The Second E. F. Benson Megapack

by E. F. Benson

  “Can’t we go on as we were, Michael?” she said.

  He looked at her incredulously.

  “Oh, no, of course not that,” he said.

  She moved a step towards him.

  “I can’t think of you in any other way,” she said, as if making an appeal.

  He stood absolutely unresponsive. Something within him longed that she should advance a step more, that he should again have the touch of her hands on his shoulders, but another instinct stronger than that made him revoke his desire, and if she had moved again he would certainly have fallen back before her.

  “It may seem ridiculous to you,” he said, “since you do not care. But I can’t do that. Does that seem absurd to you I? I am afraid it does; but that is because you don’t understand. By all means let us be what they call excellent friends. But there are certain little things which seem nothing to you, and they mean so much to me. I can’t explain; it’s just the brotherly relation which I can’t stand. It’s no use suggesting that we should be as we were before—”

  She understood well enough for his purposes.

  “I see,” she said.

  Michael paused for a moment.

  “I think I’ll be going now,” he said. “I am off to Ashbridge in two days. Give Hermann my love, and a jolly Christmas to you both. I’ll let you know when I am back in town.”

  She had no reply to this; she saw its justice, and acquiesced.

  “Good-bye, then,” said Michael.

  He walked home from Chelsea in that utterly blank and unfeeling consciousness which almost invariably is the sequel of any event that brings with it a change of attitude towards life generally. Not for a moment did he tell himself that he had been awakened from a dream, or abandon his conviction that his dream was to be made real. The rare, quiet determination that had made him give up his stereotyped mode of life in the summer and take to music was still completely his, and, if anything, it had been reinforced by Sylvia’s emphatic statement that “she wanted to care.” Only her imagining that their old relations could go on showed him how far she was from knowing what “to care” meant. At first without knowing it, but with a gradually increasing keenness of consciousness, he had become aware that this sisterly attitude of hers towards him had meant so infinitely much, because he had taken it to be the prelude to something more. Now he saw that it was, so to speak, a piece complete in itself. It bore no relation to what he had imagined it would lead into. No curtain went up when the prelude was over; the curtain remained inexorably hanging there, not acknowledging the prelude at all. Not for a moment did he accuse her of encouraging him to have thought so; she had but given him a frankness of comradeship that meant to her exactly what it expressed. But he had thought otherwise; he had imagined that it would grow towards a culmination. All that (and here was the change that made his mind blank and unfeeling) had to be cut away, and with it all the budding branches that his imagination had pictured as springing from it. He could not be comrade to her as he was to her brother—the inexorable demands of sex forbade it.

  He went briskly enough through the clean, dry streets. The frost of last night had held throughout the morning, and the sunlight sparkled with a rare and seasonable brightness of a traditional Christmas weather. Hecatombs of turkeys hung in the poulterers’ windows, among sprigs of holly, and shops were bright with children’s toys. The briskness of the day had flushed the colour into the faces of the passengers in the street, and the festive air of the imminent holiday was abroad. All this Michael noticed with a sense of detachment; what had happened had caused a veil to fall between himself and external things; it was as if he was sealed into some glass cage, and had no contact with what passed round him. This lasted throughout his walk, and when he let himself into his flat it was with the same sense of alienation that he found his cousin Francis gracefully reclining on the sofa that he had pulled up in front of the fire.

  Francis was inclined to be querulous.

  “I was just wondering whether I should give you up,” he said. “The hour that you named for lunch was half-past one. And I have almost forgotten what your clock sounded like when it struck two.”

  This also seemed to matter very little.

  “Did I ask you to lunch?” he said. “I really quite forgot; I can’t even remember doing it now.”

  “But there will be lunch?” asked Francis rather anxiously.

  “Of course. It’ll be ready in ten minutes.”

  Michael came and stood in front of the fire, and looked with a sudden spasm of envy on the handsome boy who lay there. If he himself had been anything like that—

  “I was distinctly chippy this morning,” remarked Francis, “and so I didn’t so much mind waiting for lunch. I attribute it to too much beer and bacon last night at your friend’s house. I enjoyed it—I mean the evening, and for that matter the bacon—at the time. It really was extremely pleasant.”

