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.”