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

of emancipation. He took to coming to school in vivid bow-ties that raised Mr. Cray’s most sarcastic comments.

“The sooner you go to the History Sixth, Fane, and take that loathsome ribbon with you, the better for us all. Where did you get it? Out of the housemaid’s trunk, one would say, by its appearance.”

“It happens to be a tie,” said Michael with insolence in his tone.

“Oh, it happens to be a tie, does it? Well, it also happens to be an excellent rule of St. James’ School that all boys, however clever, wear dark suits and black ties. There also happens to be an excellent cure for pretentious and flamboyant youths who disregard this rule. There happens to be a play by one Euripides called the Alcestis. I suggest you write me out the first two hundred lines of it.”

Michael’s next encounter was with Mr. Viner, on the occasion of his producing in the priest’s pipe-seasoned sitting-room a handkerchief inordinately perfumed with an Eastern scent lately discovered by Wilmot.

“Good heavens, Michael, what Piccadilly breezes are you wafting into my respectable and sacerdotal apartment?”

“I rather like scent,” explained Michael lamely.

“Well, I don’t, so, for goodness’ sake don’t bring any more of it in here. Pah! Phew! It’s worse than a Lenten address at a fashionable church. Really, you know, these people you’re in with now are not at all good for you, Michael.”

“They’re more interesting than any of the chaps at school.”

“Are they? There used to be a saying in my undergraduate days, ‘Distrust a freshman that’s always seen with third-year men.’ No doubt the inference is often unjust, but still the proverb remains.”

“Ah, but these people aren’t at school with me,” Michael observed.

“No, I wish they were. They might be licked into better shape, if they were,” retorted the priest.

“I think you’re awfully down on Wilmot just because I didn’t meet him in some churchy set. If it comes to that, I met some much bigger rotters than him at Clere.”

“My dear Michael,” argued Father Viner, “the last place I should have been surprised to see Master Wilmot would be in a churchy set. Don’t forget that if religion is a saving grace, religiosity is a constitutional weakness. Can’t you understand that a priest like myself who has taken the average course, public-school, ’varsity, and theological college, meets a thundering lot of Wilmots by the way? My dear fellow, many of my best friends, many of the priests you’ve met in my rooms, were once upon a time every bit as decadent as the lilified Wilmot. They took it like scarlet fever or chickenpox, and feel all the more secure now for having had it. Decadence, as our friend knows it, is only a newfangled name for greensickness. It’s a healthy enough mental condition for the young, but it’s confoundedly dangerous for the grownup. The first pretty girl that looks his way cures it in a boy, if he’s a normal decent boy. I shouldn’t offer any objection to your behaviour, if you were being decadent with Mark Chator or Martindale or Rigg. Good heavens, the senior curate at the best East-end Mission, when he was at Oxford, used to walk down the High leading a lobster on a silver chain, and even that wasn’t original, for he stole the poor little fantastic idea from some precious French poet. But that senior curate is a very fine fellow today. No, no, this fellow Wilmot and all his set are very bad company for you, and I do not like your being decadent with these half-baked fancy-cakes.”

Michael, however, would not admit that Mr. Viner was right, and frequented the dangerous peacock-blue room in Edwardes Square more than ever. He took Chator there amongst others, and was immensely gratified to be solemnly warned at the end of the visit that he was playing with Hellfire. This seemed to him an interesting and original pastime, and he hinted to solemn, simple, spluttering old Chator of more truly Satanic mysteries.

After Christmas Michael had his way and was moved into the History Sixth, mainly owing to the intervention of the Member for West Kensington. The History Sixth was presided over by Mr. Kirkham, whose nominal aim in life was the amelioration of Jacobean athletics. From the fact that he wore an M.C.C. ribbon round his straw hat, and an Oxford University Authentic tie, it is probable that the legend of his former skill at cricket was justified. In reality he was much more interested in Liberalism than anything else, and persistently read Blue Books, underlining the dramatic moments of Royal Commissions and chewing his moustache through pages of dialogue hostile to his opinions. A rumour sped round the school that he had been invited to stand for Parliament, a rumour which Michael, on the strength of dining with the Member for West Kensington, flatly contradicted.

The History Sixth classroom was a pleasant place, the only classroom in the school that ever saw the sun. Its windows looked out on the great green expanse of the school ground, where during the deserted hours of work the solitary roller moved sedately and ancient women weeded the pitches.

There were only seven boys in the History Sixth. There was Strang, the Captain of the Eleven, who lounged through the dull Lent term and seemed, as he spread his bulk over the small desk, like a half-finished statue to which still adhered a fragment of uncarved stone. There was Terry, the Vice-Captain of the Fifteen and most dapper halfback that ever cursed forwards. He spent his time trying to persuade Strang to take an interest in Noughts and Crosses. There was beak-nosed Thomson who had gained an Exhibition at Selwyn College, Cambridge, and dark-eyed Mallock, whose father wrote columnar letters to The Times. Burnaby, who shocked Michael very much by prophesying that a certain H. G. Wells, now writing about Martian invasions, was the coming man, and Railton, a weedy and disconsolate recluse, made up with Michael himself the class-list.

There was an