Michael had heard the verdict of the brain specialist, who yesterday had
seen his mother, and was sitting in his room beside his unopened
piano quietly assimilating it, and, without making plans of his own
initiative, contemplating the forms into which the future was beginning
to fall, mapping itself out below him, outlining itself as when objects
in a room, as the light of morning steals in, take shape again. And even
as they take the familiar shapes, so already he felt that he had guessed
all this in that week down at Ashbridge, from which he had returned with
his father and mother a couple of days before.
She was suffering, without doubt, from some softening of the brain;
nothing of remedial nature could possibly be done to arrest or cure the
progress of the disease, and all that lay in human power was to secure
for her as much content and serenity as possible. In her present
condition there was no question of putting her under restraint, nor,
indeed, could she be certified by any doctor as insane. She would have
to have a trained attendant, she would live a secluded life, from which
must be kept as far as possible anything that could agitate or distress
her, and after that there was nothing more that could be done except
to wait for the inevitable development of her malady. This might come
quickly or slowly; there was no means of forecasting that, though the
rapid deterioration of her brain, which had taken place during those
last two months, made it, on the whole, likely that the progress of the
disease would be swift. It was quite possible, on the other hand, that
it might remain stationary for months. . . . And in answer to a question
of Michael’s, Sir James had looked at him a moment in silence. Then he
answered.
“Both for her sake and for the sake of all of you,” he had said, “one
hopes that it will be swift.”
Lord Ashbridge had just telephoned that he was coming round to see
Michael, a message that considerably astonished him, since it would have
been more in his manner, in the unlikely event of his wishing to see his
son, to have summoned him to the house in Curzon Street. However, he had
announced his advent, and thus, waiting for him, and not much concerning
himself about that, Michael let the future map itself. Already it was
sharply defined, its boundaries and limits were clear, and though it was
yet untravelled it presented to him a familiar aspect, and he felt that
he could find his allotted road without fail, though he had never yet
traversed it. It was strongly marked; there could be no difficulty or
question about it. Indeed, a week ago, when first the recognition of his
mother’s condition, with the symptoms attached to it, was known to him,
he had seen the signpost that directed him into the future.
Lord Ashbridge made his usual flamboyant entry, prancing and swinging
his elbows. Whatever happened he would still be Lord Ashbridge, with his
grey top-hat and his large carnation and his enviable position.
“You will have heard what Sir James’s opinion is about your poor
mother,” he said. “It was in consequence of what he recommended when he
talked over the future with me that I came to see you.”
Michael guessed very well what this recommendation was, but with a
certain stubbornness and sense of what was due to himself, he let his
father proceed with the not very welcome task of telling him.
“In fact, Michael,” he said, “I have a favour to ask of you.”
The fact of his being Lord Ashbridge, and the fact of Michael being his
unsatisfactory son, stiffened him, and he had to qualify the favour.
“Perhaps I should not say I am about to ask you a favour,” he corrected
himself, “but rather to point out to you what is your obvious duty.”
Suddenly it struck Michael that his father was not thinking about Lady
Ashbridge at all, nor about him, but in the main about himself. All
had to be done from the dominant standpoint; he owed it to himself to
alleviate the conditions under which his wife must live; he owed it to
himself that his son should do his part as a Comber. There was no longer
any possible doubt as to what this favour, or this direction of duty,
must be, but still Michael chose that his father should state it. He
pushed a chair forward for him.
“Won’t you sit down?” he said.
“Thank you, I would rather stand. Yes; it is not so much a favour as the
indication of your duty. I do not know if you will see it in the same
light as I; you have shown me before now that we do not take the same
view.”
Michael felt himself bristling. His father certainly had the effect of
drawing out in him all the feelings that were better suppressed.
“I think we need not talk of that now, sir,” he remarked.
“Certainly it is not the subject of my interview with you now. The fact
is this. In some way your presence gives a certain serenity and content
to your mother. I noticed that at Ashbridge, and, indeed, there has been
some trouble with her this morning because I could not take her to come
to see you with me. I ask you, therefore, for her sake, to be with us as
much as you can, in short, to come and live with us.”
