Sinister Street

Maurice Avery and Wedderburn arrived together. The combination of having just been elected to the Grid and the birth of the new paper had given Maurice such an effervescence of good spirits as even he seldom boasted.

Wedderburn in contrast seemed graver, supplying in company with Maurice a solidity to the pair of them that was undeniably beneficial to their joint impression. They were followed almost immediately by Guy Hazlewood, who with his long legs came sloping in as self-possessed as he always was. Perhaps his left eyelid drooped a little lower than it was accustomed, and perhaps the sidelong smile that gave him a superficial resemblance to Michael was drawn down to a sharper point of mockery, but whatever stored-up flashes of mood and fancy Guy had to deliver, he always drawled them out in the same half-tired voice emphasized by the same careless indolence of gesture. And so this evening he was the same Guy Hazlewood, sure of being with his clear-cut pallor and effortless distinction of bearing, the personality that everyone would first observe in whatever company he found himself.

"Nigel not here, of course," he drawled. "Let's have a sweep on what he's been doing. Five bob all round. I say he's just discovered Milton to be a great poet and is now, reading Lycidas to a spellbound group of the very heartiest Trindogs in Trinity."

"I think he saw The Perfect Flapper," said Maurice "and has been trying ever since to find out whether she were a don's daughter or a theatrical bird of pa.s.sage."

"I think he's forgotten all about it," p.r.o.nounced Wedderburn very deeply indeed.

"I hope he saw that a.s.s Bill Mowbray tearing off in the opposite direction and went to fetch him back," said Townsend.

"I think he's saying Vespers for the week before last," Michael proposed as his solution.

Stewart himself came in at that moment, and in answer to an united demand to know the reason of his lateness embraced in that gentle and confiding air of his all the company, included them all as it were in an intimate aside, and with the voice and demeanor of a strayed archangel explained that the fearful velocity of a pill was responsible for his unpunctuality.

"But you're quite all right now, Nigel?" inquired Guy. "You could almost send a testimonial?"

"Oh, rather," murmured Nigel, with tender a.s.surance lighting up his great, innocent eyes. "I expect, you know, dinner's ready." Then he plunged his arm through Guy's, and led the way toward the private dining-room he had actually not forgotten to command.

Dinner, owing to Avery's determined steering of the conversation, was eaten to the accompaniment of undiluted shop. Never for a moment was any topic allowed to oust The Oxford Looking-Gla.s.s from discussion. Even Guy was powerless against the editor intoxicated by ambition's fulfillment.

Maurice sat in triumphant heads.h.i.+p with only Mowbray's vacant place to qualify very slightly the completeness of his satisfaction. He hoped they all liked his scheme of inviting well-known, even celebrated, old Oxford men to contribute from time to time. He flattered himself they would esteem the honor vouchsafed to them. He disclaimed the wish to monopolize the paper's criticism and n.o.bly invited Townsend to put in their places a series of contemporary dramatists. He congratulated Guy upon his satiric article and a.s.sured him of his great gifts. He reproached Michael for having written nothing, and vowed that many of the books for which he had already sent a printed demand to their publishers must in the December issue be reviewed by Michael. He arranged with Nigel Stewart and Wedderburn at least a dozen prospective campaigns to harry advertisers into unwilling publicity.

At nine-o'clock, the staff of The Oxford Looking-Gla.s.s, reflecting now a very roseate world, marched across the High to wind up the evening in Stewart's digs. On the threshold the host paused in sudden dismay.

"Good lord, I quite forgot. There's a meeting of the De Rebus Ecclesiasticis in my digs to-night. They'll all be there; what shall I do?"

"You can't possibly go," declared everybody.

"Mrs. Arbour," Nigel called out, hurriedly dipping into the landlady's quarters. "Mrs. Arbour."

Mrs. Arbour a.s.sured him comfortably of her existence as she emerged to confer with him in the pa.s.sage.

"There may be one or two men waiting in my rooms. Will you put out syphons and whisky and explain that I shan't be coming."

"Any reason to give, sir?" asked Mrs. Arbour.

The recalcitrant shook his seraphic head.

