Michael, in desperate conversational efforts next morning at breakfast,
mentioned the fact that the German Emperor had engaged him in a
substantial talk at Munich, and had recommended him to pass the winter
at Berlin. It was immediately obvious that he rose in his father’s
estimation, for, though no doubt primarily the fact that Michael was
his son was the cause of this interest, it gave Michael a sort of
testimonial also to his respectability. If the Emperor had thought
that his taking up a musical career was indelibly disgraceful--as Lord
Ashbridge himself had done--he would certainly not have made himself
so agreeable. On anyone of Lord Ashbridge’s essential and deep-rooted
snobbishness this could not fail to make a certain effect; his chilly
politeness to Michael sensibly thawed; you might almost have detected
a certain cordiality in his desire to learn as much as possible of this
gratifying occurrence.
“And you mean to go to Berlin?” he asked.
“I’m afraid I shan’t be able to,” said Michael; “my master is in
London.”
“I should be inclined to reconsider that, Michael,” said the father.
“The Emperor knows what he is talking about on the subject of music.”
Lady Ashbridge looked up from the breakfast she was giving Petsy II.
His dietary was rather less rich than that of the defunct, and she was
afraid sometimes that his food was not nourishing enough.
“I remember the concert we had here,” she said. “We had the ‘Song to
Aegir’ twice.”
Lord Ashbridge gave her a quick glance. Michael felt he would not have
noticed it the evening before.
“Your memory is very good, my dear,” he said with encouragement.
“And then we had a torchlight procession,” she remarked.
“Quite so. You remember it perfectly. And about his visit here, Michael.
Did he talk about that?”
“Yes, very warmly; also about our international relations.”
Lord Ashbridge gave a little giggle.
“I must tell Barbara that,” he said. “She has become a sort of
Cassandra, since she became a diplomatist, and sits on her tripod and
prophesies woe.”
“She asked me about it,” said Michael. “I don’t think she believes in
his sincerity.”
He giggled again.
“That’s because I didn’t ask her down for his visit,” he said.
He rose.
“And what are you going to do, my dear?” he said to his wife.
She looked across to Michael.
“Perhaps Michael will come for a stroll with me,” she said.
“No doubt he will. I shall have a round of golf, I think, on this fine
morning. I should like to have a word with you, Michael, when you’ve
finished your breakfast.”
The moment he had gone her whole manner changed: it was suffused with
the glow that had lit her last night.
“And we shall have another talk, dear?” she said. “It was tiresome being
interrupted last night. But your father was better pleased with you this
morning.”
Michael’s understanding of the situation grew clearer. Whatever was the
change in his mother, whatever, perhaps, it portended, it was certainly
accompanied by two symptoms, the one the late dawning of mother-love for
himself, the other a certain fear of her husband; for all her married
life she had been completely dominated by him, and had lived but in a
twilight of her own; now into that twilight was beginning to steal
a dread of him. His pleasure or his vexation had begun to affect her
emotionally, instead of being as before, merely recorded in her mind,
as she might have recorded an object quite exterior to herself, and seen
out of the window. Now it was in the room with her. Even as Michael
left her to speak with him, the consciousness of him rose again in her,
making her face anxious.
“And you’ll try not to vex him, won’t you?” she said.
His father was in the smoking-room, standing enormously in front of the
fire, and for the first time the sense of his colossal fatuity struck
Michael.
“There are several things I want to tell you about,” he said. “Your
career, first of all. I take it that you have no intention of deferring
to my wishes on the subject.”
“No, father, I am afraid not,” said Michael.
“I want you to understand, then, that, though I shall not speak to
you again about it, my wishes are no less strong than they were. It is
something to me to know that a man whom I respect so much as the Emperor
doesn’t feel as I do about it, but that doesn’t alter my view.”
“I understand,” said Michael.
“The next is about your mother,” he said. “Do you notice any change in
her?”
“Yes,” said Michael.
“Can you describe it at all?”
Michael hesitated.
“She shows quite a new affection for myself,” he said. “She came and
talked to me last night in a way she had never done before.”
