Sinister Street, vol. 2

Vacation, he found that somehow his mother had changed. In old days she had never lost for an instant that air of romantic mystery with which Michael as a very little boy for his own sa

much apart from the great world her existence had been when she was in it, his mother had only evoked a thought of romance because the average inhabitant was lower down the ladder of the more subtly differentiated social gr

ated pleasure in their company. What puzzled him most was how to account for the speed with which she had gathered round her so many acquaintances. It was almost as if his father in add

sked Stella irritably, when he had been trapped into a rus

ained. "And mother's interested in them. I expect, you know, sh

amusing," said Michael, "and now she's a

gave up everything for one man I should get to rely on him so utterly that whe

d be more vague than ev

bound to make her change tremendously, if, as I think, a goo

er offended by Stel

sily about all of that," he said. "I think t

her past there has been anything which was not perfectly ordinary, almost dull. Really by the way she worries me about the simplest litt

and though he had laughed them aside as the extravagant affectations of a gifted child, now that, however grudgingly he must

sorial or priestly air or whatever you call it, because if you ever

keeping up her music, which made Stella d

ously reproached himself for a method of obloquy so cheap. "Anyway, you never talk abou

yed over and over again the latest popular song

t he broached the subject of

h too busy with the B

el si

promised to go to Dinard with Mrs. Carruthers. She has just taken up M

urtle religions," sa

little toleration in very much the same tone

omewhere together? Stella has been quit

ther. "You and Michael are so funny, mother. You grumble at me when I don't practice al

dicted. "As a matter of fact, I've been asked to joi

friend in the north of England, he decided that his presence was necessary to the triumph of Tory Democracy and left abruptly in the middle of the night with a request to forward his luggage when it arrived. When it did arrive, the reading-par

golfing, cliff-climbing, cream-eating, fishing, sailing, and talking. Avery and Stewart also did a certain amount

the O.L.G. on Cornwall," A

potted guide?"

ste to repudiat

e on the uncanny place

the odd names hereabouts," Castleton obser

nestly assured him. "It really a

ood la

ou'll never be affected profoun

ed his thumbs

me in particular, Guy, but though, as y

" Hazlewood interrupted, with a laugh.

ith a sort of horror of the unknown. You'll all rag me, and you can, but though I

ment he puffed def

of people who write about over-emotionalized young men and women acting to the moon i

sentiments, Guy?" Mich

Cornwall, if people in books didn't always go there to solve their problems and

say more just then, though he had been compelled against his will to

hat rose in small puffs and died away in long sighs. Was it

e a telegram fro

ere rathe

ight, until gradually, as the train grew hotter, they stood out in his memory like cool people eternally splashed by grateful fountains. Yet at the back of all his regrets f

night the street-lamps seemed to have lost all their sparkle

self, as through the stale city air the hansom jog

more impersonally as the great railway-station of Europe, a center of convenience rather than the pulsing heart of pleasure. However, as soon as Michael had taken his seat in the bony fiacre and had ricocheted from corner to corner of half a dozen streets, Pa

view of the Seine and beyond of multitudinous roofs that in the foreground glistened to the sun like a pattern of enamel, until with d

nd the bareness of her arms seemed appropriate to that Hungarian dance she played. All the room was permeated with the smell of paint, and before an easel stood a girl in long unsmocked gown of green linen. This girl Michael had never seen, but he realized her personality as somehow inseparably associated with that hot-blooded Bacchante on whose dewy crimson mouth at the moment her brush rested. Geranium flowers,

ll, had brought her from London to Paris. Nor could he repress a slight feeling of hostility toward Miss Clarissa Vine whose exuberant air did not consort well with his idea of a friend for Stella. He was certainly glad, whether he were ne

ent silently for a while

el at last, "why d

nted

he situation as one created merely by Stella's impetuousness. But he could not resist a little pressu

