Michael

CHAPTER VIII

Some fortnight later, and not long before Michael was leaving town for his Christmas visit to Ashbridge, Sylvia and her brother were lingering in the big studio from which the last of their Sunday evening guests had just departed. The usual joyous chaos consequent on those entertainments reigned: the top of the piano was covered with the plates and glasses of those who had made an alfresco supper (or breakfast) of fried bacon and beer before leaving; a circle of cushions were ranged on the floor round the fire, for it was a bitterly cold night, and since, for some reason, a series of charades had been spontaneously generated, there was lying about an astonishing collection of pillow-cases, rugs, and table-cloths, and such articles of domestic and household use as could be converted into clothes for this purpose. But the event of the evening had undoubtedly been Hermann’s performance of the “Wenceslas Variations”; these he had now learned, and, as he had promised Michael, was going to play them at his concert in the Steinway Hall in January. To-night a good many musician friends had attended the Sunday evening gathering, and there had been no two opinions about the success of them.

“I was talking to Arthur Lagden about them,” said Falbe, naming a prominent critic of the day, “and he would hardly believe that they were an Opus I., or that Michael had not been studying music technically for years instead of six months. But that’s the odd thing about Mike; he’s so mature.”

It was not unusual for the brother and sister to sit up like this, till any hour, after their guests had gone; and Sylvia collected a bundle of cushions and lay full length on the floor, with her feet towards the fire. For both of them the week was too busy on six days for them to indulge that companionship, sometimes full of talk, sometimes consisting of those dropped words and long silences, on which intimacy lives; and they both enjoyed, above all hours in the week, this time that lay between the friendly riot of Sunday evening and the starting of work again on Monday. There was between them that bond which can scarcely exist between husband and wife, since it almost necessarily implies the close consanguinity of brother and sister, and postulates a certain sort of essential community of nature, founded not on tastes, nor even on affection, but on the fact that the same blood beats in the two. Here an intense affection, too strong to be ever demonstrative, fortified it, and both brother and sister talked to each other, as if they were speaking to some physically independent piece of themselves.

Sylvia had nothing apparently to add on the subject of Michael’s maturity. Instead she just raised her head, which was not quite high enough.

“Stuff another cushion under my head, Hermann,” she said. “Thanks; now I’m completely comfortable, you will be relieved to hear.”

Hermann gazed at the fire in silence.

“That’s a weight off my mind,” he said. “About Michael now. He’s been suppressed all his life, you know, and instead of being dwarfed he has just gone on growing inside. Good Lord! I wish somebody would suppress me for a year or two. What a lot there would be when I took the cork out again. We dissipate too much, Sylvia, both you and I.”

She gave a little grunt, which, from his knowledge of her inarticulate expressions, he took to mean dissent.

“I suppose you mean we don’t,” he remarked.

“Yes. How much one dissipates is determined for one just as is the shape of your nose or the colour of your eyes. By the way, I fell madly in love with that cousin of Michael’s who came with him to-night. He’s the most attractive creature I ever saw in my life. Of course, he’s too beautiful: no boy ought to be as beautiful as that.”

“You flirted with him,” remarked Hermann. “Mike will probably murder him on the way home.”

Sylvia moved her feet a little farther from the blaze.

“Funny?” she asked.

Instantly Falbe knew that her mind was occupied with exactly the same question as his.

“No, not funny at all,” he said. “Quite serious. Do you want to talk about it or not?”

She gave a little groan.

“No, I don’t want to, but I’ve got to,” she said. “Aunt Barbara—we became Sylvia and Aunt Barbara an hour or two ago, and she’s a dear—Aunt Barbara has been talking to me about it already.”

“And what did Aunt Barbara say?”

“Just what you are going to,” said Sylvia; “namely, that I had better make up my mind what I mean to say when Michael says what he means to say.”

She shifted round so as to face her brother as he stood in front of the fire, and pulled his trouser-leg more neatly over the top of his shoe.

“But what’s to happen if I can’t make up my mind?” she said. “I needn’t tell you how much I like Michael; I believe I like him as much as I possibly can. But I don’t know if that is enough. Hermann, is it enough? You ought to know. There’s no use in you unless you know about me.”

She put out her arm, and clasped his two legs in the crook of her elbow. That expressed their attitude, what they were to each other, as absolutely as any physical demonstration allowed. Had there not been the difference of sex which severed them she could never have got the sense of support that this physical contact gave her; had there not been her sisterhood to chaperon her, so to speak, she could never have been so at ease with a man. The two were lover-like, without the physical apexes and limitations that physical love must always bring with it. The complement of sex that brought them so close annihilated the very existence of sex. They loved as only brother and sister can love, without trouble.

