Sinister Street Volume Ii Part 8

The head of the table nodded.

Lonsdale was put to much trouble and expense to avenge his half-crown.

Finally with great care he took down all the pictures in Wedderburn's room and hung in their places gaudy texts. Also for the plaster Venus of Milo he caused to be made a miniature chest-protector. It was all very foolish, but it afforded exquisite entertainment to Lonsdale and his auxiliaries, especially when in the lodge they beheld Wedderburn's return from a dinner out of college, and when presently they visited him in his room to enjoy his displeasure.

Michael's consciousness of the sharp division in the college between two broad sections prevented him from retiring into seclusion. He continued to play Rugby football almost entirely in order to hear with a delighted irony the comments of the "bad men" on the "bloods." Yet many of these "bad men" he rather liked, and he would often defend them to his critical young contemporaries, although on the "bad men" of his own year he was as hard as the rest of the social leaders. He was content in this first term to follow loyally, with other heedless ones, the trend of the moment. He made few attempts to enlarge the field of his outlook by cultivating acquaintanceship outside his own college. Even Alan he seldom visited, since in these early days of Oxford it seemed to him essential to move cautiously and always under the protection of numbers.

These freshmen in their first term found a curious satisfaction in numbers. When they lunched together, they lunched in eights and twelves; when they dined out of college, as they sometimes did, at the Clarendon or the Mitre or the Queen's, they gathered in the lodge almost in the dimensions of a school-treat.

"Why do we always go about in such quant.i.ty?" Michael once asked Wedderburn.

"What else can we do?" answered Wedderburn. "We must subject each other to--I mean--we haven't got any clubs yet. We're bound to stick together."

"Well, I'm getting rather fed up with it," said Michael. "I feel more like a tourist than a Varsity man. Every day we lunch and dine and take coffee and tea in great ma.s.ses of people. I'm bored to tears by half the men I go about with, and I'm sure they're bored to tears with me. We don't talk about anything but each other's schools and whether A is a better chap than B, or whether C is a gentleman and if it's true that D isn't really. I bought for my own pleasure some rather decent books; and every other evening about twelve people come and read them over each other's shoulders, while I spend my whole time blowing cigarette ash off the pictures. And when they've all read the story of the nightingale in the Decameron, they sit up till one o'clock discussing who of our year is most likely to be elected president of the J. C. R. four years from now."

But for all Michael's grumbling through that first term he was beginning to perceive the blurred outlines of an intimate society at Oxford which in the years to come he would remember. There was Wedderburn himself whose square-headed solidity of demeanor and episcopal voice masked a b.u.t.terfly of a temperament that flitted from flower to flower of artistic experiment or danced attendance upon freshmen, the honey of whose future fame he seemed always able to probe.

"I wonder if you really are the old sn.o.b you try to make yourself," said Michael. "And yet I don't think it is sn.o.bbishness. I believe it's a form of collecting. It's a throw back to primitive life in a private school. One day in your fourth year you'll give a dinner party for about twelve bloods and I shall come too and remind you just when and how and where you picked them all up before their value was perfectly obvious.

Partly of course it's due to being at Eton where you had nothing to do but observe social distinction in the making and talk about Burne-Jones to your tutor."

"My dear fellow," said Wedderburn deeply, "I have these people up to my rooms because I like them."

"But it is convenient always to like the right people," Michael argued.

"There are lots of others just as pleasant whom you don't like. For instance, Avery----"

"Avery!" Wedderburn snorted.

"He's not likely ever to be captain of the 'Varsity Eleven," said Michael. "But he's amusing, and he can talk about books."

"Patronizing a.s.s," Wedderburn growled.

"That's exactly what he isn't," Michael contradicted.

"d.a.m.nable poseur," Wedderburn rumbled.

"Oh, well, so are you," said Michael.

He thought how willfully Wedderburn would persist in misjudging Avery.

Yet himself had spent most delightful hours with him. To be sure, his sensitiveness made him sharp-tongued, and he dressed rather too well.

But all the Carthusians at St. Mary's dressed rather too well and carried about with them the atmosphere of a week-end in a sporting country-house owned by very rich people. This burbling prosperity would gradually trickle away, Michael thought, and he began to follow the course of Avery four years hence directed by Oxford to--to what? To some distinguished goal of art, but whether as writer or painter or sculptor he did not know, Avery was so very versatile. Michael mentally put him on one side to decorate a conspicuous portion of the ideal edifice he dreamed of creating from his Oxford society. There was Lonsdale.

Lonsdale really possessed the serene perfection of a great work of art.

Michael thought to himself that almost he could bear to attend for ever Ardle's dusty lectures on Cicero in order that for ever he might hear Lonsdale admit with earnest politeness that he had not found time to glance at the text the day before, that he was indeed sorry to cause Mr.

