Michael was sitting in the big studio at the Falbes’ house late
one afternoon at the end of June, and the warmth and murmur of the
full-blown summer filled the air. The day had so far declined that the
rays of the sun, level in its setting, poured slantingly in through
the big window to the north, and shining through the foliage of the
plane-trees outside made a diaper of rosy illuminated spots and angled
shadows on the whitewashed wall. As the leaves stirred in the evening
breeze, this pattern shifted and twinkled; now, as the wind blew aside a
bunch of foliage, a lake of rosy gold would spring up on the wall; then,
as the breath of movement died, the green shadows grew thicker again
faintly stirring. Through the window to the south, which Hermann had
caused to be cut there, since the studio was not used for painting
purposes, Michael could see into the patch of high-walled garden, where
Mrs. Falbe was sitting in a low basket chair, completely absorbed in a
book of high-born and ludicrous adventures. She had made a mild attempt
when she found that Michael intended to wait for Sylvia’s return to
entertain him till she came; but, with a little oblique encouragement,
remarking on the beauty and warmth of the evening, and the pleasure of
sitting out of doors, Michael had induced her to go out again, and leave
him alone in the studio, free to live over again that which, twenty-four
hours ago, had changed life for him.
He reconstructed it as he sat on the sofa and dwelt on the pearl-moments
of it. Just this time yesterday he had come in and found Sylvia alone.
She had got up, he remembered, to give him greeting, and just opposite
the fireplace they had come face to face. She held in her hand a small
white rose which she had plucked in the tiny garden here in the middle
of London. It was not a very fine specimen, but it was a rose, and she
had said in answer to his depreciatory glance: “But you must see it when
I have washed it. One has to wash London flowers.”
Then . . . the miracle happened. Michael, with the hand that had just
taken hers, stroked a petal of this prized vegetable, with no thought in
his mind stronger than the thoughts that had been indigenous there since
Christmas. As his finger first touched the rim of the town-bred petals,
undersized yet not quite lacking in “rose-quality,” he had intended
nothing more than to salute the flower, as Sylvia made her apology for
it. “One has to wash London flowers.” But as he touched it he looked
up at her, and the quiet, usual song of his thoughts towards her grew
suddenly loud and stupefyingly sweet. It was as if from the vacant
hive-door the bees swarmed. In her eyes, as they met his, he thought
he saw an expectancy, a welcome, and his hand, instead of stroking the
rose-petals, closed on the rose and on the hand that held it, and kept
them close imprisoned and strongly gripped. He could not remember if he
had spoken any word, but he had seen that in her face which rendered all
speech unnecessary, and, knowing in the bones and the blood of him that
he was right, he kissed her. And then she had said, “Yes, Michael.”
His hand still was tight on hers that held the crumpled rose, and when
he opened it, lover-like, to stroke and kiss it, there was a spot of
blood in the palm of it, where a rose-thorn had pricked her, just one
drop of Sylvia’s blood. As he kissed it, he had wiped it away with
the tip of his tongue between his lips, and she smiling had said, “Oh,
Michael, how silly!”
They had sat together on the sofa where this afternoon he sat alone
waiting for her. Every moment of that half hour was as distinct as the
outline of trees and hills just before a storm, and yet it was still
entirely dream-like. He knew it had happened, for nothing but the
happening of it would account now for the fact of himself; but, though
there was nothing in the world so true, there was nothing so incredible.
Yet it was all as clean-cut in his mind as etched lines, and round
each line sprang flowers and singing birds. For a long space there was
silence after they had sat down, and then she said, “I think I always
loved you, Michael, only I didn’t know it. . . .” Thereafter, foolish
love talk: he had claimed a superiority there, for he had always loved
her and had always known it. Much time had been wasted owing to her
ignorance . . . she ought to have known. But all the time that existed
was theirs now. In all the world there was no more time than what they
had. The crumpled rose had its petals rehabilitated, the thorn that had
pricked her was peeled off. They wondered if Hermann had come in yet.
Then, by some vague process of locomotion, they found themselves at
the piano, and with her arm around his neck Sylvia has whispered half a
verse of the song of herself. . . .