Michael nodded, saluting, so to speak, the signpost into the future as
he passed it.
“I had already determined to do that,” he said. “I had determined, at
any rate, to ask your permission to do so. It is clear that my mother
wants me, and no other consideration can weigh with that.”
Lord Ashbridge still remained completely self-sufficient.
“I am glad you take that view of it,” he said. “I think that is all I
have to say.”
Now Michael was an adept at giving; as indicated before, when he
gave, he gave nobly, and he could not only outwardly disregard, but
he inwardly cancelled the wonderful ungenerosity with which his father
received. That did not concern him.
“I will make arrangements to come at once,” he said, “if you can receive
me to-day.”
“That will hardly be worth while, will it? I am taking your mother back
to Ashbridge tomorrow.”
Michael got up in silence. After all, this gift of himself, of his time,
of his liberty, of all that constituted life to him, was made not to
his father, but to his mother. It was made, as his heart knew, not
ungrudgingly only, but eagerly, and if it had been recommended by
the doctor that she should go to Ashbridge, he would have entirely
disregarded the large additional sacrifice on himself which it entailed.
Thus it was not owing to any retraction of his gift, or reconsideration
of it, that he demurred.
“I hope you will--will meet me half-way about this, sir,” he said. “You
must remember that all my work lies in London. I want, naturally, to
continue that as far as I can. If you go to Ashbridge it is completely
interrupted. My friends are here too; everything I have is here.”
His father seemed to swell a little; he appeared to fill the room.
“And all my duties lie at Ashbridge,” he said. “As you know, I am not
of the type of absentee landlords. It is quite impossible that I should
spend these months in idleness in town. I have never done such a thing
yet, nor, I may say, would our class hold the position they do if we
did. We shall come up to town after Easter, should your mother’s health
permit it, but till then I could not dream of neglecting my duties in
the country.”
Now Michael knew perfectly well what his father’s duties on that
excellently managed estate were. They consisted of a bi-weekly interview
in the “business-room” (an abode of files and stags’ heads, in which
Lord Ashbridge received various reports of building schemes and
repairs), of a round of golf every afternoon, and of reading the
lessons and handing the offertory-box on Sunday. That, at least, was
the sum-total as it presented itself to him, and on which he framed
his conclusions. But he left out altogether the moral effect of the
big landlord living on his own land, and being surrounded by his
own dependents, which his father, on the other hand, so vastly
over-estimated. It was clear that there was not likely to be much accord
between them on this subject.
“But could you not go down there perhaps once or twice a week, and get
Bailey to come and consult you here?” he asked.
Lord Ashbridge held his head very high.
“That would be completely out of the question,” he said.
All this, Michael felt, had nothing to do with the problem of his
mother and himself. It was outside it altogether, and concerned only
his father’s convenience. He was willing to press this point as far as
possible.
“I had imagined you would stop in London,” he said. “Supposing under
these circumstances I refuse to live with you?”
“I should draw my own conclusion as to the sincerity of your profession
of duty towards your mother.”
“And practically what would you do?” asked Michael.
“Your mother and I would go to Ashbridge tomorrow all the same.”
Another alternative suddenly suggested itself to Michael which he was
almost ashamed of proposing, for it implied that his father put his own
convenience as outweighing any other consideration. But he saw that if
only Lord Ashbridge was selfish enough to consent to it, it had manifest
merits. His mother would be alone with him, free of the presence that so
disconcerted her.
“I propose, then,” he said, “that she and I should remain in town, as
you want to be at Ashbridge.”
He had been almost ashamed of suggesting it, but no such shame was
reflected in his father’s mind. This would relieve him of the perpetual
embarrassment of his wife’s presence, and the perpetual irritation of
Michael’s. He had persuaded himself that he was making a tremendous
personal sacrifice in proposing that Michael should live with them, and
this relieved him of the necessity.