The irritation which Michael’s mere presence produced on his father
was beginning to make itself felt. The fact that Michael was squat and
long-armed and ugly had always a side-blow to deal at Lord Ashbridge
in the reminder that he was his father. He tried to disregard this--he
tried to bring his mind into an impartial attitude, without seeing for
a moment the bitter irony of considering impartiality the ideal
quality when dealing with his son. He tried to be fair, and Michael was
perfectly conscious of the effort it cost him.
“I had noticed something of the sort,” he said. “Your mother was always
asking after you. You have not been writing very regularly, Michael. We
know little about your life.”
“I have written to my mother every week,” said Michael.
The magical effects of the Emperor’s interest were dying out. Lord
Ashbridge became more keenly aware of the disappointment that Michael
was to him.
“I have not been so fortunate, then,” he said.
Michael remembered his mother’s anxious face, but he could not let this
pass.
“No, sir,” he said, “but you never answered any of my letters. I thought
it quite probable that it displeased you to hear from me.”
“I should have expressed my displeasure if I had felt it,” said his
father with all the pomposity that was natural to him.
“That had not occurred to me,” said Michael. “I am afraid I took your
silence to mean that my letters didn’t interest you.”
He paused a moment, and his rebellion against the whole of his father’s
attitude flared up.
“Besides, I had nothing particular to say,” he said. “My life is passed
in the pursuit of which you entirely disapprove.”
He felt himself back in boyhood again with this stifling and leaden
atmosphere of authority and disapproval to breathe. He knew that Francis
in his place would have done somehow differently; he could almost
hear Aunt Barbara laughing at the pomposity of the situation that had
suddenly erected itself monstrously in front of him. The fact that he
was Michael Comber vexed his father--there was no statement of the case
so succinctly true.
Lord Ashbridge moved away towards the window, turning his back
on Michael. Even his back, his homespun Norfolk jacket, his loose
knickerbockers, his stalwart calves expressed disapproval; but when his
father spoke again he realised that he had moved away like that, and
obscured his face for a different reason.
“Have you noticed anything else about your mother?” he asked.
That made Michael understand.
“Yes, father,” he said. “I daresay I am wrong about it--”
“Naturally I may not agree with you; but I should like to know what it
is.”
“She’s afraid of you,” said Michael.
Lord Ashbridge continued looking out of the window a little longer,
letting his eyes dwell on his own garden and his own fields, where
towered the leafless elms and the red roofs of the little town which
had given him his own name, and continued to give him so satisfactory an
income. There presented itself to his mind his own picture, painted and
framed and glazed and hung up by himself, the beneficent nobleman, the
conscientious landlord, the essential vertebra of England’s backbone. It
was really impossible to impute blame to such a fine fellow. He turned
round into the room again, braced and refreshed, and saw Michael thus.
“It is quite true what you say,” he said, with a certain pride in his
own impartiality. “She has developed an extraordinary timidity towards
me. I have continually noticed that she is nervous and agitated in my
presence--I am quite unable to account for it. In fact, there is no
accounting for it. But I am thinking of going up to London before long,
and making her see some good doctor. A little tonic, I daresay; though I
don’t suppose she has taken a dozen doses of medicine in as many years.
I expect she will be glad to go up, for she will be near you. The one
delusion--for it is no less than that--is as strange as the other.”
He drew himself up to his full magnificent height.
“I do not mean that it is not very natural she should be devoted to her
son,” he said with a tremendous air.
What he did mean was therefore uncertain, and again he changed the
subject.
“There is a third thing,” he said. “This concerns you. You are of the
age when we Combers usually marry. I should wish you to marry, Michael.
During this last year your mother has asked half a dozen girls down
here, all of whom she and I consider perfectly suitable, and no doubt
you have met more in London. I should like to know definitely if you
have considered the question, and if you have not, I ask you to set
about it at once.”
Michael was suddenly aware that never for a moment had Sylvia been away
from his mind. Even when his mother was talking to him last night Sylvia
had sat at the back, in the inmost place, throned and secure. And now
she stepped forward. Apart from the impossibility of not acknowledging
her, he wished to do it. He wanted to wear her publicly, though she was
not his; he wanted to take his allegiance oath, though his sovereign
heeded not.
“I have considered the question,” he said, “and I have quite made up my
mind whom I want to marry. She is Miss Falbe, Miss Sylvia Falbe, of whom
you may have heard as a singer. She is the sister of my music-master,
and I can certainly marry nobody else.”