They became a little more definite over lover-confessions. Michael had,
so to speak, nothing to confess: he had loved all along--he had wanted
her all along; there never had been the least pretence or nonsense about
it. Her path was a little more difficult to trace, but once it had been
traversed it was clear enough. She had liked him always; she had felt
sister-like from the moment when Hermann brought him to the house, and
sister-like she had continued to feel, even when Michael had definitely
declared there was “no thoroughfare” there. She had missed that
relationship when it stopped: she did not mind telling him that now,
since it was abandoned by them both; but not for the world would she
have confessed before that she had missed it. She had loved being asked
to come and see his mother, and it was during those visits that she had
helped to pile the barricade across the “sister-thoroughfare” with her
own hands. She began to share Michael’s sense of the impossibility of
that road. They could not walk down it together, for they had to be
either more or less to each other than that. And, during these visits,
she had begun to understand (and her face a little hid itself) what
Michael’s love meant. She saw it manifested towards his mother; she was
taught by it; she learned it; and, she supposed, she loved it. Anyhow,
having seen it, she could not want Michael as a brother any longer, and
if he still wanted anything else, she supposed (so she supposed) that
some time he would mention that fact. Yes: she began to hope that he
would not be very long about it. . . .
Michael went over this very deliberately as he sat waiting for her
twenty-four hours later. He rehearsed this moment and that over and over
again: in mind he followed himself and Sylvia across to the piano, not
hurrying their steps, and going through the verse of the song she
sang at the pace at which she actually sang it. And, as he dreamed and
recollected, he heard a little stir in the quiet house, and Sylvia came.
They met just as they met yesterday in front of the fireplace.
“Oh, Michael, have you been waiting long?” she said.
“Yes, hours, or perhaps a couple of minutes. I don’t know.”
“Ah, but which? If hours, I shall apologise, and then excuse myself by
saying that you must have come earlier than you intended. If minutes I
shall praise myself for being so exceedingly punctual.”
“Minutes, then,” said he. “I’ll praise you instead. Praise is more
convincing if somebody else does it.”
“Yes, but you aren’t somebody else. Now be sensible. Have you done all
the things you told me you were going to do?”
“Yes.”
Sylvia released her hands from his.
“Tell me, then,” she said. “You’ve seen your father?”
There was no cloud on Michael’s face. There was such sunlight where his
soul sat that no shadow could fall across it.
“Oh, yes, I saw him,” he said.
He captured Sylvia’s hand again.
“And what is more he saw me, so to speak,” he said. “He realised that I
had an existence independent of him. I used to be a--a sort of clock to
him; he could put its hands to point to any hour he chose. Well, he has
realised--he has really--that I am ticking along on my own account.
He was quite respectful, not only to me, which doesn’t matter, but to
you--which does.” Michael laughed, as he plaited his fingers in with
hers.
“My father is so comic,” he said, “and unlike most great humourists his
humour is absolutely unconscious. He was perfectly well aware that I
meant to marry you, for I told him that last Christmas, adding that you
did not mean to marry me. So since then I think he’s got used to you.
Used to you--fancy getting used to you!”
“Especially since he had never seen me,” said the girl.
“That makes it less odd. Getting used to you after seeing you would be
much more incredible. I was saying that in a way he had got used to
you, just as he’s got used to my being a person, and not a clock on his
chimney-piece, and what seems to have made so much difference is what
Aunt Barbara told him last night, namely, that your mother was a Tracy.
Sylvia, don’t let it be too much for you, but in a certain far-away
manner he realises that you are ‘one of us.’ Isn’t he a comic? He’s
going to make the best of you, it appears. To make the best of you! You
can’t beat that, you know. In fact, he told me to ask if he might come
and pay his respects to your mother to-morrow.
“And what about my singing, my career?” she asked.
Michael laughed again.
“He was funny about that also,” he said. “My father took it absolutely
for granted that having made this tremendous social advance, you
would bury your past, all but the Tracy part of it, as if it had
been something disgraceful which the exalted Comber family agreed to
overlook.”
“And what did you say?”
“I? Oh, I told him that, of course, you would do as you pleased about
that, but that for my part I should urge you most strongly to do nothing
of the kind.”
“And he?”
“He got four inches taller. What is so odd is that as long as I never
opposed my father’s wishes, as long as I was the clock on the chimney
piece, I was terrified at him. The thought of opposing myself to him
made my knees quake. But the moment I began doing so, I found there was
nothing to be frightened at.”
Sylvia got up and began walking up and down the long room.