The closer contact of his fire-warmed trousers to the calf of his leg made Hermann step out of her encircling arm without any question of hurting her feelings.

“I won’t be burned,” he said. “Sorry, but I won’t be burned. It seems to me, Sylvia, that you ought to like Michael a little more and a little less.”

“It’s no use saying what I ought to do,” she said. “The idea of what I ‘ought’ doesn’t come in. I like him just as much as I like him, neither more nor less.”

He clawed some more cushions together, and sat down on the floor by her. She raised herself a little and rested her body against his folded knees.

“What’s the trouble, Sylvia?” he said.

“Just what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

“Be more concrete, then. You’re definite enough when you sing.”

She sighed and gave a little melancholy laugh.

“That’s just it,” she said. “People like you and me, and Michael, too, for that matter, are most entirely ourselves when we are at our music. When Michael plays for me I can sing my soul at him. While he and I are in music, if you understand—and of course you do—we belong to each other. Do you know, Hermann, he finds me when I’m singing, without the slightest effort, and even you, as you have so often told me, have to search and be on the lookout. And then the song is over, and, as somebody says, ‘When the feast is finished and the lamps expire,’ then—well, the lamps expire, and he isn’t me any longer, but Michael, with the—the ugly face, and—oh, isn’t it horrible of me—the long arms and the little stumpy legs—if only he was rather different in things that don’t matter, that CAN’T matter! But—but, Hermann, if only Michael was rather like you, and you like Michael, I should love you exactly as much as ever, and I should love Michael, too.”

She was leaning forward, and with both hands was very carefully tying and untying one of Hermann’s shoelaces.

“Oh, thank goodness there is somebody in the world to whom I can say just whatever I feel, and know he understands,” she said. “And I know this, too—and follow me here, Hermann—I know that all that doesn’t really matter; I am sure it doesn’t. I like Michael far too well to let it matter. But there are other things which I don’t see my way through, and they are much more real—”

She was silent again, so long that Hermann reached out for a cigarette, lit it, and threw away the match before she spoke.

“There is Michael’s position,” she said. “When Michael asks me if I will have him, as we both know he is going to do, I shall have to make conditions. I won’t give up my career. I must go on working—in other words, singing—whether I marry him or not. I don’t call it singing, in my sense of the word, to sing ‘The Banks of Allan Water’ to Michael and his father and mother at Ashbridge, any more than it is being a politician to read the morning papers and argue about the Irish question with you. To have a career in politics means that you must be a member of Parliament—I daresay the House of Lords would do—and make speeches and stand the racket. In the same way, to be a singer doesn’t mean to sing after dinner or to go squawking anyhow in a workhouse, but it means to get up on a platform before critical people, and if you don’t do your very best be damned by them. If I marry Michael I must go on singing as a professional singer, and not become an amateur—the Viscountess Comber, who sings so charmingly. I refuse to sing charmingly; I will either sing properly or not at all. And I couldn’t not sing. I shall have to continue being Miss Falbe, so to speak.”

“You say you insist on it,” said Hermann; “but whether you did or not, there is nothing more certain than that Michael would.”

“I am sure he would. But by so doing he would certainly quarrel irrevocably with his people. Even Aunt Barbara, who, after all, is very liberally minded, sees that. They can none of them, not even she, who are born to a certain tradition imagine that there are other traditions quite as stiff-necked. Michael, it is true, was born to one tradition, but he has got the other, as he has shown very clearly by refusing to disobey it. He will certainly, as you say, insist on my endorsing the resolution he has made for himself. What it comes to is this, that I can’t marry him without his father’s complete consent to all that I have told you. I can’t have my career disregarded, covered up with awkward silences, alluded to as a painful subject; and, as I say, even Aunt Barbara seemed to take it for granted that if I became Lady Comber I should cease to be Miss Falbe. Well, there she’s wrong, my dear; I shall continue to be Miss Falbe whether I’m Lady Comber, or Lady Ashbridge, or the Duchess of anything you please. And—here the difficulty really comes in—they must all see how right I am. Difficulty, did I say? It’s more like an impossibility.”

Hermann threw the end of his cigarette into the ashes of the dying fire.

“It’s clear, then,” he said, “you have made up your mind not to marry him.”

She shook her head.

“Oh, Hermann, you fail me,” she said. “If I had made up my mind not to I shouldn’t have kept you up an hour talking about it.”

He stretched his hands out towards the embers already coated with grey ash.

“Then it’s like that with you,” he said, pointing. “If there is the fire in you, it is covered up with ashes.”

