Sinister Street, vol. 1

D INNER 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 tail-coat. Mrs...

A LMOST before the confusion of a new term had subsided, Michael put his name down to play football again, and it was something in the nature of an occasion when in the first sw...

S TELLA came back from Germany less foreign-looking than Michael expected, and he could take a certain amount of pleasure in her company at Bournemouth, For a time they were wel...

A FTER whooping-cough came chicken-pox, and it was settled that Michael should leave the Kindergarten where these illnesses were caught. A French governess was to teach him ever...

B ACK once more upon his pedestal in the frieze, Michael devoted himself to enjoying, while still they were important to his life, the conversation and opinions of the immortals...

T O Michael it seemed almost incredible that school should be able to continue as the great background against which his love stood out like a delicate scene carved by the artis...

W HEN at the beginning of term a melancholy senior boy, meeting Michael in one of the corridors during the actual excitement of the move, asked him what form he was going into a...

A S Michael sat opposite to his mother in the railway-carriage on the following morning, he found it hard indeed to realize that an ocean did not stretch between them. He did no...

H IS mother’s absence made very sad for Michael the tall thin house in Carlington Road. He felt enclosed in the restraint from which his mother had flown like a bird. Time stret...

Here was the opportunity to tell her about Lily, but Michael could not avail himself of it. These last two days seemed as yet too incomplete for revelation. Somehow he felt that...

M RS. FANE, having momentarily lifted the veil that all these years had hidden her personality from Michael and Stella, dropped it very swiftly again. Only the greatest emotion...

F ROM a world of daisies as big as moons and of mountainous green hillocks Michael Fane came by some unrealized method of transport to the thin red house, that as yet for his mi...

M ICHAEL found the Lower Third at St. James’ a jolly class. He was so particularly young that he was called ‘Baby,’ but with enough obvious affection to make the dubious nicknam...

I N the air of the Easter holidays that year there must have been something unusually amorous even for April, for when Michael came back to school he found that most of his frie...

M ICHAEL, although Stella was more of a tie than a companion, was shocked to hear that she would not accompany Miss Carthew and himself to Eastbourne for the summer holidays. He...

M ICHAEL somehow felt shy when he heard his mother’s voice telling him to come into her room. He had run upstairs and knocked excitedly at her door before the shyness overwhelme...

T HE preliminaries of Michael’s career at St. James’ Preparatory School passed in a dream-like confusion of thought and action. First of all he waited anxiously in the Headmaste...

T HE Lower Fifth only knew Michael during the Autumn term. After Christmas he moved up to the Middle Fifth, and, leaving behind him many friends, including Alan, he found himsel...

I N the Upper Fourth class, under the tutorship of Mr. Macrae, Michael began to prosecute seriously the study of Greek, whose alphabet he had learnt the preceding term. He now a...

I N the first fortnight of their stay at Clere Abbas Michael and Chator lived like vagabond hermits rejoicing in the freedom of fine weather. Mostly they went for long walks ove...

T HE new term opened inauspiciously; for Miss Carthew fell ill again more seriously, and Michael’s mother came back, seeming cross and worried. She settled that, as she could no...

I N Michael’s last term at St. James’ Preparatory School, Mrs. Fane settled that he should for the holidays go to France with Mr. Vernon and Mr. Lodge, two masters who were accu...

M ICHAEL spent a charming fortnight with Father Viner in Amiens, Chartres and Rouen. The early Masses to which they went along the cool, empty streets of the morning, and the sh...

T HE dun pony ambled through the lanes to the village of Basingstead Minor where Mrs. Carthew and her four daughters lived in a house called Cobble Place. It stood close to the...

M ICHAEL managed to avoid during the rest of the week any reference, direct or indirect, to his interrupted conversation with Mrs. Ross, though he fancied a reproachfulness in h...

was no sign of any pinch or bruise upon them. However, she began to cry, while Michael addressed to her the oration which for a long time he had wished to utter.

T HE brazen sun lighted savagely the barren streets, as Michael left Trelawny Road behind him. His hopeless footsteps rasped upon the pavement. His humiliation was complete. Not...

M ICHAEL left the house early next day that he might make sure of seeing Alan for a moment before Prayers. A snowy aggregation of cumulus sustained the empyrean upon the volume...

D URING whooping-cough Michael was sometimes allowed to sit in a room called the library, which was next to his mother’s bedroom on the first floor and was therefore a dearly lo...

M ISS CARTHEW’S arrival widened very considerably Michael’s view of life. Nurse’s crabbed face and stunted figure had hitherto appropriately enough dominated such realities of e...

T HE phrase “Vie de Bohème” is one in very frequent use, but few of its users recognize its implication. At the time when the term originated in French literature it had a very...

sleek Stella’s. His golden hair lost its lustre and became drab and dark and skimpy. His cheeks lost their rose-red, and black lines ringed his large and sombre blue eyes. He ca...

“ _The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy; but there is a space of life between, in which the soul is in a ferment, the character un...