Sinister Street

_"What is it then that thou hast got_ _By drudging through that five-year task?_ _What knowledge or what art is thine?_ _Set out thy stock, thy craft declare."_ IONICA.

_"Sic c.u.m his, inter quos eram, voluntatum enuntianaarum signa conmunicavi; et vitae humanae procellosam societatem altius ingressus sum, pendens ex parentum auctoritate nutuque maiorum hominum."_

ST. AUGUSTINE.

Chapter I: _The Jacobean_

Michael found the Lower Third at St. James' a jolly cla.s.s. He was so particularly young that he was called 'Baby,' but with enough obvious affection to make the dubious nickname a compliment. To be sure, Mr.

Braxted would often cackle jokes in a raucous voice about his age, and if Michael made a false quant.i.ty he would grumble and say he was paid as a schoolmaster not as a wet-nurse. However, Mr. Braxted was such a dandy and wore such very sharply creased and tight trousers and was so well set up and groomed that the cla.s.s was proud of his neat appearance, and would inform the Upper Third that Foxy Braxted did, at any rate, look a gentleman, a distinction which the Upper Third could scarcely claim for their own form-master.

Michael liked the greater freedom of a public school. There were no home-books to be signed by governesses: there was no longer any taboo upon the revelation of Christian names. Idiosyncrasies were overlooked in the vaster society of St. James'. The senior boys paid no attention to the juniors, but pa.s.sed them by scornfully as if they were grubs not worth the trouble of squas.h.i.+ng. There was no longer the same zest in the little scandals and petty spitefulness of a private school. There was much greater freedom in the choice of one's friends, and Michael no longer felt bound to restrict his intimacy to the twin Macalisters and Norton. Sometimes in the 'quarter' (as the break was now called) Michael would stand on the top of the steps that led down from the great red building into the school-ground. From this point he would survey the huge green field with its archipelago of countless boys. He would think how few of their names he knew and from what distances many of them travelled each morning to school. He could wander among them by himself and not one would turn a curious head. He was at liberty even to stare at a few great ones whom athletic prowess had endowed already with legendary divinity, so that among small boys tales were told of their daring and their immortality gradually woven into the folk-lore of St.

James'. Sometimes a member of the first fifteen would speak to Michael on a matter of athletic business.

"What's your name?"

"Fane," Michael would answer, hoping the while that his contemporaries might be pa.s.sing and see this colloquy between a man and a G.o.d.

"Oh, yes," the hero would carelessly continue, "I've got you down already. Mind you turn up to Little Side at 1.45 sharp."

Little Side was the football division that included the smallest third of the school. Sometimes the hero would ask another question, as:

"Do you know a kid called Smith P.L.?"

And Michael with happy blushes would be able to point out Smith P.L. to the great figure.

Michael played football on Little Side with great regularity, rus.h.i.+ng home to dinner and rus.h.i.+ng off again to change and be in the field by a quarter to two. He could run very fast and for that reason the lords of Little Side made him play forward, a position for which the slightness of his body made him particularly unsuited. One day, however, he managed to intercept a pa.s.s, to outwit a three-quarter, to dodge the full-back and to score a try, plumb between the posts. Luckily one of the heroes had strolled down from Pelion that afternoon to criticize Little Side and Michael was promoted from the scrum to play three-quarter back on the left wing, in which position he really enjoyed football very much indeed.

It fell out that year that the St. James' fifteen was the most invincible ever known in the school's history, and every Sat.u.r.day afternoon, when there was a home match, Michael in rain or wind or pale autumnal sunlight would take up his position in the crowd of spectators to cheer and shout and urge St. James' to another glorious victory.

Match after match that year earned immortal fame in the school records, sending the patriotic Jacobeans of every size and age home to a happy tea in the rainy twilight. Those were indeed afternoons of thunderous excitement. How everybody used to shout--School--Schoo-oo-ol--Schoo-ol!

Play up--Schoo-oo-ool! James! Ja-a-a-mes! Oh, go low. Kick! Touch!

Forward! Held! Off-side! Go in yourself! Schoo-ool!

How Michael's heart beat at the thud of the Dulford forwards in their last desperate rush towards the School 'twenty-five.' Down went the School halves, and over them like a torrent swept the Dulford pack. Down went the three-quarters in a plucky attempt to sit on the ball. Ah!

