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

They had come here to rest from the fatigue of dullness, and in a moment now the chill vapors of the autumn night would wreathe themselves round their journey home. Sunday was a day of pause when the people of the city had leisure to sigh out their weariness: it was no shutting of theaters or shops that made it sad. This congregation was composed of weaklings fit for neither good nor evil, and every Sunday night they were gathered together for a little while in the smell of warm wax and incense. Now already they were trooping out into the frore evening; their footsteps would shuffle for a space over the dark pavements; a few would have pickled cabbage and cheese for supper, a few would not; such was life in this limbo between Hell and Heaven. Barnes, however, was not to be judged with the bulk of the congregation: another reason must be found for the influence of Evening Prayer or of Chator’s words upon him.

“Did you like the sermon?” Michael asked in the porch.

“I didn’t listen to a word of it,” said Barnes emphatically.

“Oh, really? I thought you were interested. You seemed interested,” said Michael.

“I was thinking what a mug I’d been not to back The Clown for the Cesarewitch. I had the tip. You know, Fane, I’ll tell you what it is. I’m not used to money, and that’s a fact. I don’t know how to spend it. I’m afraid of it. So bang it all goes on drinks.”

“I thought you enjoyed the service,” said Michael.

“Oh, I’m used to services. You know. On and off I’ve done a lot of churchifying, I have. It would take something more than that fellow preaching to curdle me up. I’ve gone through it. Religion, love, and measles; they’re all about the same. I don’t reckon anybody gets them more than once properly.”

Michael told Barnes he was going on to supper at the Clergy House, and though he had intended to invite him to come as well, he was so much irritated by his unconscious deception that he let him go off, and went back into the empty church to wait for Chator and Nigel Stewart. What puzzled Michael most about Barnes was how himself had ever managed to be impressed by his unusual wickedness. As he beheld him nowadays, a mean and common little squirt of exceptional beastliness really, he was amazed to think that once he had endowed him with almost diabolical powers. He remembered to this day the gleam in Brother Aloysius’ blue eyes when he was gathering the blackberries by that hazel-coppice. Perhaps it had been the monkish habit, which by contrast with his expression had made him seem almost supernaturally evil; and yet when he met him again at Earl’s Court he had been kindled by those blue eyes. Henry Meats had been very much like Henry Barnes; but where was now that lambent flame in the eyes? He had looked at them many times lately, but they had always been cold and unintelligent as a doll’s.

“I really must have been mad when I was young,” Michael said to himself. “And yet other people have preserved the influence they used to have over me. Other people haven’t changed. Why should he? I wonder whether it was always myself I saw in him: my own evil genius?”

Chator came to fetch him while he was worrying over Barnes’ lapse into unimportance, and together they passed through the sacristy into the Clergy House.

Nigel Stewart’s room, which they visited in the minutes before supper, had changed very little from his digs in the High. Ely had added a picture or two; that was all. Nor had Nigel changed, except that his clerical attire made him more seraphic than ever. While he and Michael chattered of Oxford friends, Chator stood with his back to the fire beaming at the reunion which he felt he had brought about: his biretta at a military angle gave him a look of knowing benevolence.

The bell sounded for supper, and they went along corridors hung with Arundel prints and faded photographs of cathedrals, until they came to a brightly lit room where it seemed that quite twenty people were going to sit down at the trestle-table. Michael was introduced to the Vicar and two more curates, and also to a dozen church workers who made the same sort of jokes about whatever dish they were helping. Also he met that walrus-like man who, whether as organist or ceremonarius or treasurer of club accounts or vicar’s churchwarden, is always to be found attached to the clergy. Michael sat next to him, as it happened, and found he had a deep voice and was unable to get nearer to “th” than “v.”

“We’re raver finking,” he confided to Michael over a high-heaped plate, “of starting Benediction, vis year.”

“That will be wonderful,” said Michael politely.

“Yes, it ought to annoy ver poor old Bishop raver.”

The walrus-like man chuckled and bent over his food with a relish stimulated by such a prospect. After supper the two curates carried off their favorites upstairs to their own rooms; and as Chator, Stewart, and Michael were determined to spend the evening together, the Vicar was left with rather more people than usual to smoke his cigarettes.

“I envy you people,” said Michael, as the three of them sank down into deep wicker chairs. “I envy this power you have to bring Oxford⁠—or Cambridge⁠—into London. For it is the same spirit in terms of action, isn’t it? And you’re free from the thought which must often worry dons that perhaps they are having a very good time without doing very much to deserve it.”

“We work hard in this parish,” spluttered Chator. “Oh, rather. Very hard.”

“That’s what I say. You have the true peace that thrives on activity,” said Michael. “But at the same time, what I’m rather anxious to know is how nearly you touch the real sinners.”

Stewart and Chator looked at one another across his