The Second E. F. Benson Megapack

by E. F. Benson

  He laid his hand on Francis’s arm with a gesture for silence, then, invisible below, someone said, “Fifteen fathoms,” and again the oars creaked audibly in the rowlocks.

  Michael took a step towards his cousin, so that he could whisper to him.

  “Come back to the boat,” he said. “I want to row round and see who that is. Wait a moment, though.”

  The oars below made some half-dozen strokes, and then were still again. Once more there came the sound of something heavy dropped into the water.

  “Someone is making soundings in the channel there,” he said. “Come.”

  They went very quietly till they were round the point, then quickened their steps, and Michael spoke.

  “That’s the uncharted channel,” he said; “at least, only the Admiralty have the soundings. The water’s deep enough right across for a ship of moderate draught to come up, but there is a channel up which any man-of-war can pass. Of course, it may be an Admiralty boat making fresh soundings, but not likely on Boxing Day.”

  “What are you going to do?” asked Francis, striding easily along by Michael’s short steps.

  “Just see if we can find out who it is. Aunt Barbara asked me about it. I’ll tell you afterwards. Now the tide’s going out we can drop down with it, and we shan’t be heard. I’ll row just enough to keep her head straight. Sit in the bow, Francis, and keep a sharp look-out.”

  Foot by foot they dropped down the river, and soon came into the thick mist that lay beyond the point. It was impossible to see more than a yard or two ahead, but the same dense obscurity would prevent any further range of vision from the other boat, and, if it was still at its work, the sound of its oars or of voices, Michael reflected, might guide him to it. From the lisp of little wavelets lapping on the shore below the woods, he knew he was quite close in to the bank, and close also to the place where the invisible boat had been ten minutes before. Then, in the bewildering, unlocalised manner in which sound without the corrective guidance of sight comes to the ears, he heard as before the creaking of invisible oars, somewhere quite close at hand. Next moment the dark prow of a rowing-boat suddenly loomed into sight on their starboard, and he took a rapid stroke with his right-hand scull to bring them up to it. But at the same moment, while yet the occupants of the other boat were but shadows in the mist, they saw him, and a quick word of command rang out.

  “Row—row hard!” it cried, and with a frenzied churning of oars in the water, the other boat shot by them, making down the estuary. Next moment it had quite vanished in the mist, leaving behind it knots of swirling water from its oar-blades.

  Michael started in vain pursuit; his craft was heavy and clumsy, and from the retreating and faint-growing sound of the other, it was clear that he could get no pace to match, still less to overtake them. Soon he pantingly desisted.

  “But an Admiralty boat wouldn’t have run away,” he said. “They’d have asked us who the devil we were.”

  “But who else was it?” asked Francis.

  Michael mopped his forehead.

  “Aunt Barbara would tell you,” he said. “She would tell you that they were German spies.”

  Francis laughed.

  “Or Timbuctoo niggers,” he remarked.

  “And that would be an odd thing, too,” said Michael.

  But at that moment he felt the first chill of the shadow that menaced, if by chance Aunt Barbara was right, and if already the clear tranquillity of the sky was growing dim as with the mist that lay that afternoon on the waters of the deep reach, and covered mysterious movements which were going on below it. England and Germany—there was so much of his life and his heart there. Music and song, and Sylvia.

  CHAPTER X

  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 brist
ling. 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 today.”

  “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 hi
s 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.