It was not merely defiance of the dreadful old tradition, which Lord
Ashbridge had announced in the manner of Moses stepping down from Sinai,
that prompted this appalling statement of the case; it was the joy
in the profession of his love. It had to be flung out like that. Lord
Ashbridge looked at him a moment in dead silence.
“I have not the honour of knowing Miss--Miss Falbe, is it?” he said;
“nor shall I have that honour.”
Michael got up; there was that in his father’s tone that stung him to
fury.
“It is very likely that you will not,” he said, “since when I proposed
to her yesterday she did not accept me.”
Somehow Lord Ashbridge felt that as an insult to himself. Indeed, it was
a double insult. Michael had proposed to this singer, and this singer
had not instantly clutched him. He gave his dreadful little treble
giggle.
“And I am to bind up your broken heart?” he asked.
Michael drew himself up to his full height. This was an indiscretion,
for it but made his father recognise how short he was. It brought farce
into the tragic situation.
“Oh, by no means,” he said. “My heart is not going to break yet. I don’t
give up hope.”
Then, in a flash, he thought of his mother’s pale, anxious face, her
desire that he should not vex his father.
“I am sorry,” he said, “but that is the case. I wish--I wish you would
try to understand me.”
“I find you incomprehensible,” said Lord Ashbridge, and left the room
with his high walk and his swinging elbows.
Well, it was done now, and Michael felt that there were no new vexations
to be sprung on his father. It was bound to happen, he supposed, sooner
or later, and he was not sorry that it had happened sooner than he
expected or intended. Sylvia so held sway in him that he could not help
acknowledging her. His announcement had broken from him irresistibly,
in spite of his mother’s whispered word to him last night, “This is our
secret.” It could not be secret when his father spoke like that. . . .
And then, with a flare of illumination he perceived how intensely his
father disliked him. Nothing but sheer basic antipathy could have been
responsible for that miserable retort, “Am I to bind up your broken
heart?” Anger, no doubt, was the immediate cause, but so utterly
ungenerous a rejoinder to Michael’s announcement could not have been
conceived, except in a heart that thoroughly and rootedly disliked him.
That he was a continual monument of disappointment to his father he knew
well, but never before had it been quite plainly shown him how essential
an object of dislike he was. And the grounds of the dislike were now
equally plain--his father disliked him exactly because he was his
father. On the other hand, the last twenty-four hours had shown him that
his mother loved him exactly because he was her son. When these two new
and undeniable facts were put side by side, Michael felt that he was an
infinite gainer.
He went rather drearily to the window. Far off across the field below
the garden he could see Lord Ashbridge walking airily along on his way
to the links, with his head held high, his stick swinging in his
hand, his two retrievers at his heels. No doubt already the soothing
influences of Nature were at work--Nature, of course, standing for the
portion of trees and earth and houses that belonged to him--and were
expunging the depressing reflection that his wife and only son inspired
in him. And, indeed, such was actually the case: Lord Ashbridge, in his
amazing fatuity, could not long continue being himself without being
cheered and invigorated by that fact, and though when he set out his
big white hands were positively trembling with passion, he carried
his balsam always with him. But he had registered to himself, even
as Michael had registered, the fact that he found his son a most
intolerable person. And what vexed him most of all, what made him clang
the gate at the end of the field so violently that it hit one of his
retrievers shrewdly on the nose, was the sense of his own impotence. He
knew perfectly well that in point of view of determination (that quality
which in himself was firmness, and in those who opposed him obstinacy)
Michael was his match. And the annoying thing was that, as his wife had
once told him, Michael undoubtedly inherited that quality from him. It
was as inalienable as the estates of which he had threatened to deprive
his son, and which, as he knew quite well, were absolutely entailed.
Michael, in this regard, seemed no better than a common but successful
thief. He had annexed his father’s firmness, and at his death would
certainly annex all his pictures and trees and acres and the red roofs
of Ashbridge.
Michael saw the gate so imperially slammed, he heard the despairing howl
of Robin, and though he was sorry for Robin, he could not help laughing.
He remembered also a ludicrous sight he had seen at the Zoological
Gardens a few days ago: two seals, sitting bolt upright, quarrelling
with each other, and making the most absurd grimaces and noises. They
neither of them quite dared to attack the other, and so sat with their
faces close together, saying the rudest things. Aunt Barbara would
certainly have seen how inimitably his father and he had, in their
interview just now, resembled the two seals.
