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

of the neighborhood have been peeping over my area railings as if the murder had been done in here. Mr. Cleghorne’s quite hoarse with hollering out to them to keep off. And it never rains but what it pours. There’s a poor woman gone and died here now. However, a funeral’s a little more lively than the police nosing round, though her not having a blessed halfpenny and owing me three weeks on the rent it certainly won’t be anything better than a pauper’s funeral.”

“What woman?” Michael asked.

“Oh, a invalid dressmaker which I’ve been very good to⁠—a Mrs. Smith.”

“Dead?” he echoed.

“Yes, dead, and laid out, and got a clergyman sitting with her body. What clergyman? Roman Catholic, I should say. It quite worried Mr. Cleghorne. He said it gave him the rats to have a priest hanging around so close at hand. You see, being asthmatic, he’s read a lot about these Roman Catholics, and he doesn’t hold with them. They’re that underhand, he says, it makes him nervous.”

“Can I see this priest?” Michael asked.

“Well, it’s hardly the room you’re accustomed to. I’ve really looked at her more as a charity than an actual lodger. In fact, my poor old mother has gone on at me something cruel for being so good to her.”

“I think I should like to see this priest,” Michael persisted.

Mrs. Cleghorne was with difficulty persuaded to show him the way, and she was evidently a little suspicious of the motive of his visit. They descended into the gloom of the basement, and the landlady pointed out to him the room that was down three steps and up another. She excused herself from coming too. The priest, a monkey-faced Irishman, was sitting on the pale blue chest, and as Michael entered, he did not look up from his Office.

“Is that you, Sister?” he asked. Then he perceived Michael and waited for him to explain his business.

“I wanted to ask about this poor woman.”

Mrs. Smith lay under a sheet with candles winking at her head. Nothing was visible except her face still faintly rouged in the daylight.

“I was interested in her,” Michael exclaimed.

“Indeed!” said the priest dryly. “I wouldn’t have thought so.”

“Is her cat here?”

“There was some sort of an animal, but the woman of the house took it off.”

A silence followed, and Michael was aware of the priest’s hostility.

“I suppose she didn’t see her son before she died?” Michael went on. “Her son is with the Jesuits.”

“You seem to know a great deal about the poor soul?”

“I thought I had managed to help her,” said Michael, in a sad voice.

“Indeed?” commented the priest, even more dryly.

“And there is nothing I can do now?”

“Almighty God has taken her,” said the priest. “There is nothing you can do.”

“I could have some Masses said for her.”

“Are you a Catholic?” the priest asked.

“No; but I fancy I shall be a Catholic,” Michael said; and as he spoke it was like a rushing wind. He hurried out into the passage where a nun passed him in the gloom. “She will be praying,” Michael thought, and, looking back over his shoulder, he said:

“Pray for me, Sister.”

The nun was evidently startled by the voice, and went on quickly down the three steps and up the other into Mrs. Smith’s den.

Michael climbed upstairs to interview the Solutionist. He found him lying in bed.

“Why wasn’t that money paid regularly?” he asked severely.

“Who is it?” the Solutionist muttered, in fuddled accents. “Wanted the money myself. Had a glorious time. The cat’s all right, and the poor old rabbits are dead. Can’t give everybody a good time. Somebody’s got to suffer in this world.”

Michael left him, and without entering his old rooms again went away from Leppard Street.

The moment had come to visit Rome, and remembering how he had once dissuaded Maurice from going there, he felt some compunction now in telling him that he wanted to travel alone. However, it would be impossible to visit Rome for the first time with Maurice. In the studio he led up to his backing out of the engagement.

“About this going abroad,” he began.

“I say, Michael, I don’t think I can come just now. The editor of The Point of View wants a series of articles on the ballet, and I’m going to start on them at once.”

It was a relief to Michael, and he wished Maurice good luck.

“Yes, I think they’re going to be rather good,” he said confidently. “I’m going to begin with the Opera: then the Empire and the Alhambra: and in September there will be the new ballet at the Orient. Of course, I’ve got a theory about English ballet.”

“Is there anything about which you haven’t got a theory?” Michael asked. “Hullo, you’ve got the Venetian mirror from Ararat House. I’m so glad!”

“I’ve arranged all that,” Maurice said. “Lily Haden has gone to live with a girl called Sylvia Scarlett. Rather a terror, I thought.”

“Yes, I had an idea you’d find her a bit difficult.”

“Oh, but I scored off her in the end,” said Maurice quickly.

“Congratulations,” said Michael. “Well, I’m going to Rome.”

“I say, rather hot.”

“So much the better.”

“I used to be rather keen on Rome, but I’ve a theory it’s generally a disappointment. However, I suppose I shall have to go one day.”

“Yes, I don’t think Rome ought to miss your patronage, Maurice.”

They parted as intimate friends, but while Michael was going downstairs from the studio he thought that it might very easily be for the last time.

His mother was at home for tea; lots of women and a bishop were having a committee about something. When they had all rustled away into the mellow June evening, Michael asked what had been accomplished.

“It’s this terrible state of the London streets,” said Mrs. Fane. “Something has got to be done about these miserable women. The Bishop of Chelsea has promised to bring in some kind of a bill in Parliament. He feels so strongly about it.”

“What does he feel?” Michael asked.

“Why, of course, that they shouldn’t be allowed.”

“The remedy lies with him,” Michael