Sinister Street Volume Ii Part 42

"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 to-morrow 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 att.i.tude 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 ap.r.o.ns and dress up like this! Look at Wedders!"

"Enter Second Ruffian, what?" Lonsdale chuckled.

"I suppose it does take the place of religion," Michael e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, 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 eyegla.s.s 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, you must do something, you know," said Lonsdale, letting fall his eyegla.s.s in disapproval. "You'll find that out in town."

Michael was engaged for the next dance to one of Maurice's sisters. Amid the whirl of frocks, as he swung round this pretty and insipid creature in pink crepe-de-chine, he was dreadfully aware that neither his nor her conversation mattered at all, and that valuable time was being robbed from him to the strains of the Choristers waltz. Really he would have preferred to leave Oxford in a manner more solemn than this, not tangled up with frills and misses and obvious music. Looking down at Blanche Avery, he almost hated her. And to-morrow there would be another ball.

He must dance with her again, with her and with her sister and with a dozen more dolls like her.

Next morning, or rather next noon, for it was noon before people woke after these b.a.l.l.s that were not over until four o'clock, Michael looked out of his bedroom window with a sudden dismay at the great elms of the deer park, deep-bosomed, verdurous, entranced beneath the June sky.

"This is the last whole day," he said, "the last day when I shall have a night at the end of it; and it's going to be absolutely wasted at a picnic with all these women."

Michael scarcely knew how to tolerate that picnic, and wondered resentfully why everybody else seemed to enjoy it so much.

"Delicious life," said his mother, as he punted her away from the tinkling crowd on the bank. "I'm not surprised you like Oxford, dear Michael."

"I like it--I liked it, I mean, very much more when it was altogether different from this sort of thing. The great point of Oxford--in fact, the whole point of Oxford--is that there are no girls."

"How charmingly savage you are, dear boy," said his mother. "And how absurd to pretend you don't care for girls."

"But I don't," he a.s.serted. "In Oxford I actually dislike them very much. They're out of place except in Banbury Road. Dons should never have been allowed to marry. Really, mother, women in Oxford are wrong."

"Of course, I can't argue with you. But there seem to me to be a great many of them."