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

being unable to get into Mulberry Cottage. His brutal frankness; his cynical egotism; his cold resolution, were ignominiously repulsed by a fast-closed door. Ringing a bell at intervals of a minute was a very undignified substitute for the position he had imagined himself taking up in that small square room. This errand-boy who stood at his elbow, gazing with such rapt interest at his ringing of the bell, was by no means the audience he had pictured.

“Does it amuse you to watch a bell being rung?” Michael asked.

The errand-boy shook his head.

“Well, why do you do it?”

“I wasn’t,” said the errand-boy.

“What are you doing, then?”

“Nothing.”

Michael could not grapple with the errand-boy, and he retired from Tinderbox Lane until after lunch. He rang again, but he could get no answer to his ringing. At intervals until midnight he came back, but there was never an answer all the time. He went home and wrote to Sylvia:

173 Cheyne Walk,
S.W.

Dear Sylvia,

If you aren’t afraid of being beaten, why are you afraid to let me see Lily?

I dare you to let me see her. Be sporting.

Yours,

M. F.

To Lily he wrote:

Darling,

Meet me outside South Kensington Station any time from twelve to three.

Michael.

Alone, of course.

Next day he waited three hours and a half for Lily, but she did not come. All the time he spent in a secondhand bookshop with one eye on the street. When he got home, he found a note from Sylvia:

Come tomorrow at twelve.

S. S.

Michael crumpled up the note and flung it triumphantly into the waste-paper basket.

“I thought I should sting you into giving way,” he exclaimed.

Mrs. Gainsborough opened the door to him, when he arrived.

“They’ve gone away, the demons!” was what she said.

Michael was conscious of the garden rimmed with hoarfrost stretching behind her in a vista; and as he stared at this silver sparkling desert he realized that Sylvia had inflicted upon him a crushing humiliation.

“Where have they gone?” he asked blankly.

“Oh, they never tell me where they get to. But they took their luggage. There’s a note for you from Sylvia. Come in, and I’ll give it to you.”

Michael followed her drearily along the gravel path.

“We shall be having the snowdrops before we know where we are,” Mrs. Gainsborough said.

“Very soon,” he agreed. He would have assented if she had foretold begonias tomorrow morning.

In the sitting-room Michael saw Sylvia’s note, a bleak little envelope waiting for him on that tablecloth. Mrs. Gainsborough left him to read it alone. The old silence of the room haunted him again now, the silence that was so much intensified by the canary hopping about his cage. Almost he decided to throw the letter unread into the fire.

From every corner of the room the message of Sylvia’s hostility was stretching out toward him. “Sweet,” said the canary. Michael tore open the envelope and read:

Perhaps you’ll admit that my influence is as strong as yours. You’d much better give her up. In a way, I’m rather sorry for you, but not enough to make me hand over Lily to you. Do realize, my dear young thing, that you aren’t even beginning to understand women. I admit that there’s precious little to understand in Lily. And for that very reason, when even you begin to see through her beauty, you’ll hate her. Now I hate to think of this happening. She’s a thousand times better off with me than she ever could be with you. Perhaps my maternal instinct has gone off the lines a bit and fixed itself on Lily. And yet I don’t think it’s anything so sickly as sentimental mothering. No, I believe I just like to sit and look at her. Lily’s rather cross with me for taking her away from “such a nice boy.” Does that please you? And doesn’t it exactly describe you? However, I won’t crow. Don’t break the lusters, when you read this. They belong to Fatty. What I suggest for you is a walk in Kensington Gardens to the refrain of “Blast the whole bloody world!” Now look shocked, my little Vandyck.

S. S.

Michael tore the letter up. He did not want to read and reread it for the rest of the day. His eyelids were pricking unpleasantly, and he went out to find Mrs. Gainsborough. He was really sensitive that even a room should witness such a discomfiture. The landlady was downstairs in the kitchen, where he had not yet been. In this room of copper pots and pans, with only the garden in view, she might have been a farmer’s wife.

“Sit down,” she said. “And make yourself at home.”

“Will you sit down?” Michael asked.

“Oh, well, yes, if it’s any pleasure to you.” She took off her apron and seated herself, smoothing the bombasine skirt over her knees.

A tabby cat purred between them; a kettle was singing; and there was a smell of allspice.

“You really don’t know where the girls have gone?” Michael began.

“No more than you do,” she assured him. “But that Sylvia is really a Turk.”

“I suppose Lily didn’t tell you that I used to know her six years ago?” he asked.

“Oh, yes, she talked about you a lot. A good deal more than Miss Sylvia liked, that’s a sure thing.”

“Well, do you think it’s fair for Sylvia to carry her off like this? I want to marry Lily, Mrs. Gainsborough.”

“There, only fancy what a daring that Sylvia has. She’s a nice girl, and very high-spirited, but she is a Miss Dictatorial.”

Michael felt encouraged by Mrs. Gainsborough’s attitude, and he made up his mind to throw himself upon her mercy. Sentiment would be his only weapon, and he found some irony in the reflection that he had set out this morning to be a brutal cynic in his treatment of the situation.

“Do you think it’s fair to try to prevent Lily from marrying me? You know as well as I do that the life she’s leading now isn’t