“Upon my word, Michael,” he said, with the first hint of cordiality that
he had displayed, “that is very well thought of. Let us consider; it is
certainly the case that this derangement in your poor mother’s mind has
caused her to take what I might almost call a dislike to me. I mentioned
that to Sir James, though it was very painful for me to do so, and he
said that it was a common and most distressing symptom of brain disease,
that the sufferer often turned against those he loved best. Your plan
would have the effect of removing that.”
He paused a moment, and became even more sublimely fatuous.
“You, too,” he said, “it would obviate the interruption of your work,
about which you feel so keenly. You would be able to go on with it. Of
myself, I don’t think at all. I shall be lonely, no doubt, at Ashbridge,
but my own personal feelings must not be taken into account. Yes; it
seems to me a very sensible notion. We shall have to see what your
mother says to it. She might not like me to be away from her, in spite
of her apparent--er--dislike of me. It must all depend on her attitude.
But for my part I think very well of your scheme. Thank you, Michael,
for suggesting it.”
He left immediately after this to ascertain Lady Ashbridge’s feelings
about it, and walked home with a complete resumption of his usual
exuberance. It indeed seemed an admirable plan. It relieved him from
the nightmare of his wife’s continual presence, and this he expressed
to himself by thinking that it relieved her from his. It was not that
he was deficient in sympathy for her, for in his self-centred way he was
fond of her, but he could sympathise with her just as well at Ashbridge.
He could do no good to her, and he had not for her that instinct of love
which would make it impossible for him to leave her. He would also be
spared the constant irritation of having Michael in the house, and this
he expressed to himself by saying that Michael disliked him, and would
be far more at his ease without him. Furthermore, Michael would be able
to continue his studies . . . of this too, in spite of the fact that he
had always done his best to discourage them, he made a self-laudatory
translation, by telling himself that he was very glad not to have
to cause Michael to discontinue them. In fine, he persuaded himself,
without any difficulty, that he was a very fine fellow in consenting to
a plan that suited him so admirably, and only wondered that he had not
thought of it himself. There was nothing, after his wife had expressed
her joyful acceptance of it, to detain him in town, and he left for
Ashbridge that afternoon, while Michael moved into the house in Curzon
Street.
Michael entered upon his new life without the smallest sense of having
done anything exceptional or even creditable. It was so perfectly
obvious to him that he had to be with his mother that he had no
inclination to regard himself at all in the matter; the thing was
as simple as it had been to him to help Francis out of financial
difficulties with a gift of money. There was no effort of will, no
sense of sacrifice about it, it was merely the assertion of a paramount
instinct. The life limited his freedom, for, for a great part of the day
he was with his mother, and between his music and his attendance on her,
he had but little leisure. Occasionally he went out to see his friends,
but any prolonged absence on his part always made her uneasy, and he
would often find her, on his return, sitting in the hall, waiting
for him, so as to enjoy his presence from the first moment that he
re-entered the house. But though he found no food for reflection in
himself, Aunt Barbara, who came to see them some few days after Michael
had been installed here, found a good deal.
They had all had tea together, and afterwards Lady Ashbridge’s nurse had
come down to fetch her upstairs to rest. And then Aunt Barbara surprised
Michael, for she came across the room to him, with her kind eyes full of
tears, and kissed him.
“My dear, I must say it once,” she said, “and then you will know that it
is always in my mind. You have behaved nobly, Michael; it’s a big word,
but I know no other. As for your father--”
Michael interrupted her.
“Oh, I don’t understand him,” he said. “At least, that’s the best way to
look at it. Let’s leave him out.”
He paused a moment.
“After all, it is a much better plan than our living all three of us at
Ashbridge. It’s better for my mother, and for me, and for him.”
“I know, but how he could consent to the better plan,” she said. “Well,
let us leave him out. Poor Robert! He and his golf. My dear, your father
is a very ludicrous person, you know. But about you, Michael, do you
think you can stand it?”
He smiled at her.
“Why, of course I can,” he said. “Indeed, I don’t think I’ll accept that
statement of it. It’s--it’s such a score to be able to be of use, you
know. I can make my mother happy. Nobody else can. I think I’m getting
rather conceited about it.”
