Sinister Street Volume Ii Part 41

"No, the world--the world we live in."

"I don't fancy, you know," said Michael, "that the intellectual part of Oxford is directly applicable to the world at all. What I mean to say is, that I think it can only be applied to the world through our behavior."

"Well, of course," said Alan, "that's a truism."

Michael was rather disconcerted. The thought in his mind had seemed more worthy of expression.

"But the point is," Alan went on, "whether our philosophic education, our mental training has any effect on our behavior. It seems to me that Oxford is just as typically Oxford whatever a man reads."

"That wasn't the case at school," said Michael. "I'm positive for instance the Modern side was definitely inferior to the Cla.s.sical side--in manners and everything else. And though at Oxford other circ.u.mstances interfere to make the contrast less violent, it doesn't seem to me one gains the quintessence of the university unless one reads Greats. Even History only supplies that in the case of men exceptionally sensitive to the spirit of place. I mean to say sensitive in such a way that Oxford, quite apart from dons and undergraduates, can herself educate. I'm tremendously anxious now that Oxford should become more democratic, but I'm equally anxious that, in proportion as she offers more willingly the shelter of her learning to the people, the learning she bestows shall be more than ever rigidly unpractical, as they say."

"So you really think philosophy is directly applicable?" said Alan.

"How Socratic you are," Michael laughed. "Perhaps the Rhodes Scholars will answer your question. I remember reading somewhere lately that it was confidently antic.i.p.ated the advent of the Rhodes Scholars would transform a provincial university into an imperial one. That may have been written by a Cambridge man bitterly aware of his own provincial university. Yet a moment's reflection should have taught him that provincialism in academic matters is possibly an advantage. Florence and Athens were provincial. Rome and London and Oxford are metropolitan--much more dangerously exposed to the metropolitan snares of superficiality and of submerged personality with the corollary of vulgar display.

Neither Rome nor London nor Oxford has produced her own poets. They have always been sung by the envious but happy provincials. Rome and London would have treated Sh.e.l.ley just as Oxford did. Cambridge would have disapproved of him, but a bourgeois dread of interference would have let him alone. As for an imperial university, the idea is ghastly. I figure something like the Imperial Inst.i.tute filled with Colonials eating pemmican. The Eucalyptic Vision, it might be called."

"And you'd make a distinction between imperial and metropolitan?" Alan asked.

"Good gracious, yes. Wouldn't you distinguish between New York and London? Imperialism is the worst qualities of the provinces gathered up and exhibited to the world in the worst way. A metropolis takes provincialism and skims the cream. It is a disintegrating, but for itself a civilizing, force. A metropolis doesn't encourage creative art by metropolitans. It ought to be engaged all the time in trying to make the provincials appreciate what they themselves are doing."

"I think you're probably talking a good deal of rot," said Alan severely. "And we seem to have gone a long way from my question."

"About the application of philosophy?"

Alan nodded.

"Dear man, as were I a Cantabrian provincial, I should say. Dear man!

Doesn't it make you shiver? It's like the 'Pleased to meet you,' of Americans and Tootingians. It's so terribly and intrusively personal. So informative and unrestrained, so gushing and----"

"I wish you'd answer my question," Alan grumbled, "and call me what you like without talking about it."

"Now I've forgotten my answer," said Michael. "And it was a wonderful answer. Oh, I remember now. Of course, your philosophy is applicable to the world. You coming from a metropolitan university will try to infect the world with your syllogisms. You will meet Cambridge men much better educated than yourself, but all of them incompetent to appreciate their own education. You will gently banter them, trying to allay their provincial suspicion of your easy manner. You will----"

"_You_ will simply not be serious," said Alan. "And so I shall go to bed."

"My dear chap, I'm only talking like this because if I were serious, I couldn't bear to think that to-night is almost the end of our fourth year. It is, in fact, the end of 99 St. Giles."

"Well, it isn't as if we were never going to see each other again," said Alan awkwardly.

"But it is," said Michael. "Don't you realize, even with all your researches into philosophy, that after to-night we shall only see each other in dreams? After to-night we shall never again have identical interests and obligations."

"Well, anyway, I'm going to bed," said Alan, and with a good-night very typical in its curtness of many earlier ones uttered in similar accents, he went upstairs.

Michael, when he found himself alone, thought it wiser to follow him. It was melancholy to watch the moon above the empty thoroughfare, and to hear the bells echoing through the s.p.a.ces of the city.

CHAPTER XVI

THE LAST WEEK

Michael's old rooms in college were lent to him for three or four days as he had hoped they would be. The present occupant, a freshman, was not staying up for Commemoration, and though next term he would move into larger rooms for his second year, his effects had not yet been transferred. Michael found it interesting to deduce from the evidence of his books and pictures the character of the owner with whom he had merely a nodding acquaintance. On the whole, he seemed to be a dull young man. The photographs of his relatives were dull: his books were dull and unkempt: his pictures were dull, narrative rather than decorative. Probably there was nothing in the room that was strictly individual, nothing that he had acquired to satisfy his own taste. Every picture had probably been brought to Oxford because its absence would not be noticed in whatever spare bedroom it had previously been hung.