And then he became aware that all the time, au fond, he had thought
about nothing but Sylvia, and of Sylvia, not as the subject of quarrel,
but as just Sylvia, the singing Sylvia, with a hand on his shoulder.
The winter sun was warm on the south terrace of the house, when, an hour
later, he strolled out, according to arrangement, with his mother. It
had melted the rime of the night before that lay now on the grass in
threads of minute diamonds, though below the terrace wall, and on the
sunk rims of the empty garden beds it still persisted in outline of
white heraldry. A few monthly roses, weak, pink blossoms, weary with
the toil of keeping hope alive till the coming of spring, hung dejected
heads in the sunk garden, where the hornbeam hedge that carried its
russet leaves unfallen, shaded them from the wind. Here, too, a few
bulbs had pricked their way above ground, and stood with stout, erect
horns daintily capped with rime. All these things, which for years
had been presented to Lady Ashbridge’s notice without attracting her
attention; now filled her with minute childlike pleasure; they were
discoveries as entrancing and as magical as the first finding of
the oval pieces of blue sky that a child sees one morning in a
hedge-sparrow’s nest. Now that she was alone with her son, all her
secret restlessness and anxiety had vanished, and she remarked almost
with glee that her husband had telephoned from the golf links to say
that he would not be back for lunch; then, remembering that Michael
had gone to talk to his father after breakfast, she asked him about the
interview.
Michael had already made up his mind as to what to say here. Knowing
that his father was anxious about her, he felt it highly unlikely that
he would tell her anything to distress her, and so he represented the
interview as having gone off in perfect amity. Later in the day, on
his father’s return, he had made up his mind to propose a truce between
them, as far as his mother was concerned. Whether that would be accepted
or not he could not certainly tell, but in the interval there was
nothing to be gained by grieving her.
A great weight was lifted off her mind.
“Ah, my dear, that is good,” she said. “I was anxious. So now perhaps we
shall have a peaceful Christmas. I am glad your Aunt Barbara and Francis
are coming, for though your aunt always laughs at your father, she does
it kindly, does she not? And as for Francis--my dear, if God had given
me two sons, I should have liked the other to be like Francis. And shall
we walk a little farther this way, and see poor Petsy’s grave?”
Petsy’s grave proved rather agitating. There were doleful little stories
of the last days to be related, and Petsy II. was tiresome, and insisted
on defying the world generally with shrill barkings from the top of
the small mound, conscious perhaps that his helpless predecessor slept
below. Then their walk brought them to the band of trees that separated
the links from the house, from which Lady Ashbridge retreated, fearful,
as she vaguely phrased it, “of being seen,” and by whom there was no
need for her to explain. Then across the field came a group of children
scampering home from school. They ceased their shouting and their games
as the others came near, and demurely curtsied and took off their caps
to Lady Ashbridge.
“Nice, well-behaved children,” said she. “A merry Christmas to you all.
I hope you are all good children to your mothers, as my son is to me.”
She pressed his arm, nodded and smiled at the children, and walked on
with him. And Michael felt the lump in his throat.
The arrival of Aunt Barbara and Francis that afternoon did something, by
the mere addition of numbers to the party, to relieve the tension of the
situation. Lord Ashbridge said little but ate largely, and during the
intervals of empty plates directed an impartial gaze at the portraits of
his ancestors, while wholly ignoring his descendant. But Michael was too
wise to put himself into places where he could be pointedly ignored, and
the resplendent dinner, with its six footmen and its silver service,
was not really more joyless than usual. But his father’s majestic
displeasure was more apparent when the three men sat alone afterwards,
and it was in dead silence that port was pushed round and cigarettes
handed. Francis, it is true, made a couple of efforts to enliven things,
but his remarks produced no response whatever from his uncle, and he
subsided into himself, thinking with regret of what an amusing evening
he would have had if he had only stopped in town. But when they rose
Michael signed to his cousin to go on, and planted himself firmly in the
path to the door. It was evident that his father did not mean to speak
to him, but he could not push by him or walk over him.