  He yawned largely and openly.

  “I had no idea you could frolic like that, Mike,” he said. “It was quite a new light on your character. How did you learn to do it? It’s quite a new accomplishment.”

  Here again the veil was drawn. Was it last night only that Falbe had played the Variations, and that they had acted charades? Francis proceeded in bland unconsciousness.

  “I didn’t know Germans could be so jolly,” he continued. “As a rule I don’t like Germans. When they try to be jolly they generally only succeed in being top-heavy. But, of course, your friend is half-English. Can’t he play, too? And to think of your having written those ripping tunes. His sister, too—no wonder we haven’t seen much of you, Mike, if that’s where you’ve been spending your time. She’s rather like the new girl at the Gaiety, but handsomer. I like big girls, don’t you? Oh, I forgot, you don’t like girls much, anyhow. But are you learning your mistake, Mike? You looked last night as if you were getting more sensible.”

  Michael moved away impatiently.

  “Oh, shut it, Francis,” he observed.

  Francis raised himself on his elbow.

  “Why, what’s up?” he asked. “Won’t she turn a favourable eye?”

  Michael wheeled round savagely.

  “Please remember you are talking about a lady, and not a Gaiety lady,” he remarked.

  This brought Francis to his feet.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I was only indulging in badinage until lunch was ready.”

  Michael could not make up his mind to tell his cousin what had happened; but he was aware of having spoken more strongly than the situation, as Francis knew of it, justified.

  “Let’s have lunch, then,” he said. “We shall be better after lunch, as one’s nurse used to say. And are you coming to Ashbridge, Francis?”

  “Yes; I’ve been talking to Aunt Bar about it this morning. We’re both coming; the family is going to rally round you, Mike, and defend you from Uncle Robert. There’s sure to be some duck shooting, too, isn’t there?”

  This was a considerable relief to Michael.

  “Oh, that’s ripping,” he said. “You and Aunt Barbara always make me feel that there’s a good deal of amusement to be extracted from the world.”

  “To be sure there is. Isn’t that what the world is for? Lunch and amusement, and dinner and amusement. Aunt Bar told me she dined with you the other night, and had a quantity of amusement as well as an excellent dinner. She hinted—”

  “Oh, Aunt Barbara’s always hinting,” said Michael.

  “I know. After all, everything that isn’t hints is obvious, and so there’s nothing to say about it. Tell me more about the Falbes, Mike. Will they let me go there again, do you think? Was I popular? Don’t tell me if I wasn’t.”

  Michael smiled at this egoism that could not help being charming.

  “Would you care if you weren’t?” he asked.

  “Very much. One naturally wants to please delightful people. And I think they are both delightful. Especially the girl; but then she starts with the tremendous advantage o
f being—of being a girl. I believe you are in love with her, Mike, just as I am. It’s that which makes you so grumpy. But then you never do fall in love. It’s a pity; you miss a lot of jolly trouble.”

  Michael felt a sudden overwhelming desire to make Francis stop this maddening twaddle; also the events of the morning were beginning to take on an air of reality, and as this grew he felt the need of sympathy of some kind. Francis might not be able to give him anything that was of any use, but it would do no harm to see if his cousin’s buoyant unconscious philosophy, which made life so exciting and pleasant a thing to him, would in any way help. Besides, he must stop this light banter, which was like drawing plaster off a sore and unhealed wound.

  “You’re quite right,” he said. “I am in love with her. Furthermore, I asked her to marry me this morning.”

  This certainly had an effect.

  “Good Lord!” said Francis. “And do you mean to say she refused you?”

  “She didn’t accept me,” said Michael. “We—we adjourned.”

  “But why on earth didn’t she take you?” asked Francis.

  All Michael’s old sensitiveness, his self-consciousness of his plainness, his awkwardness, his big hands, his short legs, came back to him.

