Sinister Street, Compton Mackenzie [classic books for 10 year olds .TXT] 📗

of the Easter holidays that year there must have been something unusually amorous even for April, for when Michael came back to school he found that most of his friends and contemporaries had been wounded by love’s darts. Alan, to be sure, returned unscathed, but as he had been resting in the comparatively cloistral seclusion of Cobble Place, Michael did not count his whole heart much honour to anything except his lack of opportunity. Everybody else had come back in possession of girls; some even had acquired photographs. There was talk of gloves and handkerchiefs, of flowers and fans, but nobody, as far as Michael could cautiously ascertain, had thought of soap; and he congratulated himself upon his relic. Also, apparently, all his friends in their pursuit of Eastertide nymphs had been successful, and he began to take credit to himself for being unlucky. His refusal (to this already had come Kathleen’s suddenly withdrawn hand) gave him a peculiar interest, and those of his friends in whom he confided looked at him with awe, and listened respectfully to his legend of despair.

Beneath the hawthorns on the golden afternoons and lingering topaz eves of May, Michael would wait for Alan to finish his game of cricket, and between lazily applauded strokes and catches he would tell the tale of Kathleen to his fellows:

“I asked her to wait for me. Of course she was older than me. I said I was ready to marry her when I was twenty-one, but there was another chap, a decent fellow, devilish handsome, too. He was frightfully rich, and so she agreed to elope with him. I helped them no end. I told her father he simply must not attempt to interfere. But, of course, I was frightfully cut up⁠—oh, absolutely knocked out. We’re all of us unlucky in love in our family. My sister was in love with an Austrian who was killed by an avalanche. I don’t suppose I shall ever be in love again. They say you never really fall in love more than once in your life. I feel a good deal older this term. I suppose I look⁠ ⁠… oh, well hit indeed⁠—run it out, and again, sir, and again⁠ ⁠… !”

So Michael would break off the tale of his love, until one of his listeners would seek to learn more of passion’s frets and fevers.

“But, Bangs, what about the day she eloped? What did you do?”

“I wrote poetry,” Michael would answer.

“Great Scott, that’s a bit of a swat, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it’s a bit difficult,” Michael would agree. “Only, of course, I only write vers libre. No rhymes or anything.”

And then an argument would arise as to whether poetry without rhymes could fairly be called poetry at all. This argument, or another like it, would last until the cricket stopped, when Michael and his fellows would stroll into the pavilion and examine the scoring-book or criticize the conduct of the game.

It was a pleasant time, that summer term, and life moved on very equably for Michael, notwithstanding his Eastertide heartbreak. Alan caused him a little trouble by his indifference to anything but cricket, and one Sunday, when May had deepened into June, Michael took him to task for his attitude. Alan had asked Michael over to Richmond for the weekend, and the two of them had punted down the river towards Kew. They had moored their boat under a weeping willow about the time when the bells for church, begin to chime across the level water-meadows.

“Alan, aren’t you ever going to fall in love?” Michael began.

“Why should I?” Alan countered in his usual way.

“I don’t know. I think it’s time you did,” said Michael. “You’ve no idea how much older it makes you feel. And I suppose you don’t want to remain a kid forever. Because, you know, old chap, you are an awful kid beside me.”

“Thanks very much,” said Alan. “I believe you’re exactly one month older, as a matter of fact.”

“Yes, in actual time,” said Michael earnestly. “But in experience I’m years older than you.”

“That must be why you’re such a rotten field,” commented Alan. “After forty the joints get stiff.”

“Oh, chuck being funny,” said Michael severely. “I’m in earnest. Now you know as well as I do that last term and the term before I was miserable. Well, look at me now. I’m absolutely happy.”

“I thought you were so frightfully depressed,” said Alan, twinkling. “I thought you’d had an unlucky love affair. It seems to take you differently from the way it takes most people.”

“Oh, of course, I was miserable,” Michael explained. “But now I’m happy in her happiness. That’s love.”

Alan burst out laughing, and Michael observed that if he intended to receive his confidences in such a flippant way, he would in future take care to be more secretive.

“I’m showing you what a lot I care about you,” Michael went on in tones of deepest injury, “by telling you about myself. I think it’s rather rotten of you to laugh.”

“But you’ve told everybody,” Alan pointed out.

Michael took another tack, and explained to Alan that he wanted the spur of his companionship in everything.

“It would be so ripping if we were both in love,” he sighed. “Honestly, Alan, don’t you feel I’m much more developed since last term? I say, you played awfully well yesterday against Dulford Second. If you go on improving at the rate you are now, I don’t see why you shouldn’t get your Blue at Oxford. By Jove, you know, in eighteen months we shall be at Oxford. Are you keen?”

“Frightfully keen,” said Alan. “Especially if I haven’t got to be in love all the time.”

“I’m not going to argue with you any more,” Michael announced. “But you’re making a jolly big mistake. Still, of course, I do understand about your cricket, and I dare say love might make you a bit boss-eyed. Perhaps when footer begins again next term, I shall get over this perpetual longing I have for Kathleen. You’ve no idea how