Sinister Street, vol. 2

e had managed to achieve a second class in Moderations, and he had now in view a term of cricket whose energy might fortunately be c

a reasonable price. Alan casually nodded to one or two fellow hosts at the guest table, but did not offer to introduce Michael. All dow

ust sitting down?"

the implication that Michael should know better than to expect him

e windows of the socker push in Peck?"

answered Alan

tried to point out to him that the St. Mary's method

"But I hate your system of all getting up fr

rybody. Why, Alan, I believe if you'd had another guest to-night, you wouldn't even have introd

wanted to meet this evening? All the men

an impossible outside the four people in his own set," retorted

se," Ala

while the coffee-machine bubbled and fizzed and The Soul's Awake

" Alan asked. "I expect th

kely that there is a single cupboard in the House

o-jar squatting upon the floor between them: they lit their pipes and sipped

forty-eight isn't so bad in an innings of 287. The point is whether they can afford to give a place to another bowler who's no earthly use as a bat. It seems a bit of a tail. I wen

d at Lord's. I think I shall ask my mot

d rather d

o worry about them. I'll explain you're busy with cri

Stella who had come back from an arduous time with music and musical people

And I don't think I'd say anything about those four wickets for forty

t the seven or eight men competing for the three vacancies in the Varsity eleven. At about a

at come down for cocoa at ten?" asked Michae

They're people who live on this stairc

ed if he insisted on staying, so to his

f old bachelors with your fads

"But I warn you they're all awfully dull, and I've

Michael hurriedl

an answer from his mother to

HEYNE

.

y

rest M

apital idea. And do be nice about poor Dick Prescott. Stella is so young and impulsive. I wish she could understand how much much happier she would be married to a nice man, even though he may be a little older than herself. This tearing all over Europe cannot be good for her. And now she talks of going to Vienna and studying under somebody with a perfectly impossible name beginning with L. Not only that, but she also talks of unlearning all she has learned and beginning all over again. This is most absurd,

r l

th

f the responsibility of his mother at Oxford. He would have had to be so steadily informative, an

HEYNE

.

y

ar

her, "No, quite unnecessary." But of course, if I should disgrace you by coming alone, I won't. Is

!" interjacu

n music all over again, so be ve

el

sh mother o

ll-blooded asceticism of Oxford Michael censured his own behavior when he was seventeen and looked back with some dismay on the view of himself at that time as it appeared to him now. He was as much shocked by that period now as at school in his fifteenth year he had been shocked by the memory of the two horrid little girls at Eastbourne. Altogether this invita

tella, it was arranged that she should come up fo

s made to vow attendance for at least every other occasion. Wedderburn volunteered his services. Guy Hazlewood, who was threatened with Schools, was let off with a lunch. Nigel Stewart spoke mysteriously of a girl whose adve

Lonsdale, as they waited on the platform. "Your s

in close-fitting gray dress she stood in the Oxford sunlight. Stella, too, in that flowered muslin relieved Michael instantly of the faint anxiety he had conceived lest she might appear in a Munich garb unbecoming to a reserved lands

us," said Lonsdale. "I thought

Michael, "was that you would hav

, really," pro

of you than you could ever

awful ass, Miss Fane," said Lonsdale encour

s the county gaol, and when they reached the gaol he told her

that Queens is a marmalade factory, and she'll have a pretty good no

n Merivale your nephew?" he asked Mrs. Ross. "He's playing for the Varsity against Surrey. Sent down som

to his age. Lunch had been laid in Lonsdale's rooms, since he was one of the few men in college who possessed a dining-room in addition to a sitting-room. Yet,

ses going to and fro across the green quadrangles, with its laughter and talk and speculations upon the weather, with its overheated s

tched Alan's face fall when he saw her beside Maurice and marked how nervously he fidgeted with his gloves. There was a broken click from the field of play. It was time for Alan to go in. Michael wished very earnestly he could score a brilliant century so that Stella hearing the applause could realize how m