  “I should think you could see well enough if you look at me,” he said, “without my telling you.”

  “Oh, that silly old rot,” said Francis cheerfully. “I thought you had forgotten all about it.”

  “I almost had—in fact I quite had until this morning,” said Michael. “If I had remembered it I shouldn’t have asked her.”

  He corrected himself.

  “No, I don’t think that’s true,” he said. “I should have asked her, anyhow; but I should have been prepared for her not to take me. As a matter of fact, I wasn’t.”

  Francis turned sideways to the table, throwing one leg over the other.

  “That’s nonsense,” he said. “It doesn’t matter whether a man’s ugly or not.”

  “It doesn’t as long as he is not,” remarked Michael grimly.

  “It doesn’t matter much in any case. We’re all ugly compared to girls; and why ever they should consent to marry any of us awful hairy things, smelling of smoke and drink, is more than I can make out; but, as a matter of fact, they do. They don’t mind what we look like; what they care about is whether we want them. Of course, there are exceptions—”

  “You see one,” said Michael.

  “No, I don’t. Good Lord, you’ve only asked her once. You’ve got to make yourself felt. You’re not intending to give up, are you?”

  “I couldn’t give up.”

  “Well then, just hold on. She likes you, doesn’t she?”

  “Certainly,” said Michael, without hesitation. “But that’s a long way from the other thing.”

  “It’s on the same road.”

  Michael got up.

  “It may be,” he said, “but it strikes me it’s round the corner. You can’t even see one from the other.”

  “Possibly not. But you never know how near the corner really is. Go for her, Mike, full speed ahead.”

  “But how?”

  “Oh, there are hundreds of ways. I’m not sure that one of the best isn’t to keep away for a bit. Even if she doesn’t want you just now, when you are there, she may get to want you when you aren’t. I don’t think I should go on the mournful Byronic plan if I were you; I don’t think it would suit your style; you’re too heavily built to stand leaning against the chimney-piece, gazing at her and dishevelling your hair.”

  Michael could not help laughing.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, don’t make a joke of it,” he said.

  “Why not? It isn’t a tragedy yet. It won’t be a tragedy till she marries somebody else, or definitely says no. And until a thing is proved to be tragic, the best way to deal with it is to treat it like a comedy which is going to end well. It’s only the second act now, you see, when everything gets into a mess. By the merciful decrees of Providence, you see, girls on the whole want us as much as we want them. That’s what makes it all so jolly.”

  Michael went down next day to Ashbridge, where Aunt Barbara and Francis were to follow the day after, and found, after the freedom and interests of the last six months, that the pompous formal life was more intolerable than ever. He was clearly in disgrace still, as was made quite clear to him by his father’s icy and awful politeness when it was necessary to speak to him, and by his utter unconsciousness of his presence when it was not. This he had expected. Christmas had ushered in a truce in which no guns were discharged, but remained sighted and pointed, ready to fire.

  But though there was no change in his father, his mother seemed to Michael to be curiously altered; her mind, which, as has been already noticed, was usually in a stunned condition, seemed to have awakened like a child from its sleep, and to have begun vaguely crying in an inarticulate discomfort. It was true that Petsy was no more, having succumbed to a bilious attack of unusual severity, but a second Petsy had already taken her place, and Lady Ashbridge sat with him—it was a gentleman Petsy this time—in her lap as before, and occasionally shed a tear or two over Petsy II. in memory of Petsy I. But this did not seem to account for the wakening up of her mind and emotions into this state of depression and anxiety. It was as if all her life she had been quietly dozing in the sun, and that the place where she sat had passed into the shade, and she had awoke cold and shivering from a bitter wind. She had become far more talkative, and though she had by no means abandoned her habit of upsetting any conversation by the extreme obviousness of her remarks, she asked many more questions, and, as Michael noticed, often repeated a question to which she had received an answer only a few minutes before. During dinner Michael constantly found her looking at him in a shy and eager manner, removing her gaze when she found it was observed, and when, later, after a silent cigarette with his father in the smoking-room, during which Lord Ashbridge, with some ostentation, studied an Army List, Michael went to his bedroom, he was utterly astonished, when he gave a “Come in” to a tapping at his door, to see his mother enter. Her maid was standing behind her holding the inevitable Petsy, and she herself hovered hesitatingly in the doorway.