She did not reply for a moment.

“I think you’ve hit it there,” she said. “I believe there is the fire; when, as I said, he plays for me I know there is. But the ashes? What are they? And who shall disperse them for me?”

She stood up swiftly, drawing herself to her full height and stretching her arms out.

“There’s something bigger than we know coming,” she said. “Whether it’s storm or sunshine I have no idea. But there will be something that shall utterly sever Michael and me or utterly unite us.”

“Do you care which it is?” he asked.

“Yes, I care,” said she.

He held out his hands to her, and she pulled him up to his feet.

“What are you going to say, then, when he asks you?” he said.

“Tell him he must wait.”

He went round the room putting out the electric lamps and opening the big skylight in the roof. There was a curtain in front of this, which he pulled aside, and from the frosty cloudless heavens the starshine of a thousand constellations filtered down.

“That’s a lot to ask of any man,” he said. “If you care, you care.”

“And if you were a girl you would know exactly what I mean,” she said. “They may know they care, but, unless they are marrying for perfectly different reasons, they have to feel to the end of their fingers that they care before they can say ‘Yes.’”

He opened the door for her to pass out, and they walked up the passage together arm-in-arm.

“Well, perhaps Michael won’t ask you,” he said, “in which case all bother will be saved, and we shall have sat up talking till—Sylvia, did you know it is nearly three—sat up talking for nothing!”

Sylvia considered this.

“Fiddlesticks!” she said.

And Hermann was inclined to agree with her.

This view of the case found confirmation next day, for Michael, after his music lesson, lingered so firmly and determinedly when the three chatted together over the fire that in the end Hermann found nothing to do but to leave them together. Sylvia had given him no sign as to whether she wished him to absent himself or not, and he concluded, since she did not put an end to things by going away herself, that she intended Michael to have his say.

The latter rose as the door closed behind Hermann, and came and stood in front of her. And at the moment Sylvia could notice nothing of him except his heaviness, his plainness, all the things that she had told herself before did not really matter. Now her sensation contradicted that; she was conscious that the ash somehow had vastly accumulated over her fire, that all her affection and regard for him were suddenly eclipsed. This was a complete surprise to her; for the moment she found Michael’s presence and his proximity to her simply distasteful.

“I thought Hermann was never going,” he said.

For a second or two she did not reply; it was clearly no use to continue the ordinary banter of conversation, to suggest that as the room was Hermann’s he might conceivably be conceded the right to stop there if he chose. There was no transition possible between the affairs of every day and the affair for which Michael had stopped to speak. She gave up all attempt to make one; instead, she just helped him.

“What is it, Michael?” she asked.

Then to her, at any rate, Michael’s face completely changed. There burned in it all of a sudden the full glow of that of which she had only seen glimpses.

“You know,” he said.

His shyness, his awkwardness, had all vanished; the time had come for him to offer to her all that he had to offer, and he did it with the charm of perfect manliness and simplicity.

“Whether you can accept me or not,” he said, “I have just to tell you that I am entirely yours. Is there any chance for me, Sylvia?”

He stood quite still, making no movement towards her. She, on her side, found all her distaste of him suddenly vanished in the mere solemnity of the occasion. His very quietness told her better than any protestations could have done of the quality of what he offered, and that quality vastly transcended all that she had known or guessed of him.

“I don’t know, Michael,” she said at length.

She came a step forward, and without any sense of embarrassment found that she, without conscious intention, had put her hands on his shoulders. The moment that was done she was conscious of the impulse that made her do it. It expressed what she felt.

“Yes, I feel like that to you,” she said. “You’re a dear. I expect you know how fond I am of you, and if you don’t I assure you of it now. But I have got to give you more than that.”

Michael looked up at her.

“Yes, Sylvia,” he said, “much more than that.”

A few minutes ago only she had not liked him at all; now she liked him immensely.

“But how, Michael?” she asked. “How can I find it?”

“Oh, it’s I who have got to find it for you,” he said. “That is to say, if you want it to be found. Do you?”

She looked at him gravely, without the tremor of a smile in her eyes.

“What does that mean exactly?” she said.

“It is very simple. Do you want to love me?”

She did not move her hands; they still rested on his shoulders like things at ease, like things at home.

“Yes, I suppose I want to,” she said.

“And is that the most you can do for me at present?” he asked.

