Volume Ii Part 15 (2/2)
The reading-party in question consisted besides Michael of Maurice Avery, Guy Hazlewood, Castleton, and Stewart. Bill Mowbray also joined them for the first two days, but after receiving four wires in reference to the political candidature of a friend in the north of England, he decided that his presence was necessary to the triumph of Tory Democracy and left abruptly in the middle of the night with a request to forward his luggage when it arrived. When it did arrive, the reading-party sent it to await at Univ Mowbray's arrival in October, arguing that such an arrangement would save Bill and his friends much money, as he would indubitably spend during the rest of the vacation not more than forty-eight hours on the same spot.
The reading-party had rooms in a large farmhouse near the Lizard; and they spent a very delightful month bathing, golfing, cliff-climbing, cream-eating, fis.h.i.+ng, sailing, and talking. Avery and Stewart also did a certain amount of work on the first number of The Oxford Looking-Gla.s.s, work which Hazlewood amused himself by pulling to pieces.
”I'm doing an article for the O.L.G. on Cornwall,” Avery announced one evening.
”What, a sort of potted guide?” Hazlewood asked.
Maurice made haste to repudiate the suggestion.
”No, no; it's an article on the uncanny place influence of Cornwall.”
”I think half of that uncanniness is due to the odd names hereabouts,”
Castleton observed. ”The sign-posts are like incantations.”
”Much more than that,” Avery earnestly a.s.sured him. ”It really affects me profoundly sometimes.”
Hazlewood laughed.
”Oh, Maurice, not profoundly. You'll never be affected profoundly by anything,” he prophesied.
Maurice clicked his thumbs impatiently.
”You always know all about everybody and me in particular, Guy, but though, as you're aware, I'm a profound materialist----”
”Maurice is plumbing the lead to-night,” Hazlewood interrupted, with a laugh. ”He'll soon transcend all human thought.”
”Here in Cornwall,” Maurice pursued, undaunted, ”I really am affected sometimes with a sort of horror of the unknown. You'll all rag me, and you can, but though I've enjoyed myself frightfully, I don't think I shall ever come to Cornwall again.”
With this announcement he puffed defiance from his pipe.
”Shut up, Maurice!” Hazlewood chaffed. ”You've been reading Cornish novelists--the sort of people who write about over-emotionalized young men and women acting to the moon in hut-circles or dancing with their own melodramatic Psyches on the top of a cromlech.”
”Do you believe in presentiments, Guy?” Michael broke in suddenly.
”Of course I do,” said Hazlewood. ”And I'd believe in the inherent weirdness of Cornwall, if people in books didn't always go there to solve their problems and if Maurice weren't always so facile with the right emotion at the right moment.”
”I've got a presentiment to-night,” said Michael, and not wis.h.i.+ng to say more just then, though he had been compelled against his will to admit as much, he left the rest of the party, and went up to his room.
Outside the tamarisks lisped at intervals in a faint wind that rose in small puffs and died away in long sighs. Was it a presentiment he felt, or was it merely thunder in the air?
Next morning came a telegram from Stella in Paris:
_join me here rather quickly._
Michael left Cornwall that afternoon, and all the length of the hara.s.sing journey to London he thought of his friends bathing all day and talking half through the intimate night, until gradually, as the train grew hotter, they stood out in his memory like cool people eternally splashed by grateful fountains. Yet at the back of all his regrets for Cornwall, Michael was thinking of Stella and wondering whether the telegram was merely due to her impetuous way or whether indeed she wanted him more than rather quickly.
It was dark when he reached London, and in the close August night the street-lamps seemed to have lost all their sparkle, seemed to glow luridly like the sinister lamps of a dream.
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