MICHAEL MAKES MUSIC
During August Miss Mason took Pippa down to a little seaside place in
Devonshire. She chose it because its name--Hope--appealed to her.
Pippa adored it. She loved the quaint cottages, and the beach with the
tarred nets spread out to dry, and the kindly fishermen who took her
out in their boats, and who talked to her in a dialect she could hardly
understand. But she understood their kindness, and they understood her
smiles, so they got on very well together.
Barnabas came down for a fortnight, and Pippa met him at the station,
a thin slip of a child, her face bronzed with the sun and sea air,
and her eyes holding the hint of mystery he had seen in the eyes of
Kostolitz.
They bathed together, they caught prawns in seaweedy pools in the
rocks, they sat in the shadow of the cliffs and watched the sea-gulls
and the white-sailed boats on the blue water.
And during these days Barnabas found in Pippa something that he had
not found before--not even during the June days when they had wandered
through the lanes with Pegasus. He found in her Woman and Companion.
She ceased to be merely Child. He saw the spirit of Kostolitz in
her mysterious eyes. She showed it to him in a hundred ways--in her
clear joyous love of Nature, in her fanciful imaginings and delicate
thoughts, in her quick insight into everything that was beautiful. And
with it all she was a child, too, with a child-like simple faith and
trust that was to be her heritage throughout her life. And because
there was this trait also in Barnabas they found in each other the most
perfect companionship.
Miss Mason watched them together, helped them prawn, and was radiantly
happy. She cared not at all for the occasional smiles her quaint figure
and costume provoked from other visitors to the place. And because
Pippa was enjoying herself enormously she remained at Hope throughout
September as well.
The Duchessa di Corleone too had left London during August. She
wandered from place to place trying to find forgetfulness and not
succeeding.
In September she returned to town. She never went near the studios now,
but Michael came often to see her, and used to make music for her. In
it she found some consolation. And Michael loved to come to her house,
though the sight of her always gave him pain.
One day after he had been playing to her, and they were having tea
together, he suddenly looked up at a picture of St. Michael that hung
in her drawing-room.
"Queer," he said, with a little twisted smile, "that my people should
have chosen to name me after the warrior angel." And he glanced from
the strength of the pictured figure at his own shrunken limbs. His
voice was so bitter that Sara could find no reply.
"Just a moment's carelessness on the part of a nursemaid," went on
Michael. "She dropped me when I was a baby. You see the result. It
makes it difficult to believe in an over-ruling Providence, doesn't it?
My guardian angel must have been peculiarly inattentive at the moment."
"I think," said Sara slowly, "that there are times in the life of every
one when it is very difficult to have faith. Yet, if one loses it one
loses all happiness."
"I lost both long ago," said Michael. "It's an irony of fate to be
born with an acute sense of the beautiful, and to see one's own
repulsiveness."
Sara looked up quickly.
"But you are not repulsive," she said.
"Bah!" said Michael. "Look at me! Women are only kind to me out of
pity."
Sara looked straight at him. "There you are quite wrong," she said
decisively. "I don't feel the smallest pity for you in the sense you
mean. Your face is quite beautiful, and your music----" she stopped.
"But my body," he said.
"Yes," said Sara calmly, "I grant you that it is extremely trying for
you to be lame, and you must often wish to be strong and big. But you
need not think it makes the smallest difference in our affection for
you." She again looked steadily at him as she spoke.
Michael looked away from her. "But no woman could love me--they would
shrink from me," he said. And his face flushed hotly.
"Not at all," said Sara. "There again you are quite wrong. I grant that
there is a certain type of woman who is entirely attracted by sinews
and muscles in a man. But most assuredly there are others."
There was a silence. Then Michael spoke again. His voice was very low.
"You--you could never care?" he said.
Sara's eyes filled with quick tears. "Not in the way you mean," she
said gently; "but not because of the morbid reason you have suggested.
I--I love some one else."
"Paul?" he asked.
Sara bowed her head.
Michael was silent. "But if you did not," he asked suddenly, "would you
have thought it horrible of me to tell you that I love you--not quietly
and calmly, but--but as a man loves a woman?"
"I should have been honoured to hear it from you," said Sara.
Michael looked across at her with a strange smile.
"Thank you," he said. "I shall not tell you how--though you know it.
Nor shall I ever tell any other woman what I have told you. You will
still let me come and see you?"
"You must come," said Sara quickly. "I should miss you dreadfully if
you didn't. During these last weeks your visits have been my greatest
pleasure. When I hear the front door bell ring I listen. And when I
hear the pad of your crutch on the stairs I am happy, and I say to
myself, 'It is Michael.'"
It was the first time she had used his name. For a few moments Michael
did not trust himself to speak. When he did his voice was light.
"I shall hate my crutch no longer," he said, "since its sound has given
you happiness. Do you know you have quite suddenly brought back faith
to me. I thought it was dead. Now I will play for you again."