That reached her again; all the time the plain words, the plain face, the quiet of him stabbed her with daggers of which he had no idea. She was dismayed at the recollection of her talk with her brother the evening before, of the ease and certitude with which she had laid down her conditions, of not giving up her career, of remaining the famous Miss Falbe, of refusing to take a dishonoured place in the sacred circle of the Combers. Now, when she was face to face with his love, so ineloquently expressed, so radically a part of him, she knew that there was nothing in the world, external to him and her, that could enter into their reckonings; but into their reckonings there had not entered the one thing essential. She gave him sympathy, liking, friendliness, but she did not want him with her blood. And though it was not humanly possible that she could want him with more than that, it was not possible that she could take him with less.

“Yes, that is the most I can do for you at present,” she said.

Still quite quietly he moved away from her, so that he stood free of her hands.

“I have been constantly here all these last months,” he said. “Now that you know what I have told you, do you want not to see me?”

That stabbed her again.

“Have I implied that?” she asked.

“Not directly. But I can easily understand its being a bore to you. I don’t want to bore you. That would be a very stupid way of trying to make you care for me. As I said, that is my job. I haven’t accomplished it as yet. But I mean to. I only ask you for a hint.”

She understood her own feeling better than he. She understood at least that she was dealing with things that were necessarily incalculable.

“I can’t give you a hint,” she said. “I can’t make any plans about it. If you were a woman perhaps you would understand. Love is, or it isn’t. That is all I know about it.”

But Michael persisted.

“I only know what you have taught me,” he said. “But you must know that.”

In a flash she became aware that it would be impossible for her to behave to Michael as she had behaved to him for several months past. She could not any longer put a hand on his shoulder, beat time with her fingers on his arm, knowing that the physical contact meant nothing to her, and all—all to him. The rejection of him as a lover rendered the sisterly attitude impossible. And not only must she revise her conduct, but she must revise the mental attitude of which it was the physical counterpart. Up till this moment she had looked at the situation from her own side only, had felt that no plans could be made, that the natural thing was to go on as before, with the intimacy that she liked and the familiarity that was the obvious expression of it. But now she began to see the question from his side; she could not go on doing that which meant nothing particular to her, if that insouciance meant something so very particular to him. She realised that if she had loved him the touch of his hand, the proximity of his face would have had significance for her, a significance that would have been intolerable unless there was something mutual and secret between them. It had seemed so easy, in anticipation, to tell him that he must wait, so simple for him just—well, just to wait until she could make up her mind. She believed, as she had told her brother, that she cared for Michael, or as she had told him that she wanted to—the two were to the girl’s mind identical, though expressed to each in the only terms that were possible—but until she came face to face with the picture of the future, that to her wore the same outline and colour as the past, she had not known the impossibility of such a presentment. The desire of the lover on Michael’s part rendered unthinkable the sisterly attitude on hers. That her instinct told her, but her reason revolted against it.

“Can’t we go on as we were, Michael?” she said.

He looked at her incredulously.

“Oh, no, of course not that,” he said.

She moved a step towards him.

“I can’t think of you in any other way,” she said, as if making an appeal.

He stood absolutely unresponsive. Something within him longed that she should advance a step more, that he should again have the touch of her hands on his shoulders, but another instinct stronger than that made him revoke his desire, and if she had moved again he would certainly have fallen back before her.

“It may seem ridiculous to you,” he said, “since you do not care. But I can’t do that. Does that seem absurd to you I? I am afraid it does; but that is because you don’t understand. By all means let us be what they call excellent friends. But there are certain little things which seem nothing to you, and they mean so much to me. I can’t explain; it’s just the brotherly relation which I can’t stand. It’s no use suggesting that we should be as we were before—”

She understood well enough for his purposes.

“I see,” she said.

Michael paused for a moment.

“I think I’ll be going now,” he said. “I am off to Ashbridge in two days. Give Hermann my love, and a jolly Christmas to you both. I’ll let you know when I am back in town.”

She had no reply to this; she saw its justice, and acquiesced.

“Good-bye, then,” said Michael.

He walked home from Chelsea in that utterly blank and unfeeling consciousness which almost invariably is the sequel of any event that brings with it a change of attitude towards life generally. Not for a moment did he tell himself that he had been awakened from a dream, or abandon his conviction that his dream was to be made real. The rare, quiet determination that had made him give up his stereotyped mode of life in the summer and take to music was still completely his, and, if anything, it had been reinforced by Sylvia’s emphatic statement that “she wanted to care.” Only her imagining that their old relations could go on showed him how far she was from knowing what “to care” meant. At first without knowing it, but with a gradually increasing keenness of consciousness, he had become aware that this sisterly attitude of hers towards him had meant so infinitely much, because he had taken it to be the prelude to something more. Now he saw that it was, so to speak, a piece complete in itself. It bore no relation to what he had imagined it would lead into. No curtain went up when the prelude was over; the curtain remained inexorably hanging there, not acknowledging the prelude at all. Not for a moment did he accuse her of encouraging him to have thought so; she had but given him a frankness of comradeship that meant to her exactly what it expressed. But he had thought otherwise; he had imagined that it would grow towards a culmination. All that (and here was the change that made his mind blank and unfeeling) had to be cut away, and with it all the budding branches that his imagination had pictured as springing from it. He could not be comrade to her as he was to her brother—the inexorable demands of sex forbade it.