Ardle such a mortification, but that unfortunately he had left his Plato in a sadler's shop, where he had found it necessary to complain of a saddle newly made for him.

"But I am lecturing on Cicero, Mr. Lonsdale. The Pro Milone was not delivered by Plato, Mr. Lonsdale."

"What's he talking about?" Lonsdale whispered to Michael.

"Nor was it delivered by Mr. Fane," added the Senior Tutor dryly.

Lonsdale looked at first very much alarmed by this suggestion, then seeing by the lecturer's face that something was still wrong, he a.s.sumed a puzzled expression, and finally in an attempt to relieve the situation he laughed very heartily and said:

"Oh, well, after all, it's very much the same." Then, as everybody else laughed very loudly, Lonsdale sat down and leaned back, pulling up his trousers in gentle self-congratulation.

"Rum old buffer," he whispered presently to Michael. "His eye gets very gla.s.sy when he looks at me. Do you think I ought to ask him to lunch?"

Michael thought that Avery, Wedderburn and Lonsdale might be considered to form the nucleus of the intimate ideal society which his imagination was leading him on to shape. And if that trio seemed not completely to represent the forty freshmen of St. Mary's, there might be added to the list certain others for qualities of athletic renown that combined with charm of personality gave them the right to be set up in Michael's collection as types. There was Grainger, last year's Captain of the Boats at Eton, who would certainly row for the 'Varsity in the spring.

Michael liked to sit in his rooms and watch his sprawling bulk and listen for an hour at a time to his nave theories of life. Grainger seemed to shed rays of positive goodness, and Michael found that he exercised over this splendid piece of youth a fascination which to himself was surprising.

"Great Scott, you are an odd chap," Grainger once e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.

"Why?"

"Why, you're a clever devil, aren't you, and you don't seem to do anything. Have I talked a lot of rot?"

"A good deal," Michael admitted. "At least, it would be rot if I talked it, but it would be ridiculous if you talked in any other way."

"You _are_ a curious chap. I can't make you out."

"Why should you?" asked Michael. "You were never sent into this world to puzzle out things. You were sent here to sprawl across it just as you're sprawling across that sofa. When you go down, you'll go into the Egyptian Civil Service and you'll sprawl across the Sahara in exactly the same way. I rather wish I were like you. It must be quite comfortable to sit down heavily and unconcernedly on a lot of people. I can't imagine a more delightful mattress; only I should feel them wriggling under me."

"I suppose you're a Radical. They say you are," Grainger lazily announced through puffed-out fumes of tobacco.

"I suppose I might be," said Michael, "if I wanted to proclaim myself anything at all, but I'd much rather watch you sprawling effectively and proclaiming yourself a supporter of Conservatism. I've really very little inclination to criticize people like you. It's only in books I think you're a little boring."

Term wore on, and a pleasurable antic.i.p.ation was lent to the coming vacation by a letter which Michael received from his mother.

CARLINGTON ROAD,

November 20th.

Dearest Michael,

I'm so glad you're still enjoying Oxford. I quite agree with you it would be better for me to wait a little while before I visit you, though I expect I should behave myself perfectly well. You'll be glad to hear that I've got rid of this tiresome house. I've sold it to a retired Colonel--such an objectionable old man, and I'm really so pleased he's bought it. It has been a most worrying autumn because the people next door were continually complaining of Stella's piano, and really Carlington Road has become impossible.

Such an air of living next door, and whenever I look out of the window the maid is shaking a mat and looking up to see if I'm interested. We must try to settle on a new house when you're back in town. We'll stay in a hotel for a while. Stella has had to take a studio, which I do not approve of her doing, and I cannot bear to see the piano going continually in and out of the house. There are so many things I want to talk to you about--money, and whether you would like to go to Paris during the holidays. I daresay we could find a house at some other time.

Your loving

Mother.

From Stella about the same time, Michael also received a letter.

My dear old Michael,

I seem to have made really a personal success at my concert, and I've taken a studio here because the man next door--a most _frightful_ bounder--said the noise I made went through and through his wife. As she's nearly as big round as the world, I wasn't flattered. Mother is getting very fussy, and all sorts of strange women come to the house and talk about some society for dealing with Life with a capital letter. I think we're going to be rather well off, and Mother wants to live in a house she's seen in Park Street, but I want to take a house in Cheyne Walk. I hope you like Cheyne Walk, because this house has got a splendid studio in the garden and I thought with some mauve brocades it would look perfectly lovely. There's a very good _paneled_ room that you could have, and of course the studio would be half yours. I am working at a Franck concerto. I'm being painted by rather a nice youth, at least he would be nice, if he weren't so much like a corpse. I suppose you'll condescend to ask me down to Oxford next term.

Yours ever,

Stella.