“There is one thing I want to say to you, father,” said he. “I have told
my mother that our interview this morning was quite amicable. I do not
see why she should be distressed by knowing that it was not.”
His father’s face softened a moment.
“Yes, I agree to that,” he said.
As far as that went, the compact was observed, and whenever Lady
Ashbridge was present her husband made a point of addressing a few
remarks to Michael, but there their intercourse ended. Michael found
opportunity to explain to Aunt Barbara what had happened, suggesting
as a consolatory simile the domestic difficulties of the seals at the
Zoological Gardens, and was pleased to find her recognise the aptness of
this description. But heaviest of all on the spirits of the whole party
sat the anxiety about Lady Ashbridge. There could be no doubt that
some cerebral degeneration was occurring, and Lady Barbara’s urgent
representation to her brother had the effect of making him promise
to take her up to London without delay after Christmas, and let a
specialist see her. For the present the pious fraud practised on her
that Michael and his father had had “a good talk” together, and were
excellent friends, sufficed to render her happy and cheerful. She
had long, dim talks, full of repetition, with Michael, whose presence
appeared to make her completely content, and when he was out or away
from her she would sit eagerly waiting for his return. Petsy, to the
great benefit of his health, got somewhat neglected by her; her whole
nature and instincts were alight with the mother-love that had burnt
so late into flame, with this tragic accompaniment of derangement. She
seemed to be groping her way back to the days when Michael was a little
boy, and she was a young woman; often she would seat herself at her
piano, if Michael was not there to play to her, and in a thin, quavering
voice sing the songs of twenty years ago. She would listen to his
playing, beating time to his music, and most of all she loved the hour
when the day was drawing in, and the first shadow and flame of dusk and
firelight; then, with her hand in his, sitting in her room, where
they would not be interrupted, she would whisper fresh inquiries about
Sylvia, offering to go herself to the girl and tell her how lovable
her suitor was. She lived in a dim, subaqueous sort of consciousness,
physically quite well, and mentally serene in the knowledge that Michael
was in the house, and would presently come and talk to her.
For the others it was dismal enough; this shadow, that was to her a
watery sunlight, lay over them all--this, and the further quarrel,
unknown to her, between Michael and his father. When they all met, as
at meal times, there was the miserable pretence of friendliness and
comfortable ease kept up, for fear of distressing Lady Ashbridge. It
was dreary work for all concerned, but, luckily, not difficult of
accomplishment. A little chatter about the weather, the merest small
change of conversation, especially if that conversation was held between
Michael and his father, was sufficient to wreathe her in smiles, and
she would, according to habit, break in with some wrecking remark, that
entailed starting this talk all afresh. But when she left the room a
glowering silence would fall; Lord Ashbridge would pick up a book or
leave the room with his high-stepping walk and erect head, the picture
of insulted dignity.
Of the three he was far most to be pitied, although the situation
was the direct result of his own arrogance and self-importance; but
arrogance and self-importance were as essential ingredients of his
character as was humour of Aunt Barbara’s. They were very awkward and
tiresome qualities, but this particular Lord Ashbridge would have
no existence without them. He was deeply and mortally offended with
Michael; that alone was sufficient to make a sultry and stifling
atmosphere, and in addition to that he had the burden of his anxiety
about his wife. Here came an extra sting, for in common humanity he had,
by appearing to be friends with Michael, to secure her serenity, and
this could only be done by the continued profanation of his own highly
proper and necessary attitude towards his son. He had to address
friendly words to Michael that really almost choked him; he had to
practise cordiality with this wretch who wanted to marry the sister of
a music-master. Michael had pulled up all the old traditions, that
carefully-tended and pompous flower-garden, as if they had been weeds,
and thrown them in his father’s face. It was indeed no wonder that, in
his wife’s absence, he almost burst with indignation over the desecrated
beds. More than that, his own self-esteem was hurt by his wife’s fear of
him, just as if he had been a hard and unkind husband to her, which he
had not been, but merely a very self-absorbed and dominant one, while
the one person who could make her quite happy was his despised son.
Michael’s person, Michael’s tastes, Michael’s whole presence and
character were repugnant to him, and yet Michael had the power which, to
do Lord Ashbridge justice, he would have given much to be possessed of
himself, of bringing comfort and serenity to his wife.