There was an unanimous cry of agony, as everybody pressed against the boundary rope and craned towards the touch-line until the posts creaked before the strain. Not in vain had those gallant three-quarters been smeared with mud and bruised by the boots of the surging Dulford pack; for the ball had been kicked on too far and Cutty Jackson, the School back, had fielded it miraculously. He was going to punt. 'Kick!' yelled the despairing spectators. And Jackson, right under the disappointed groans of the Dulford forwards whose muscles cracked with the effort to fetch him down, kicked the ball high, high into the silvery November air. Up with that spinning greasy oval travelled the hopes of the onlookers, and, as it fell safely into touch, from all round the field rose like a rocket a huge sigh of relief that presently broke into volleys and paeans of exultation, as half-time sounded with St. James' a goal to the good. How Michael admired the exhausted players when they sucked the sliced lemons and lay about in the mud; how he envied Cutty Jackson, when the lithe and n.o.ble fellow leaned against the goalpost and surveyed his audience. 'Sidiness' could be easily forgiven after that never-to-be-forgotten kick into touch. Why, thought Michael, should not he himself be one day ranked as the peer of Cutty Jackson? Why should not he, six or seven years

Michael's brain swam with excitement. He saw the Dulford team as giants bull-necked and invulnerable. He saw the School halves shrinking, the School three-quarters s.h.i.+ver like gra.s.s and the School forwards crumple before the Dulford charges. They were beaten: the untarnished record was broken: Michael could have sobbed for his side. Swifter than swallows, the Dulford three-quarters flew down the now all too short field of play. They were in! Look! they were dancing in triumph. A try to Dulford! Disconsolately the School team lined up behind their disgraced goal. Jauntily the Dulford half walked away with the shapely leather.

The onlookers held their breath, as the ball, evilly accurate, dangerously direct, was poised in position for the kick at goal. The signal was given: the School team made their rush: the ball rose in the air: hung for a moment motionless, hit a goalpost, quivered and fell back. One goal to a try--five points to three--and St. James' was leading. Then indeed did the School play up. Then indeed did every man in the team 'go low': and for the rest of the game to neither side did any advantage incline. Grunts and muttered oaths, the thud of feet, the smack of wet leather lasted continually. In the long line-ups for the throw in from touch, each man marked his man viciously: the sweat poured down from hanging jaws: vests were torn, knees were grimed with mud and elbows were blackened. The scrimmages were the tightest and neatest ever watched, and neither scrum could screw the other a foot. At last the shrill whistle of the referee proclaimed the end of an immortal contest.

There were cheers for the victors by the vanquished, by the vanquished for their conquerors. The spectators melted away into the gathering mist and rain, a flotsam of black umbrellas. In a few moments the school-ground was desolate and silent. Michael, as he looked at the gra.s.s ploughed into mud by the severe struggle, thought what superb heroes were in his School team; and just as he was going home, content, he saw a blazer left on a post. It was Jackson's, and Michael, palpitating with the honour, ran as fast as he could to the changing-room through the echoing cloister beneath the school.

"I say, Jackson, you left this on the ground," he said shyly.

Jackson looked up from a conversation with the Dulford full-back.

"Oh, thanks very much," he murmured, and went on with his talk.

Michael would not have missed that small sentence for any dignity in the world.

During his first term at St. James', Michael went on with his study of the art of dancing, begun during the previous winter without much personal satisfaction and with a good deal of self-consciousness. These dancing lessons took place in the hall at Randell's, and Michael revisited his old school with a new confidence. He found himself promoted to stay beyond the hour of pupilage in order pleasantly to pa.s.s away a second hour by dancing formally with the sisters and cousins of other boys. He had often admired last year those select Jacobeans who, b.u.t.toning white gloves, stood in a supercilious group, while their juniors clumped through the Ladies' Chain uninspired by the swish of a single petticoat. Now he was of their sacred number. It was not surprizing that under the influence of the waltz and the Circa.s.sian circle and the schottische and the quadrille and the mazurka that Michael should fall in love. He was not anxious to fall in love: many times to other boys he had mocked at woman and dilated upon the folly of matrimony. He had often declared on his way to and from school that celibacy should be the ideal of every man. He used to say how little he could understand the habit of sitting in dark corners and kissing. Even Miss Carthew he grew accustomed to treat almost with rudeness, lest some lynx-eyed friend of his should detect in his relation with her a tendency towards the sentimental. However, Muriel in her salmon-coloured, accordion-pleated frock bowled Michael off his superior pedestal. He persuaded himself that this was indeed one of those unchangeable pa.s.sions of which he read or rather did read now. This great new emotion was certainly Love, for Michael could honestly affirm that as soon as he saw Muriel sitting on a chair with long black legs outstretched before her, he loved her. No other girl existed, and when he moved towards her for the pleasure of the next dance, he felt his heart beating, his cheeks on fire. Muriel seemed to like him after a fas.h.i.+on. At any rate, she cordially supported him in a project of long-deferred revenge upon Mr. Macrae of the Upper Fourth at Randell's, and she kept 'cave' while Michael tried the door of his empty cla.s.s-room off the top gallery of the hall. It was unlocked, and Michael crept in and quickly threw the contents of Mr. Macrae's desk out of the window and wrote on the blackboard: 'Mr. Macrae is the silliest a.s.s in England.' Then he and Muriel walked demurely back to join the tinkling mazurka down below and, though many enquiries were set on foot as to the perpetrator of the outrage, Michael was never found out.