nged into her reasons. First, she took Michael back to

c perfection was not enough for an artis

ery well indeed, and asked just how she

at a youth was

ael quickly interjected. "You surely haven't fall

side, but I am fascinated by

ment, overshadowed by the thou

nter who had very much

confess that your acquaintanceship with the arts

and eyed all Paris with

t do anything. I suppose for a long time now you've been making a

d Alan falling in love with one another was to be bro

f myself," Stella flamed. "But I thought

issa Vine?" Michael

l I traveled w

l this comes of your taking that stu

w that all this had indeed come from that studio, and to sho

t and talk hot air till three o'clock in the morning. I shall go mad," Mic

ut only of her art, that she made one want to work and was therefore a valuable companion, and, finally, to appease if po

he quarter of an hour he was waiting for Stella to dress, it was impossible for him to say whether

arty, you shall sit next

rrogated Mich

party in our r

w Ayliffe is co

no

ll have to

again very

able to spend the afternoon together. It was a jolly afternoon, for though Stella had closed her lips tightly to any more confidences, she and Michael enjoyed

effect at which they were aiming. But to resist their appeal, coming as they did from the heart of Paris to this long riverside room with its lamps and shadows, was impossible. Each couple that entered seemed to relinquish slowly on the threshold a mysterious intimacy which set Michael's heart beating in the imagination of what altitudes it might not have reached along the path of romantic passions. Every yo

room in sound as emotionally melodious, as romantically real as the sea-sound conjured by a shell. Here were gathered people who worked always in that circumfluent inspiration, that murmur of liberty, that whisper of humanity. What could Oxford give but the bells of out-worn beliefs, and the patter

ffe's cadaverous exterior was just a noble melancholy, that Ayliffe's high pointed head did not betray an almost insufferable self-esteem, and, what was the hardest t

e George's pict

t nothing more definite than a sense of the extraordinary ease of social intercourse under these conditions. Looking round, he saw that Clarissa Vine had come to sit ne

ittle thin, don't

t always seemed to apply equally to the subject and the medium. It was impossible to tell from Mi

himself for the absence of subtlety or cleverness in such an answer b

an," said Clarissa,

d not conceive an affirmation of per

sed the other Stel

or even qualified agreement would be too dangerous a proc

arissa triumphantly. "I said, 'my god, Ge

mpression of a full-length study had been correct, and, finding that it wa

he edged away by drawing attent

said Clarissa. "But I li

oment," Michael observed, without remembering that

to heaps of people. All the same, I wish you'd let me paint you. I shoul

k, and, despising the while his weak van

she said, shaking Michael's temperam

rritably visualized himself in a tiger-skin car

you would sit for me

pity Maurice Avery was not here! He would so enjoy skating on the thin ice of her thought. Yet ice was scarcely an appropriate metaphor to use in connection with her. There should be some parallel with strawberries to illustrate his notion of Clarissa, who

nish that aureole with which he had encircled this gathering, that halo woven by the mist of his imagination and illuminated by the essential joy of the company. But now, when all were fused by the power of the music in a brilliance that actually pierced his apprehension with the sense of its positive being, Michael's aureole gleamed with the same comparative reality. Traveling from heart to heart, he drew from each the deepdown sweetness which justified all that was extravagant in demeanor and dress, all that was flaunting in voice and gesture, all that was weak in achievement and ambition. Even Clarissa's prematurity seemed transferred from the cause to the effect of her art, so that here and there some strain of music was strong enough to sustain her personality up to the very point of abandon at which her pictures aimed. As for George Ayliffe, Michael watching

of obstinate surprise which belongs to a violin. The bones in that lean body of his might have been of catgut, so much did he play with his whole frame, so little observably with his hands merely. As for Stella, apart from the simplicity of her coloring, it was less easy to find physically a resemblance to the piano, and yet how well her personality consorted with one. Were she ignorant

the height from which they must so swiftly fall. Yet when the violin had thoughtlessly lured them to such a zenith that had the music stopped altogether on that pole a reaction into disappointed sobs might not have been surprising, Stella with her piano brought them back to the normal course of their hopes, seemed to bear tenderly each

