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 even was
his personality strong enough to retain the love of a girl for
six weeks. Yet he experienced a morbid sympathy with Lily, so
unutterably beneath the rest of mankind was he already inclined
to estimate himself. Stella opened wide her grey eyes when she
greeted his pale disheartened return.
“Feeling ill?” she asked.
“I’m feeling a worthless brute,” said Michael, plunging into a dejected
acquiescence in the worst that could be said about him.
“Tell me,” whispered Stella. “Ah, do.”
“I’ve found out that Lily is quite ready to flirt with anybody. With
anybody!”
“What a beastly girl!” Stella flamed.
“Well, you can’t expect her to remain true to a creature like me,” said
Michael, declaring his self-abasement.
“A creature like you?” cried Stella. “Why, Michael, how can you
be so absurd? If you speak of yourself like that, I shall begin
to think you _are_ ‘a creature’ as you call yourself. Ah, no,
but you’re not, Michael. It’s this Lily who is the creature.
Oh, don’t I know her, the insipid puss! A silly little doll
that lets everybody pull her about. I hate weak girls. How I
despise them!”
“But you despise boys, Stella,” Michael reminded her.
“And this chap she was flirting with was much older than me.
Perhaps Lily is like you, and prefers older men.”
Michael had no heart left even to maintain his stand against Stella’s
alarming opinions and prejudices so frankly expressed.
“Like me,” Stella cried, stamping her foot. “Like me! How dare you
compare her with me? I’m not a doll. Do you think anyone has ever dared
to kiss me?”
“I’m sorry,” said Michael. “But you talk so very daringly that I
shouldn’t be surprized by anything you told me. At the same time I
can’t help sympathizing with Lily. It must have been dull to be in love
with a schoolboy—an awkward lout of eighteen.”
“Michael! I will not hear you speak of yourself like that. I’m ashamed
of you. How can you be so weak? Be proud. Oh, Michael, do be proud—it’s
the only thing on earth worth being.”
Stella stood dominant before him. Her grey eyes flashed; her proud,
upcurving mouth was slightly curled: her chin was like the chin of a
marble goddess, and yet with that brown hair lapping her wide
shoulders, with those long legs, lean-flanked and supple, she was more
like some heroic boy.
“Yes, you can be proud enough,” said Michael. “But you’ve got something
to be proud of. What have I got?”
“You’ve got me,” said Stella fiercely.
“Why, yes, I suppose I have,” Michael softly agreed. “Let’s talk about
your first appearance.”
“I was talking about it to mother when a man called Prescott came.”
“Prescott?” said Michael. “I seem to have heard mother speak about him.
I wonder when it was. A long time ago, though.”
“Well, whoever he was,” said Stella, “he brought mother bad
news.”
“How do you know?”
“Have you ever seen mother cry?”
“Yes, once,” said Michael. “It was when I was talking through my hat
about the war.”
“I’ve never seen her cry,” said Stella pensively. “Until to-day.”
Michael forgot about his own distress in the thought of his mother, and
he sat hushed all through the evening, while Stella played in the
darkness. Mrs. Fane went up to her own room immediately she came in
that night, and the next morning, which was Saturday, Michael
listlessly took the paper out to read in the garden, while he waited
for Stella to dress herself so that they could go out together and
avoid the house over which seemed to impend calamity.
Opening the paper, Michael saw an obituary notice of the Earl of Saxby.
He scanned the news, only half absorbing it:
“In another column will be found the details—enteric—adds another
famous name to the lamentable toll of this war—the late nobleman did
not go into society much of late years—formerly Captain in the Welsh
Guards—born 1860—married Lady Emmeline MacDonald, daughter of the Earl
of Skye, K.T.—raised corps of Mounted Infantry (Saxby’s Horse)—great
traveller—unfortunately no heir to the title which becomes extinct.”
Michael guessed the cause of his mother’s unhappiness of yesterday. He
went upstairs and told Stella.
“I suppose mother was in love with him,” she said.
“I suppose she was,” Michael agreed. “I wish I hadn’t refused to say
good-bye to him. It seems rather horrible now.”
Mrs. Fane had left word that she would not be home until after
dinner, and Michael and Stella sat apprehensive and silent in
the drawing-room. Sometimes they would toss backwards and
forwards to each other reassuring words, while outside the
livid evening of ochreous oppressive clouds
and ashen pavements slowly dislustred into a night swollen
with undelivered rain and baffled thunders.
About nine o’clock Mrs. Fane came home. She stood for a moment in the
doorway of the room, palely regarding her children. She seemed
undecided about something, but after a long pause she sat down between
them and began to speak:
“Something has happened, dear children, that I think you ought to know
about before you grow any older.”