Michael's pa.s.sion for Muriel increased with every evening of her company, and he went so far as to make friends with a very unpopular boy who lived in her road, for the sake of holding this unpopular boy in close conversation by his threshold on the chance of seeing Muriel's grey m.u.f.f in the twilight. Muriel was strangely cold for the heroine of such a romance, and indeed Michael only once saw her really vivacious, which was when he gave her a catapult. Yet sometimes she would make a clandestine appointment and talk to him for twenty minutes in a secluded terrace, so that he consoled himself with a belief in her untold affection. Michael read Don Quixote again on account of Dulcinea del Toboso, and he was greatly moved by the knight's apostrophes and declamations. He longed for a confidant and was half inclined to tell Stella about Muriel; but when he came to the point Stella was engrossed in a new number of Little Folks and Michael feared she was unworthy of such a trust. The zenith of his pa.s.sion was attained at the Boarders'

dance to which he and Muriel and even Stella were invited. Michael had been particularly told by Miss Carthew that he was to dance four times at least with Stella and never to allow her to be without a partner. He was in despair and felt, as he encountered the slippery floor with Stella hanging nervously on his arm, that round his neck had been tied a millstone of responsibility. There in a corner was Muriel exquisite in yellow silk, and in her hair a yellow bow. Boys flitted round her, like bees before a hive, and here was he powerless with this wretched sister.

"You wait here," said Michael. "I'll be back in half a jiffy."

"Oh, no," pouted Stella. "You're not to leave me alone, Michael. Miss Carthew said you were to look after me."

Michael groaned.

"Do you like ices?" he asked desperately. "You do, don't you?"

"No," said Stella. "They make my tooth ache."

Michael almost wept with chagrin. He had planned to swap with Stella for unlimited ices all her dances with him. Then he saw a friend whom he caught hold of, and with whom he whispered fiercely for a moment.

"I say, you might dance with my kiddy sister for a bit. She's awfully fond of ices, so you needn't really dance."

The friend said he preferred to remain independent at a dance.

"No, I say, do be a decent chap," begged Michael. "Just dance with her once and get another chap to dance with her after you've had your shot.

Oh, do. Look here. What'll you swap for the whole of her programme?"

The friend considered the proposition in its commercial side.

"Look here," Michael began, and then, as he nervously half turned his head, he saw the crowd thickening about Muriel. He waved his arm violently in the hope that she would realize his plight and keep the rivals at arm's length. "Look here," he went on, "you know my bat with the whalebone splice?" This bat was Michael's most precious possession, and even as he bartered it for love, he smelt the fragrant linseed-oil of the steeped bandages which now preserved it for summer suns.

The friend's eyes twinkled greedily.

"I'll swap that bat," said Michael, "if you'll make sure my kiddy sister hasn't got a single empty place on her programme all the dance."

"All right," said the friend. And as he was led up to Stella, Michael whispered hurriedly, when the introduction had been decorously made:

"This chap's frightfully keen on you, Stella. He simply begged me to introduce him to you."

Then from the depths of Michael's soul a deep-seated cunning inspired him to add:

"I wouldn't at first, because he was awfully in love with another girl and I thought it hard cheese on her, because she's here to-night. But he said he'd go home if he didn't dance with you. So I had to."

Michael looked enquiringly at Stella, marked the smirk of satisfaction on her lips, then recklessly, almost sliding over the polished floor, he plunged through Muriel's suitors and proffered his programme. They danced together nearly all the evening, and alas, Muriel told him that she was going to boarding-school next term. It was a blow to Michael, and the dance programme with Muriel's name fourteen times repeated was many times looked at with sentimental pangs each night of next term before Michael went to bed a hundred miles away from Muriel at her boarding-school.

However, Muriel and her porcelain-blue eyes and the full bow of her lips and the slimness and girlishness of her were forgotten in the complexities of life at a great public school. Michael often looked back to that first term in the Lower Third as a period of Arcadian simplicity, a golden age. In his second term Michael after an inconspicuous position in the honest heart of the list was not moved up, for which he was very glad, as the man who took the Upper Third was by reputation a dull driver without any of the amenities by which Foxy Braxted seasoned scholastic life.

One morning, when the Lower Third had been pleasantly dissolved in laughter by Foxy's caustic jokes at the expense of a boy who had p.r.o.nounced the Hebrides as a dissyllable, following a hazardous guess that the capital of New South Wales was New York, the door of the cla.s.s-room opened abruptly and Dr. Brownjohn the Headmaster sailed in.

"Is there a boy called Fane in this cla.s.s?" he demanded deeply.