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

any little thing I can do to oblige,” said Barnes very sarcastically.

It took Michael a long time to convince him that no plot was looming, but at last he persuaded him to come to 173 Cheyne Walk, and after that he knew that Barnes could not refuse to show him Leppard Street.

IV Leppard Street

While they were driving to Cheyne Walk, Michael extracted from Barnes an outline of his adventures since last they had met. The present narrative was probably not less cynical than the account of his life related to Michael on various occasions in the past; but perhaps because his imagination had already to some extent been fed by reality, he could no longer be shocked. He received the most sordid avowals calmly, neither blaming Barnes nor indulging himself with mental gooseflesh. Yet amid all the frankness accorded to him he could not find out why Barnes had changed his name. He was curious about this, because he could not conceive any shamelessness too outrageous for Barnes to reveal. It would be interesting to find out what could really make even him pause; no doubt ultimately, with the contrariness of the underworld, it would turn out to be something that Michael himself would consider trivial in comparison with so much of what Barnes had boasted. Anyway, whether he discovered the secret or not, it would certainly be interesting to study Barnes, since in him good and evil might at any moment display themselves as clearly as a hidden substance to a reagent flung into a seething alembic. It might perhaps be assuming too much to say that there was any good in him; and yet Michael was unwilling to suppose that all his conversions were merely the base drugs of a disordered morality. Apart from his philosophic value, Barnes might very actually be of service in the machinery of finding Lily.

At 173 Cheyne Walk Barnes looked about him rather bitterly.

“Easy enough to behave yourself in a house like this,” he commented.

Here spoke the child who imagines that grown-up people have no excuse to be anything but very good. There might be something worth pursuing in that thought. A child might consider itself chained more inseverably than one who apparently possesses the perfectiveness of free-will. Had civilization complicated too unreasonably the problem of evil? It was a commonplace to suppose that the sense of moral responsibility increased with the opportunity of development, and yet after all was not the reverse true?

“Why should it be easier to behave here than in Leppard Street?” Michael asked. “I do wish you could understand it’s really so much more difficult. I can’t distinguish what is wrong from what is right nearly so well as you can.”

“Well, in my experience, and my experience has done its bit I can tell you,” said Barnes in self-satisfied parenthesis. “In my experience most of the difficulties in this world come from wanting something we haven’t got. I don’t care what it is⁠—a woman or a drink or a new suit of clothes. Money’ll buy any of them. Give me ten pounds a week, and I could be a bloody angel.”

“Supposing I offered you half as much for three months,” suggested Michael. “Do you think you’d find life any easier while it lasted?”

“Well, don’t be silly,” said Barnes. “Of course I should. If you’d walked home every night with your eyes on the gutter in case anybody had dropped a threepenny bit, you’d think it was easier. It’s not a bit of good your running me down, Fane. If you were me, you’d be just the same. Those monks at the Abbey used to jaw about holy poverty. The man who first said that ought to be walking about hell with donkey’s ears on his nob. What’s it done for me? I ask you. Why, it’s made me so that I’d steal a farthing from one blind man to palm it off as half-a-quid on another.”

“Tell me about Leppard Street,” said Michael, laughing. “What’s it like?”

“Well, you go and punch a few holes in a cheese rind. That’s what it looks like. And then go and think yourself a rat who’s lost all his teeth, and you’ve got what it feels like to be living in it.”

“Supposing I said I’d like to try?” asked Michael. “What would you think?”

“Think? I shouldn’t think two seconds. I should know you were having a game. What good’s Leppard Street to you, when you can sit here bouncing up and down all day on cushions?”

“Experience,” said Michael.

“Oh, rats! Nothing’s experience that you haven’t had to do.”

“Well, I’ll give you five pounds a week,” Michael offered, “if you’ll keep yourself free to do anything I want you to do. I shouldn’t want anything very dreadful, of course,” he added.

It was difficult for Michael to persuade Barnes that he was in earnest, so difficult indeed that, even when he produced five sovereigns and offered them directly to him, he had to disclose partially his reason for wishing to go to Leppard Street.

“You see, I want to find a girl,” he explained.

“Well, if you go and live in Leppard Street you’ll lose the best girl you’ve got straight off. That’s all there is to it.”

“You don’t understand. This girl I used to know has gone wrong, and I want to find her and marry her.”

It seemed to Michael that Barnes’ manner changed in some scarcely definable way when he made this announcement. He pocketed the five pounds and invited Michael to come to Leppard Street whenever he liked. He was evidently no longer suspicious of his sincerity, and a perky, an almost cunning cordiality had replaced the disheartened cynicism of his former attitude. It encouraged Michael to see how obviously his resolve had impressed Barnes. He accepted it as an augury of good hap. Involuntarily he waited for his praise; and when Barnes made no allusion to the merit of his action, he ascribed his silence to emotion. This was proving really