, until almost all together the guests departed. From the street below fainter and fainter sou

fe," although he did not perhaps realize all the deadliness of this undergraduate insult.

course he will, Cl

on't," said Mi

Stella persisted, paying not the

ing earnestly into space as if the pictori

pointed out scornfully. He suspected Clarissa's cour

lla," she murmured intensely. Then with one backward look of reproach for Michael

ard!" Michael burst out. "She's utterly stupid and utterly second-rate and she

f all these queer peop

Cornwall to look after you in this crowd of idiots I can't imagine. I may not be a great pianist in

yed yourself very much. And you oughtn't to be horrid abou

d be the first to laugh at me, if I dressed up Alan and Maurice Avery and half a dozen

ur head the notion that I dressed these people up.

because you have money. That compensates for any jealousy they might feel

tella ej

till air that he was ready to surrender instantly his provocative standpoint of intolerance. The contest between prejudice and sentiment was unequal in such conditions. No one could fail to forgive the most outrageous pretender on such a

I simply didn't exist. That's rather galling. Now at Oxford, supposing your friend Ayliffe were suddenly shot down among a lot of men in my year, he would be out of sympathy with us, and we should be out of sympathy w

la whispered, with a gesture of disarming c

t on me being heavy, let's say a pendulum. And there's nothing qui

garden. He was constantly aware of a loss of dignity which worried him considerably and for which he took himself to task very sternly. Finally he attributed it to one of two reasons, either that he felt a sense of constraint in Stella's presence on her ac

t. Now, I can do nothing with my experience. I seize it, I enjoy it for a very short time. I begin to observe it with a warm interest, then to criticize, then to be bored by it, and finally I fo

depressed by t

re depressed by me then. But if you are, oh, Michael, I shan't know what to do! Only you won't be, if we're in C

completely self-satisfied. It was pleasant to arrive in Compiègne and find that Madame Regnier's house had not changed in three years, that the three old widows had not suffered from ti

mporary, and asked him to call upon Michael. The young prince arrived one morning in a 70 h.p. car and by his visit made M. Regnier the proudest bourgeois in France. Prince Raoul, who was dressed, so Stella said, as brightly as it was possible even for a prince to dress nowadays, insisted that Michael and his sister must become temporary members of the Société du Sport de Comp

the languidly beautiful women sitting at tea, and also to the over-tailored sportsmen who were cultivating a supposedly Britannic seriousness of attitude toward their games. Soon Michael and Stella found themselves going out to dinner and playing bridge and listening to much admiration of England in a Franco-cockney accent that was the result of a foreign language mostly acquired from grooms. With all its veneer of English freedom, it was still a very ceremonious society, and though money had tempered the rigidity of its forms and opinions, th

use I have to go away t

ions ever since the sun rose," Stella said, shak

me for this last time

e more might not spoil h

n't get out of

ew minutes they were racing through the forest so fast that the trees on either side winked in a conti

forest Raoul turned sharply off along a wagoner's track over whose green ruts the car jolted ab

y I've brought you

"Wait a minute and you'll see," he chuckled. He was leading the way along a narrow

f the world," said Stella. "W

tone of such wistfulness as for the moment made him seem middle-aged.

rther side stood a cottage with diamonded lattices and a gabled roof and a garden full of deep crimson phlox glowing aga

waine and the Green

ou inside,"

e cottage chimney curled a film of smoke that gave a voiceless voice to the silence, and when as they paused in the lych

oing to answer that

l open it. Ursule! Ursule!" he c

elicate as the pluming of a moth's wing, while everything about her dress gave the same impression of extreme fineness, though the stuff was only a black bombazine an

ack oak among the sounds of ticking clocks and di

la, running to it. She played the

y inquired. "It belonged to my sister who often ca

d made Michael suppose he was g

place belongs to y

u be my guests here, although I shall be away? For as lo

say?" Michael and Stell

nd, but perhaps M. Regnier found compensation in going down to his favorite café that afternoon and speaking of his gues

uch larger when it was explored. It stretched out a rectangular wing of cool and shadowed rooms toward the forest. In this portion Ursule lived, and there was the pantry, and the kitchen embossed with copper pans, and the still-room which had garnered each flowery year in its course. Coterminous w

ed and botched by the homely meals of numberless dead banqueters; and at either end of the cottage there were two small bedrooms with frequent changing patterns in dimity and chintz,