“Yes, dear; I find you insufferable,” remarked Aunt Barbara
parenthetically.
“Then you must just bear it. The thing is”--Michael took a moment to
find the words he searched for--“the thing is I want to be wanted. Well,
it’s no light thing to be wanted by your mother, even if--”
He sat down on the sofa by his aunt.
“Aunt Barbara, how ironically gifts come,” he said. “This was rather a
sinister way of giving, that my mother should want me like this just as
her brain was failing. And yet that failure doesn’t affect the quality
of her love. Is it something that shines through the poor tattered
fabric? Anyhow, it has nothing to do with her brain. It is she herself,
somehow, not anything of hers, that wants me. And you ask if I can stand
it?”
Michael with his ugly face and his kind eyes and his simple heart seemed
extraordinarily charming just then to Aunt Barbara. She wished that
Sylvia could have seen him then in all the unconsciousness of what he
was doing so unquestioningly, or that she could have seen him as she
had with his mother during the last hour. Lady Ashbridge had insisted
on sitting close to him, and holding his hand whenever she could possess
herself of it, of plying him with a hundred repeated questions, and
never once had she made Michael either ridiculous or self-conscious. And
this, she reflected, went on most of the day, and for how many days it
would go on, none knew. Yet Michael could not consider even whether he
could stand it; he rejected the expression as meaningless.
“And your friends?” she said. “Do you manage to see them?”
“Oh, yes, occasionally,” said Michael. “They don’t come here, for the
presence of strangers makes my mother agitated. She thinks they have
some design of taking her or me away. But she wants to see Sylvia. She
knows about--about her and me, and I can’t make up my mind what to do
about it. She is always asking if I can’t take her to see Sylvia, or get
her to come here.”
“And why not? Sylvia knows about your mother, I suppose.”
“I expect so. I told Hermann. But I am afraid my mother will--well, you
can’t call it arguing--but will try to persuade her to have me. I can’t
let Sylvia in for that. Nor, if it comes to that, can I let myself in
for that.”
“Can’t you impress on your mother that she mustn’t?”
Michael leaned forward to the fire, pondering this, and stretching out
his big hands to the blaze.
“Yes, I might,” he said. “I should love to see Sylvia again, just
see her, you know. We settled that the old terms we were on couldn’t
continue. At least, I settled that, and she understood.”
“Sylvia is a gaby,” remarked Aunt Barbara.
“I’m rather glad you think so.”
“Oh, get her to come,” said she. “I’m sure your mother will do as you
tell her. I’ll be here too, if you like, if that will do any good. By
the way, I see your Hermann’s piano recital comes off to-morrow.”
“I know. My mother wants to go to that, and I think I shall take her.
Will you come too, Aunt Barbara, and sit on the other side of her? My
‘Variations’ are going to be played. If they are a success, Hermann
tells me I shall be dragged screaming on to the platform, and have to
bow. Lord! And if they’re not, well, ‘Lord’ also.”
“Yes, my dear, of course I’ll come. Let me see, I shall have to lie, as
I have another engagement, but a little thing like that doesn’t bother
me.”
Suddenly she clapped her hands together.
“My dear, I quite forgot,” she said. “Michael, such excitement. You
remember the boat you heard taking soundings on the deep-water reach? Of
course you do! Well, I sent that information to the proper quarter, and
since then watch has been kept in the woods just above it. Last night
only the coastguard police caught four men at it--all Germans. They
tried to escape as they did before, by rowing down the river, but there
was a steam launch below which intercepted them. They had on them a
chart of the reach, with soundings, nearly complete; and when they
searched their houses--they are all tenants of your astute father, who
merely laughed at us--they found a very decent map of certain private
areas at Harwich. Oh, I’m not such a fool as I look. They thanked me, my
dear, for my information, and I very gracefully said that my information
was chiefly got by you.”
“But did those men live in Ashbridge?” asked Michael.
“Yes; and your father will have four decorous houses on his hands. I am
glad: he should not have laughed at us. It will teach him, I hope. And
now, my dear, I must go.”
She stood up, and put her hand on Michael’s arm.