“But what am I to do about it, Michael?” she asked. “Oh, I blush when
I think of a conversation I had with Hermann about you, just before
Christmas, when I knew you were going to propose to me. I said that I
could never give up my singing. Can you picture the self-importance of
that? Why, it doesn’t seem to me to matter two straws whether I do
or not. Naturally, I don’t want to earn my living by it any more, but
whether I sing or not doesn’t matter. And even as the words are in my
mouth I try to imagine myself not singing any more, and I can’t. It’s
become part of me, and while I blush to think of what I said to Hermann,
I wonder whether it’s not true.”
She came and sat down by him again.
“I believe you have got enough artistic instinct to understand that,
Michael,” she said, “and to know what a tremendous help it is to one’s
art to be a professional, and to be judged seriously. I suppose that,
ideally, if one loves music as I do one ought to be able to do one’s
very best, whether one is singing professionally or not, but it
is hardly possible. Why, the whole difference between amateurs and
professionals is that amateurs sing charmingly and professionals just
sing. Only they sing as well as they possibly can, not only because they
love it, but because if they don’t they will be dropped on to, and if
they continue not singing their best, will lose their place which they
have so hardly won. I can see myself, perhaps, not singing at all,
literally never opening my lips in song again, but I can’t see myself
coming down to the Drill Hall at Brixton, extremely beautifully
dressed, with rows of pearls, and arriving rather late, and just singing
charmingly. It’s such a spur to know that serious musicians judge one’s
performance by the highest possible standard. It’s so relaxing to think
that one can easily sing well enough, that one can delight ninety-nine
hundredths of the audience without any real effort. I could sing ‘The
Lost Chord’ and move the whole Drill Hall at Brixton to tears. But there
might be one man there who knew, you or Hermann or some other, and at
the end he would just shrug his shoulders ever so slightly, and I would
wish I had never been born.”
She paused a moment.
“I’ll not sing any more at all, ever,” she said, “or I must sing to
those who will take me seriously and judge me ruthlessly. To sing just
well enough to please isn’t possible. I’ll do either you like.”
Mrs. Falbe strayed in at this moment with her finger in her book, but
otherwise as purposeless as a wandering mist.
“I was afraid it might be going to get chilly,” she remarked. “After a
hot day there is often a cool evening. Will you stop and dine, Lord--I
mean, Michael?”
“Please; certainly!” said Michael.
“Then I hope there will be something for you to eat. Sylvia, is there
something to eat? No doubt you will see to that, darling. I shall just
rest upstairs for a little before dinner, and perhaps finish my book. So
pleased you are stopping.”
She drifted towards the studio door, in thistledown fashion catching at
corners a little, and then moving smoothly on again, talking gently half
to herself, half to the others.
“And Hermann’s not in yet, but if Lord--I mean, Michael, is going to
stop here till dinnertime, it won’t matter whether Hermann comes in in
time to dress or not, as Michael is not dressed either. Oh, there is the
postman’s knock! What a noise! I am not expecting any letters.”
The knock in question, however, proved to be Hermann, who, as was
generally the case, had forgotten his latchkey. He ran into his mother
at the studio door, and came and sat down, regardless of whether he was
wanted or not, between the two on the sofa, and took an arm of each.
“I probably intrude,” he said, “but such is my intention. I’ve just seen
Lady Barbara, who says that the shock has not been too much for Mike’s
father. That is a good thing; she says he is taking nourishment much as
usual. I suppose I oughtn’t to jest on so serious a subject, but I
took my cue from Lady Barbara. It appears that we have blue blood too,
Sylvia, and we must behave more like aristocrats. A Tracy in the time
of King John flirted, if no more, with a Comber. And what about your
career, Sylvia? Are you going to continue to urge your wild career,
or not? I ask with a purpose, as Blackiston proposes we should give a
concert together in the third week in July. The Queen’s Hall is vacant
one afternoon, and he thinks we might sing and play to them. I’m on if
you are. It will be about the last concert of the season, too, so we
shall have to do our best. Otherwise we, or I, anyhow, will start again
in the autumn with a black mark. By the way, are you going to start
again in the autumn? It wouldn’t surprise me one bit to hear that you
and Mike had been talking about just that.”
“Don’t be too clever to live, Hermann,” said Sylvia.