Mrs. Fane paused again and stared before her, seeming to be reaching
out for strength to continue. Michael and Stella sat breathless as the
air of the night. Mrs. Fane’s white kid gloves fell to the floor softly
like the petals of a blown rose, and as if she missed their
companionship in the stress of explication, she went on more rapidly.
“Lord Saxby has died in the Transvaal of enteric fever, and I think you
both ought to know that Lord Saxby was your father.”
When his mother said this, the blood rushed to Michael’s face and then
immediately receded, so that his eyelids as they closed over his eyes
to shield them from the room’s suddenly intense light glowed greenly;
and when he looked again anywhere save directly at his mother, his
heart seemed to have been crushed between ice. The room itself went
swinging up in loops out of reach of his intelligence, that vainly
strove to bring it back to familiar conditions. The nightmare passed:
the drawing-room regained its shape and orderly tranquillity: the story
went on.
“I have often wished to tell you, Michael, in particular,” said
his mother, looking at him with great grey eyes whose lustrous
intensity cooled his first pained sensation of shamefulness,
“Years ago, when you were the dearest little boy, and when I
was young and rather lonely sometimes, I longed to tell you.
But it would not have been fair to weigh you down with
knowledge that you certainly could not have
grasped then. I thought it was kinder to escape from your
questions, even when you said that your father looked like a
prince.”
“Did I?” Michael asked, and he fell to wondering why he had spoken and
why his voice sounded so exactly the same as usual.
“You see ... of course ... I was never married to your father. You must
not blame him, because he wanted to marry me always, but Lady Saxby
wouldn’t divorce him. I dare say she had a right to nurse her injury.
She is still alive. She lives in an old Scottish castle. Your father
gave up nearly all his time to me. That was why you were both alone so
much. You must forgive me for that, if you can. But I knew, as time
went on that we should never be married, and.... Your father only saw
you once, dearest Stella, when you were very tiny. You remember,
Michael, when you saw him. He loved you so much, for of course, except
in name, you were his heir. He wanted to have you to live with him. He
loved you.”
“I suppose that’s why I liked him so tremendously,” said Michael.
“Did you, dearest boy?” said Mrs. Fane, and the tears were in her grey
eyes. “Ah, how dear it is of you to say that.”
“Mother, I can’t tell you how sorry I am I never went to say good-bye.
I shall never forgive myself,” said Michael. “I shall never forgive
myself.”
“But you must. It was my fault,” said his mother. “I dare say I asked
you tactlessly. I was so much upset at the time that I only thought
about myself.”
“Why did he go?” asked Stella suddenly.
“Well, that was my fault. I was always so dreadfully worried
over the way in which I had spoilt his life that when he
thought he ought to go and fight for his country, I could not
bear to dissuade him. You see, having no heir, he was
always fretting and fretting about the extinction of his
family, and he had a fancy that the last of his name should do
something for his country. He had given up his country for me,
and I knew that if he went to the war he would feel that he
had paid the debt. I never minded so much that we weren’t
married, but I always minded the feeling that I had robbed him
by my love. He was such a very dear fellow. He was always so
good and patient, when I begged him not to see you both. That
was his greatest sorrow. But it wouldn’t have been fair to
you, dear children. You must not blame me for that. I knew it
was better that you should be brought up in ignorance. It was,
wasn’t it?” she asked wistfully.
“Better,” Michael murmured.
“Better,” Stella echoed.
Mrs. Fane stood up, and Michael beheld her tall, tragical form with a
reverence he had never felt for anything.
“Children, you must forgive me,” she said.
And then simply, with repose and exquisite fitness she left Michael and
Stella to themselves. By the door Stella overtook her.
“Mother darling,” she cried. “You know we adore you. You do, don’t
you?”
Mrs. Fane smiled, and Michael thought he would cherish that smile to
the end of his life.
“Well?” said Michael, when Stella and he were sitting alone again.
“Of course I’ve known for years it was something like this,” said
Stella.
“I can’t think why I never guessed. I ought to have guessed easily,”
Michael said. “But somehow one never thinks of anything like this in
connection with one’s own mother.”
“Or sister,” murmured Stella, looking up at a spot on the
ceiling.
“I wish I could kick myself for not having said good-bye to him,”
Michael declared. “That comes of talking too much. I talked much too
much then. Talking destroys action. What a beast I was. Lily and I look
rather small now, don’t we?” he went on. “When you think of the amount
that mother must have suffered all these years, it just makes Lily and
me look like illustrations in a book. It’s a curious thing that this
business about mother and ... Lord Saxby ought, I suppose, to make me
feel more of a worm than ever, but it doesn’t. Ever since the first
shock, I’ve been feeling prouder and prouder. I can’t make it out.”
Then suddenly Michael flushed.
“I say, I wonder how many of our friends have known all the time? Mrs.
