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

his breakfast with an appetite. As he rose to leave the Common Room, Lonsdale emerged from the zareba of illustrated papers with which he had fortified his place at table.

“Have you been reading that thing of Mossy’s?” he asked incredulously.

Michael nodded.

“Isn’t it most awful rot?”

“Some of it,” Michael assured him.

“I suppose it would be only sporting to buy a copy,” sighed Lonsdale. “I suppose I ought to buzz round and buck the college up into supporting it. By Jove, I’ll write and tell the governor to buy a copy. I want him to raise my allowance this year, and he’ll think I’m beginning to take an interest in what he calls ‘affairs.’ ”

Michael turned into Venner’s before going back to his own rooms.

“Hullo, is that the paper?” asked Venner. “Dear me, this looks very learned. You should tell him to put some more about sport into it⁠—our fellows are all so dreadfully wild about sport. They’d be sure to buy it then. Going to work this morning? That’s right. I’m always advising the men to work in the morning. But bless you, they don’t pay any attention to me. They only laugh and say, ‘what’s old Venner know about it?’ ”

Michael, sitting snugly in the morning quiet of his room, leaned over to poke the fire into a blaze, eyed with satisfaction November’s sodden mists against his window, and settled himself back in the deep chair to The Oxford Looking-Glass.

Oxford Liberalism. By Vernon Townsend.
A Restatement of Tory Ideals. By William Mowbray.

These two articles Michael decided to take on trust. From their perusal he would only work himself up into a condition of irritated neutrality. Indeed, he felt inclined to take all the rest of the magazine on trust. The tranquillity of his own room was too seductive. Dreaming became a duty here. It was so delightful to count from where he sat the books on the shelves and to arrive each time at a different estimate of their number. It was so restful to stare up at Mona Lisa and traverse without fatigue that labyrinth of rocks and streams. His desk not yet deranged by work or correspondence possessed a monumental stability of neatness that was most soothing to contemplate. It had the restfulness of a well-composed landscape where every contour took the eye easily onward and where every tree grew just where it was needed for a moment’s halt. The olive-green magazine dropped unregarded onto the floor, and there was no other book within reach. The dancing fire danced on. Far away sounded the cries of daily life. The chimes in St. Mary’s tower struck without proclaiming any suggestion of time. How long these roll-call mornings were and how rapidly dream on dream piled its drowsy outline. Was there not somewhere at the other end of Oxford a lecture at eleven o’clock? This raw morning was not suitable for lectures out of college. Was not Maurice coming to lunch? How deliciously far off was the time for ordering lunch. He really must get out of the habit of sitting in this deep wicker-chair, until evening licensed such repose.

Some people had foolishly attended a ten-o’clock lecture at St. John’s. What a ludicrous idea! They had ridden miserably through the cold on their bicycles and with numb fingers were now trying to record scraps of generalization in a notebook that would inevitably be lost long before the Schools. At the same time it was rather lazy to lie back like this so early in the morning. Why was it so difficult to abandon the Sirenian creakings of this chair? He wanted another match for his second pipe, but even the need for that was not violent enough to break the luxurious catalepsy of his present condition.

Then suddenly Maurice Avery and Nigel Stewart burst into the room, and Michael by a supreme effort plunged upward onto his legs to receive them.

“My hat, what a frowst!” exclaimed Maurice, rushing to the window and letting in the mist and the noise of the High.

“We’re very hearty this morning,” murmured Stewart. “I heard Mass at Barney’s for the success of the O.L.G.”

“Nigel and I have walked down the High, rounded the Corn, and back along the Broad and the Turl,” announced Maurice. “And how many copies do you think we saw bought by people we didn’t know?”

“None,” guessed Michael maliciously.

“Don’t be an ass. Fifteen. Well, I’ve calculated that at least four times as many were being sold, while we were making our round. That’s sixty, and it’s not half-past ten yet. We ought to do another three hundred easily before lunch. In fact, roughly I calculate we shall do five hundred and twenty before tonight. Not bad. After two thousand we shall be making money.”

“Maurice bought twenty-two copies himself,” said Stewart, laughing, and lest he should seem to be laughing at Maurice thrust an affectionate arm through his to reassure him.

“Well, I wanted to encourage the boys who were selling them,” Maurice explained.

“They’ll probably emigrate with the money they’ve made out of you,” predicted Michael. “And what on earth are you going to do with twenty-two copies? I find this one copy of mine extraordinarily in the way.”

“Oh, I shall send them to well-known literary people in town. In fact, I’m going to write round and get the best-known old Oxford men to give us contributions from time to time, without payment, of course. I expect they’ll be rather pleased at being asked.”

“Don’t you think it may turn their heads?” Michael anxiously suggested. “It would be dreadful to read of the sudden death of Quiller-Couch from apoplectic pride or to hear that Hilaire Belloc or Max Beerbohm had burst with exultation in his bath.”

“It’s a pity you can’t be funny in print,” said Maurice severely. “You’d really be some use on the paper then.”

“But what we’ve really come round to say,” interposed Stewart, “is that there’s an O.L.G. dinner tonight at the Grid; and then afterward we’re all going across to