“I don’t propose to die, if you mean that. Oh, Blackiston had another
suggestion also. He wanted to know if we would consider making a short
tour in Germany in the autumn. He says that the beloved Fatherland is
rather disposed to be interested in us. He thinks we should have
good audiences at Leipzig, and so on. There’s a tendency, he says, to
recognise poor England, a cordial intention, anyhow. I said that in your
case there might be domestic considerations which--But I think I shall
go in any case. Lord, fancy playing in Germany to Germans again. Fancy
being listened to by a German audience; fancy if they approved.”
Michael leaned forward, putting his elbow into Hermann’s chest. Early
December had already been mentioned as a date for their marriage, and as
a pre-nuptial journey, this seemed to him a plan ecstatically ideal.
“Yes, Sylvia,” he said. “The answer is yes. I shall come with you, you
know. I can see it; a triumphal procession, you two making noises, and
me listening. A month’s tour, Hermann. Middle of October till middle of
November. Yes, yes.”
All his tremendous pride in her singing, dormant for the moment under
the wonder of his love, rose to the surface. He knew what her singing
meant to her, and, from their conversation together just now, how keen
was her eagerness for the strict judgment of those who knew, how she
loved that austere pinnacle of daylight. Here was an ideal opportunity;
never yet, since she had won her place as a singer, had she sung in
Germany, that Mecca of the musical artist, and in her case, the land
from which she sprung. Had the scheme implied a postponement of their
marriage, he would still have declared himself for it, for he unerringly
felt for her in this; he knew intuitively what delicious beckoning this
held for her.
“Yes, yes,” he repeated, “I must have you do that, Sylvia. I don’t care
what Hermann wants or what you want. I want it.”
“Yes, but who’s to do the playing and the singing?” asked Hermann.
“Isn’t it a question, perhaps, for--”
Michael felt quite secure about the feelings of the other two, and
rudely interrupted.
“No,” he said. “It’s a question for me. When the Fatherland hears that
I am there it will no doubt ask me to play and sing instead of you two.
Lord! Fancy marrying into such a distinguished family. I burst with
pride!”
It required, then, little debate, since all three were agreed, before
Hermann was empowered with authority to make arrangements, and they
remained simultaneously talking till Mrs. Falbe, again drifting in,
announced that the bell for dinner had sounded some minutes before. She
had her finger in the last chapter of “Lady Ursula’s Ordeal,” and laid
it face downwards on the table to resume again at the earliest possible
moment. This opportunity was granted her when, at the close of dinner,
coffee and the evening paper came in together. This Hermann opened at
the middle page.
“Hallo!” he said. “That’s horrible! The Heir Apparent of the Austrian
Emperor has been murdered at Serajevo. Servian plot, apparently.”
“Oh, what a dreadful thing,” said Mrs. Falbe, opening her book. “Poor
man, what had he done?”
Hermann took a cigarette, frowning.
“It may be a match--” he began.
Mrs. Falbe diverted her attention from “Lady Ursula” for a moment.
“They are on the chimney-piece, dear,” she said, thinking he spoke of
material matches.
Michael felt that Hermann saw something, or conjectured something
ominous in this news, for he sat with knitted brow reading, and letting
the match burn down.
“Yes; it seems that Servian officers are implicated,” he said. “And
there are materials enough already for a row between Austria and Servia
without this.”
“Those tiresome Balkan States,” said Mrs. Falbe, slowly immersing
herself like a diving submarine in her book. “They are always
quarrelling. Why doesn’t Austria conquer them all and have done with
it?”
This simple and striking solution of the whole Balkan question was
her final contribution to the topic, for at this moment she became
completely submerged, and cut off, so to speak, from the outer world, in
the lucent depths of Lady Ursula.
Hermann glanced through the other pages, and let the paper slide to the
floor.
“What will Austria do?” he said. “Supposing she threatens Servia in some
outrageous way and Russia says she won’t stand it? What then?”
Michael looked across to Sylvia; he was much more interested in the way
she dabbled the tips of her hands in the cool water of her finger bowl
than in what Hermann was saying. Her fingers had an extraordinary life
of their own; just now they were like a group of maidens by a fountain.
. . . But Hermann repeated the question to him personally.
“Oh, I suppose there will be a lot of telegraphing,” he said, “and
perhaps a board of arbitration. After all, one expected a European
conflagration over the war in the Balkan States, and again over their
row with Turkey. I don’t believe in European conflagrations. We are all
too much afraid of each other. We walk round each other like collie dogs
on the tips of their toes, gently growling, and then quietly get back to
our own territories and lie down again.”