He went briskly enough through the clean, dry streets. The frost of last night had held throughout the morning, and the sunlight sparkled with a rare and seasonable brightness of a traditional Christmas weather. Hecatombs of turkeys hung in the poulterers’ windows, among sprigs of holly, and shops were bright with children’s toys. The briskness of the day had flushed the colour into the faces of the passengers in the street, and the festive air of the imminent holiday was abroad. All this Michael noticed with a sense of detachment; what had happened had caused a veil to fall between himself and external things; it was as if he was sealed into some glass cage, and had no contact with what passed round him. This lasted throughout his walk, and when he let himself into his flat it was with the same sense of alienation that he found his cousin Francis gracefully reclining on the sofa that he had pulled up in front of the fire.

Francis was inclined to be querulous.

“I was just wondering whether I should give you up,” he said. “The hour that you named for lunch was half-past one. And I have almost forgotten what your clock sounded like when it struck two.”

This also seemed to matter very little.

“Did I ask you to lunch?” he said. “I really quite forgot; I can’t even remember doing it now.”

“But there will be lunch?” asked Francis rather anxiously.

“Of course. It’ll be ready in ten minutes.”

Michael came and stood in front of the fire, and looked with a sudden spasm of envy on the handsome boy who lay there. If he himself had been anything like that

—“I was distinctly chippy this morning,” remarked Francis, “and so I didn’t so much mind waiting for lunch. I attribute it to too much beer and bacon last night at your friend’s house. I enjoyed it—I mean the evening, and for that matter the bacon—at the time. It really was extremely pleasant.”

He yawned largely and openly.

“I had no idea you could frolic like that, Mike,” he said. “It was quite a new light on your character. How did you learn to do it? It’s quite a new accomplishment.”

Here again the veil was drawn. Was it last night only that Falbe had played the Variations, and that they had acted charades? Francis proceeded in bland unconsciousness.

“I didn’t know Germans could be so jolly,” he continued. “As a rule I don’t like Germans. When they try to be jolly they generally only succeed in being top-heavy. But, of course, your friend is half-English. Can’t he play, too? And to think of your having written those ripping tunes. His sister, too—no wonder we haven’t seen much of you, Mike, if that’s where you’ve been spending your time. She’s rather like the new girl at the Gaiety, but handsomer. I like big girls, don’t you? Oh, I forgot, you don’t like girls much, anyhow. But are you learning your mistake, Mike? You looked last night as if you were getting more sensible.”

Michael moved away impatiently.

“Oh, shut it, Francis,” he observed.

Francis raised himself on his elbow.

“Why, what’s up?” he asked. “Won’t she turn a favourable eye?”

Michael wheeled round savagely.

“Please remember you are talking about a lady, and not a Gaiety lady,” he remarked.

This brought Francis to his feet.

“Sorry,” he said. “I was only indulging in badinage until lunch was ready.”

Michael could not make up his mind to tell his cousin what had happened; but he was aware of having spoken more strongly than the situation, as Francis knew of it, justified.

“Let’s have lunch, then,” he said. “We shall be better after lunch, as one’s nurse used to say. And are you coming to Ashbridge, Francis?”

“Yes; I’ve been talking to Aunt Bar about it this morning. We’re both coming; the family is going to rally round you, Mike, and defend you from Uncle Robert. There’s sure to be some duck shooting, too, isn’t there?”

This was a considerable relief to Michael.

“Oh, that’s ripping,” he said. “You and Aunt Barbara always make me feel that there’s a good deal of amusement to be extracted from the world.”

“To be sure there is. Isn’t that what the world is for? Lunch and amusement, and dinner and amusement. Aunt Bar told me she dined with you the other night, and had a quantity of amusement as well as an excellent dinner. She hinted—”

“Oh, Aunt Barbara’s always hinting,” said Michael.

“I know. After all, everything that isn’t hints is obvious, and so there’s nothing to say about it. Tell me more about the Falbes, Mike. Will they let me go there again, do you think? Was I popular? Don’t tell me if I wasn’t.”

Michael smiled at this egoism that could not help being charming.

