Sinister Street Volume Ii Part 53

"We're going in for Herefords," Alan suddenly announced without consideration for the trend of the talk. "You know. Those white-faced chaps."

Michael looked at him in astonishment.

"I was thinking about this place of Stella's in Huntingdonshire," Alan explained. "We went down to see it last week."

"Oh, Alan, why did you tell him? He doesn't deserve to be told."

"Is it decent?" Michael asked.

"Awfully decent," said Alan. "Rather large, you know."

"In fact, we shall belong to the squirearchy," cried Stella, crashing down upon the piano with the first bars of Chopin's most exciting Polonaise and from the Polonaise going off into an absurd impromptu recitative.

"We shall have a dog-cart--a high and shining dog-cart--and we shall go bowling down the lanes of the county of Hunts--because in books about people who live in the county and of the county and by with or from the county dog-carts invariably bowl--we shall have a herd of Herefordshire bulls and bullocks and bullockesses--and my husband Alan with a straw in his mouth will go every morning with the bailiff to inspect their well-being--- and three days every week from November to March we shall go hunting in Huntingdon--and when we aren't actually hunting in Huntingdon we shall be talking about hunting--and we shall also talk about the Primrose League and the foot-and-mouth disease and the evolutions of the new High Church Vicar--we shall...."

But Michael threw a cushion at her, and the recitative came to an end.

They all three talked for a long while more seriously of plans for life at Hardingham Hall.

"You know dear old Prescott requested me in his will that I would hyphen his name on to mine, whether I were married or single," said Stella. "So we shall be Mr. and Mrs. Prescott-Merivale. Alan has been very good about that, though I think he's got a dim idea it's putting on side.

Stella Prescott-Merivale or The Curse of the County! And when I play I'm going to be Madame Merivale. I decline to be done out of the Madame! and everybody will p.r.o.nounce it Marivahleh and I shall receive the unanimous encomia of the critical press."

"Life will be rather a rag," said Michael, with approbation.

"Of course it's going to be simply wonderful. Can't you see the headlines? From Chopin to Sheep. Madame Merivale, the famous Virtuosa, and her Flock of Barbary Long-tails."

It was all so very remote from Neptune Crescent, Michael thought. They really were going to be so ridiculously happy, these two, in their country life. And now they were talking of finding him a house close to Hardingham Hall. There must be just that small Georgian house, they vowed, where with a large garden of stately walks and a well-proportioned library of books he could stay in contented retreat.

They promised him, too, that beyond the tallest cedar on the lawn a gazebo should command the widest, the greenest expanse of England ever beheld.

"It would so add to our reputation in the county of Hunts," said Stella, "if you were near by. We should feel so utterly Augustan. And of course you'd ride a nag. I'm not sure really that you wouldn't have to wear knee-breeches. I declare, Michael, that the very idea makes me feel like Jane Austen, or do I mean Doctor Johnson?"

"I should make up your mind which," Michael advised.

"But you know what I mean," she persisted. "The doctor's wife would come in to tea and tell us that her husband had dug up a mummy or whatever it was the Romans left about. And I should say, 'We must ask my brother about it. My brother, my dear Mrs. Jumble, will be sure to know.

My brother knows everything.' And she would agree with a pursed-up mouth. 'Oh, pray do, my dear Mrs. Prescott-Merivale. Everyone says your brother is a great scholar. It's such a pleasure to have him at the Lodge. So very distinguished, is it not?'"

"If you're supposed to be imitating Jane Austen, I may as well tell you at once that it's not a bit like it."

"But I think you ought to come and live near us," Alan solemnly put in.

"Of course, my dear, he's coming," Stella declared.

"Of course I'm not," Michael contradicted. But he was very glad they wanted him; and then he thought with a pang how little they would want him with Lily in that well-proportioned library. How little Lily would enjoy the fat and placid Huntingdon meadows. How little, too, she would care to see the blackbird swagger with twinkling rump by the shrubbery's edge or hear him scatter the leaves in shrill affright. In the quick vision that came to him of a sleek lawn possessed by birds, Michael experienced his first qualm about the wisdom of what he intended to do.

"And how about Michael's wife?" Alan asked.

Michael looked quite startled by a query so coincident with his own.

"Oh, of course we shall find someone quite perfect for him," Stella confidently prophesied.

"No, really," said Michael to hide his embarra.s.sment. "I object.

Matchmaking ought not to begin during an engagement."

Stella paid no heed to the protest, and she began to describe a lady-love who should well become the surroundings in which she intended to place him.

"I think rather a Quakerish person, don't you, Alan? Rather neat and tiny with a great sense of humor and...."

"In fact, an admirable sick nurse," Michael interposed, laughing.

Soon he left them in the studio and went for a walk by the side of the river, thinking, as he strolled in the shade of the plane-trees, how naturally Stella would enter the sphere of English country life now that by fortune the opportunity had been given to her of following in the long line of her ancestors. That she would be able to do so seemed to Michael an additional reason why he should consider less the security of his own future, and he was vexed with himself for that fleeting disloyalty to his task.

