by E. F. Benson
She took up his big hand that lay on his knee and began timidly stroking it.
“Since you have been away,” she said, “and since your father has been vexed with you, I have begun to see how lonely you must have been. What taught me that, I am afraid, was only that I have begun to feel lonely, too. Nobody wants me; even Petsy, when she died, didn’t want me to be near her, and then it began to strike me that perhaps you might want me. There was no one else, and who should want me if my son did not? I never gave you the chance before, God forgive me, and now perhaps it is too late. You have learned to do without me.”
That was bitterly true; the truth of it stabbed Michael. On his side, as he knew, he had made no effort either, or if he had they had been but childish efforts, easily repulsed. He had not troubled about it, and if she was to blame, the blame was his also. She had been slow to show the mother-instinct, but he had been just as wanting in the tenderness of the son.
He was profoundly touched by this humble timidity, by the sincerity, vague but unquestionable, that lay behind it.
“It’s never too late, is it?” he said, bending down and kissing the thin white hands that held his. “We are in time, after all, aren’t we?”
She gave a little shiver.
“Oh, don’t kiss my hands, Michael,” she said. “It hurts me that you should do that. But it is sweet of you to say that I am not too late, after all. Michael, may I just take you in my arms—may I?”
He half rose.
“Oh, mother, how can you ask?” he said.
“Then let me do it. No, my darling, don’t move. Just sit still as you are, and let me just get my arms about you, and put my head on your shoulder, and hold me close like that for a moment, so that I can realise that I am not too late.”
She got up, and, leaning over him, held him so for a moment, pressing her cheek close to his, and kissing him on the eyes and on the mouth.
“Ah, that is nice,” she said. “It makes my loneliness fall away from me. I am not quite alone any more. And now, if you are not tired will you let me talk to you a little more, and learn a little more about you?”
She pulled her chair again nearer him, so that sitting there she could clasp his arm.
“I want your happiness, dear,” she said, “but there is so little now that I can do to secure it. I must put that into other hands. You are twenty-five, Michael; you are old enough to get married. All Combers marry when they are twenty-five, don’t they? Isn’t there some girl you would like to be yours? But you must love her, you know, you must want her, you mustn’t be able to do without her. It won’t do to marry just because you are twenty-five.”
It would no more have entered into Michael’s head this morning to tell to his mother about Sylvia than to have discussed counterpoint with her. But then this morning he had not been really aware that he had a mother. But to tell her now was not unthinkable, but inevitable.
“Yes, there is a girl whom I can’t do without,” he said.
Lady Ashbridge’s face lit up.
“Ah, tell me about her—tell me about her,” she said. “You want her, you can’t do without her; that is the right wife for you.”
Michael caught at his mother’s hand as it stroked his sleeve.
“But she is not sure that she can do with me,” he said.
Her face was not dimmed at this.
“Oh, you may be sure she doesn’t know her own mind,” she said. “Girls so often don’t. You must not be down-hearted about it. Who is she? Tell me about her.”
“She’s the sister of my great friend, Hermann Falbe,” he said, “who teaches me music.”
This time the gladness faded from her.
“Oh, my dear, it will vex your father again,” she said, “that you should want to marry the sister of a music-teacher. It will never do to vex him again. Is she not a lady?”
Michael laughed.
“But certainly she is,” he said. “Her father was German, her mother was a Tracy, just as well-born as you or I.”
“How odd, then, that her brother should have taken to giving music lessons. That does not sound good. Perhaps they are poor, and certainly there is no disgrace in being poor. And what is her name?”
“Sylvia,” said Michael. “You have probably heard of her; she is the Miss Falbe who made such a sensation in London last season by her singing.”
The old outlook, the old traditions were beginning to come to the surface again in poor Lady Ashbridge’s mind.
“Oh, my dear!” she said. “A singer! That would vex your father terribly. Fancy the daughter of a Miss Tracy becoming a singer. And yet you want her—that seems to me to matter most of all.”
Then came a step at the door; it opened an inch or two, and Michael heard his father’s voice.
“Is your mother with you, Michael?” he asked.
At that Lady Ashbridge got up. For one second she clung to her son, and then, disengaging herself, froze up like the sudden congealment of a spring.
“Yes, Robert,” she said. “I was having a little talk to Michael.”
“May I come in?”
“It’s our secret,” she whispered to Michael.
“Yes, come in, father,” he said.
Lord Ashbridge stood towering in the doorway.
“Come, my dear,” he said, not unkindly, “it’s time for you to go to bed.”
She had become the mask of herself again.
“Yes, Robert,” she said. “I suppose it must be late. I will come. Oh, there’s Petsy. Will you ring, Michael? then Fedden will come and take him to bed. He sleeps with Fedden.”
CHAPTER IX
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 de
ar?” 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.
&nb
sp; “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.