“Would you care if you weren’t?” he asked.

“Very much. One naturally wants to please delightful people. And I think they are both delightful. Especially the girl; but then she starts with the tremendous advantage of being—of being a girl. I believe you are in love with her, Mike, just as I am. It’s that which makes you so grumpy. But then you never do fall in love. It’s a pity; you miss a lot of jolly trouble.”

Michael felt a sudden overwhelming desire to make Francis stop this maddening twaddle; also the events of the morning were beginning to take on an air of reality, and as this grew he felt the need of sympathy of some kind. Francis might not be able to give him anything that was of any use, but it would do no harm to see if his cousin’s buoyant unconscious philosophy, which made life so exciting and pleasant a thing to him, would in any way help. Besides, he must stop this light banter, which was like drawing plaster off a sore and unhealed wound.

“You’re quite right,” he said. “I am in love with her. Furthermore, I asked her to marry me this morning.”

This certainly had an effect.

“Good Lord!” said Francis. “And do you mean to say she refused you?”

“She didn’t accept me,” said Michael. “We—we adjourned.”

“But why on earth didn’t she take you?” asked Francis.

All Michael’s old sensitiveness, his self-consciousness of his plainness, his awkwardness, his big hands, his short legs, came back to him.

“I should think you could see well enough if you look at me,” he said, “without my telling you.”

“Oh, that silly old rot,” said Francis cheerfully. “I thought you had forgotten all about it.”

“I almost had—in fact I quite had until this morning,” said Michael. “If I had remembered it I shouldn’t have asked her.”

He corrected himself.

“No, I don’t think that’s true,” he said. “I should have asked her, anyhow; but I should have been prepared for her not to take me. As a matter of fact, I wasn’t.”

Francis turned sideways to the table, throwing one leg over the other.

“That’s nonsense,” he said. “It doesn’t matter whether a man’s ugly or not.”

“It doesn’t as long as he is not,” remarked Michael grimly.

“It doesn’t matter much in any case. We’re all ugly compared to girls; and why ever they should consent to marry any of us awful hairy things, smelling of smoke and drink, is more than I can make out; but, as a matter of fact, they do. They don’t mind what we look like; what they care about is whether we want them. Of course, there are exceptions—”

“You see one,” said Michael.

“No, I don’t. Good Lord, you’ve only asked her once. You’ve got to make yourself felt. You’re not intending to give up, are you?”

“I couldn’t give up.”

“Well then, just hold on. She likes you, doesn’t she?”

“Certainly,” said Michael, without hesitation. “But that’s a long way from the other thing.”

“It’s on the same road.”

Michael got up.

“It may be,” he said, “but it strikes me it’s round the corner. You can’t even see one from the other.”

“Possibly not. But you never know how near the corner really is. Go for her, Mike, full speed ahead.”

“But how?”

“Oh, there are hundreds of ways. I’m not sure that one of the best isn’t to keep away for a bit. Even if she doesn’t want you just now, when you are there, she may get to want you when you aren’t. I don’t think I should go on the mournful Byronic plan if I were you; I don’t think it would suit your style; you’re too heavily built to stand leaning against the chimney-piece, gazing at her and dishevelling your hair.”

Michael could not help laughing.

“Oh, for God’s sake, don’t make a joke of it,” he said.

“Why not? It isn’t a tragedy yet. It won’t be a tragedy till she marries somebody else, or definitely says no. And until a thing is proved to be tragic, the best way to deal with it is to treat it like a comedy which is going to end well. It’s only the second act now, you see, when everything gets into a mess. By the merciful decrees of Providence, you see, girls on the whole want us as much as we want them. That’s what makes it all so jolly.”

Michael went down next day to Ashbridge, where Aunt Barbara and Francis were to follow the day after, and found, after the freedom and interests of the last six months, that the pompous formal life was more intolerable than ever. He was clearly in disgrace still, as was made quite clear to him by his father’s icy and awful politeness when it was necessary to speak to him, and by his utter unconsciousness of his presence when it was not. This he had expected. Christmas had ushered in a truce in which no guns were discharged, but remained sighted and pointed, ready to fire.

