The Second E. F. Benson Megapack

by E. F. Benson

  “Then you must just bear it. The thing is”—Michael took a moment to find the words he searched for—“the thing is I want to be wanted. Well, it’s no light thing to be wanted by your mother, even if—”

  He sat down on the sofa by his aunt.

  “Aunt Barbara, how ironically gifts come,” he said. “This was rather a sinister way of giving, that my mother should want me like this just as her brain was failing. And yet that failure doesn’t affect the quality of her love. Is it something that shines through the poor tattered fabric? Anyhow, it has nothing to do with her brain. It is she herself, somehow, not anything of hers, that wants me. And you ask if I can stand it?”

  Michael with his ugly face and his kind eyes and his simple heart seemed extraordinarily charming just then to Aunt Barbara. She wished that Sylvia could have seen him then in all the unconsciousness of what he was doing so unquestioningly, or that she could have seen him as she had with his mother during the last hour. Lady Ashbridge had insisted on sitting close to him, and holding his hand whenever she could possess herself of it, of plying him with a hundred repeated questions, and never once had she made Michael either ridiculous or self-conscious. And this, she reflected, went on most of the day, and for how many days it would go on, none knew. Yet Michael could not consider even whether he could stand it; he rejected the expression as meaningless.

  “And your friends?” she said. “Do you manage to see them?”

  “Oh, yes, occasionally,” said Michael. “They don’t come here, for the presence of strangers makes my mother agitated. She thinks they have some design of taking her or me away. But she wants to see Sylvia. She knows about—about her and me, and I can’t make up my mind what to do about it. She is always asking if I can’t take her to see Sylvia, or get her to come here.”

  “And why not? Sylvia knows about your mother, I suppose.”

  “I expect so. I told Hermann. But I am afraid my mother will—well, you can’t call it arguing—but will try to persuade her to have me. I can’t let Sylvia in for that. Nor, if it comes to that, can I let myself in for that.”

  “Can’t you impress on your mother that she mustn’t?”

  Michael leaned forward to the fire, pondering this, and stretching out his big hands to the blaze.

  “Yes, I might,” he said. “I should love to see Sylvia again, just see her, you know. We settled that the old terms we were on couldn’t continue. At least, I settled that, and she understood.”

  “Sylvia is a gaby,” remarked Aunt Barbara.

  “I’m rather glad you think so.”

  “Oh, get her to come,” said she. “I’m sure your mother will do as you tell her. I’ll be here too, if you like, if that will do any good. By the way, I see your Hermann’s piano recital comes off tomorrow.”

  “I know. My mother wants to go to that, and I think I shall take her. Will you come too, Aunt Barbara, and sit on the other side of her? My ‘Variations’ are going to be played. If they are a success, Hermann tells me I shall be dragged screaming on to the platform, and have to bow. Lord! And if they’re not, well, ‘Lord’ also.”

  “Yes, my dear, of course I’ll come. Let me see, I shall have to lie, as I have another engagement, but a little thing like that doesn’t bother me.”

  Suddenly she clapped her hands together.

  “My dear, I quite forgot,” she said. “Michael, such excitement. You remember the boat you heard taking soundings on the deep-water reach? Of course you do! Well, I sent that information to the proper quarter, and since then watch has been kept in the woods just above it. Last night only the coastguard police caught four men at it—all Germans. They tried to escape as they did before, by rowing down the river, but there was a steam launch below which intercepted them. They had on them a chart of the reach, with soundings, nearly complete; and when they searched their houses—they are all tenants of your astute father, who merely laughed at us—they found a very decent map of certain private areas at Harwich. Oh, I’m not such a fool as I look. They thanked me, my dear, for my information, and I very gracefully said that my information was chiefly got by you.”

  “But did those men live in Ashbridge?” asked Michael.

  “Yes; and your father will have four decorous houses on his hands. I am glad: he should not have laughed at us. It will teach him, I hope. And now, my dear, I must go.”

  She stood up, and put her hand on Michael’s arm.

  “And you know what I think of you,” she said. “Tomorrow evening, then. I hate music usually; but then I adore Mr. Hermann. I only wish he wasn’t a German. Can’t you get him to naturalise himself and his sister?”

