stella said, up to.

“We’re going in for Herefords,” Alan suddenly announced without consideration for the trend of the talk. “You know. Those white-faced chaps.”

Michael looked at him in astonishment.

“I was thinking about this place of Stella’s in Huntingdonshire,” Alan explained. “We went down to see it last week.”

“Oh, Alan, why did you tell him? He doesn’t deserve to be told.”

“Is it decent?” Michael asked.

“Awfully decent,” said Alan. “Rather large, you know.”

“In fact, we shall belong to the squirearchy,” cried Stella, crashing down upon the piano with the first bars of Chopin’s most exciting Polonaise and from the Polonaise going off into an absurd impromptu recitative.

“We shall have a dogcart⁠—a high and shining dogcart⁠—and we shall go bowling down the lanes of the county of Hunts⁠—because in books about people who live in the county and of the county and by with or from the county dogcarts invariably bowl⁠—we shall have a herd of Herefordshire bulls and bullocks and bullockesses⁠—and my husband Alan with a straw in his mouth will go every morning with the bailiff to inspect their well-being⁠—and three days every week from November to March we shall go hunting in Huntingdon⁠—and when we aren’t actually hunting in Huntingdon we shall be talking about hunting⁠—and we shall also talk about the Primrose League and the foot-and-mouth disease and the evolutions of the new High Church Vicar⁠—we shall.⁠ ⁠…”

But Michael threw a cushion at her, and the recitative came to an end.

They all three talked for a long while more seriously of plans for life at Hardingham Hall.

“You know dear old Prescott requested me in his will that I would hyphen his name on to mine, whether I were married or single,” said Stella. “So we shall be Mr. and Mrs. Prescott-Merivale. Alan has been very good about that, though I think he’s got a dim idea it’s putting on side. Stella Prescott-Merivale or The Curse of the County! And when I play I’m going to be Madame Merivale. I decline to be done out of the Madame! and everybody will pronounce it Marivahleh and I shall receive the unanimous encomia of the critical press.”

“Life will be rather a rag,” said Michael, with approbation.

“Of course it’s going to be simply wonderful. Can’t you see the headlines? From Chopin to Sheep. Madame Merivale, the famous Virtuosa, and her Flock of Barbary Long-tails.”

It was all so very remote from Neptune Crescent, Michael thought. They really were going to be so ridiculously happy, these two, in their country life. And now they were talking of finding him a house close to Hardingham Hall. There must be just that small Georgian house, they vowed, where with a large garden of stately walks and a well-proportioned library of books he could stay in contented retreat. They promised him, too, that beyond the tallest cedar on the lawn a gazebo should command the widest, the greenest expanse of England ever beheld.

“It would so add to our reputation in the county of Hunts,” said Stella, “if you were near by. We should feel so utterly Augustan. And of course you’d ride a nag. I’m not sure really that you wouldn’t have to wear knee-breeches. I declare, Michael, that the very idea makes me feel like Jane Austen, or do I mean Doctor Johnson?”

“I should make up your mind which,” Michael advised.

“But you know what I mean,” she persisted. “The doctor’s wife would come in to tea and tell us that her husband had dug up a mummy or whatever it was the Romans left about. And I should say, ‘We must ask my brother about it. My brother, my dear Mrs. Jumble, will be sure to know. My brother knows everything.’ And she would agree with a pursed-up mouth. ‘Oh, pray do, my dear Mrs. Prescott-Merivale. Everyone says your brother is a great scholar. It’s such a pleasure to have him at the Lodge. So very distinguished, is it not?’ ”

“If you’re supposed to be imitating Jane Austen, I may as well tell you at once that it’s not a bit like it.”

“But I think you ought to come and live near us,” Alan solemnly put in.

“Of course, my dear, he’s coming,” Stella declared.

“Of course I’m not,” Michael contradicted. But he was very glad they wanted him; and then he thought with a pang how little they would want him with Lily in that well-proportioned library. How little Lily would enjoy the fat and placid Huntingdon meadows. How little, too, she would care to see the blackbird swagger with twinkling rump by the shrubbery’s edge or hear him scatter the leaves in shrill affright. In the quick vision that came to him of a sleek lawn possessed by birds, Michael experienced his first qualm about the wisdom of what he intended to do.

“And