Sinister Street

"He's from St. James'."

"Where on earth's that?"

"London."

"Why, I thought it was a kind of charity school," said Lonsdale. Then he turned to Michael again:

"I say, are you really from St. James'?"

Michael replied coldly that he was.

"I say, come and have coffee with me after hall. One or two O. E.'s are coming in, but you won't mind?"

"Why, do you want to find out something about St. James'?" demanded Michael, frowning.

"Oh, I say, don't be ratty. It's that a.s.s Tommy. He always talks at the top of his voice."

Lonsdale, as he spoke, looked so charmingly apologetic and displayed such accomplished sang-froid that Michael forgave him immediately and promised to come to coffee.

"Good egg!" Lonsdale exclaimed with the satisfaction of having smoothed over an awkward place. "I say," he offered, "if you'd like to meet Wedderburn, I'll ask him, too. He seems to have improved since he's been up at the Varsity. Don't you think that fat man Wedderburn has improved, Tommy?"

Tommy nodded.

"One day's done him no end of good."

"I say," Lonsdale offered, "you haven't met Fane. Mr. Fane--Mr.

Grainger. I was just saying to Fane that the Etonians are a rotten lot this term."

"One or two are all right," Grainger admitted with evident reluctance.

"Well, perhaps two," Lonsdale agreed. "This dinner isn't bad, what?"

By this time the conversation at the table had become more general, and Michael gradually realized that some of the alarm he had felt himself had certainly been felt by his companions. Now at any rate there was a perceptible relaxation of tension. Still the conversation was only general in so much as that whenever anybody spoke, the rest of the table listened. The moment the flow of his information dried up, somebody else began pumping forth instruction. These slightly nervous little lectures were delivered without any claim to authority and they came up prefaced by the third person of legendary narrative.

"They say we shall all have to interview the Warden to-morrow."

"They say on Sunday afternoon the Wagger makes the same speech to the freshers that he's made for twenty years."

"They say we ought to go head of the river this year."

"They say the freshers are expected to make a bonner on Sunday night."

"They say any one can have commons of bread and cheese by sending out word to the b.u.t.tery. It's really included in the two-and-fourpence for dinner."

"They say they charge a penny for the napkin every night."

So the information proceeded, and Michael had just thought to himself that going up to Oxford was very much like going to school again, when from the second-year tables crashed the sound of a concerted sneeze. The dons from high table looked coldly down the hall, expressing a vague, but seemingly impotent disapproval, for immediately afterward that sternutation shook the air a second time.

Michael thought the difference between school and Oxford might be greater than he had supposed.

The slowest eater at the second freshmen's table had nervously left half his savory; Wedderburn without apparent embarra.s.sment had received the Sub-Warden's permission to rise from dinner; Lonsdale hurriedly marshaled as many of his acquaintances as he could, and in a large and

Michael was interested by Lonsdale's sitting-room, for he divined at once that it was typical, just a transplanted Eton study with the addition of smoking paraphernalia. The overmantel was plumed with small photographs of pleasant young creatures in the gay nautical costumes of the Fourth of June and festooned hats of Alexandra or Monarch, of the same pleasant young creatures at an earlier and chubbier age, of the same pleasant young creatures with penciled mustaches and the white waistcoat of Pop. In addition to their individual commemorations the pleasant young creatures would appear again in house groups, in winning house elevens, and most exquisitely of all in Eton Society. Michael always admired the photographs of Pop, for they seemed to him to epitomize all the traditions of all the public-schools of England, to epitomize them moreover with something of that immortality of captured action expressed by great Athenian sculpture. In comparison with Pop the Harrow Philathletic Society was a barbarous group, with all the self-consciousness of a deliberate archaism. Besides the personal photographs in Lonsdale's room there were studies of grouse by Thorburn; and Michael, remembering Alan's grouse, felt in accord with Lonsdale and with all that Lonsdale stood for. Knowing Alan, he felt that he knew Lonsdale, and at once he became more at ease with all his contemporaries in Lonsdale's room. Michael looked at the colored prints of Cecil Aldin's pictures and made up his mind he would buy a set for Alan: also possibly he would buy for Alan the Sir Galahad of Watts which was rather better than The Soul's Awakening.

After Lonsdale's pictures Michael surveyed Lonsdale's books, the brilliantly red volumes of Jorrocks, the two or three odd volumes of the Badminton library, and the school books tattered and ink-splashed. More interesting than such a library were the glossy new briars, the virgin meerschaum, the patent smoking-tables and another table evidently designed to make drinking easy, but by reason of the complexity of its machinery actually more likely to discourage one forever from refreshment. The rest of the s.p.a.ce, apart from the furniture bequeathed by the noisy Templeton-Collins when he moved to larger rooms above, was crowded with the freshmen whom after hall Lonsdale had so hastily gathered together una.s.sorted.

"I ordered coffee for sixteen," announced the host. "I thought it would be quicker than making it in a new machine that my sister gave me. It just makes enough for three, and the only time I tried, it took about an hour to do that... who'll drink port?"

Michael thought the scout's prophecies about the superfluity of Lonsdale's wine were rather premature, for it seemed that everybody intended to drink port.

"I believe this is supposed to be rather good port," said Lonsdale.

"It is jolly good," several connoisseurs echoed.

"I don't know much about it myself. But my governor's supposed to be rather a judge. He said 'this is wasted on you and your friends, but I haven't got any bad wine to give you.'"

Here everybody held up their gla.s.ses against the light, took another sip and murmured their approval.

"Do you think this is a good wine, Fane?" demanded Lonsdale, thereby drawing so much attention to Michael that he blushed to nearly as deep a color as the port itself.

"I like it very much," Michael said.

"Do you like it, Wedderburn?" asked Lonsdale, turning to the freshman who had sat in the armchair at the head of the second table.

"d.a.m.ned good wine," p.r.o.nounced Wedderburn in a voice so rich with appreciation and so deep with judgment that he immediately established a reputation for worldly knowledge, and from having been slightly derided at Eton for his artistic ambitions was ever afterward respected and consulted. Michael envied his air of authority, but trembled for Wedderburn's position when he heard him reproach Lonsdale for his lack of any good pictures.

"You might stick up one that can be looked at for more than two seconds," Wedderburn said severely.

"What sort of picture?" asked Lonsdale.

"Primavera, for instance," Wedderburn suggested, and Michael's heart beat in sympathy.

"Never heard of the horse," Lonsdale answered. "Who owned her?"

"My G.o.d," Wedderburn rumbled, "I'll take you to buy one to-morrow, Lonny. You deserve it after that."

"Right-O!" Lonsdale cheerfully agreed. "Only I don't want my room to look like the Academy, you know."

Wedderburn shook his head in benevolent contempt, and the conversation was deflected from Lonsdale's artistic education by a long-legged Wykehamist with crisp chestnut hair and a thin florid face of dimpling smiles.

"Has anybody been into Venner's yet?" he asked.

"I have," proclaimed a dumpy Etonian whose down-curving nose hung over a perpetually open mouth. "Marjoribanks took me in just before hall. But he advised me not to go in by myself yet awhile."

"The second-year men don't like it," agreed the long-legged Wykehamist with a wise air. "They say one can begin to go in occasionally in one's third term."

"What is Venner's?" Michael asked.

"Don't you know?" sniffed the dumpy Etonian who had already managed to proclaim his friends.h.i.+p with Marjoribanks, the President of the Junior Common Room, and therefore presumably had the right to open his mouth a little wider than usual at Michael.