Hermann laughed.
“Thank God, there’s that wonderful fire-engine in Germany ready to turn
the hose on conflagrations.”
“What fire-engine?” asked Michael.
“The Emperor, of course. We should have been at war ten times over but
for him.”
Sylvia dried her finger-tips one by one.
“Lady Barbara doesn’t quite take that view of him, does she, Mike?” she
asked.
Michael suddenly remembered how one night in the flat Aunt Barbara had
suddenly turned the conversation from the discussion of cognate topics,
on hearing that the Falbes were Germans, only to resume it again when
they had gone.
“I don’t fancy she does,” he said. “But then, as you know, Aunt Barbara
has original views on every subject.”
Hermann did not take the possible hint here conveyed to drop the matter.
“Well, then, what do you think about him?” he asked.
Michael laughed.
“My dear Hermann,” he said, “how often have you told me that we English
don’t pay the smallest attention to international politics. I am aware
that I don’t; I know nothing whatever about them.”
Hermann shook off the cloud of preoccupation that so unaccountably,
to Michael’s thinking, had descended on him, and walked across to the
window.
“Well, long may ignorance be bliss,” he said. “Lord, what a divine
evening! ‘Uber allen gipfeln ist Ruhe.’ At least, there is peace on the
only summits visible, which are house roofs. There’s not a breath of
wind in the trees and chimney-pots; and it’s hot, it’s really hot.”
“I was afraid there was going to be a chill at sunset,” remarked Mrs.
Falbe subaqueously.
“Then you were afraid even where no fear was, mother darling,” said he,
“and if you would like to sit out in the garden I’ll take a chair out
for you, and a table and candles. Let’s all sit out; it’s a divine hour,
this hour after sunset. There are but a score of days in the whole year
when the hour after sunset is warm like this. It’s such a pity to
waste one indoors. The young people”--and he pointed to Sylvia and
Michael--“will gaze into each other’s hearts, and Mamma’s will beat in
unison with Lady Ursula’s, and I will sit and look at the sky and become
profoundly sentimental, like a good German.”
Hermann and Michael bestirred themselves, and presently the whole little
party had encamped on chairs placed in an oasis of rugs (this was done
at the special request of Mrs. Falbe, since Lady Ursula had caught a
chill that developed into consumption) in the small, high-walled garden.
Beyond at the bottom lay the road along the embankment and the grey-blue
Thames, and the dim woods of Battersea Park across the river. When they
came out, sparrows were still chirping in the ivy on the studio wall
and in the tall angle-leaved planes at the bottom of the little plot,
discussing, no doubt, the domestic arrangements for their comfort
during the night. But presently a sudden hush fell upon them, and their
shrillness was sharp no more against the drowsy hum of the city. The
sky overhead was of veiled blue, growing gradually more toneless as the
light faded, and was unflecked by any cloud, except where, high in the
zenith, a fleece of rosy vapour still caught the light of the sunken
sun, and flamed with the soft radiance of some snow-summit. Near it
there burned a molten planet, growing momentarily brighter as the night
gathered and presently beginning to be dimmed again as a tawny moon
three days past the full rose in the east above the low river horizon.
Occasionally a steamer hooted from the Thames and the noise of churned
waters sounded, or the crunch of a motor’s wheels, or the tapping of
the heels of a foot passenger on the pavement below the garden wall. But
such evidence of outside seemed but to accentuate the perfect peace of
this secluded little garden where the four sat: the hour and the place
were cut off from all turmoil and activities: for a moment the stream
of all their lives had flowed into a backwater, where it rested immobile
before the travel that was yet to come. So it seemed to Michael then,
and so years afterwards it seemed to him, as vividly as on this evening
when the tawny moon grew golden as it climbed the empty heavens, dimming
the stars around it.
What they talked of, even though it was Sylvia who spoke, seemed
external to the spirit of the hour. They seemed to have reached a point,
some momentary halting-place, where speech and thought even lay outside,
and the need of the spirit was merely to exist and be conscious of
its existence. Sometimes for a moment his past life with its
self-repression, its mute yearnings, its chrysalis stirrings, formed a
mist that dispersed again, sometimes for a moment in wonder at what
the future held, what joys and troubles, what achings, perhaps, and
anguishes, the unknown knocked stealthily at the door of his mind, but
then stole away unanswered and unwelcome, and for that hour, while Mrs.