"No, sir," said Mrs. Arbour cheerfully, "quite so. Just say you're not coming? Yes, sir. Oh, they'll make themselves at home without you, I'll be bound. It's not likely to be a very noisy party, is it, sir?"

"Oh, no. It's the De Rebus Ecclesiasticis, Mrs. Arbour."

"I see, sir. Foreigners. I'll look after them."

Nigel having disposed of the pious debaters, joined his friends again, and it was decided to adjourn to Guy's digs in Holywell. Arm in arm the six journalists marched down the misted High. Arm in arm they turned into Catherine Street, and arm in arm they walked into the Proctor outside the Ratcliffe Camera. To him they admitted their members.h.i.+p of the university. To him they proffered very politely their names and the names of their colleges, and with the same politeness agreed to visit him next morning. The Proctor raised his cap and with his escort faded into the fog. Arm in arm the six journalists continued their progress into Holywell. Guy

"Comeragh and Anstruther are working downstairs, I expect," Guy explained, as one by one, while his guests waited in the dim light, he made a great illumination with wax candles. Then he poked up the fire and set gla.s.ses ready for anyone's need. Great armchairs were pulled round in a semicircle: pipes were lit: the stillness and mystery of the Oxford night crept along the ancient street, a stillness which at regular intervals was broken by mult.i.tudinous chimes, or faintly now and then by pa.s.sing footfalls. Unexcited by argument the talk rippled in murmurous contentment.

Michael was in no mood himself for talking, and he sat back listening now and then, but mostly dreaming. He thought of the conversation in that long riverside room in Paris with its extravagance and pretentiousness. Here in this time-haunted Holywell Street was neither.

To be sure, Christianity and the soul's immortality and the future of England and contemporary art were running the gauntlet of youth's examination, but the Academic Muse had shown the company her aegis, had turned everything to unpa.s.sionate stone, and softened all presumption with her guarded glances. It was extraordinary how under her guidance every subject was stripped of obtrusive reality, how even women, discussed never so grossly, remained untarnished; since they ceased to be real women, but mere abstractions wanton or chaste in accordance with the demands of wit. The ribaldry was Aristophanic or Rabelaisian with as little power to offend, so much was it consecrated and refined by immemorial usages. Michael wished that all the world could be touched by the magical freedom and equally magical restraint of the Academic Muse, and as he sat here in this ancient room, hoped almost violently that never again would he be compelled to smirch the present clarity and steadiness of his vision.

CHAPTER IX

THE LESSON OF SPAIN

Perhaps Michael enjoyed more than anything else during his acc.u.mulation of books the collection of as many various editions of Don Quixote as possible. He had brought up from London the fat volume ill.u.s.trated by Dore over which he had fallen asleep long ago and of which owing to Nurse's disapproval he had in consequence been deprived. Half the pages still showed where they had been bent under the weight of his small body: this honorable scar and the familiar musty smell and the book's unquestionable if slightly vulgar dignity prevented Michael from banis.h.i.+ng it from the shelf that now held so many better editions.

However much the zest in Dore's ill.u.s.trations had died away in the flavor of Skelton's English, Michael could not abandon the big volume with what it held of childhood's first intellectual adventure. The shelf of Don Quixotes became in all his room one of the most cherished objects of contemplation. There was something in the "Q" and the "X" repeated on the back of volume after volume that positively gave Michael an impression in literal design of the Knight's fantastic personality. The very soul of Spain seemed to be symbolized by those sere quartos of the seventeenth century, nor was it imperceptible even in Smollett's c.o.c.kney rendering bound in marbled boards. Staring at the row of Don Quixotes on a dull December afternoon, Michael felt overwhelmingly a desire to go to Spain himself, to drink at the source of Cervantes' mighty stream of imagination which with every year's new reading seemed to him to hold more and more certainly all that was most vital to life's appreciation.

He no longer failed to see the humor of Don Quixote, but even now tears came more easily than laughter, and he regretted as poignantly as the Knight himself those times of chivalry which with all the extravagance of their decay were yet in essence superior to the mode that ousted them into ignominy. Something akin to Don Quixote's impulsive dismay Michael experienced in his own view of the twentieth century. He felt he needed a constructive ideal of conduct to sustain him through the long pilgrimage that must ensue after these hushed Oxford dreams.