“And you know what I think of you,” she said. “To-morrow evening, then.
I hate music usually; but then I adore Mr. Hermann. I only wish he
wasn’t a German. Can’t you get him to naturalise himself and his
sister?”
“You wouldn’t ask that if you had seen him in Munich,” said Michael.
“I suppose not. Patriotism is such a degrading emotion when it is not
English.”
Michael’s “Variations” came some half-way down the programme next
evening, and as the moment for them approached, Lady Ashbridge got more
and more excited.
“I hope he knows them by heart properly, dear,” she whispered to
Michael. “I shall be so nervous for fear he’ll forget them in the
middle, which is so liable to happen if you play without your notes.”
Michael laid his hand on his mother’s.
“Hush, mother,” he said, “you mustn’t talk while he’s playing.”
“Well, I was only whispering. But if you tell me I mustn’t--”
The hall was crammed from end to end, for not only was Hermann a person
of innumerable friends, but he had already a considerable reputation,
and, being a German, all musical England went to hear him. And to-night
he was playing superbly, after a couple of days of miserable nervousness
over his debut as a pianist; but his temperament was one of those
that are strung up to their highest pitch by such nervous agonies; he
required just that to make him do full justice to his own personality,
and long before he came to the “Variations,” Michael felt quite at ease
about his success. There was no question about it any more: the
whole audience knew that they were listening to a master. In the row
immediately behind Michael’s party were sitting Sylvia and her mother,
who had not quite been torn away from her novels, since she had sought
“The Love of Hermione Hogarth” underneath her cloak, and read it
furtively in pauses. They had come in after Michael, and until the
interval between the classical and the modern section of the concert he
was unaware of their presence; then idly turning round to look at the
crowded hall, he found himself face to face with the girl.
“I had no idea you were there,” he said. “Hermann will do, won’t he? I
think--”
And then suddenly the words of commonplace failed him, and he looked at
her in silence.
“I knew you were back,” she said. “Hermann told me about--everything.”
Michael glanced sideways, indicating his mother, who sat next him, and
was talking to Barbara.
“I wondered whether perhaps you would come and see my mother and me,” he
said. “May I write?”
She looked at him with the friendliness of her smiling eyes and her
grave mouth.
“Is it necessary to ask?” she said.
Michael turned back to his seat, for his mother had had quite enough of
her sister-in-law, and wanted him again. She looked over her shoulder
for a moment to see whom Michael was talking to.
“I’m enjoying my concert, dear,” she said. “And who is that nice young
lady? Is she a friend of yours?”
The interval was over, and Hermann returned to the platform, and waiting
for a moment for the buzz of conversation to die down, gave out,
without any preliminary excursion on the keys, the text of Michael’s
“Variations.” Then he began to tell them, with light and flying fingers,
what that simple tune had suggested to Michael, how he imagined himself
looking on at an old-fashioned dance, and while the dancers moved to
the graceful measure of a minuet, or daintily in a gavotte, the tune of
“Good King Wenceslas” still rang in his head, or, how in the joy of
the sunlight of a spring morning it still haunted him. It lay behind
a cascade of foaming waters that, leaping, roared into a ravine; it
marched with flying banners on some day of victorious entry, it watched
a funeral procession wind by, with tapers and the smell of incense; it
heard, as it got nearer back to itself again, the peals of Christmas
bells, and stood forth again in its own person, decorated and
emblazoned.
Hermann had already captured his audience; now he held them tame in the
hollow of his hand. Twice he bowed, and then, in answer to the demand,
just beckoned with his finger to Michael, who rose. For a moment his
mother wished to detain him.
“You’re not going to leave me, my dear, are you?” she asked anxiously.
He waited to explain to her quietly, left her, and, feeling rather
dazed, made his way round to the back and saw the open door on to the
platform confronting him. He felt that no power on earth could make him
step into the naked publicity there, but at the moment Hermann appeared
in the doorway.
“Come on, Mike,” he said, laughing. “Thank the pretty ladies and
gentlemen! Lord, isn’t it all a lark!”