  “I heard you come up, Michael,” she said, “and I wondered if it would annoy you if I came in to have a little talk with you. But I won’t come in if it would annoy you. I only thought I should like a little chat with you, quietly, secure from interruptions.”

  Michael instantly got up from the chair in front of his fire, in which he had already begun to see images of Sylvia. This intrusion of his mother’s was a thing utterly unprecedented, and somehow he at once connected its innovation with the strange manner he had remarked already. But there was complete cordiality in his welcome, and he wheeled up a chair for her.

  “But by all means come in, mother,” he said. “I was not going to bed yet.”

  Lady Ashbridge looked round for her maid.

  “And will Petsy not annoy you if he sits quietly on my knee?” she asked.

  “Of course not.”

  Lady Ashbridge took the dog.

  “There, that is nice,” she said. “I told them to see you had a good fire on this cold night. Has it been very cold in London?”

  This question had already been asked and answered twice, now for the third time Michael admitted the severity of the weather.

  “I hope you wrap up well,” she said. “I should be sorry if you caught cold, and so, I am sure, your father would be. I wish you could make up your mind not to vex him any more, but go back into the Guards.”

  “I’m afraid that’s impossible, mother,” he said.

  “Well, if it’s impossible there is no use in saying anything more about it. But it vexed him very much. He is still vexed with you. I wish he was not vexed. It is a sad thing when father and son fall out. But you do wrap up, I hope, in the cold weather?”

  Michael felt a sudden pang of anxiety and alarm. Each separate thing that his mother said
was sensible enough, but in the sum they were nonsense.

  “You have been in London since September,” she went on. “That is a long time to be in London. Tell me about your life there. Do you work hard? Not too hard, I hope?”

  “No! Hard enough to keep me busy,” he said.

  “Tell me about it all. I am afraid I have not been a very good mother to you; I have not entered into your life enough. I want to do so now. But I don’t think you ever wanted to confide in me. It is sad when sons don’t confide in their mothers. But I daresay it was my fault, and now I know so little about you.”

  She paused a moment, stroking her dog’s ears, which twitched under her touch.

  “I hope you are happy, Michael,” she said. “I don’t think I am so happy as I used to be. But don’t tell your father; I feel sure he does not notice it, and it would vex him. But I want you to be happy; you used not to be when you were little; you were always sensitive and queer. But you do seem happier now, and that’s a good thing.”

  Here again this was all sensible, when taken in bits, but its aspect was different when considered together. She looked at Michael anxiously a moment, and then drew her chair closer to him, laying her thin, veined hand, sparkling with many rings, on his knee.

  “But it wasn’t I who made you happier,” she said, “and that’s so dreadful. I never made anybody happy. Your father always made himself happy, and he liked being himself, but I suspect you haven’t liked being yourself, poor Michael. But now that you’re living the life you chose, which vexes your father, is it better with you?”

  The shyness had gone from the gaze that he had seen her direct at him at dinner, which fugitively fluttered away when she saw that it was observed, and now that it was bent so unwaveringly on him he saw shining through it what he had never seen before, namely, the mother-love which he had missed all his life. Now, for the first time, he saw it; recognising it, as by divination, when, with ray serene and untroubled, it burst through the mists that seemed to hang about his mother’s mind. Before, noticing her change of manner, her restless questions, he had been vaguely alarmed, and as they went on the alarm had become more pronounced; but at this moment, when there shone forth the mother-instinct which had never come out or blossomed in her life, but had been overlaid completely with routine and conventionality, rendering it too indolent to put forth petals, Michael had no thought but for that which she had never given him yet, and which, now it began to expand before him, he knew he had missed all his life.