On the afternoon of the day following Christmas the two cousins had been
across the estuary to Ashbridge together. Francis, who, in spite of his
habitual easiness of disposition and general good temper, had found the
conditions of anger and anxiety quite intolerable, had settled to leave
next day, instead of stopping till the end of the week, and Michael
acquiesced in this without any sense of desertion; he had really only
wondered why Francis had stopped three nights, instead of finding urgent
private business in town after one. He realised also, somewhat with
surprise, that Francis was “no good” when there was trouble about; there
was no one so delightful when there was, so to speak, a contest of who
should enjoy himself the most, and Francis invariably won. But if
the subject of the contest was changed, and the prize given for the
individual who, under depressing circumstances, should contrive to show
the greatest serenity of aspect, Francis would have lost with an even
greater margin. Michael, in fact, was rather relieved than otherwise
at his cousin’s immediate departure, for it helped nobody to see the
martyred St. Sebastian, and it was merely odious for St. Sebastian
himself. In fact, at this moment, when Michael was rowing them back
across the full-flooded estuary, Francis was explaining this with his
customary lucidity.
“I don’t do any good here, Mike,” he said. “Uncle Robert doesn’t speak
to me any more than he does to you, except when Aunt Marion is there.
And there’s nothing going on, is there? I practically asked if I might
go duck-shooting to-day, and Uncle Robert merely looked out of the
window. But if anybody, specially you, wanted me to stop, why, of course
I would.”
“But I don’t,” said Michael.
“Thanks awfully. Gosh, look at those ducks! They’re just wanting to be
shot. But there it is, then. Certainly Uncle Robert doesn’t want me, nor
Aunt Marion. I say, what do they think is the matter with her?”
Michael looked round, then took, rather too late, another pull on his
oars, and the boat gently grated on the pebbly mud at the side of the
landing-place. Francis’s question, the good-humoured insouciance of it
grated on his mind in rather similar fashion.
“We don’t know yet,” he said. “I expect we shall all go back to town in
a couple of days, so that she may see somebody.”
Francis jumped out briskly and gracefully, and stood with his hands in
his pockets while Michael pushed off again, and brought the boat into
its shed.
“I do hope it’s nothing serious,” he said. “She looks quite well,
doesn’t she? I daresay it’s nothing; but she’s been alone, hasn’t she,
with Uncle Robert all these weeks. That would give her the hump, too.”
Michael felt a sudden spasm of impatience at these elegant and consoling
reflections. But now, in the light of his own increasing maturity, he
saw how hopeless it was to feel Francis’s deficiencies, his entire lack
of deep feeling. He was made like that; and if you were fond of anybody
the only possible way of living up to your affection was to attach
yourself to their qualities.
They strolled a little way in silence.
“And why did you tell Uncle Robert about Sylvia Falbe?” asked Francis.
“I can’t understand that. For the present, anyhow, she had refused you.
There was nothing to tell him about. If I was fond of a girl like that I
should say nothing about it, if I knew my people would disapprove, until
I had got her.”
Michael laughed.
“Oh, yes you would,” he said, “if you were to use your own words,
fond of her ‘like that.’ You couldn’t help it. At least, I couldn’t.
It’s--it’s such a glory to be fond like that.”
He stopped.
“We won’t talk about it,” he said--“or, rather, I can’t talk about it,
if you don’t understand.”
“But she had refused you,” said the sensible Francis.
“That makes no difference. She shines through everything, through the
infernal awfulness of these days, through my father’s anger, and my
mother’s illness, whatever it proves to be--I think about them really
with all my might, and at the end I find I’ve been thinking about
Sylvia. Everything is she--the woods, the tide--oh, I can’t explain.”
