Sinister Street

_In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland,_ _At the sea-down's edge between windward and lee,_ _Walled round with rocks as an inland island,_ _The ghost of a garden fronts the sea._

"I say," exclaimed Michael eagerly, "I never knew Swinburne was a really great poet. And fancy, he's alive now."

"Alive, and living at Putney," said Mr. Viner.

"And yet he wrote what you've just said!"

"He wrote that, and many other things too. He wrote:

_Before the beginning of years_ _There came to the making of man_ _Time, with a gift of tears;_ _Grief, with a gla.s.s that ran;_ _Pleasure, with pain for leaven,_ _Summer, with flowers that fell;_ _Remembrance fallen from heaven,_ _And madness risen from h.e.l.l."_

"Good Lord!" sighed Michael. "And he's in Putney at this very moment."

Michael went home clasping close the black volume, and in his room that night, while the gas jet flamed excitably in defiance of rule, he read almost right through the Second Series of Poems and Ballads. It was midnight when he turned down the gas and sank feverishly into bed. For a long while he was saying to himself isolated lines: _'The wet skies harden, the gates are barred on the summer side.' 'The rose-red acacia that mocks the rose.' 'Sleep, and if life was bitter to thee, brother.'

'For whom all winds are quiet as the sun, all waters as the sh.o.r.e.'_

In school on Monday morning Mr. Cray, to Michael's regret, did not allude to the command that his cla.s.s should read 'In a Garden.' Michael was desperately anxious at once to tell him how much he had loved the poem and to remind him of the real t.i.tle, 'A Forsaken Garden.' At last he could bear it no longer and went up flushed with enthusiasm to Mr.

Cray's desk, nominally to enquire into an alleged mistake in his Latin Prose, but actually to inform Mr. Cray of his delight in Swinburne. When the grammatical blunder had been discussed, Michael said with as much nonchalance as he could a.s.sume:

"I read that poem, sir. I think it's ripping."

"What poem?" repeated Mr. Cray vaguely. "Oh, yes, 'Enoch Arden.'"

"'Enoch Arden,'" stammered Michael. "I thought you said 'In a Garden.' I read 'A Forsaken Garden' by Swinburne."

Mr. Cray put on his most patronizing manner.

"My poor Fane, have you never heard of Enoch Arden? Perhaps you've never even heard of Tennyson?"

"But Swinburne's good, isn't he, sir?"

"Swinburne is very well," said Mr. Cray. "Oh, yes, Swinburne will do, if you like rose-jam. But I don't recommend Swinburne for you, Fane."

Then Mr. Cray addressed his cla.s.s:

"Did you all read 'Enoch Arden'?"

"Yes, sir," twittered the Upper Fifth.

"Fane, however, with that independence of judgment which distinguishes his Latin Prose from, let us say, the prose of Cicero, preferred to read 'A Forsaken Garden' by one Swinburne."

The Upper Fifth giggled dutifully.

"Perhaps Fane will recite to us his discovery," said Mr. Cray, scratching his scurfy head with the gnawed end of a penholder.

Michael blushed resentfully, and walked back to his desk.

"No?" said Mr. Cray with an affectation of great surprise.

Then he and the Upper Fifth, contented with their superiority, began to chew and rend some tough Greek particles which ultimately became digestible enough to be a.s.similated by the Upper Fifth; while Mr. Cray himself purred over his cubs, looking not very unlike a mangy old lioness.

"Eight more terms," groaned Michael to himself.

Mr. Cray was not so blind to his pupils' need for mild intellectual excitement, however much he might scorn the easy emotions of Swinburne.

He really grew lyrical over Homeric difficulties, and even spoke enthusiastically of Mr. Mackail's translation of the Georgics; but always he managed to conceal the n.o.bility of his

until Mr. Cray suggested that it might be equivalent to the Latin 'mola,' meaning 'grain coa.r.s.ely ground.' An exhausting discussion followed, ill.u.s.trated by examples from every sort of writer, all of which had to be taken down in notes in antic.i.p.ation of a still more exhausting essay on the subject.

"The meal may be trite," said Mr. Cray, "but not the subject," he added, chuckling. "However, I have only touched the fringe of it: you will find the arguments fully set forth in b.u.t.tmann's Lexilogus. Who possesses that invaluable work?"

n.o.body in the Upper Fifth possessed it, but all anxiously made a note of it, in order to acquire it over the counter of the Book Room downstairs.