Term was nearly over. Michael had heard from Stella that she was going to spend two or three months in Germany. Her Brahms recitals, she wrote, had not been so successful as she ought to have made them. In London she was wasting time. Mother was continually wanting her to come to the theater. It seemed almost as if mother were trying to throw her in the way of marrying Prescott. He had certainly been very good, but she must retreat into Germany, and there again work hard. Would not Michael come too? Why was he so absurdly prejudiced against Germany? It was the only country in which to spend Christmas.

The more Stella praised Germany, the more Michael felt the need of going to a country as utterly different from it as possible. He did not want to spend the vacation in London. He did not want his mother to talk vaguely to him of the advantage for Stella in marrying Prescott. The idea was preposterous. He would be angry with his mother, and he would blurt out to Prescott his dislike of such a notion. He would thereby wound a man whom he admired and display himself in the light of the objectionably fraternal youth. In the dreary and wet murk of December the sun-dried volumes of Cervantes spoke to him of Spain.

Maurice Avery came up to his room, fatigued with fame and disappointed that Castleton with whom he had arranged to go to Rome had felt at the last moment he must take his mother to Bath. To him Michael proposed Spain.

"But why not Rome?" Maurice argued. "As I originally settled."

"Not with me," Michael pointed out. "I don't want to go to Rome now. I always feel luxuriously that there will occur the moment in my life when I shall say, 'I am ready to go to Rome. I must go to Rome.' It's a fancy of mine and nothing will induce me to spoil it by going to Rome at the wrong moment."

Maurice grumbled at him, told him he was affected, unreasonable, and even hinted Michael ought to come to Rome simply for the fact that he himself had been balked of his intention by the absurdly filial Castleton.

"I do think mothers ought not to interfere," Maurice protested. "My mother never interferes. Even my sisters are allowed to have their own way. Why can't Mrs. Castleton go to Bath by herself? I'm sure Castleton overdoes this 'duty' pose. And now you won't come to Rome. Well, will you come to Florence?"

"Yes, and be worried by you to move on to Rome the very minute we arrive there," said Michael. "No, thanks. If you don't want to come to Spain, I'll try to get someone else. Anyway, I don't mind going by myself."

"But what shall we do in Spain?" asked Maurice fretfully.

Michael began to laugh.

"We can dance the fandango," he pointed out. "Or if the fandango is too hard, there always remains the bolero."

"If we went to Rome," Maurice was persisting, but Michael cut him short.

"It's absolutely useless, Mossy. I am not going to Rome."

"Then I suppose I shall have to go to Spain," said Maurice, in a much injured tone.

So in the end it was settled chiefly, Michael always maintained, because Maurice found out it was advisable to travel with a pa.s.sport. As not by the greatest exaggeration of insecurity could a pa.s.sport be deemed necessary for Rome, Maurice decided it was an overrated city and became at once fervidly Spanish, even to the extent of saying "gracias"

whenever the cruet was pa.s.sed to him in hall. Wedderburn at the last moment thought he would like to join the expedition: so Maurice with the pa.s.sport in his breast pocket preferred to call it.

There were two or three days of packing in London, while Maurice stayed at 173 Cheyne Walk and was a great success with Mrs. Fane. The Rugby match against Cambridge was visited in a steady downpour. Wedderburn fetched his luggage, and the last dinner was eaten together at Cheyne Walk. Mrs. Fane was tenderly, if rather vaguely, solicitous for their safety.

"Dearest Michael," she said, "do be careful not to be gored by a bull.

I've never been to Spain. One seems to know nothing about it. Mr. Avery, do have some more turkey. I hope you don't dreadfully dislike garlic.

Such a pungent vegetable. Michael darling, why are you laughing? Isn't it a vegetable? Mr. Wedderburn, do have some more turkey. A friend of mine, Mrs. Carruthers, who is a great believer in Mental Science...

Michael always laughs at me when I try to explain.... Hark, there is the cab, really. I hope it won't be raining in Spain. 'Rain, rain, go to Spain.' So ominous, isn't it? Good-bye, dearest boy, and write to me at Mrs. Carruthers, High Towers, G.o.dalming."