  “You wouldn’t ask that if you had seen him in Munich,” said Michael.

  “I suppose not. Patriotism is such a degrading emotion when it is not English.”

  Michael’s “Variations” came some half-way down the programme next evening, and as the moment for them approached, Lady Ashbridge got more and more excited.

  “I hope he knows them by heart properly, dear,” she whispered to Michael. “I shall be so nervous for fear he’ll forget them in the middle, which is so liable to happen if you play without your notes.”

  Michael laid his hand on his mother’s.

  “Hush, mother,” he said, “you mustn’t talk while he’s playing.”

  “Well, I was only whispering. But if you tell me I mustn’t—”

  The hall was crammed from end to end, for not only was Hermann a person of innumerable friends, but he had already a considerable reputation, and, being a German, all musical England went to hear him. And tonight he was playing superbly, after a couple of days of miserable nervousness over his debut as a pianist; but his temperament was one of those that are strung up to their highest pitch by such nervous agonies; he required just that to make him do full justice to his own personality, and long before he came to the “Variations,” Michael felt quite at ease about his success. There was no question about it any more: the whole audience knew that they were listening to a master. In the row immediately behind Michael’s party were sitting Sylvia and her mother, who had not quite been torn away from her novels, since she had sought “The Love of Hermione Hogarth” underneath her cloak, and read it furtively in pauses. They had come in after Michael, and until the interval between the classical and the modern section of the concert he was unaware of their presence; then idly turning round to look at the crowded hall, he found himself face to face with the girl.

  “I had no idea you were there,” he said. “Hermann will do, won’t he? I think—”

  And then suddenly the words of commonplace failed him, and he looked at her in silence.

  “I knew you were back,” she said. “Hermann told me about—everything.”

  Michael glanced sideways, indicating his mother, who sat next him, and was talking to Barbara.

  “I wondered whether perhaps you would come and see my mother and me,” he said. “May I write?”

  She looked at him with the friendliness of her smiling eyes and her grave mouth.

  “Is it necessary to ask?” she said.

  Michael turned back to his seat, for his mother had had quite enough of her sister-in-law, and wanted him again. She looked over her shoulder for a moment to see whom Michael was talking to.

  “I’m enjoying my concert, dear,” she said. “And who is that nice young lady? Is she a friend of yours?”

  The interval was over, and Hermann returned to the platform, and waiting for a moment for the buzz of conversation to die down, gave out, without any preliminary excursion on the keys, the text of Michael’s “Variations.” Then he began to tell them, with light and flying fingers, what that simple tune had suggested to Michael, how he imagined himself looking on at an old-fashioned dance, and while the dancers moved to the graceful measure of a minuet, or daintily in a gavotte, the tune of “Good King Wenceslas” still rang in his head, or, how in the joy of the sunlight of a spring morning it still haunted him. It lay behind a cascade of
foaming waters that, leaping, roared into a ravine; it marched with flying banners on some day of victorious entry, it watched a funeral procession wind by, with tapers and the smell of incense; it heard, as it got nearer back to itself again, the peals of Christmas bells, and stood forth again in its own person, decorated and emblazoned.

  Hermann had already captured his audience; now he held them tame in the hollow of his hand. Twice he bowed, and then, in answer to the demand, just beckoned with his finger to Michael, who rose. For a moment his mother wished to detain him.

  “You’re not going to leave me, my dear, are you?” she asked anxiously.

  He waited to explain to her quietly, left her, and, feeling rather dazed, made his way round to the back and saw the open door on to the platform confronting him. He felt that no power on earth could make him step into the naked publicity there, but at the moment Hermann appeared in the doorway.

  “Come on, Mike,” he said, laughing. “Thank the pretty ladies and gentlemen! Lord, isn’t it all a lark!”

