Sinister Street Compton Mackenzie (good novels to read in english .TXT) 📖

three or four others, marched up to Appleby’s rooms.

Lonsdale knocked upon the door, and as he opened it assumed what he probably supposed to be an expression of ferocity, though he was told afterward he had merely looked rather more funny than usual.

“Oh, hullo, Lonsdale,” said Appleby, as the party entered. “Come in and have a smoke. How’s your governor?”

Lonsdale seemed to choke for breath a moment, and then sat down in a chair so deep that for the person once plunged into its recesses an offensive movement must have been extremely difficult.

“Come in, you chaps,” Appleby pursued in hospitable serenity. “I don’t know any of your names, but take pews, take pews. Venner hasn’t sent up the cigars I ordered.”

“We know,” interrupted Lonsdale severely.

“But I’ve some pretty decent weeds here,” continued Appleby, without a tremor of embarrassment. “Who’s for whisky?”

“Look here, young Apple-pip, or whatever your name is, what you’ve got to understand is that.⁠ ⁠…”

Appleby again interrupted Lonsdale.

“Can we make up a bridge four? Or are you chaps not keen on cards?”

“What you require, young Appleby,” began Lonsdale.

“You’ve got it right this time,” said Appleby encouragingly.

“What you require is to have your room bally well turned upside down.”

“Oh, really?” said Appleby, with a suave assumption of interest.

“Yes,” answered Lonsdale gloomily, and somehow the little affirmative that was meant to convey so much of fearful intent was so palpably unimpressive that Lonsdale turned to his companions and appealed for their more eloquent support.

“Tell him he mustn’t come into Venner’s and put on all that side. It’s not done. He’s a fresher,” gasped Lonsdale, obviously helpless in that absorbing chair.

“All right,” agreed Appleby cheerfully. “I’ll send the order up to you next time.”

Immediately afterward, though exactly how it happened Lonsdale could never probably explain, he found himself drinking Appleby’s whisky and smoking one of Appleby’s cigars. This seemed to kindle the spark of his resentment to flame, and he sprang up.

“We ought to debag him!” he cried.

Appleby was thereupon debagged; but as he made no resistance to the divestiture and as he continued to walk about trouserless and dispense hospitality without any apparent loss of dignity, the debagging had to be written down a failure. Finally he folded up his trousers and put on a dressing-gown of purple velvet, and when they left him, he was watching them descend his staircase and actually was calling after them to remind Venner about the cigars, if the office were still open.

“Hopeless,” sighed Lonsdale. “The man’s a hopeless ass.”

“I think he had the laugh, though,” said Michael.

VIII The Oxford Looking-Glass

Roll-calls were not kept at St. Mary’s with that scrupulousness of outward exterior which, in conjunction with early rising, such a discipline may have been designed primarily to secure. On the morning after the attempted adjustment of Appleby’s behavior, a raw and vaporous November morning, Michael at one minute to eight o’clock ran collarless, unbrushed, unshaven, toward the steps leading up to hall at whose head stood the Dean beside the clerkly recorder of these sorry matutinal appearances. Michael waited long enough to see his name fairly entered in the book, yawned resentfully at the Dean, and started back on the taciturn journey that must culminate in the completion of his toilet. Crossing the gravel space between Cloisters and Cuther’s worldly quad, he met Maurice Avery dressed finally for the day at one minute past eight o’clock. Such a phenomenon provoked him into speech.

“What on earth.⁠ ⁠… Are you going to London?” he gasped.

“Rather not. I’m going out to buy a copy of the O.L.G.”

Michael shook his head, sighed compassionately, and passed on. Twenty minutes later in Common Room he was contemplating distastefully the kedgeree which with a more hopeful appetite he had ordered on the evening before, when Maurice planked down beside his place the first number of The Oxford Looking-Glass.

“There’s a misprint on page thirty-seven, line six. It ought to be ‘yet’ not ‘but.’ Otherwise I think it’s a success. Do you mind reading my slashing attack on the policy of the Oxford theater? Or perhaps you’d better begin at the beginning and go right through the whole paper and give me your absolutely frank opinion of it as a whole. Just tell me candidly if you think my Reflections are too individual. I want the effect to be more⁠—”

“Maurice,” Michael interrupted, “do you like kedgeree?”

“Yes, very much,” Maurice answered absently. Then he plunged on again. “Also don’t forget to tell me if you think that Guy’s skit is too clever. And if you find any misprints I haven’t noticed, mark them down. We can’t alter them now, of course, but I’ll speak to the compositor myself. You like the color? I wonder whether it wouldn’t have been better to have had dark blue after all. Still⁠—”

“Well, if you like kedgeree,” Michael interrupted again, “do you like it as much in the morning as you thought you were going to like it the night before?”

“Oh, how the dickens do I know?” exclaimed Maurice fretfully.

“Well, will you just eat my breakfast and let me know if you think I ought to have ordered eggs and bacon last night?”

“Aren’t you keen on the success of this paper?” Maurice demanded.

“I’ll tell you later on,” Michael offered. “We’ll lunch together quietly in my rooms, and the little mulled claret we shall drink to keep out this filthy fog will also enormously conduce to the amiableness of my judgment.”

“And you won’t come out with me and Nigel Stewart to watch people buying copies on their way to leckers?” Maurice suggested in a tone of disappointment. Lonsdale arrived for breakfast at this moment, just in time to prevent Michael’s heart from being softened. The newcomer was at once invited to remove the editor.

“Have you bought your copy of the O.L.G. yet, Lonny?” Maurice demanded, unabashed.

“Look here, Moss Avery,” said Lonsdale seriously, “if you promise to spend the bob you screw out of me on buying yourself some soothing syrup, I’ll⁠ ⁠…”

But the