They had walked across the marshy land at the edge of the estuary, and
now in front of them was the steep and direct path up to the house,
and the longer way through the woods. At this point the estuary made
a sudden turn to the left, sweeping directly seawards, and round the
corner, immediately in front of them was the long reach of deep water
up which, even when the tide was at its lowest, an ocean-going steamer
could penetrate if it knew the windings of the channel. To-day, in the
windless, cold calm of mid-winter, though the sun was brilliant in a
blue sky overhead, an opaque mist, thick as cotton-wool, lay over the
surface of the water, and, taking the winding road through the woods,
which, following the estuary, turned the point, they presently found
themselves, as they mounted, quite clear of the mist that lay below them
on the river. Their steps were noiseless on the mossy path, and almost
immediately after they had turned the corner, as Francis paused to light
a cigarette, they heard from just below them the creaking of oars in
their rowlocks. It caught the ears of them both, and without conscious
curiosity they listened. On the moment the sound of rowing ceased, and
from the dense mist just below them there came a sound which was quite
unmistakable, namely, the “plop” of something heavy dropped into the
water. That sound, by some remote form of association, suddenly recalled
to Michael’s mind certain questions Aunt Barbara had asked him about the
Emperor’s stay at Ashbridge, and his own recollection of his having gone
up and down the river in a launch. There was something further, which he
did not immediately recollect. Yes, it was the request that if when he
was here at Christmas he found strangers hanging about the deep-water
reach, of which the chart was known only to the Admiralty, he should
let her know. Here at this moment they were overlooking the mist-swathed
water, and here at this moment, unseen, was a boat rowing stealthily,
stopping, and, perhaps, making soundings.
He laid his hand on Francis’s arm with a gesture for silence, then,
invisible below, someone said, “Fifteen fathoms,” and again the oars
creaked audibly in the rowlocks.
Michael took a step towards his cousin, so that he could whisper to him.
“Come back to the boat,” he said. “I want to row round and see who that
is. Wait a moment, though.”
The oars below made some half-dozen strokes, and then were still again.
Once more there came the sound of something heavy dropped into the
water.
“Someone is making soundings in the channel there,” he said. “Come.”
They went very quietly till they were round the point, then quickened
their steps, and Michael spoke.
“That’s the uncharted channel,” he said; “at least, only the Admiralty
have the soundings. The water’s deep enough right across for a ship
of moderate draught to come up, but there is a channel up which any
man-of-war can pass. Of course, it may be an Admiralty boat making fresh
soundings, but not likely on Boxing Day.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Francis, striding easily along by
Michael’s short steps.
“Just see if we can find out who it is. Aunt Barbara asked me about it.
I’ll tell you afterwards. Now the tide’s going out we can drop down
with it, and we shan’t be heard. I’ll row just enough to keep her head
straight. Sit in the bow, Francis, and keep a sharp look-out.”
Foot by foot they dropped down the river, and soon came into the thick
mist that lay beyond the point. It was impossible to see more than
a yard or two ahead, but the same dense obscurity would prevent any
further range of vision from the other boat, and, if it was still at its
work, the sound of its oars or of voices, Michael reflected, might guide
him to it. From the lisp of little wavelets lapping on the shore below
the woods, he knew he was quite close in to the bank, and close also to
the place where the invisible boat had been ten minutes before. Then,
in the bewildering, unlocalised manner in which sound without the
corrective guidance of sight comes to the ears, he heard as before the
creaking of invisible oars, somewhere quite close at hand. Next moment
the dark prow of a rowing-boat suddenly loomed into sight on their
starboard, and he took a rapid stroke with his right-hand scull to bring
them up to it. But at the same moment, while yet the occupants of the
other boat were but shadows in the mist, they saw him, and a quick word
of command rang out.
“Row--row hard!” it cried, and with a frenzied churning of oars in the
water, the other boat shot by them, making down the estuary. Next moment
it had quite vanished in the mist, leaving behind it knots of swirling
water from its oar-blades.
Michael started in vain pursuit; his craft was heavy and clumsy, and
from the retreating and faint-growing sound of the other, it was clear
that he could get no pace to match, still less to overtake them. Soon he
pantingly desisted.
“But an Admiralty boat wouldn’t have run away,” he said. “They’d have
asked us who the devil we were.”
“But who else was it?” asked Francis.
Michael mopped his forehead.
“Aunt Barbara would tell you,” he said. “She would tell you that they
were German spies.”
Francis laughed.
“Or Timbuctoo niggers,” he remarked.
“And that would be an odd thing, too,” said Michael.
But at that moment he felt the first chill of the shadow that
menaced, if by chance Aunt Barbara was right, and if already the clear
tranquillity of the sky was growing dim as with the mist that lay
that afternoon on the waters of the deep reach, and covered mysterious
movements which were going on below it. England and Germany--there was
so much of his life and his heart there. Music and song, and Sylvia.