But though there was no change in his father, his mother seemed to Michael to be curiously altered; her mind, which, as has been already noticed, was usually in a stunned condition, seemed to have awakened like a child from its sleep, and to have begun vaguely crying in an inarticulate discomfort. It was true that Petsy was no more, having succumbed to a bilious attack of unusual severity, but a second Petsy had already taken her place, and Lady Ashbridge sat with him—it was a gentleman Petsy this time—in her lap as before, and occasionally shed a tear or two over Petsy II. in memory of Petsy I. But this did not seem to account for the wakening up of her mind and emotions into this state of depression and anxiety. It was as if all her life she had been quietly dozing in the sun, and that the place where she sat had passed into the shade, and she had awoke cold and shivering from a bitter wind. She had become far more talkative, and though she had by no means abandoned her habit of upsetting any conversation by the extreme obviousness of her remarks, she asked many more questions, and, as Michael noticed, often repeated a question to which she had received an answer only a few minutes before. During dinner Michael constantly found her looking at him in a shy and eager manner, removing her gaze when she found it was observed, and when, later, after a silent cigarette with his father in the smoking-room, during which Lord Ashbridge, with some ostentation, studied an Army List, Michael went to his bedroom, he was utterly astonished, when he gave a “Come in” to a tapping at his door, to see his mother enter. Her maid was standing behind her holding the inevitable Petsy, and she herself hovered hesitatingly in the doorway.

“I heard you come up, Michael,” she said, “and I wondered if it would annoy you if I came in to have a little talk with you. But I won’t come in if it would annoy you. I only thought I should like a little chat with you, quietly, secure from interruptions.”

Michael instantly got up from the chair in front of his fire, in which he had already begun to see images of Sylvia. This intrusion of his mother’s was a thing utterly unprecedented, and somehow he at once connected its innovation with the strange manner he had remarked already. But there was complete cordiality in his welcome, and he wheeled up a chair for her.

“But by all means come in, mother,” he said. “I was not going to bed yet.”

Lady Ashbridge looked round for her maid.

“And will Petsy not annoy you if he sits quietly on my knee?” she asked.

“Of course not.”

Lady Ashbridge took the dog.

“There, that is nice,” she said. “I told them to see you had a good fire on this cold night. Has it been very cold in London?”

This question had already been asked and answered twice, now for the third time Michael admitted the severity of the weather.

“I hope you wrap up well,” she said. “I should be sorry if you caught cold, and so, I am sure, your father would be. I wish you could make up your mind not to vex him any more, but go back into the Guards.”

“I’m afraid that’s impossible, mother,” he said.

“Well, if it’s impossible there is no use in saying anything more about it. But it vexed him very much. He is still vexed with you. I wish he was not vexed. It is a sad thing when father and son fall out. But you do wrap up, I hope, in the cold weather?”

Michael felt a sudden pang of anxiety and alarm. Each separate thing that his mother said was sensible enough, but in the sum they were nonsense.

“You have been in London since September,” she went on. “That is a long time to be in London. Tell me about your life there. Do you work hard? Not too hard, I hope?”

“No! hard enough to keep me busy,” he said.

“Tell me about it all. I am afraid I have not been a very good mother to you; I have not entered into your life enough. I want to do so now. But I don’t think you ever wanted to confide in me. It is sad when sons don’t confide in their mothers. But I daresay it was my fault, and now I know so little about you.”

She paused a moment, stroking her dog’s ears, which twitched under her touch.

“I hope you are happy, Michael,” she said. “I don’t think I am so happy as I used to be. But don’t tell your father; I feel sure he does not notice it, and it would vex him. But I want you to be happy; you used not to be when you were little; you were always sensitive and queer. But you do seem happier now, and that’s a good thing.”

Here again this was all sensible, when taken in bits, but its aspect was different when considered together. She looked at Michael anxiously a moment, and then drew her chair closer to him, laying her thin, veined hand, sparkling with many rings, on his knee.

“But it wasn’t I who made you happier,” she said, “and that’s so dreadful. I never made anybody happy. Your father always made himself happy, and he liked being himself, but I suspect you haven’t liked being yourself, poor Michael. But now that you’re living the life you chose, which vexes your father, is it better with you?”

The shyness had gone from the gaze that he had seen her direct at him at dinner, which fugitively fluttered away when she saw that it was observed, and now that it was bent so unwaveringly on him he saw shining through it what he had never seen before, namely, the mother-love which he had missed all his life. Now, for the first time, he saw it; recognising it, as by divination, when, with ray serene and untroubled, it burst through the mists that seemed to hang about his mother’s mind. Before, noticing her change of manner, her restless questions, he had been vaguely alarmed, and as they went on the alarm had become more pronounced; but at this moment, when there shone forth the mother-instinct which had never come out or blossomed in her life, but had been overlaid completely with routine and conventionality, rendering it too indolent to put forth petals, Michael had no thought but for that which she had never given him yet, and which, now it began to expand before him, he knew he had missed all his life.

She took up his big hand that lay on his knee and began timidly stroking it.

