Sinister Street Volume Ii Part 1

Sinister Street.

vol. 2.

by Compton Mackenzie.

BOOK ONE

DREAMING SPIRES

Bright memories of young poetic pleasure In free companionship, the loving stress Of all life-beauty, lull'd in studious leisure, When every Muse was jocund with excess Of fine delight and tremulous happiness; The breath of an indolent unbridled June, When delicate thought fell from the dreamy moon: But now strange care, sorrow, and grief oppress.

ROBERT BRIDGES.

CHAPTER I

THE FIRST DAY

Michael felt glad to think he would start the adventure of Oxford from Paddington. The simplicity of that railway station might faintly mitigate alarms which no amount of previous deliberation could entirely disperse. He remembered how once he had lightly seen off a Cambridge friend from Liverpool Street and, looking back at the suburban tumult of the Great Eastern Railway, he was grateful for the simplicity of Paddington.

Michael had been careful that all his heavy luggage should be sent in advance; and he had shown himself gravely exacting toward Alan in this matter of luggage, writing several times to remind him of his promise not to appear on the platform with more than a portmanteau of moderate size and a normal kit-bag. Michael hoped this precaution would prevent at any rate the porters from commenting upon the freshness of him and his friend.

"Oxford train?" inquired a porter, as the hansom pulled up. Michael nodded, and made up his mind to show his esteem when he tipped this promethean.

"Third cla.s.s?" the porter went on. Michael mentally doubled the tip, for he had neglected to a.s.sure himself beforehand about the etiquette of cla.s.s, and nothing could have suited so well his self-consciousness as this information casually yielded.

"Let me see, you didn't have any golf-clubs, did you, sir?" asked the porter.

Michael shook his head regretfully, for as he looked hurriedly up and down the platform in search of Alan, he perceived golf-clubs everywhere, and when at last he saw him, actually even he had a golf-bag slung over his shoulder.

"I never knew you played golf," said Michael indignantly.

"I don't. These are the governor's. He's given up playing," Alan explained.

"Are you going to play?" Michael pursued. He was feeling rather envious of the appearance of these veteran implements.

"I may have a shot," Alan admitted.

"You might have told me you were going to bring them," Michael grumbled.

"My dear old a.s.s, I never knew I was, until the governor w.a.n.ged them into my lap just as I was starting."

Michael turned aside and bought a number of papers, far too many for the short journey. Indeed, all the way they lay on the rack unregarded, while the train crossed and recrossed the silver Thames. At first he was often conscious of the other undergraduates in the compartment, who seemed to be eying him with a puzzled contempt; but very soon, when he perceived that this manner of looking at one's neighbor was general, he became reconciled to the att.i.tude and ascribed it to a habit of mind rather than to the expression of any individual distaste. Then suddenly, as Michael was gazing out of the window, the pearly sky broke into spires and pinnacles and domes and towers. He caught his breath for one bewitched moment, before he busied himself with the luggage on the rack.

On the platform Michael and Alan decided to part company, as neither of them felt sure enough whether St. Mary's or Christ Church were nearer to the station to risk a joint hansom.

"Shall I come and see you this afternoon?" Michael rashly offered.

"Oh, rather," Alan agreed, and they turned away from one another to secure their cabs.

All the time that Michael was driving to St. Mary's, he was regretting he had not urged Alan to visit him first. A growing sensation of shy dread was making him vow that once safe in his own rooms at St. Mary's nothing should drag him forth again that day. What on earth would he say when he arrived at the college? Would he have to announce himself? How would he find his rooms? On these points he had pestered several Old Jacobeans now at Oxford, but none of them could remember the precise ceremonies of arrival. Michael leaned back in the hansom and cursed their inefficient memories.

Then the cab pulled up by the St. Mary's lodge, and events proceeded with unexpected rapidity. A cheerful man with red hair and a round face welcomed his luggage. The cabman was paid the double of his correct fare, and to Michael's relief drove off instantly. From a sort of gla.s.s case that filled half the interior of the lodge somebody very much like a family butler inquired richly who Michael was.

"Mr. C. M. S. Fane?" rolled out the unctuous man.

Michael nodded.

"Is there another Fane?" he asked curiously.

"No, sir," said the head porter, and the negative came out with the sound of a drawn cork. "No, sir, but I wished to hessateen if I had your initials down correct in my list. Mr. C. M. S. Fane," he went on, looking at a piece of paper. "St. Cuthbert's. Four. Two pair right. Your servant is Porcher. Your luggage has arrived, and perhaps you'll settle with me presently. Henry will show you to your rooms. Henry! St.

Cuthbert's. Four. Two pair right."

The red-headed under-porter picked up Michael's bag, and Michael was preparing to follow him at once, when the unctuous man held up a warning hand. Then he turned to look into a large square pigeon-hole labeled Porcher.

