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

the adventure. She looked a little doubtful at his account of Mr. Wilmot.

“Oh, he’s all right, really, Mother. Only, you know, a little peculiar. But then he’s a poet.”

Next day came a letter from Mr. Wilmot.

205 Edwardes Square, W.

November.

Dear Mrs. Fane,

I must apologize for inviting your son to dinner so unceremoniously. But he made a great appeal to me, sitting on the top of a ladder in Elson’s Bookshop. I have a library, in which he may enjoy himself whenever he likes. Meanwhile, may he come to dinner with me on Friday next? Mr. Johnstone, the Member for West Kensington, is coming with his nephew who may be dull without Michael. Michael tells me he thinks of becoming an ecclesiastical lawyer. In that case Johnstone will be particularly useful, and can give him some hints. He’s a personal friend of old Dr. Brownjohn. With many apologies for my “impertinence,”

Yours very truly,

Arthur Wilmot.

“This is a perfectly sensible letter,” said Mrs. Fane.

“Perhaps I thought he was funnier than he really was. Does he say anything else except about me sitting on the top of a ladder?”

Somehow Michael was disappointed to hear that this was all.

IX The Yellow Age

Dinner with Mr. Arthur Wilmot occupied most of Michael’s thoughts for a week. He was mainly concerned about his costume, and he was strenuously importunate for a tailcoat. Mrs. Fane, however, was sure that a dinner-jacket would better become his youthfulness. Then arose the question of stickup collars. Michael pointed out that very soon he would be sixteen, and that here was a fine opportunity to leave behind the Polo or Shakespeare collar.

“You’re growing up so quickly, dearest boy,” sighed his mother.

Michael was anxious to have one of the new double collars.

“But don’t they look rather outré?” protested Mrs. Fane.

“Well, Abercrombie, the Secretary of the Fifteen, wears one,” observed Michael.

“Have your own way, dear,” said Mrs. Fane gently.

Two or three days before the dinner-party Michael braved everything and wore one of the new double collars to school. Its extravagant advent among the discreet neckwear of the Upper Fifth caused a sensation. Mr. Cray himself looked curiously once or twice at Michael, who assumed in consequence a particularly nonchalant air, and lounged over his desk even more than usual.

“Are you going on the stage, Fane?” enquired Mr. Cray finally, exasperated by Michael’s indolent construing.

“Not that I know of,” said Michael.

“I wasn’t sure whether that collar was part of your getup as an eccentric comedian.”

The Upper Fifth released its well-worn laugh, and Michael scowled at his master.

However, he endured the sarcasm of the first two days and still wore the new collars, vowing to himself that presently he would make fresh attacks upon the convention of school attire, since apparently he was able thereby to irritate old Cray.

After all, the dinner-party was not so exciting as he had hoped from the sample of his new friend’s conversation. To be sure he was able to smoke as much as he liked, and drink as much champagne as he knew how without warning headshakes; but Mr. Johnstone, the Member for West Kensington, was a moon-faced bore, and his nephew turned out to be a lank nonentity on the despised Modern side. Mr. Johnstone talked a good deal about the Catholic movement, which somehow during the last few weeks was ceasing to interest Michael so much as formerly. Michael himself ascribed this apostasy to his perusal, ladder-high, of Zola’s novel Lourdes with its damaging assaults upon Christian credulity. The Member of Parliament seemed to Michael, after his psychical adventures of the past few months, curiously dull and antique, and he evidently considered Michael affected. However, he encouraged the idea of ecclesiastical law, and promised to talk to Dr. Brownjohn about Michael’s release from the thraldom of Classics. As for the nephew, he seemed to be able to do nothing but stretch the muscles of his chicken-like neck and ask continually whether Michael was going to join the Field Club that some obscure Modern Lower Master was in travail with at the moment. He also invited Michael to join a bicycling club that apparently met at Surbiton every other Saturday afternoon. Mr. Wilmot contented himself with silence and the care of his guests’ entertainment.

Finally the Member for West Kensington with his crudely jointed nephew departed into the fog, and Mr. Wilmot, with an exaggerated sigh, shut the front door.

“I must be going too,” said Michael grudgingly.

“My dear boy, the evening has scarcely begun,” objected Mr. Wilmot. “Come upstairs to my library, and tell me all about your opinions, and whether you do not think that everything is an affectation.”

They went up together.

“Every year I redecorate this room,” Mr. Wilmot explained. “Last year it was apple-green set out with cherry-red. Now I am become a mysterious peacock-blue, for lately I have felt terribly old. How well this uncertain tint suits your fresh languor.”

Michael admired the dusky blue chamber with the plain mirrors of tarnished gilt, the gleaming books and exotic engravings, and the heterogeneous finery faintly effeminate. He buried himself in a deep embroidered chair, with an ebony box of cigarettes at his feet, while Mr. Wilmot, after a myriad mincing preliminaries, sought out various highly coloured bottles of liqueurs.

“This is a jolly ripping room,” sighed Michael.

“It represents a year’s moods,” said Mr. Wilmot.

“And then will you change it?” asked Michael.

“Perhaps. The most subtly painted serpent casts ultimately its slough. Crème-de-Menthe?”

“Yes, please,” said Michael, who would have accepted anything in his present receptive condition.

“And what do you think of life?” enquired Mr. Wilmot, taking his place on a divan opposite Michael. “Do you mind if I smoke my Jicky-scented hookah?” he added.

“Not at all,” said Michael. “These cigarettes are jolly ripping. I think life at school is frightfully dull⁠—except, of course, when one goes out. Only I don’t often.”

“Dull?” repeated Mr. Wilmot. “Listen to the amazing cruelty of youth, that finds even his adventurous Sicilian existence dull.”

“Well, it is,” said Michael. “I think I used to like it, but nowadays everything gets fearfully stale almost at once.”

“Already your life has been