t played for his batting," he

y much attention, even when Alan sat down despondently beside them, unbuckli

n his rooms to be followed by the river. Turning into Holywell, they met Guy

for me to do that for one day and one night will let me e

y there on Monday night,"

sissss ... Mr. H'wood," mumbled Michael

"But isn't it rather a shame to ask M

. "I should rather li

ink with a pensive upward glance at the trend of the clouds, occurred Guy Hazlewood's party in Holywell, wh

n anybody had expected, chiefly on

to be here," Lonsdale

nstruther, all sons of Belial, what e

with Guy handicapped by having to pretend to assent to Wedderburn's suggestions for entertainment, he managed at last to monopolize Stella almost en

ree times and wa

dation, though there was a group of really musical people in the darkest corner who emerged between ea

ever been. Nor was this coldness due to any anxiety for her s

lays as well as she di

e may be a little excite

isn't going to advance quite definitely, there really isn't any longe

. "You'd be surprised, as indeed I was surprised, to find how simple a

o be one audience after another in q

erficial action-oh, Michael," Mrs. Ross exclaimed, breaking off, "what dreadfully long words you'r

ng a problem to m

longer a problem to yours

I was, when we las

d to link him too closely for his pleasure to the behavior which had led

ave passed away?"

to introduce a younger brother like myself then, say to the second-year table in hall." Michael paused for a moment, half hoping Mrs. Ross would assure him he had caricatured his former self, but as she said nothing, he continued: "When I came up to Oxford I found that the natural preparation for Oxford was not a day-school like St. James', but a boarding-school. Therefore I had to acquire in a term what most of my contemporaries had been given several years to acquire. I remember quite distinctly my father saying to my mother, 'By gad, Valérie, he ought to go to Eton, you know,' and my mother disagreeing, 'No, no, I'm sure you were right

ool?" asked Mrs. Ross. "Alan for instance came very successf

ete, into one of the rather objectionable bigots of the public-school theory. Now I was never perfectly normal. I might even have been called morbid and unhealthy. I should have been, if I hadn't always

t fancy the greatest geniuses in the world eve

ce. I have never had that. Stella absorbed all the creative and interpretative force that was going. I never have and never shall get beyond sympathy, and even t

ould have militated against the development

unbalanced. Eton would have adjusted this balance. I'm sure of that, because since I've been at Oxford I find my powers of criticism so very m

is I shall begin to regret your earlier extravagance. This d

Oxford enormously. I can't tell you how happy I am here, how many people I like. And I appreciate it so much the more because to a certain extent at first it was a struggle to find that wide normal road on which I'm strolling along now. I'm so positive that the best of Oxford is the best of England, and that the best of England is the best of humanity that I long to apply to the wo

d Mrs. Ross gravely. "I wonder how you are going to expre

ion at all," said Michael. "There's no fi

Mrs. Ross. "And now tell me, just to gratify my curiosity, why you

y all are, and how infinitely youthful they appear beside those wild and worldly-wise Bohemians to whose company she has been accustomed for so long. I long to tell her that these undergraduates are really so much wiser, even if literature means Mr. Soapy Sponge's Sport

hortations in his deepest bass. Michael, after his talk with Mrs. Ross, was relieved to find him

much of the girl that Trinity man-what's his name-Stewart has roped in. She looks like something left over from a needlework stall. I say, your sister jolly well knows how to punch a piano. Topping, what? Mossy's been very much on the spot to-night

atching the passage of the cigars and cigarettes down t

bles they stood laughing and talking for a moment. Guy Hazlewood, Comer

" these murmured to their h

up by everything. Special v

get Firsts now,"

arty vanished on echoing footsteps into the moon-bright spaces, into the dark and narrow entries. Voices faint and silvery rippled along the spell

y ran off down the High toward St. Mary's

rooms for a bit?" Mauri

, who divined that Maurice was going

sence that evening to want to h