"These letters are for you, sir," he explained pompously. Michael took them, and in a dream followed Henry under a great gothic gateway, and along a gravel path. In a doorway numbered IV, Henry stopped and shouted "Porcher!" From an echoing vault came a cry in answer, and the scout appeared.

"One of your gentlemen arrived," said Henry. "Mr. Fane." Then he touched his cap and retired.

"Any more luggage in the lodge, sir?" Porcher asked.

"Not much," said Michael apologetically.

"There's a nice lot of stuff in your rooms," Porcher informed him. "Come in yesterday morning, it did."

They were mounting the stone stairway, and on each of the floors Michael was made mechanically aware by a printed notice above a water-tap that no slops must be emptied there. This prohibition stuck in his mind somehow as the first ascetic demand of the university.

"These are your rooms, sir, and when you want me, you'll shout, of course. I'm just unpacking Mr. Lonsdale's wine."

Michael was conscious of pale October sunlight upon the heaped-up packing-cases; he was conscious of the unnatural brilliancy of the fire in the sunlight; he was conscious that life at Oxford was conducted with much finer amenities than life at school. Simultaneously he was aware of a loneliness; yet as he once more turned to survey his room, it was a fleeting loneliness which quickly perished in the satisfaction of a privacy that hitherto he had never possessed. He turned into the bedroom, and looked out across the quad, across the rectangle of vivid green gra.s.s, across the Warden's garden with its faint gaiety of autumnal flowers and tufted gray walls, and beyond to where the elms of the deer-park were ma.s.sed against the thin sky and the deer moved in leisurely files about the spare sunlight.

It did not take Michael long to arrange his clothes; and then the problem of undoing the packing-cases presented itself. A hammer would be necessary, and a chisel. He must shout for Porcher. Shouting in the tremulous peace of this October morning would inevitably attract more attention to himself than would be pleasant, and he postponed the summons in favor of an examination of his letters. One after another he opened them, and every one was the advertis.e.m.e.nt of a tailor or hairdresser or tobacconist. The tailors were the most insistent; they even went so far as to announce that representatives would call upon him at his pleasure. Michael made up his mind to order his cap and gown after lunch. Lunch! How should he obtain lunch? Where should he obtain lunch? When should he obtain lunch? Obviously there must be some precise manner of obtaining lunch, some ritual consecrated by generations of St.

Mary's men. The loneliness came back triumphant, and plunged him dejectedly down into a surprisingly deep wicker-chair. The fire crackled in the silence, and the problem of lunch remained insoluble. The need for Porcher's advice became more desperate. Other freshmen before him must have depended upon their scout's experience. He began to practice calling Porcher in accents so low that they acquired a tender and reproachful significance. Michael braced himself for the performance after these choked and m.u.f.fled rehearsals, and went boldly out on to the stone landing. An almost entranced silence held the staircase, a silence that he could not bring himself to violate. On the door of the rooms opposite he read his neighbor's name--_Mackintosh_. He wished he knew whether Mackintosh were a freshman. It would be delightful to make him share the responsibility of summoning Porcher from his task of arranging Lonsdale's wine. And who was Lonsdale? _No slops must be emptied here! Mackintosh! Fane!_ Here were three announcements hinting at humanity in a desolation of stillness. Michael reading his own name gathered confidence and a volume of breath, leaned over the stone parapet of the landing and, losing all his courage in a sigh, decided to walk downstairs and take his chance of meeting Porcher on the way.

On the floor beneath Michael read _Bannerman_ over the left-hand door and _Templeton-Collins_ over the right-hand door. While he was pondering the personality and status of Templeton-Collins, presumably the gentleman himself appeared, stared at Michael very deliberately, came forward and, leaning over the parapet, yelled in a voice that combined rage, protest, disappointment and appeal with the maximum of sound: "Porcher!" After which, Templeton-Collins again stared very deliberately at Michael and retired into his room, while Michael hurried down to intercept the scout, hoping his dismay at Templeton-Collins' impatience would not be too great to allow him to pay a moment's attention to himself.

However, on the ground floor the silence was still unbroken, and hopelessly Michael read over the right-hand door _Amherst_, over the left-hand door _Lonsdale_. What critical moment had arrived in the unpacking of Lonsdale's wine to make the scout so heedless of Templeton-Collins' call? Again it resounded from above, and Michael looking up involuntarily, caught the downward glance of Templeton-Collins himself.

"I say, is Porcher down there?" the latter asked fretfully.

"I think he's unpacking Lonsdale's wine."

"Who's Lonsdale?" demanded Templeton-Collins. "You might sing out and tell him I want him."

With this request Templeton-Collins vanished, leaving Michael in a quandary. There was only one hope of relieving the intolerable situation, he thought, which was to shout "Porcher" from where he was standing. This he did at the very moment the scout emerged from Lonsdale's rooms.