Michael advanced with him, stared and hoped he smiled properly, though
he felt that he was nailing some hideous grimace to his face; and then
just below him he saw his mother eagerly pointing him out to a total
stranger, with gesticulation, and just behind her Sylvia looking at her,
and not at him, with such tenderness, such kindly pity. There were the
two most intimately bound into his life, the mother who wanted him, the
girl whom he wanted; and by his side was Hermann, who, as Michael always
knew, had thrown open the gates of life to him. All the rest, even
including Aunt Barbara, seemed of no significance in that moment.
Afterwards, no doubt, he would be glad they were pleased, be proud of
having pleased them; but just now, even when, for the first time in his
life, that intoxicating wine of appreciation was given him, he stood
with it bubbling and yellow in his hand, not drinking of it.
Michael had prepared the way of Sylvia’s coming by telling his mother
the identity of the “nice young lady” at the concert; he had also
impressed on her the paramount importance of not saying anything with
regard to him that could possibly embarrass the nice young lady, and
when Sylvia came to tea a few days later, he was quite without any
uneasiness, while for himself he was only conscious of that thirst for
her physical presence, the desire, as he had said to Aunt Barbara, “just
to see her.” Nor was there the slightest embarrassment in their meeting!
it was clear that there was not the least difficulty either for him
or her in being natural, which, as usually happens, was the complete
solution.
“That is good of you to come,” he said, meeting her almost at the door.
“My mother has been looking forward to your visit. Mother dear, here is
Miss Falbe.”
Lady Ashbridge was pathetically eager to be what she called “good.”
Michael had made it clear to her that it was his wish that Miss Falbe
should not be embarrassed, and any wish just now expressed by Michael
was of the nature of a divine command to her.
“Well, this is a pleasure,” she said, looking across to Michael with the
eyes of a dog on a beloved master. “And we are not strangers quite, are
we, Miss Falbe? We sat so near each other to listen to your brother, who
I am sure plays beautifully, and the music which Michael made. Haven’t I
got a clever son, and such a good one?”
Sylvia was unerring. Michael had known she would be.
“Indeed, you have,” she said, sitting down by her. “And Michael mustn’t
hear what we say about him, must he, or he’ll be getting conceited.”
Lady Ashbridge laughed.
“And that would never do, would it?” she said, still retaining Sylvia’s
hand. Then a little dim ripple of compunction broke in her mind.
“Michael,” she said, “we are only joking about your getting conceited.
Miss Falbe and I are only joking. And--and won’t you take off your hat,
Miss Falbe, for you are not going to hurry away, are you? You are going
to pay us a long visit.”
Michael had not time to remind his mother that ladies who come to tea
do not usually take their hats off, for on the word Sylvia’s hands were
busy with her hatpins.
“I’m so glad you suggested that,” she said. “I always want to take my
hat off. I don’t know who invented hats, but I wish he hadn’t.”
Lady Ashbridge looked at her masses of bright hair, and could not help
telegraphing a note of admiration, as it were, to Michael.
“Now, that’s more comfortable,” she said. “You look as if you weren’t
going away next minute. When I like to see people, I hate their going
away. I’m afraid sometimes that Michael will go away, but he tells me he
won’t. And you liked Michael’s music, Miss Falbe? Was it not clever of
him to think of all that out of one simple little tune? And he tells me
you sing so nicely. Perhaps you would sing to us when we’ve had tea. Oh,
and here is my sister-in-law. Do you know her--Lady Barbara? My dear,
what is your husband’s name?”
Seeing Sylvia uncovered, Lady Barbara, with a tact that was creditable
to her, but strangely unsuccessful, also began taking off her hat. Her
sister-in-law was too polite to interfere, but, as a matter of fact, she
did not take much pleasure in the notion that Barbara was going to stay
a very long time, too. She was fond of her, but it was not Barbara whom
Michael wanted. She turned her attention to the girl again.
“My husband’s away,” she said, confidentially; “he is very busy down at
Ashbridge, and I daresay he won’t find time to come up to town for many
weeks yet. But, you know, Michael and I do very well without him,
very well, indeed, and it would never do to take him away from his
duties--would it, Michael?”
