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

wave away the least element of disturbance. Next Saturday he and Alan were going to spend the day in Richmond Park; and when it came in its course what a day it was. The boys set out directly after breakfast and walked through the pungent bracken, chasing the deer and the dragonflies as if there were nothing to distinguish them. Down streamed the sun from the blue July heavens: but Michael and Alan clad in white went careless of the heat. They walked over the grass uphill and ran down through the cool dells of oak trees, down towards the glassy ponds to play “ducks and drakes” in the flickering weather. They stood by the intersecting carriage-roads and mocked the perspiring travellers in their black garments. They cared for nothing but being alive in Richmond Park on a summer Saturday of London. At last, near a shadowy woodland where the grasses grew very tall, Michael and Alan, smothering the air with pollen, flung themselves down into the fragrancy and, while the bees droned about them, slept in the sun. Later in the afternoon the two friends sat on the Terrace among the old ladies and the old gentlemen, and the nurserymaids and the children’s hoops. Down below, the Thames sparkled in a deep green prospect of England. An hour went by; the old ladies and the old gentlemen and the nurserymaids and the hoops faded away one by one under the darkling trees. Down below, the Thames threaded with shining curves a vast and elusive valley of azure. The Thames died away to a sheen of dusky silver: the azure deepened almost to indigo: lights flitted into ken one by one: there travelled up from the river a sound of singing, and somewhere in the houses behind a piano began to tinkle. Michael suddenly became aware that the end of the summer term was in sight. He shivered in the dewfall and put his arm round Alan’s neck affectionately and intimately: only profound convention kept him from kissing his friend and by not doing so he felt vaguely that something was absent from this perfection of dusk. Something in Michael at that moment demanded emotional expression, and from afternoon school of yesterday recurred to his mind a note to some lines in the Sixth Aeneid of Virgil. He remembered the lines, having by some accident learned his repetition for that day:

Huc omnis turba ad ripas effusa ruebat,
Matres atque viri defunctaque corpora vita
Magnanimum heroum, pueri innuptœque puellœ,
Impositique rogis juvenes ante ora parentum;
Quam multa in silvis auctumni frigore primo
Lapsa cadunt folia, aut ad terram gurgite ab alto
Quam multœ glomerantur aves ubi frigidus annus
Trans pontum fugat et terris immittit apricis.

Compare, said the commentator, Milton, Paradise Lost, Book I.

Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks
In Vallombrosa.

As Michael mentally repeated the thunderous English line, a surge of melancholy caught him up to overwhelm his thoughts. In some way those words expressed what he was feeling at this moment, so that he could gain relief from the poignancy of his joy here in the darkness close to Alan with the unfathomable valley of the Thames beneath, by saying over and over again:

Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks
In Vallombrosa.

“Damn, damn, damn, damn,” cried Alan suddenly. “Exams on Monday! Damn, damn, damn, damn.”

“I must go home and swat tonight,” said Michael.

“So must I,” sighed Alan.

“Walk with me to the station,” Michael asked.

“Oh, rather,” replied Alan.

Soon Michael was jolting back to Kensington in a stuffy carriage of hot Richmond merrymakers, while all the time he sat in the corner, saying over and over again:

Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks
In Vallombrosa.

All Saturday night and all Sunday Michael worked breathlessly for those accursed examinations: but at the end of them he and Alan were bracketed equal, very near the tail of the Upper Fourth A. Dr. Brownjohn sent for each of them in turn, and each of them found the interview very trying.

“What do you mean by it?” roared the Headmaster to Michael. “What do you mean by it, you young blackguard? Um? Look at this list. Um? It’s a contemptible position for a Scholar. Down here with a lump of rabbit’s brains, you abominable little loafer. Um? If you aren’t in the first five boys of the Lower Fifth next term, I’ll kick you off the Foundation. What good are you to the School? Um? None at all.”

As Dr. Brownjohn bellowed forth this statement, his mouth opened so wide that Michael instinctively shrank back as if from a crater in eruption.

“You don’t come here to swagger about,” growled the Headmaster. “You come here to be a credit to your school. You pestilent young jackanapes, do you suppose I haven’t noticed your idleness? Um? I notice everything. Get out of my sight and take your hands out of your pockets, you insolent little lubber. Um?”

Michael left the Headmaster’s room with an expression of tragic injury: in the corridor was a group of juniors.

“What the devil are you kids hanging about here for?” Michael demanded.

“All right, sidey Fane,” they burbled. Michael dashed into the group and grabbed a handful of caps which he tossed into the dusty complications of the Laocoön. To their lamentations he responded by thrusting his hands deep down into his pockets and whistling “Little Dolly Daydreams, pride of Idaho.” The summer term would be over in a few days, and Michael was sorry to say goodbye to Alan, who was going to Norway with his father and mother and would therefore not be available for the whole of the holidays. Indeed, he was leaving two days before School actually broke up. Michael was wretched without Alan and brooded over the miseries of life that so soon transcended the joys. On the last day of term, he was seized with an impulse to say goodbye to Mr. Caryll, an impulse which he could not understand and was inclined to deplore. However, it was too strong for his