  Michael advanced with him, stared and hoped he smiled properly, though he felt that he was nailing some hideous grimace to his face; and then just below him he saw his mother eagerly pointing him out to a total stranger, with gesticulation, and just behind her Sylvia looking at her, and not at him, with such tenderness, such kindly pity. There were the two most intimately bound into his life, the mother who wanted him, the girl whom he wanted; and by his side was Hermann, who, as Michael always knew, had thrown open the gates of life to him. All the rest, even including Aunt Barbara, seemed of no significance in that moment. Afterwards, no doubt, he would be glad they were pleased, be proud of having pleased them; but just now, even when, for the first time in his life, that intoxicating wine of appreciation was given him, he stood with it bubbling and yellow in his hand, not drinking of it.

  Michael had prepared the way of Sylvia’s coming by telling his mother the identity of the “nice young lady” at the concert; he had also impressed on her the paramount importance of not saying anything with regard to him that could possibly embarrass the nice young lady, and when Sylvia came to tea a few days later, he was quite without any uneasiness, while for himself he was only conscious of that thirst for her physical presence, the desire, as he had said to Aunt Barbara, “just to see her.” Nor was there the slightest embarrassment in their meeting! It was clear that there was not the least difficulty either for him or her in being natural, which, as usually happens, was the complete solution.

  “That is good of you to come,” he said, meeting her almost at the door. “My mother has been looking forward to your visit. Mother dear, here is Miss Falbe.”

  Lady Ashbridge was pathetically eager to be what she called “good.” Michael had made it clear to her that it was his wish that Miss Falbe should not be embarrassed, and any wish just now expressed by Michael was of the nature of a divine command to her.

  “Well, this is a pleasure,” she said, looking across to Michael with the eyes of a dog on a beloved master. “And we are not strangers quite, are we, Miss Falbe? We sat so near each other to listen to your brother, who I am sure plays beautifully, and the music which Michael made. Haven’t I got a clever son, and such a good one?”

  Sylvia was unerring. Michael had known she would be.

  “Indeed, you have,” she said, sitting down by her. “And Michael mustn’t hear what we say about him, must he, or he’ll be getting conceited.”

  Lady Ashbridge laughed.

  “And that would never do, would it?” she said, still retaining Sylvia’s hand. Then a little dim ripple of compunction broke in her mind. “Michael,” she said, “we are only joking about your getting conceited. Miss Falbe and I are only joking. And—and won’t you take off your hat, Miss Falbe, for you are not going to hurry away, are you? You are going to pay us a long visit.”

  Michael had not time to remind his mother that ladies who come to tea do not usually take their hats off, for on the word Sylvia’s hands were busy with her hatpins.

  “I’m so glad you suggested that,” she said. “I always want to take my hat off. I don’t know who invented hats, but I wish he hadn’t.”

  Lady Ashbridge looked at her masses of bright hair, and could not help telegraphing a note of admiration, as it were, to Michael.

  “Now, that’s more comfortable,” she said. “You look as if you weren’t going away next minute. When I like to see people, I hate their going away. I’m afraid sometimes that Michael will go away, but he tells me he won’t. And you liked Michael’s music, Miss Falbe? Was it not clever of him to think of all that out of one simple little tune? And he tells me you sing so nicely. Perhaps you would sing to us when we’ve had tea. Oh, and here is my sister-in-law. Do you know her—Lady Barbara? My dear, what is your husband’s name?”

  Seeing Sylvia uncovered, Lady Barbara, with a tact that was creditable to her, but strangely unsuccessful, also began taking off her hat. Her sister-in-law was too polite to interfere, but, as a matter of fact, she did not take much pleasure in the notion that Barbara was going to stay a very long time, too. She was fond of her, but it was not Barbara whom Michael wanted. She turned her attention to the girl again.

  “My husband’s away,” she said, confidentially; “he is very busy down at Ashbridge, and I daresay he won’t find time to come up to town for many weeks yet. But, you know, Michael and I do very well without him, very well, indeed, and it would never do to take him away from his duties—would it, Michael?”

  Here was a shoal to be avoided.

  “No, you mustn’t think of tempting him to come up to town,” said Michael. “Give me some tea for Aunt Barbara.”

  This answer entranced Lady Ashbridge; she had to nudge Michael several times to show that she understood the brilliance of it, and put lump after lump of sugar into Barbara’s cup in her rapt appreciation of it. But very soon she turned to Sylvia again.