"No use," said Mr. Cray. "b.u.t.tmann's Lexilogus is now out of print."

Michael p.r.i.c.ked up at this. The phrase leant a curious flavour of Romance to the dull book.

"No doubt, however, you will be able to obtain it second-hand," added Mr. Cray.

The notion of tracking down b.u.t.tmann's Lexilogus possessed the Upper Fifth. Eagerly after school the diligent ones discussed ways and means.

Parties were formed, almost one might say expeditions, to rescue the valuable work from oblivion. Michael stood contemptuously aside from the buzz of self-conscious effort round him, although he had made up his own mind to be one of the first to obtain the book. Levy, however, secured the first copy for fourpence in Farringdon Street, earning for his sharpness much praise. Another boy bought one for three s.h.i.+llings and sixpence in Paddington, the price one would expect to pay, if not a Levy; and there were rumours of a copy in Kensington High Street. To Michael the mart of London from earliest youth had been Hammersmith Broadway, and thither he hurried, hopeful of discovering b.u.t.tmann's dingy Lexilogus, for the purchase of which he had thoughtfully begged a sovereign from his mother. Michael did not greatly covet b.u.t.tmann, but he was sure that the surplus from three s.h.i.+llings and sixpence, possibly even from fourpence, would be very welcome.

He found at last in a turning off Hammersmith Broadway a wonderful bookshop, whose rooms upon rooms leading into one another were all lined and loaded with every kind of book. The proprietor soon found a copy of b.u.t.tmann, which he sold to Michael for half a crown, leaving him with fifteen s.h.i.+llings for himself, since he decided that it would be as well to return his mother at least half a crown from her sovereign. The purchase completed, Michael began to wander round the shop, taking down a book here, a book there, dipping into them from the top of a ladder, sniffing them, clapping their covers together to drive away the dust, and altogether thoroughly enjoying himself, while the daylight slowly faded and street-lamps came winking into ken outside. At last, just as the shop-boy was putting up the shutters, Michael discovered a volume bound in half-morocco of a crude gay blue, that proved on inspection to contain the complete poetical works of Algernon Charles Swinburne, for the sum of seventeen s.h.i.+llings and sixpence.

What was now left of his golden sovereign that should have bought so much beside b.u.t.tmann's brown and musty Lexilogus?

Michael approached the proprietor with the volume in his hand.

"How much?" he asked, with a queer choking sensation, a throbbing excitement, for he had never before even imagined the expenditure of seventeen s.h.i.+llings and sixpence on one book.

"What's this?" said the proprietor, putting on his spectacles. "Oh, yes, Swinburne--pirated American edition. Seventeen s.h.i.+llings and sixpence."

"Couldn't you take less?" asked Michael, with a vague hope that he might rescue a s.h.i.+lling for his mother, if not for cigarettes.

"Take less?" repeated the bookseller. "Good gracious, young man, do you know what you'd have to pay for Swinburne's stuff separate? Something like seven or eight pounds, and then they'd be all in different volumes.

Whereas here you've got--lemme see--Atalanta in Calydon, Chastelard, Poems and Ballads, Songs before Sunrise, Bothwell, Tristram of Lyonesse, Songs of Two Nations, and heaven knows what not. I call seventeen s.h.i.+llings and sixpence very cheap for what you might almost call a man's life-work. Shall I wrap it up?"

"Yes, please," said Michael, gasping with the effect of the plunge.

But when that night he read

_Swallow, my sister, O fair swift swallow,_

he forgot all about the cost.

The more of Swinburne that Michael read, the more impatient he grew of school. The boredom of Mr. Cray's cla.s.s became stupendous; and Michael, searching for some way to avoid it, decided to give up Cla.s.sics and apply for admission to the History Sixth, which was a small a.s.sociation of boys who had drifted into this appendix for the purpose of defeating the ordinary rules of promotion. For instance, when the Captain of the School Eleven had not attained the privileged Sixth, he was often allowed to enter the History Sixth, in order that he might achieve the intellectual dignity which consorted with his athletic prowess.

Michael had for some time envied the leisure of the History Sixth, with its general air of slackness and its form-master, Mr. Kirkham, who, on account of holding many administrative positions important to the athletic life of the school, was so often absent from his cla.s.s-room. He now racked his brains for an excuse to achieve the idle bliss of these charmed few. Finally he persuaded his mother to write to the Headmaster and apply for his admission, on the grounds of the greater utility of History in his future profession.

"But what are you going to be, Michael?" asked his mother.