, read Gregorovius' History of the Papacy; and when she stopped suddenly he would wake half-startled from the bloody horrors of the tenth century narrated laboriously with such cold p

, and if anything were wanting to give them a sense of perfect ease the thought that here at Compiègne th

there never would have been anything approaching a love-affair betwe

ople to play about with. It's the same sort of pleasure one gets from eating cheap sweets between meals. With somebody like George, one

l in love with him? I don't want to be too objectionably fraternal, but if

ael, you've no idea what a relief it is sometimes to play on the pi

mance," Michael pointed out. He was beginning to feel

me in Paris wasn't very important?" She

e if the whole affair was so

rrective," Ste

er? And, you know, I don't believe you would consider that rela

o do is to work the conversation round to yourself. One reason

en able to talk this out before, because you're the only person who knows what I was born and at the same time is able to understand that for me to think about my circumstances rather a lot doesn't imply any very morbid self-consciousness. You're all right. You have this astonishing gift which would have guaranteed you self-expression whatever you had been born. When one sees an artist up to your level, one doesn't give a damn for his ancestors or his family or his personal features apart from the security of t

ds and the narrow portal that led to this secluded forest-world, and away down the lane to where on either side of the spraying

," said Michael, sighing, "a path le

evelation. It's so fascinating to me. It's like a chord that neve

pathetic in fact,"

and independent to be pa

envy doesn't enter my head. Indeed, I don't think I'm ever discontented or even resentful for one moment, but if I were the head of a great family I should have my duties set out in a long line

aid. "You're not prevented from being a gentle

ns the great popular mass of humanity, and however superficially useless he may seem, his existence is a pledge of the immanence of the idea. Popular education has fired thousands to prove themselves not gentlemen in the present meaning of the term, but something much finer than any gentleman we know anything about. And they are not, they simply and solidly are not. The first instinct of the gentleman is respect for the past with all it connotes of art and religion and thought. The first instinct of the educated unfit is to hate

I don't see why you shouldn't ultimately attain to

stence that hurts nobody and fades out of mem

y ornaments is valid," Stella poi

most I can hope for," Michael gloomily an

he had created such an atmosphere of admiration. She was eager to find out what Michael most esteemed in him,

pproved. But naturally I wanted to find out your opinion of him. What could be more inter

and demanded her reason for keeping s

el, that if I had told you, you would always have been examining him when you thought he wasn't looking. And of

Castéra-Verduzan! Prescott! Ayliffe! What folly it had been for him to make his own plans for her and Alan. Yet it had seemed so obvious and so easy that these two should fall in love with each other. Michael wondered whether he were specially privileged in being able to see through to a sister's heart, whether other brothers went blindly on without an inkling that their sisters were loved. It was astonishing to think that the grave Prescott had stepped so far and so rashly from his polite seclusion as to accept the risk of ridicule for proposing to a girl whose mother's love f

you mustn't get cranky. I wish you wouldn't bother so much about

ured her. "But I do feel a sort of responsibility

felt that responsibility were

the responsibility rather heavily, and it's a sort of loyalty

ld be time to leave this forest house. Raoul did not manage to come back to Compiègne in time to say good-bye, and so at the moment of departure they took leave of old Ursule

t roofs and spires and trees of the Surrey shore no more than breath upon a glass. In this luminous and immaterial city the house in Cheyne Walk stood out with the pleasant aspect of its demure

o glad you've enjoyed yourselves together. Is it a heather mixture? And I was in France, too. But the trains are so oddly inconvenient.

a series of Brahms recitals in one of the smaller concert halls. Alan met Michael on the platform at Paddin

c?" Mich

Fifty-five wickets for 8.4 during the vac. Not bad for a dry sum

journey up talked m