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

strange to see her sitting here in his old room, and to be in a way more sharply aware of her than he had ever been, as he watched her fanning herself and looking round at the furniture, while the echoes of laughter and talk died away down the stone staircase without.

“Dear Michael,” she said. “I wish I’d seen this room when you lived in it properly.”

He laughed.

“When I lived in it properly,” he answered, “I should have been made so shy by your visit that I think you’d have hated me and the room.”

“You must have been so domestic,” said his mother. “Such a curious thing has happened.”

“Apropos of what?” asked Michael, smiling.

“You know Dick Prescott left Stella all his money, well⁠—”

“But, mother, I didn’t know anything about it.”

“It was rather vague. He left it first to some old lady whom he intended to live four or five years, but she died this week, and so Stella inherits it at once. About two thousand a year. It’s all in land, and will have to be managed. Huntingdonshire, or some country nobody believes in. It’s all very difficult. She must marry at once.”

“But, mother, why because she is to be better off and own land in Huntingdonshire, is she to marry at once?” asked Michael.

“To avoid fortune-hunters, odd foreign counts, and people.”

“But she’s not twenty-one yet,” he objected.

“My dearest boy, I know, I know. That’s why she must marry. Don’t you see, when she’s of age, she’ll be able to marry whom she likes, and you know how headstrong Stella is.”

“Mother,” said Michael suddenly, “supposing she married Alan?”

“Delightful boy,” she commented.

“You mean he’s too young?”

“For the present, yes.”

“But you wouldn’t try to stop an engagement, would you?” he asked very earnestly.

“My dearest Michael, if two young people I were fond of fell in love, I should be the last person to try to interfere,” Mrs. Fane promised.

“Well, don’t say anything to Alan about Stella having more money. I think he might be sensitive about it.”

“Darling Stella!” she sighed. “So intoxicated with poverty⁠—the notion of it, I mean.”

“Mother,” said Michael suddenly and nervously, “you know, don’t you, that the day after tomorrow is the House ball⁠—the Christ Church ball?”

“Where your father was?” she said gently, pondering the past.

He nodded.

“I’ll show you his old rooms,” Michael promised.

“Darling boy,” she murmured, putting out her hand. He held it very tightly for a moment.

Next day after the Trinity ball Alan, who was very cheerful, told Michael he thought it would be good sport to invite everybody to tea at 99 St. Giles.

“Oh, I particularly didn’t want that to happen,” said Michael, taken aback.

Alan was puzzled to know his reason.

“You’ll probably think me absurd,” said Michael. “But I rather wanted to keep Ninety-nine for a place that I could remember as more than all others the very heart of Oxford, the most intimate expression of all I have cared for up here.”

“Well, so you can, still,” said Alan severely. “My asking a few people there to tea won’t stop you.”

“All the same, I wish you wouldn’t,” Michael persisted. “I moved into college for Commem just to avoid taking anybody to St. Giles.”

“Not even Stella?” demanded Alan.

Michael shook his head.

“Well, of course, if you don’t want me to, I won’t,” said Alan grudgingly. “But I think you’re rather ridiculous.”

“I am, I know,” Michael agreed. “But thanks for honoring me. Do you think Stella has altered much since she was in Vienna, and during this year in town?”

“Not a bit,” Alan declared enthusiastically. “And yet in one way she has,” he corrected himself. “She seems less out of one’s reach.”

“Or else you know better how to stretch,” Michael laughed.

“Oh, I wasn’t thinking of her attitude to me,” said Alan a little stiffly.

“Most generalizations come down to a particular fact,” Michael answered. But he would not tease Alan too much because he really wished him to have confidence.

After the Trinity ball it seemed to Michael now not very rash to sound Stella about her point of view with regard to Alan. For this purpose he invited her to come in a canoe with him on the Cher. Yet when together they were gliding down the green tunnels of the stream, when all the warmth of June was at their service, when neither question nor answer could have cast on either more than a momentary shadow, Michael could not bring himself to approach the subject even indirectly. They discussed lazily the success of the Trinity ball, without reference to the fact that Stella had danced three-quarters of her program with Alan. She did not even bother to say he was a good dancer, so much was the convention of indifference demanded by the brother and sister in their progress along this fronded stream.

That night in the Town Hall Michael did not dance a great deal himself at the Masonic ball. He sat with Lonsdale in the gallery, and together they much diverted themselves with the costumes of the Freemasons. It was really ridiculous to see Wedderburn in a red cloak and inconvenient sword dancing the Templars quadrille.

“I think the English are curious people,” said Michael. “How absurd that all these undergraduates should belong to an Apollo Lodge and wear these aprons and dress up like this! Look at Wedders!”

“Enter Second Ruffian, what?” Lonsdale chuckled.

“I suppose it does take the place of religion,” Michael ejaculated, in a tone of bewilderment. “Can you see my sister and Alan Merivale anywhere?” he added casually.

“When’s that coming off?” asked Lonsdale. He had taken to an eyeglass since he had been in London, and the enhanced eye glittered very wisely at Michael.

“You think?”

“What? Rather! My dear old bird, I’ll lay a hundred to thirty. Look at them now.”

“They’re only dancing,” said Michael.

“But what dancing! Beautiful action. I never saw a pair go down so sweetly to the gate. By the way, what are you going to do now you’re down?”

Michael shrugged his shoulders.

“I suppose you wouldn’t like to come into the motor business?”

“No, thanks very much,” said Michael.

“Well,