Falbe finished with Lady Ursula, while Hermann smoked and sighed like a
sentimental German, and while he and Sylvia sat, speaking occasionally,
but more often silent, he was in some kind of Nirvana for which its own
existence was everything. Movement had ceased: he held his breath while
that divine pause lasted.
When it was broken, there was no shattering of it: it simply died away
like a long-drawn chord as Mrs. Falbe closed her book.
“She died,” she said, “I knew she would.”
Hermann gave a great shout of laughter.
“Darling mother, I’m ever so much obliged,” he said. “We had to return
to earth somehow. Where has everybody else been?”
Michael stirred in his chair.
“I’ve been here,” he said.
“How dull! Oh, I suppose that’s not polite to Sylvia. I’ve been in
Leipzig and in Frankfort and in Munich. You and Sylvia have been there,
too, I may tell you. But I’ve also been here: it’s jolly here.”
His sentimentalism had apparently not quite passed from him.
“Ah, we’ve stolen this hour!” he said. “We’ve taken it out of the
hurly-burly and had it to ourselves. It’s been ripping. But I’m back
from the rim of the world. Oh, I’ve been there, too, and looked out over
the immortal sea. Lieber Gott, what a sea, where we all come from, and
where we all go to! We’re just playing on the sand where the waves have
cast us up for one little hour. Oh, the pleasant warm sand and the play!
How I love it.”
He got out of his chair stretching himself, as Mrs. Falbe passed into
the house, and gave a hand on each side to Michael and Sylvia.
“Ah, it was a good thing I just caught that train at Victoria nearly
a year ago,” he said. “If I had been five seconds later, I should have
missed it, and so I should have missed my friend, and Sylvia would have
missed hers, and Mike would have missed his. As it is, here we all are.
Behold the last remnant of my German sentimentality evaporates, but I am
filled with a German desire for beer. Let us come into the studio, liebe
Kinder, and have beer and music and laughter. We cannot recapture this
hour or prolong it. But it was good, oh, so good! I thank God for this
hour.”
Sylvia put her hand on her brother’s arm, looking at him with just a
shade of anxiety.
“Nothing wrong, Hermann?” she asked.
“Wrong? There is nothing wrong unless it is wrong to be happy. But we
have to go forward: my only quarrel with life is that. I would stop it
now if I could, so that time should not run on, and we should stay just
as we are. Ah, what does the future hold? I am glad I do not know.”
Sylvia laughed.
“The immediate future holds beer apparently,” she said. “It also hold
a great deal of work for you and me, if it is to hold Leipzig and
Frankfort and Munich. Oh, Hermann, what glorious days!”
They walked together into the studio, and as they entered Hermann looked
back over her into the dim garden. Then he pulled down the blind with a
rattle.
“‘Move on there!’ said the policeman,” he remarked. “And so they moved
on.”
The news about the murder of the Austrian Grand Duke, which, for that
moment at dinner, had caused Hermann to peer with apprehension into the
veil of the future, was taken quietly enough by the public in general in
England. It was a nasty incident, no doubt, and the murder having been
committed on Servian soil, the pundits of the Press gave themselves
an opportunity for subsequently saying that they were right, by
conjecturing that Austria might insist on a strict inquiry into the
circumstances, and the due punishment of not only the actual culprits
but of those also who perhaps were privy to the plot. But three days
afterwards there was but little uneasiness; the Stock Exchanges of
the European capitals--those highly sensitive barometers of coming
storm--were but slightly affected for the moment, and within a week
had steadied themselves again. From Austria there came no sign of any
unreasonable demand which might lead to trouble with Servia, and so with
Slavonic feeling generally, and by degrees that threatening of storm,
that sudden lightning on the horizon passed out of the mind of the
public. There had been that one flash, no more, and even that had not
been answered by any growl of thunder; the storm did not at once move
up and the heavens above were still clear and sunny by day, and
starry-kirtled at night. But here and there were those who, like Hermann
on the first announcement of the catastrophe, scented trouble, and
Michael, going to see Aunt Barbara one afternoon early in the second
week of July, found that she was one of them.
“I distrust it all, my dear,” she said to him. “I am full of uneasiness.