Carthew and Mrs. Ross both know. I feel sure by what they’ve said. And
yet I wonder if Mrs. Ross does know. She’s so strict in her notions
that ... I wonder ... and yet I suppose she isn’t so strict as I
thought she was. Perhaps I was wrong.”
“What are you talking about?” Stella asked.
“Oh, something that happened at Cobble Place. It’s not important enough
to tell you.”
“What I’m wondering,” said Stella, “is what mother was like when she
was my age. She didn’t say anything about her family. But I suppose we
can ask her some time. I’m really rather glad I’m not ‘Lady Stella
Fane.’ It would be ridiculous for a great pianist to be ‘Lady
Something.’”
“You wouldn’t have been Lady Stella Fane,” Michael contradicted. “You
would have been Lady Stella Cunningham. Cunningham was the family name.
I remember reading about it all when I was interested in Legitimists.”
“What are they?” Stella asked. “The opposite of illegitimate?”
Michael explained the difference, and he was glad that the word
‘illegitimate’ should first occur like this. The
pain of its utterance seemed mitigated somehow by the
explanation.
“It’s an extraordinary thing,” Michael began, “but, do you know,
Stella, that all the agony of seeing Lily flirting seems to have died
away, and I feel a sort of contempt ... for myself, I mean. Flirting
sounds such a loathsome word after what we’ve just listened to. Alan
was right, I believe. I shall have to tell Alan about all this. I
wonder if it will make any difference to him. But of course it won’t.
Nothing makes any difference to Alan.”
“It’s about time I met him,” said Stella.
“Why, haven’t you?” Michael exclaimed. “Nor you have. Great Scott! I’ve
been so desperately miserable over Lily that I’ve never asked Alan here
once. Oh, I will, though.”
“I say, oughtn’t we to go up to mother?” said Stella.
“Would she like us to?” Michael wondered.
“Oh, yes, I’m sure she would.”
“But I can’t express what I feel,” Michael complained. “And it will be
absurd to go and stand in front of her like two dummies.”
“I’ll say something,” Stella promised; and, “Mother,” she said, “come
and hear me play to you.”
The music-room, with its spare and austere decoration, seemed to
Michael a fit place for the quiet contemplation of the tale of love he
had lately heard.
Whatever of false shame, of self-consciousness, of shock remained was
driven away by Stella’s triumphant music. It was as if he were sitting
beneath a mountain waterfall that, graceful and unsubstantial as
wind-blown tresses, was yet most incomparably strong, and wrought an
ice-cold, a stern purification.
Then Stella played with healing gentleness, and Michael in the
darkness kissed his mother and stole away to bed, not to dream
of Lily that night, not to toss enfevered, but
quietly to lie awake, devising how to show his mother that he
loved her as much now as he had loved her in the dim sunlight
of most early childhood.
About ten days later Mrs. Fane came to Michael and Stella with a
letter.
“I want to read you something,” she said. “Your father’s last letter
has come.”
“ _We are in Pretoria now, and I think the war will soon be
over. But of course there’s a lot to be done yet. I’m
feeling seedy to-night, and I’m rather sighing for England.
I wonder if I’m going to be ill. I have a presentiment that
things are going wrong with me—at least not wrong, because
in a way I would be glad. No, I wouldn’t, that reads as if
I were afraid to keep going_ .
“ _I keep thinking of Michael and Stella. Michael must be
told soon. He must forgive me for leaving him no name. I
keep thinking of those Siamese stamps he asked for when I
last saw him. I wish I’d seen him again before I went. But
I dare say you were right. He would have guessed who I was,
and he might have gone away resentful_ .”
Michael looked at his mother, and thanked her implicitly for excusing
him. He was glad that his father had not known he had declined to see
him.
“ _ I don’t worry so much over Stella. If she really has
the stuff in her to make the name you think she will, she
does not need any name but her own. But it maddens me to
think that Michael is cut out of everything. I can scarcely
bear to realize that I am the last. I’m glad he’s going to
Oxford, and I’m very glad that he chose St. Mary’s. I was
only up at Christ Church a year, and St. Mary’s was a much
smaller college in those days. Now of course it’s
absolutely one of the best. Whatever Michael wants to do he
will be able to do, thank God. I don’t expect, from what
you tell me of him, he’ll choose the
Service. However, he’ll do what he likes. When I come
back, I must see him and I shall be able to explain
what will perhaps strike him at first as the injustice
of his position. I dare say he’ll think less hardly of
me when I’ve told him all the circumstances. Poor old
chap! I feel that I’ve been selfish, and yet _ ....
“ _I wonder if I’m going to be ill. I feel rotten. But
don’t worry. Only, if by any chance I can’t write again,
will you give my love to the children, and say I hope
they’ll not hate the thought of me? That piano was the best
Prescott could get. I hope Stella is pleased with it_ .”
“Thanks awfully for reading us that,” said Michael.