“Since you have been away,” she said, “and since your father has been vexed with you, I have begun to see how lonely you must have been. What taught me that, I am afraid, was only that I have begun to feel lonely, too. Nobody wants me; even Petsy, when she died, didn’t want me to be near her, and then it began to strike me that perhaps you might want me. There was no one else, and who should want me if my son did not? I never gave you the chance before, God forgive me, and now perhaps it is too late. You have learned to do without me.”

That was bitterly true; the truth of it stabbed Michael. On his side, as he knew, he had made no effort either, or if he had they had been but childish efforts, easily repulsed. He had not troubled about it, and if she was to blame, the blame was his also. She had been slow to show the mother-instinct, but he had been just as wanting in the tenderness of the son.

He was profoundly touched by this humble timidity, by the sincerity, vague but unquestionable, that lay behind it.

“It’s never too late, is it?” he said, bending down and kissing the thin white hands that held his. “We are in time, after all, aren’t we?”

She gave a little shiver.

“Oh, don’t kiss my hands, Michael,” she said. “It hurts me that you should do that. But it is sweet of you to say that I am not too late, after all. Michael, may I just take you in my arms—may I?”

He half rose.

“Oh, mother, how can you ask?” he said.

“Then let me do it. No, my darling, don’t move. Just sit still as you are, and let me just get my arms about you, and put my head on your shoulder, and hold me close like that for a moment, so that I can realise that I am not too late.”

She got up, and, leaning over him, held him so for a moment, pressing her cheek close to his, and kissing him on the eyes and on the mouth.

“Ah, that is nice,” she said. “It makes my loneliness fall away from me. I am not quite alone any more. And now, if you are not tired will you let me talk to you a little more, and learn a little more about you?”

She pulled her chair again nearer him, so that sitting there she could clasp his arm.

“I want your happiness, dear,” she said, “but there is so little now that I can do to secure it. I must put that into other hands. You are twenty-five, Michael; you are old enough to get married. All Combers marry when they are twenty-five, don’t they? Isn’t there some girl you would like to be yours? But you must love her, you know, you must want her, you mustn’t be able to do without her. It won’t do to marry just because you are twenty-five.”

It would no more have entered into Michael’s head this morning to tell to his mother about Sylvia than to have discussed counterpoint with her. But then this morning he had not been really aware that he had a mother. But to tell her now was not unthinkable, but inevitable.

“Yes, there is a girl whom I can’t do without,” he said.

Lady Ashbridge’s face lit up.

“Ah, tell me about her—tell me about her,” she said. “You want her, you can’t do without her; that is the right wife for you.”

Michael caught at his mother’s hand as it stroked his sleeve.

“But she is not sure that she can do with me,” he said.

Her face was not dimmed at this.

“Oh, you may be sure she doesn’t know her own mind,” she said. “Girls so often don’t. You must not be down-hearted about it. Who is she? Tell me about her.”

“She’s the sister of my great friend, Hermann Falbe,” he said, “who teaches me music.”

This time the gladness faded from her.

“Oh, my dear, it will vex your father again,” she said, “that you should want to marry the sister of a music-teacher. It will never do to vex him again. Is she not a lady?”

Michael laughed.

“But certainly she is,” he said. “Her father was German, her mother was a Tracy, just as well-born as you or I.”

“How odd, then, that her brother should have taken to giving music lessons. That does not sound good. Perhaps they are poor, and certainly there is no disgrace in being poor. And what is her name?”

“Sylvia,” said Michael. “You have probably heard of her; she is the Miss Falbe who made such a sensation in London last season by her singing.”

The old outlook, the old traditions were beginning to come to the surface again in poor Lady Ashbridge’s mind.

“Oh, my dear!” she said. “A singer! That would vex your father terribly. Fancy the daughter of a Miss Tracy becoming a singer. And yet you want her—that seems to me to matter most of all.”

Then came a step at the door; it opened an inch or two, and Michael heard his father’s voice.

“Is your mother with you, Michael?” he asked.

At that Lady Ashbridge got up. For one second she clung to her son, and then, disengaging herself, froze up like the sudden congealment of a spring.

“Yes, Robert,” she said. “I was having a little talk to Michael.”

“May I come in?”

“It’s our secret,” she whispered to Michael.

“Yes, come in, father,” he said.

Lord Ashbridge stood towering in the doorway.

“Come, my dear,” he said, not unkindly, “it’s time for you to go to bed.”

She had become the mask of herself again.

“Yes, Robert,” she said. “I suppose it must be late. I will come. Oh, there’s Petsy. Will you ring, Michael? then Fedden will come and take him to bed. He sleeps with Fedden.”