Sinister Street by Compton Mackenzie

Author:Compton Mackenzie
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction, Bildungsromans, Illegitimate children -- Fiction
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2020-04-21T00:48:54+00:00

V Youth’s Domination

On May Morn­ing, when the choir boys of St. Mary’s hymned the ris­ing sun, Michael was able for the first time to be­hold the vis­i­ble ex­pres­sion of his own men­tal im­age of Ox­ford’s com­plete­ness, to pierce in one daz­zling mo­ment of re­al­iza­tion the cloudy and elu­sive con­cepts which had rest­lessly gath­ered and re­solved them­selves in beau­ti­ful ob­scu­rity about his mind. He was granted on that oc­ca­sion to hold the city, as it were, im­pris­oned in a crys­tal globe, and by the in­ten­sity of his evo­ca­tion to rec­og­nize per­fectly that un­cap­turable quin­tes­sence of hu­man de­sire and hu­man vi­sion so supremely dis­played through the merely out­ward glory of its repos­i­tory.

All night Michael and a large party of fresh­men, now scarcely to be called fresh­men so much did they feel they pos­sessed of the right to live, had sus­tained them­selves with dressed crab and sleepy bridge-fours. Dur­ing the gray hour of hinted dawn they wan­dered round the col­lege, rous­ing from sleep such lazy con­tem­po­raries as had vowed that not all the joys and tri­umph of May Morn­ing on the tower should make them keep awake, dur­ing the vigil. Even so with what it con­tained of abil­ity to vex other peo­ple that last hour hung a lit­tle heav­ily upon the en­thu­si­asts. Slowly, how­ever, the sky light­ened: slowly the cold hues and blushes of the sun’s youth, that stood as sym­bol for so much here in St. Mary’s, made of the east one great shell of lu­cent color. The gray stones of the col­lege lost the mys­te­ri­ous out­lines of dawn and sharp­ened slowly to a rose-warmed vi­tal­ity. The choir boys gath­ered like twit­ter­ing birds at the base of the tower: en­er­getic vis­i­tors came half shyly through the por­tal that was to give such a sense of time’s re­ju­ve­na­tion as never be­fore had they deemed pos­si­ble: dons came hur­ry­ing like great black birds in the gath­er­ing light: and at last the tired rev­el­ers, Michael and Wed­der­burn, Mau­rice Avery and Lons­dale and Grainger and Cuffe and Castle­ton and a score be­sides equipped in cap and gown went scram­bling and laugh­ing up the wind­ing stairs to the top.

For Michael the mo­ment of wait­ing for the first shaft of the sun was scarcely to be en­dured: the vi­sion of the city be­low was al­most too poignant dur­ing the hush of ex­pectancy that pre­ceded the dec­la­ra­tion of wor­ship. Then flashed a sil­ver beam in the east: the massed choir boys with one ac­cord opened their mouths and sang just ex­actly, Michael said to him­self, like the morn­ing stars. The ris­ing sun sent ray upon ray lanc­ing over the roofs of the out­spread city un­til with all its spires and tow­ers, with all its domes and houses and still, un­pop­u­lous streets it sparkled like the sea. The hymn was sung: the choir boys twit­tered again like spar­rows, and, bow­ing their greet­ings to one an­other, the dons cawed gravely like rooks. The bells in­cred­i­bly loud here on the tower’s top crashed out so ar­dently that ev­ery stone seemed to nod

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