Every book seemed either a survival of school or the inexpensive pastime of a railway journey. The very clock on the mantelpiece, which was still drearily ticking, looked like the first prize of a consolation race, rather than the gratification of a personal choice. Michael reproached the young man for being able to spend three terms a year without an attempt to garnish decently the gothic bookshelves, without an effort to leave upon this temporary abode the impression of his lodging. He almost endowed the room itself with a capacity for criticism, feeling it must deplore three terms of such undistinguished company. Yet, after all, he had left nothing to tell of his sojourn here. Although he and the dull young freshman had both used this creaking wicker-chair, for their successors neither of them could preserve the indication of their precedence. One relic of his own occupation, however, he did find in the fragments of envelopes which he had stuck to the door on innumerable occasions to announce the time of his return. These bits of paper that straggled in a kite's tail over the oak door had evidently resisted all attempts to scrub them off. There were usually a few on every door in college, but no one had ever so extensively advertised his movements as Michael, and to see these obstinate bits of tabs gave him a real pleasure, as if they a.s.sured him of his former existence here. Each one had marked an ubiquitous hour that was recorded more indelibly than many other occasions of higher importance.

There was not, however, much time for sentimentalizing over the past, as somewhere before one o'clock his mother and Stella would arrive, and they must be met. Alan came with him to the railway station, and it was delightful to see Wedderburn with them, and in another part of the train Maurice with his mother and sisters. They must all have lunch at the Randolph, said Wedderburn immediately. Mrs. Fane was surprised to find the Randolph such a large hotel, and told Michael that if she had known it were possible to be at all comfortable in Oxford, she would have come up to see him long before. In the middle of lunch Lonsdale appeared, having according to his own account traced Michael's movements with tremendous determination. He was introduced to Mrs. Fane, who evidently took a fancy to him. She was looking, Michael thought, most absurdly young as Lonsdale rattled away to her, himself quite unchanged by a year at Sc.o.o.ne's and a recent failure to enter the Foreign Office.

"I say, this is awfully sporting of you, Mrs. Fane. You know, one feels fearfully out of it, coming up like this. Terribly old, and all that.

I've been mugging away for the Diplomatic and I've just made an awful a.s.s of myself. So I thought I wouldn't ask my governor to come up. He's choking himself to pieces over my career at present, but I've had an awfully decent offer from a man I know who runs a motor business, and I don't think I've got the amba.s.sadorial manner, do you? I think I shall be much better at selling cars, don't you? I say, which b.a.l.l.s are you going to? Because I must buzz round and see about tickets."

Lonsdale's last question seemed to demand an answer, and Mrs. Fane looked at Michael rather anxiously.

"Michael, what b.a.l.l.s are we going to?" she inquired.

"Trinity, the House, and the Apollo," he told her.

"What house is that? and I don't think I ever heard of Apollo College.

It sounds very attractive. Have I said something foolish?" Mrs. Fane looked round her, for everyone was laughing.

"The House is Christ Church, mother," said Michael, and then swiftly he remembered his father might have made that name familiar to her. If he had, she gave no sign; and Michael blushing fiercely, went on quickly to explain that the Apollo was the name of the Masonic Lodge of the university. Stella and Mrs. Fane rested that afternoon, and Michael with Wedderburn, Lonsdale, and several other contemporaries spent a jolly time in St. Mary's, walking round and reviving the memories of former rags. Alan had suggested that, as he would be near the Randolph, he might as well call in and escort Mrs. Fane and Stella down to tea in Michael's rooms. Mrs. Avery with Blanche and Eileen Avery had also been invited, and there was very little s.p.a.ce left for teacups. Wedderburn, however, a.s.sisted by Porcher on whom alone of these familiar people time had not laid a visible finger, managed to make everybody think they had enjoyed their tea. Afterward there was a general move to the river for a short time, but as Lonsdale said, it must be for a very short time in order that everyone might be in good form for the Trinity ball. Mrs.

Fane thought she would like to stay with Michael and talk to him for a while. It was strange to see her sitting here in his old room, and to be in a way more sharply aware of her than he had ever been, as he watched her fanning herself and looking round at the furniture, while the echoes of laughter and talk died away down the stone staircase without.

"Dear Michael," she said. "I wish I'd seen this room when you lived in it properly."

He laughed.

"When I lived in it properly," he answered, "I should have been made so shy by your visit that I think you'd have hated me and the room."

"You must have been so domestic," said his mother. "Such a curious thing has happened."

"Apropos of what?" asked Michael, smiling.

"You know d.i.c.k Prescott left Stella all his money, well----"

"But, mother, I didn't know anything about it."

"It was rather vague. He left it first to some old lady whom he intended to live four or five years, but she died this week, and so Stella inherits it at once. About two thousand a year. It's all in land, and will have to be managed. Huntingdonshire, or some country n.o.body believes in. It's all very difficult. She must marry at once."

"But, mother, why because she is to be better off and own land in Huntingdonshire, is she to marry at once?" asked Michael.

"To avoid fortune-hunters, odd foreign counts, and people."

"But she's not twenty-one yet," he objected.

"My dearest boy, I know, I know. That's why she must marry. Don't you see, when she's of age, she'll be able to marry whom she likes, and you know how headstrong Stella is."

"Mother," said Michael suddenly, "supposing she married Alan?"