  “And your brother is a friend of Michael’s, too, isn’t he?” she said. “Some day perhaps he will come to see me. We don’t see many people, Michael and I, for we find ourselves very well content alone. But perhaps some day he will come and play his concert over again to us; and then, perhaps, if you ask me, I will sing to you. I used to sing a great deal when I was younger. Michael—where has Michael gone?”

  Michael had just left the room to bring some cigarettes in from next door, and Lady Ashbridge ran after him, calling him. She found him in the hall, and brought him back triumphantly.

  “Now we will all sit and talk for a long time,” she said. “You one side of me, Miss Falbe, and Michael the other. Or would you be so kind as to sing for us? Michael will play for you, and would it annoy you if I came and turned over the pages? It would give me a great deal of pleasure to turn over for you, if you will just nod each time when you are ready.”

  Sylvia got up.

  “Why, of course,” she said. “What have you got, Michael? I haven’t anything with me.”

  Michael found a volume of Schubert, and once again, as on the first time he had seen her, she sang “Who is Sylvia?” while he played, and Lady Ashbridge had her eyes fixed now on one and now on the other of them, waiting for their nod to do her part; and then she wanted to sing herself, and with some far-off remembrance of the airs and graces of twenty-five years ago, she put her handkerchief and her rings on the top of the piano, and, playing for herself, emitted faint treble sounds which they knew to be “The Soldier’s Farewell.”

  Then presently her nurse came for her to lie down before dinner, and she was inclined to be tearful and refuse to go till Michael made it clear that it was his express and sovereign will that she should do so. Then very audibly she whispered to him. “May I ask her to give me a kiss?” she said. “She looks so kind, Michael, I don’t think she would mind.”

  Sylvia went back home with a little heartache for Michael, wondering, if she was in his place, if her mother, instead of being absorbed in her novels, demanded such incessant attentions, whether she had suffici
ent love in her heart to render them with the exquisite simplicity, the tender patience that Michael showed. Well as she knew him, greatly as she liked him, she had not imagined that he, or indeed any man could have behaved quite like that. There seemed no effort at all about it; he was not trying to be patient; he had the sense of “patience’s perfect work” natural to him; he did not seem to have to remind himself that his mother was ill, and thus he must be gentle with her. He was gentle with her because he was in himself gentle. And yet, though his behaviour was no effort to him, she guessed how wearying must be the continual strain of the situation itself. She felt that she would get cross from mere fatigue, however excellent her intentions might be, however willing the spirit. And no one, so she had understood from Barbara, could take Michael’s place. In his occasional absences his mother was fretful and miserable, and day by day Michael left her less. She would sit close to him when he was practising—a thing that to her or to Hermann would have rendered practice impossible—and if he wrestled with one hand over a difficult bar, she would take the other into hers, would ask him if he was not getting tired, would recommend him to rest for a little; and yet Michael, who last summer had so stubbornly insisted on leading his own life, and had put his determination into effect in the teeth of all domestic opposition, now with more than cheerfulness laid his own life aside in order to look after his mother. Sylvia felt that the real heroisms of life were not so much the fine heady deeds which are so obviously admirable, as such serene steadfastness, such unvarying patience as that which she had just seen.

  Her whole soul applauded Michael, and yet below her applause was this heartache for him, the desire to be able to help him to bear the burden which must be so heavy, though he bore it so blithely. But in the very nature of things there was but one way in which she could help him, and in that she was powerless. She could not give him what he wanted. But she longed to be able to.

  CHAPTER XI

  It was a morning of early March, and Michael, looking out from the dining-room window at the house in Curzon Street, where he had just breakfasted alone, was smitten with wonder and a secret ecstasy, for he suddenly saw and felt that it was winter no longer, but that spring had come. For the last week the skies had screamed with outrageous winds and had been populous with flocks of sullen clouds that discharged themselves in sleet and snowy rain, and half last night, for he had slept very badly, he had heard the dashing of showers, as of wind-driven spray, against the window-panes, and had listened to the fierce rattling of the frames. Towards morning he had slept, and during those hours it seemed that a new heaven and a new earth had come into being; vitally and essentially the world was a different affair altogether.