Sinister Street

School? How ascetic! How stringent! What book shall I buy for you, O greatly to be envied dreamer of Sicilian dreams? Shall I buy you Mademoiselle de Maupin, so that all her rococo soul may dance with gilded limbs across your vision? Or shall I buy you A Rebours, and teach you to live? And yet I think neither would suit you perfectly. So here is a volume of Pater--Imaginary Portraits. You will like to read of Denys l'Auxerrois. One day I myself will write an imaginary portrait of you, wherein your secret, sidelong smile will reveal to the world the whole art of youth."

"But really--thanks very much," stammered Michael, who was beginning to suspect the stranger of madness--"it's awfully kind of you, but, really, I think I'd rather not."

"Do not be proud," said Mr. Wilmot. "Pride is for the pure in heart, and you are surely not pure in heart. Or are you? Are you indeed like one of those wonderful white statues of antiquity, unaware of the soul with all its maladies?"

In the end, so urgent was Mr. Wilmot, Michael accepted the volume of Pater, and walked with the stranger through the foggy night. Somehow the conversation was so destructive of all experience that, as Michael and his new friend went by the school-gates and perceived beyond the vast bulk of St. James' looming, Michael felt himself a stranger to it all, as if he never again would with a crowd of companions surge out from afternoon school. The stranger came as far as the corner of Carlington Road with Michael.

"I will write to your mother and ask her to let you dine with me one night next week. You interest me so much."

Mr. Wilmot waved a pontifical good-bye and vanished in the direction of Kensington.

At home Michael told his mother of the adventure. She looked a little doubtful at his account of Mr. Wilmot.

"Oh, he's all right, really, Mother. Only, you know, a little peculiar.

But then he's a poet."

Next day came a letter from Mr. Wilmot.

205 EDWARDES SQUARE, W.

_November._

_Dear Mrs. Fane,_

_I must apologize for inviting your son to dinner so unceremoniously. But he made a great appeal to me, sitting on the top of a ladder in Elson's Bookshop. I have a library, in which he may enjoy himself whenever he likes. Meanwhile, may he come to dinner with me on Friday next? Mr. Johnstone, the Member for West Kensington, is coming with his nephew who may be dull without Michael. Michael tells me he thinks of becoming an ecclesiastical lawyer. In that case Johnstone will be particularly useful, and can give him some hints. He's a personal friend of old Dr. Brownjohn.

With many apologies for my 'impertinence,'_

_Yours very truly,_

_Arthur Wilmot._

"This is a perfectly sensible letter," said Mrs. Fane.

"Perhaps I thought he was funnier than he really was. Does he say anything else except about me

Somehow Michael was disappointed to hear that this was all.

Chapter IX: _The Yellow Age_

Dinner with Mr. Arthur Wilmot occupied most of Michael's thoughts for a week. He was mainly concerned about his costume, and he was strenuously importunate for a tail-coat. Mrs. Fane, however, was sure that a dinner-jacket would better become his youthfulness. Then arose the question of stick-up collars. Michael pointed out that very soon he would be sixteen, and that here was a fine opportunity to leave behind the Polo or Shakespeare collar.

"You're growing up so quickly, dearest boy," sighed his mother.

Michael was anxious to have one of the new double collars.

"But don't they look rather _outre_?" protested Mrs. Fane.

"Well, Abercrombie, the Secretary of the Fifteen, wears one," observed Michael.

"Have your own way, dear," said Mrs. Fane gently.

Two or three days before the dinner-party Michael braved everything and wore one of the new double collars to school. Its extravagant advent among the discreet neckwear of the Upper Fifth caused a sensation. Mr.

Cray himself looked curiously once or twice at Michael, who a.s.sumed in consequence a particularly nonchalant air, and lounged over his desk even more than usual.

"Are you going on the stage, Fane?" enquired Mr. Cray finally, exasperated by Michael's indolent construing.

"Not that I know of," said Michael.

"I wasn't sure whether that collar was part of your get-up as an eccentric comedian."

The Upper Fifth released its well-worn laugh, and Michael scowled at his master.

However, he endured the sarcasm of the first two days and still wore the new collars, vowing to himself that presently he would make fresh attacks upon the convention of school attire, since apparently he was able thereby to irritate old Cray.

After all, the dinner-party was not so exciting as he had hoped from the sample of his new friend's conversation. To be sure he was able to smoke as much as he liked, and drink as much champagne as he knew how without warning headshakes; but Mr. Johnstone, the Member for West Kensington, was a moon-faced bore, and his nephew turned out to be a lank nonent.i.ty on the despised Modern side. Mr. Johnstone talked a good deal about the Catholic movement, which somehow during the last few weeks was ceasing to interest Michael so much as formerly. Michael himself ascribed this apostasy to his perusal, ladder-high, of Zola's novel Lourdes with its damaging a.s.saults upon Christian credulity. The Member of Parliament seemed to Michael, after his psychical adventures of the past few months, curiously dull and antique, and he evidently considered Michael affected. However, he encouraged the idea of ecclesiastical law, and promised to talk to Dr. Brownjohn about Michael's release from the thraldom of Cla.s.sics. As for the nephew, he seemed to be able to do nothing but stretch the muscles of his chicken-like neck and ask continually whether Michael was going to join the Field Club that some obscure Modern Lower Master was in travail with at the moment. He also invited Michael to join a bicycling club that apparently met at Surbiton every other Sat.u.r.day afternoon. Mr. Wilmot contented himself with silence and the care of his guests' entertainment.

Finally the Member for West Kensington with his crudely jointed nephew departed into the fog, and Mr. Wilmot, with an exaggerated sigh, shut the front door.

"I must be going too," said Michael grudgingly.

"My dear boy, the evening has scarcely begun," objected Mr. Wilmot.

"Come upstairs to my library, and tell me all about your opinions, and whether you do not think that everything is an affectation."

They went up together.

"Every year I redecorate this room," Mr. Wilmot explained. "Last year it was apple-green set out with cherry-red. Now I am become a mysterious peac.o.c.k-blue, for lately I have felt terribly old. How well this uncertain tint suits your fresh languor."

Michael admired the dusky blue chamber with the plain mirrors of tarnished gilt, the gleaming books and exotic engravings, and the heterogeneous finery faintly effeminate. He buried himself in a deep embroidered chair, with an ebony box of cigarettes at his feet, while Mr. Wilmot, after a myriad mincing preliminaries, sought out various highly coloured bottles of liqueurs.

"This is a jolly ripping room," sighed Michael.

"It represents a year's moods," said Mr. Wilmot.

"And then will you change it?" asked Michael.

"Perhaps. The most subtly painted serpent casts ultimately its slough.

Creme-de-Menthe?"

"Yes, please," said Michael, who would have accepted anything in his present receptive condition.

"And what do you think of life?" enquired Mr. Wilmot, taking his place on a divan opposite Michael. "Do you mind if I smoke my Jicky-scented hookah?" he added.

"Not at all," said Michael. "These cigarettes are jolly ripping. I think life at school is frightfully dull--except, of course, when one goes out. Only I don't often."

"Dull?" repeated Mr. Wilmot. "Listen to the amazing cruelty of youth, that finds even his adventurous Sicilian existence dull."