And what makes me more uneasy is that they are taking it so quietly
at the Austrian Embassy and at the German. I dined at one Embassy
last night and at the other only a few nights ago, and I can’t get
anybody--not even the most indiscreet of the Secretaries--to say a word
about it.”
“But perhaps there isn’t a word to be said,” suggested Michael.
“I can’t believe that. Austria cannot possibly let an incident of that
sort pass. There is mischief brewing. If she was merely intending to
insist--as she has every right to do--on an inquiry being held that
should satisfy reasonable demands for justice, she would have insisted
on that long ago. But a fortnight has passed now, and still she makes
no sign. I feel sure that something is being arranged. Dear me, I quite
forgot, Tony asked me not to talk about it. But it doesn’t matter with
you.”
“But what do you mean by something being arranged?” asked Michael.
She looked round as if to assure herself that she and Michael were
alone.
“I mean this: that Austria is being persuaded to make some outrageous
demand, some demand that no independent country could possibly grant.”
“But who is persuading her?” asked Michael.
“My dear, you--like all the rest of England--are fast asleep. Who but
Germany, and that dangerous monomaniac who rules Germany? She has long
been wanting war, and she has only been delaying the dawning of Der Tag,
till all her preparations were complete, and she was ready to hurl her
armies, and her fleet too, east and west and north. Mark my words! She
is about ready now, and I believe she is going to take advantage of her
opportunity.”
She leaned forward in her chair.
“It is such an opportunity as has never occurred before,” she said, “and
in a hundred years none so fit may occur again. Here are we--England--on
the brink of civil war with Ireland and the Home Rulers; our hands are
tied, or, rather, are occupied with our own troubles. Anyhow, Germany
thinks so: that I know for a fact among so much that is only conjecture.
And perhaps she is right. Who knows whether she may not be right, and
that if she forces on war whether we shall range ourselves with our
allies?”
Michael laughed.
“But aren’t you piling up a European conflagration rather in a hurry,
Aunt Barbara?” he asked.
“There will be hurry enough for us, for France and Russia and perhaps
England, but not for Germany. She is never in a hurry: she waits till
she is ready.”
A servant brought in tea and Lady Barbara waited till he had left the
room again.
“It is as simple as an addition sum,” she said, “if you grant the first
step, that Austria is going to make some outrageous demand of
Servia. What follows? Servia refuses that demand, and Austria begins
mobilisation in order to enforce it. Servia appeals to Russia,
invokes the bond of blood, and Russia remonstrates with Austria. Her
representations will be of no use: you may stake all you have on that;
and eventually, since she will be unable to draw back she, too, will
begin in her slow, cumbrous manner, hampered by those immense distances
and her imperfect railway system, to mobilise also. Then will Germany,
already quite prepared, show her hand. She will demand that Russia shall
cease mobilisation, and again will Russia refuse. That will set the
military machinery of France going. All the time the governments of
Europe will be working for peace, all, that is, except one, which is
situated at Berlin.”
Michael felt inclined to laugh at this rapid and disastrous sequence of
ominous forebodings; it was so completely characteristic of Aunt Barbara
to take the most violent possible view of the situation, which no doubt
had its dangers. And what Michael felt was felt by the enormous majority
of English people.
“Dear Aunt Barbara, you do get on quick,” he said.
“It will happen quickly,” she said. “There is that little cloud in the
east like a man’s hand today, and rather like that mailed fist which
our sweet peaceful friend in Germany is so fond of talking about. But it
will spread over the sky, I tell you, like some tropical storm. France
is unready, Russia is unready; only Germany and her marionette, Austria,
the strings of which she pulls, is ready.”
“Go on prophesying,” said Michael.
“I wish I could. Ever since that Sarajevo murder I have thought of
nothing else day and night. But how events will develop then I can’t
imagine. What will England do? Who knows? I only know what Germany
thinks she will do, and that is, stand aside because she can’t stir,
with this Irish mill-stone round her neck. If Germany thought otherwise,
she is perfectly capable of sending a dozen submarines over to our naval
manoeuvres and torpedoing our battleships right and left.”
Michael laughed outright at this.
“While a fleet of Zeppelins hovers over London, and drops bombs on the
War Office and the Admiralty,” he suggested.
But Aunt Barbara was not in the least diverted by this.