Michael stayed at 202 High for his Viva. He occupied Wedderburn's old white-paneled room, which he noted with relief was still sacred to the tradition of a carefully chosen decorousness. The Viva was short and irrelevant. He supposed he had obtained a comfortable third, and really it seemed of the utmost unimportance in view of what a gulf now lay between him and Oxford. However, he mustered enough interest to stay in Cheyne Walk until the lists were out, and during those ten days he made no attempt to find Lily.

Alan got a third in Greats and Michael a first in History. Michael's immediate emotion was of gladness that Alan had no reason now to feel the disappointment. Then he began to wonder how on earth he had achieved a first. Many letters of congratulation arrived; and one or two of the St. Mary's dons suggested he should try for a fellowship at All Souls.

The idea occupied his fancy a good deal, for it was attractive to have anything so remote come suddenly within the region of feasibleness. He would lose nothing by trying for it, and if he succeeded what a congenial existence offered itself. With private means he would be able to divide his time between Oxford and London. There would really be nothing to mar the perfect amenity of the life that seemed to stretch before him. Since he apparently had some talent (he certainly had not worked hard enough to obtain a first without some talent) he would prosecute the study of history. He would make himself famous in a select sort of way. He would become the authority of a minor tributary to the great stream of research. A set of very scholarly, very thorough works would testify to his reputation. There were plenty of archaic problems still to be solved. He cast a proprietary glance over the centuries, and he had almost decided to devote himself to the service of Otto I and Sylvester II, when in a moment the thought of Lily, sweeping as visibly before his mind as the ghost in an Elizabethan play, made every kind of research into the past seem a waste of resolution. He tore up the congratulatory letters and decided to let the future wait a while. This pursuit of Lily was a mad business, no doubt, but to come to grips with the present called for a certain amount of madness.

Alan remonstrated with him, when he heard that he had no intention of trying for All Souls.

"You are an extraordinary chap. You were always grumbling when you were up that you didn't know what you ought to do, and now when it's perfectly obvious you won't make the slightest attempt to do it."

"Used I to grumble?" asked Michael.

"Well, not exactly grumble. But you were always asking theoretical questions which had no answer," said Alan severely.

"What if I told you I'd found an answer to a great many of them?"

"Ever since I've been engaged to Stella you've found it necessary to be very mysterious. What are you playing at, Michael?"

"It's imaginable, don't you think, that I might be making up my mind to do something which I considered more vital for me than a fellowship at All Souls?"

"But it seems so obvious after your easy first that you should clinch it."

"I tell you it was a fluke."

"My third wasn't a fluke," said Alan. "I worked really hard for it."

"Thirds and firsts are equally unimportant in the long run," Michael argued. "You have already fitted into your place with the most complete exact.i.tude. There's no dimension in your future that can possibly trouble you. Supposing I get this fellowship? It will either be too big for me, in which case I shall have to be perpetually puffing out my frills and furbelows to make a pretense of filling it, or it will be too small, and I shall have to pare down my very soul in order to squeeze into it most uncomfortably."

"You'll never do anything," Alan prophesied. "Because you'll always be doubting."

"I might get rid finally of that sense of insecurity," Michael pointed out. "With all doubts and hesitations I'm perfectly convinced of one great factor in human life--the necessity to follow the impulse which lies deeper than any reason. Reason is the enemy of civilization. Reason carried to the _nth_ power can always with absurd ease be debauched by sentiment, and sentiment is mankind's wretched little lament for disobeying impulse. Women preserve this divinity because they are irrational. The New Woman claims equality with man because she claims to be as reasonable as men. She has fixed on voting for a Member of Parliament as the medium to display her reasonableness. The franchise is to be endowed with a sacramental significance. If the New Women win, they will degrade themselves to the slavery of modern men. But of course they won't win, because G.o.d is so delightfully irrational. By the way, it's worth noting that the peculiar vestment with which popular fancy has clothed the New Woman is called rational costume. You often hear of 'rationals' as a synonym for breeches. What was I saying? Oh, yes, about G.o.d being irrational. You never know what he'll do next. He is a dreadful problem for rationalists. That's why they have abolished him."

"You're confusing two different kinds of reason," said Alan. "What you call impulse--unless your impulse is mere madness--is what I might call reason."

"In that case I recommend you as a philosopher to set about the reconstruction of your terminology. I'm not a philosopher, and therefore I've given this vague generic name 'impulse' to something which deserves, such a powerful and infallible and overmastering impetus does it give to conduct, a very long name indeed."

"But if you're going through life depending on impulse," Alan objected, "you'll be no better off than a weatherc.o.c.k. You can't discount reason in this way. You must admit that our judgments are modified by experience."

"The chief thing we learn from experience is to place upon it no reliance whatever."