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

Michael found the evening a delightful end to his day. He was sufficiently tired by his nocturnal vigil to be able to accept the experience without any prickings of self-consciousness and doubt as to whether this Balliol club resented his intrusion. Hazlewood’s room was the most personal that so far he had seen in Oxford. It shadowed forth for Michael possibilities that in the sporting atmosphere of St. Mary’s he had begun to forget. He would not have liked Tommy Grainger or Lonsdale to have rooms like this one of Hazlewood’s, nor would he have exchanged the society of Grainger and Lonsdale for any other society in Oxford; but he was glad to think that Hazlewood and his rooms existed. He lay back in a deep armchair watching the candlelight flicker over the tapestries, and the shadows of the listeners in giant size upon their martial and courtly populations. He heard in half-a-dream the level voice of Hazlewood enunciating his theories in graceful singing sentences, and the occasional fizz of a replenished glass. The tobacco smoke grew thicker and thicker, curling in spirals about the emaciated loveliness of an ivory saint. The paper was over: and before the discussion was started somebody rose and drew back the dull green curtains sown with golden fleur-de-lys. Moonbeams came slanting in and with them the freshness of the May night: more richly blue gathered the tobacco smoke: more magical became the room, and more perfectly the decorative expression of all Oxford stood for. One by one the members of the Chandos Society rose up to comment on the paper, mocking and earnest, affected and sincere, always clever, sometimes humorous, sometimes truly wise with an apologetic wisdom that was the more delightful.

Michael came to the conclusion that he liked Balliol, that most unjustly had he heard its atmosphere stigmatized as priggish. He made up his mind to examine more closely at leisure this atmosphere, so that from it he might extract the quintessential spirit. Walking with Hazlewood to the lodge, he asked him if the men he had met in his room would stand as representatives of the college.

“Yes, I should think so,” said Hazlewood. “Why, are you making exhaustive researches into the social aspects of Oxford life? It takes an American to do that really well, you know.”

“But what is the essential Balliol?” Michael demanded.

“Who could say so easily? Perhaps it’s the same sort of spirit, slightly filtered down through modern conditions, as you found in Elizabethan England.”

Michael asked for a little more elaboration.

“Well, take a man connected with the legislative class, directly by birth and indirectly by opportunities, give him at least enough taste not to be ashamed of poetry, give him also enough energy not to be ashamed of football or cricket, and add a profound satisfaction with Oxford in general and Balliol in particular, and there you are.”

“Will that description serve for yourself?” Michael asked.

“For me? Oh, great scott, no! I’m utterly deficient in proconsular ambitions.”

They had reached the lodge by now, and Michael left his new friend after promising very soon to come to lunch and pursue further his acquaintance with Balliol.

When Michael got back to college, Avery was hard at work with Wedderburn drawing up the preliminary circular of The Oxford Looking-Glass. Both the promoters insisted that Michael should listen to their announcement before he told them anything about himself or his day.

“The Oxford Looking-Glass,” Avery began, “is intended to reflect contemporary undergraduate thought.”

“I prefer ‘will reflect,’ ” Wedderburn interrupted, in bass accents of positive opinion.

“I don’t think it very much matters,” said Michael, “as long as you don’t think that ‘contemporary undergraduate thought’ is too pretentious. The question is whether you can see a ghost in a mirror, for a spectral appearance is just about as near as undergraduate thought ever reaches toward reality.”

Neither Avery nor Wedderburn condescended to reply to his criticism, and the chief promoter went on:

“Some of the subjects which The Oxford Looking-Glass will reflect will be Literature, Politics, Painting, Music, and the Drama.”

“I think that’s a rotten sentence,” Michael interrupted.

“Well, of course, it will be polished,” Avery irritably explained. “What Wedders and I have been trying to do all the evening is to say as simply and directly as possible what we are aiming at.”

“Ah!” Michael agreed, smiling. “Now I’m beginning to understand.”

“It may be assumed,” Avery went on, “that the opinion of those who are ‘knocking at the door’ (in inverted commas)⁠—”

“I shouldn’t think anybody would ever open to people standing outside a door in inverted commas,” Michael observed.

“Look here, Michael,” Avery and Wedderburn protested simultaneously, “will you shut up, or you won’t be allowed to contribute.”

“Haven’t you ever heard of the younger generation knocking at the door in Ibsen?” fretfully demanded Maurice. “That the opinion of those who are knocking at the door,” he continued defiantly, “is not unworthy of an audience.”

“But if they’re knocking at a door,” Michael objected, “they can’t be reflected in a mirror; unless it’s a glass door, and if it’s a glass door, they oughtn’t to be knocking on it very hard. And if they don’t knock hard, there isn’t much point⁠—”

“The Editor in chief,” pursued Maurice, undaunted by Michael’s attempt to reduce to absurdity the claims of The Oxford Looking-Glass, “will be M. Avery (St. Mary’s), with whom will be associated C. St. C. Wedderburn (St. Mary’s), C. M. S. Fane (St. Mary’s), V. L. A. Townsend (B.N.C.). I haven’t asked him yet, as a matter of fact, but he’s sure to join because he’s very keen on Ibsen. W. Mowbray (Univ.). Bill Mowbray’s very bucked at the scheme. He’s just resigned from the Russell and joined the Canning. They say at the Union that a lot of the principal speakers are going to follow Chamberlain’s lead for Protection. N. R. Stewart (Trinity). Nigel Stewart is most tremendously keen, and rather a good man to have, as he’s had two poems taken by The Saturday Review already.