“And if England stands aside,” she said, “Der Tag will only dawn a
little later, when Germany has settled with France and Russia. We shall
live to see Der Tag, Michael, unless we are run over by motor-buses, and
pray God we shall see it soon, for the sooner the better. Your adorable
Falbes, now, Sylvia and Hermann. What do they think of it?”
“Hermann was certainly rather--rather upset when he read of the Sarajevo
murders,” he said. “But he pins his faith on the German Emperor, whom he
alluded to as a fire-engine which would put out any conflagration.”
Aunt Barbara rose in violent incredulity.
“Pish and bosh!” she remarked. “If he had alluded to him as an
incendiary bomb, there would have been more sense in his simile.”
“Anyhow, he and Sylvia are planning a musical tour in Germany in the
autumn,” said Michael.
“‘It’s a long, long way to Tipperary,’” remarked Aunt Barbara
enigmatically.
“Why Tipperary?” asked Michael.
“Oh, it’s just a song I heard at a music-hall the other night. There’s
a jolly catchy tune to it, which has rung in my head ever since. That’s
the sort of music I like, something you can carry away with you. And
your music, Michael?”
“Rather in abeyance. There are--other things to think about.”
Aunt Barbara got up.
“Ah, tell me more about them,” she said. “I want to get this nightmare
out of my head. Sylvia, now. Sylvia is a good cure for the nightmare. Is
she kind as she is fair, Michael?”
Michael was silent for a moment. Then he turned a quiet, radiant face to
her.
“I can’t talk about it,” he said. “I can’t get accustomed to the wonder
of it.”
“That will do. That’s a completely satisfactory account. But go on.”
Michael laughed.
“How can I?” he asked. “There’s no end and no beginning. I can’t ‘go on’
as you order me about a thing like that. There is Sylvia; there is me.”
“I must be content with that, then,” she said, smiling.
“We are,” said Michael.
Lady Barbara waited a moment without speaking.
“And your mother?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“She still refuses to see me,” he said. “She still thinks it was I who
made the plot to take her away and shut her up. She is often angry with
me, poor darling, but--but you see it isn’t she who is angry: it’s just
her malady.”
“Yes, my dear,” said Lady Barbara. “I am so glad you see it like that.”
“How else could I see it? It was my real mother whom I began to know
last Christmas, and whom I was with in town for the three months that
followed. That’s how I think of her: I can’t think of her as anything
else.”
“And how is she otherwise?”
Again he shook his head.
“She is wretched, though they say that all she feels is dim and veiled,
that we mustn’t think of her as actually unhappy. Sometimes there are
good days, when she takes a certain pleasure in her walks and in looking
after a little plot of ground where she gardens. And, thank God, that
sudden outburst when she tried to kill me seems to have entirely passed
from her mind. They don’t think she remembers it at all. But then the
good days are rare, and are growing rarer, and often now she sits doing
nothing at all but crying.”
Aunt Barbara laid her hand on him.
“Oh, my dear,” she said.
Michael paused for a moment, his brown eyes shining.
“If only she could come back just for a little to what she was in
January,” he said. “She was happier then, I think, than she ever was
before. I can’t help wondering if anyhow I could have prolonged those
days, by giving myself up to her more completely.”
“My dear, you needn’t wonder about that,” said Aunt Barbara. “Sir James
told me that it was your love and nothing else at all that gave her
those days.”
Michael’s lips quivered.
“I can’t tell you what they were to me,” he said, “for she and I found
each other then, and we both felt we had missed each other so much and
so long. She was happy then, and I, too. And now everything has
been taken from her, and still, in spite of that, my cup is full to
overflowing.”
“That’s how she would have it, Michael,” said Barbara.
“Yes, I know that. I remind myself of that.”
Again he paused.
“They don’t think she will live very long,” he said. “She is getting
physically much weaker. But during this last week or two she has been
less unhappy, they think. They say some new change may come any time:
it may be only the great change--I mean her death; but it is possible
before that that her mind will clear again. Sir James told me that
occasionally happened, like--like a ray of sunlight after a stormy day.
It would be good if that happened. I would give almost anything to feel
that she and I were together again, as we were.”
Barbara, childless, felt something of motherhood. Michael’s simplicity
and his sincerity were already known to her, but she had never yet
known the strength of him. You could lean on Michael. In his quiet,
undemonstrative way he supported you completely, as a son should; there
was no possibility of insecurity. . . .
“God bless you, my dear,” she said.