Here was a shoal to be avoided.
“No, you mustn’t think of tempting him to come up to town,” said
Michael. “Give me some tea for Aunt Barbara.”
This answer entranced Lady Ashbridge; she had to nudge Michael several
times to show that she understood the brilliance of it, and put lump
after lump of sugar into Barbara’s cup in her rapt appreciation of it.
But very soon she turned to Sylvia again.
“And your brother is a friend of Michael’s, too, isn’t he?” she said.
“Some day perhaps he will come to see me. We don’t see many people,
Michael and I, for we find ourselves very well content alone. But
perhaps some day he will come and play his concert over again to us; and
then, perhaps, if you ask me, I will sing to you. I used to sing a great
deal when I was younger. Michael--where has Michael gone?”
Michael had just left the room to bring some cigarettes in from next
door, and Lady Ashbridge ran after him, calling him. She found him in
the hall, and brought him back triumphantly.
“Now we will all sit and talk for a long time,” she said. “You one side
of me, Miss Falbe, and Michael the other. Or would you be so kind as to
sing for us? Michael will play for you, and would it annoy you if I came
and turned over the pages? It would give me a great deal of pleasure to
turn over for you, if you will just nod each time when you are ready.”
Sylvia got up.
“Why, of course,” she said. “What have you got, Michael? I haven’t
anything with me.”
Michael found a volume of Schubert, and once again, as on the first time
he had seen her, she sang “Who is Sylvia?” while he played, and Lady
Ashbridge had her eyes fixed now on one and now on the other of them,
waiting for their nod to do her part; and then she wanted to sing
herself, and with some far-off remembrance of the airs and graces of
twenty-five years ago, she put her handkerchief and her rings on the
top of the piano, and, playing for herself, emitted faint treble sounds
which they knew to be “The Soldier’s Farewell.”
Then presently her nurse came for her to lie down before dinner, and she
was inclined to be tearful and refuse to go till Michael made it clear
that it was his express and sovereign will that she should do so. Then
very audibly she whispered to him. “May I ask her to give me a kiss?”
she said. “She looks so kind, Michael, I don’t think she would mind.”
Sylvia went back home with a little heartache for Michael, wondering,
if she was in his place, if her mother, instead of being absorbed in her
novels, demanded such incessant attentions, whether she had sufficient
love in her heart to render them with the exquisite simplicity, the
tender patience that Michael showed. Well as she knew him, greatly as
she liked him, she had not imagined that he, or indeed any man could
have behaved quite like that. There seemed no effort at all about it;
he was not trying to be patient; he had the sense of “patience’s perfect
work” natural to him; he did not seem to have to remind himself that his
mother was ill, and thus he must be gentle with her. He was gentle with
her because he was in himself gentle. And yet, though his behaviour was
no effort to him, she guessed how wearying must be the continual strain
of the situation itself. She felt that she would get cross from mere
fatigue, however excellent her intentions might be, however willing
the spirit. And no one, so she had understood from Barbara, could take
Michael’s place. In his occasional absences his mother was fretful and
miserable, and day by day Michael left her less. She would sit close to
him when he was practising--a thing that to her or to Hermann would have
rendered practice impossible--and if he wrestled with one hand over a
difficult bar, she would take the other into hers, would ask him if he
was not getting tired, would recommend him to rest for a little; and yet
Michael, who last summer had so stubbornly insisted on leading his own
life, and had put his determination into effect in the teeth of all
domestic opposition, now with more than cheerfulness laid his own life
aside in order to look after his mother. Sylvia felt that the real
heroisms of life were not so much the fine heady deeds which are so
obviously admirable, as such serene steadfastness, such unvarying
patience as that which she had just seen.
Her whole soul applauded Michael, and yet below her applause was this
heartache for him, the desire to be able to help him to bear the burden
which must be so heavy, though he bore it so blithely. But in the very
nature of things there was but one way in which she could help him, and
in that she was powerless. She could not give him what he wanted. But
she longed to be able to.