by E. F. Benson
He again refreshed himself with the landscape. The roofs of Ashbridge were visible in the clear sunset. . . . Ashbridge paid its rents with remarkable regularity.
“That may or may not be so,” he said, forgetting for a moment the danger of being dignified. “But Combers have position.”
Barbara controlled herself admirably. A slight tremor shook her, which he did not notice.
“Yes, dear,” she said. “I allow that Combers have had for many generations a sort of acquisitive cunning, for all we possess has come to us by exceedingly prudent marriages. They have also — I am an exception here — the gift of not saying very much, which certainly has an impressive effect, even when it arises from not having very much to say. They are sticky; they attract wealth, and they have the force called vis inertiae, which means that they invest their money prudently. You should hear Tony — well, perhaps you had better not hear Tony. But now here is Michael showing that he has got tastes. Can you wonder that I’m delighted? And not only has he got tastes, but he has the strength of character to back them. Michael, in the Guards too! It was a perfect farce, and he’s had the sense to see it. He hated his duties, and he hated his diversions. Now Francis—”
“I am afraid Michael has always been a little jealous of Francis,” remarked his father.
This roused Barbara; she spoke quite seriously:
“If you really think that, my dear,” she said, “you have the distinction of being the worst possible judge of character that the world has ever known. Michael might be jealous of anybody else, for the poor boy feels his physical awkwardness most sensitively, but Francis is just the one person he really worships. He would do anything in the world for him.”
The discussion with Barbara was being even more fruitless than that with his wife, and Lord Ashbridge rose.
“All I can do, then, is to ask you not to back Michael up,” he said.
“My dear, he won’t need backing up. He’s a match for you by himself. But if Michael, after thoroughly worsting you, asks me my opinion, I shall certainly give it him. But he won’t ask my opinion first. He will strew your limbs, Robert, over this delightful terrace.”
“Michael’s train is late,” said Lady Ashbridge, hearing the stable clock strike. “He should have been here before this.”
Barbara had still a word to say, and disregarded this quencher.
“But don’t think, Robert,” she said, “that because Michael resists your wishes and authority, he will be enjoying himself. He will hate doing it, but that will not stop him.”
Lord Ashbridge was not a bully; he had merely a profound sense of his own importance.
“We will see about resistance,” he said.
Barbara was not so successful on this occasion, and exploded loudly:
“You will, dear, indeed,” she said.
Michael meantime had been travelling down from London without perturbing himself over the scene with his father which he knew lay before him. This was quite characteristic of him; he had a singular command over his imagination when he had made up his mind to anything, and never indulged in the gratuitous pain of anticipation. Today he had an additional bulwark against such self-inflicted worries, for he had spent his last two hours in town at the vocal recital of a singer who a month before had stirred the critics into rhapsody over her gift of lyric song. Up till now he had had no opportunity of hearing her; and, with the panegyrics that had been showered on her in his mind, he had gone with the expectation of disappointment. But now, an hour afterwards, the wheels of the train sang her songs, and in the inward ear he could recapture, with the vividness of an hallucination, the timbre of that wonderful voice and also the sweet harmonies of the pianist who accompanied her.
The hall had been packed from end to end, and he had barely got to his seat, the only one vacant in the whole room, when Miss Sylvia Falbe appeared, followed at once by her accompanist, whose name occurred nowhere on the programme. Two neighbours, however, who chatted shrilly during the applause that greeted them, informed him that this was Hermann, “dear Hermann; there is no one like him!” But it occurred to Michael that the singer was like him, though she was fair and he dark. But his perception of either of them visually was but vague; he had come to hear and not to see. Neither she nor Hermann had any music with them, and Hermann just glanced at the programme, which he put down on the top of the piano, which, again unusually, was open. Then without pause they began the set of German songs — Brahms, Schubert, Schumann — with which the recital opened. And for one moment, before he lost himself in the ecstasy of hearing, Michael found himself registering the fact that Sylvia Falbe had one of the most charming faces he had ever seen. The next he was swallowed up in melody.
She had the ease of the consummate artist, and each note, like the gates of the New Jerusalem, was a pearl, round and smooth and luminous almost, so that it was as if many-coloured light came from her lips. Nor was that all; it seemed as if the accompaniment was made by the song itself, coming into life with the freshness of the dawn of its creation; it was impossible to believe that one mind directed the singer and another the pianist, and if the voice was an example of art in excelsis, not less exalted was the perfection of the player. Not for a moment through the song did he take his eyes off her; he looked at her with an intensity of gaze that seemed to be reading the emotion with which the lovely melody filled her. For herself, she looked straight out over the hall, with grey eyes half-closed, and mouth that in the pauses of her song was large and full-lipped, generously curving, and face that seemed lit with the light of the morning she sang of. She was the song; Michael thought of her as just that, and the pianist who watched and understood her so unerringly was the song, too. They had for him no identity of their own; they were as remote from everyday life as the mind of Schumann which they made so vivid. It was then that they existed.
The last song of the group she sang in English, for it was “Who is Sylvia?” There was a buzz of smiles and whispers among the front row in the pause before it, and regaining her own identity for a moment, she smiled at a group of her friends among whom clearly it was a cliche species of joke that she should ask who Sylvia was, and enumerate her merits, when all the time she was Sylvia. Michael felt rather impatient at this; she was not anybody just now but a singer. And then came the divine inevitable simplicity of perfect words and the melody preordained for them. The singer, as he knew, was German, but she had no trace of foreign accent. It seemed to him that this was just one miracle the more; she had become English because she was singing what Shakespeare wrote.
The next group, consisting of modern French songs, appeared to Michael utterly unworthy of the singer and the echoing piano. If you had it in you to give reality to great and simple things, it was surely a waste to concern yourself with these little morbid, melancholy manikins, these marionettes. But his emotions being unoccupied he attended more to the manner of the performance, and in especial to the marvellous technique, not so much of the singer, but of the pianist who caused the rain to fall and the waters reflect the toneless grey skies. He had never, even when listening to the great masters, heard so flawless a comprehension as this anonymous player, incidentally known as Hermann, exhibited. As far as mere manipulation went, it was, as might perhaps be expected, entirely effortless, but effortless no less was the understanding of the music. It happened. . . . It was like that.
All of this so filled Michael’s mind as he travelled down that evening to Ashbridge, that he scarcely remembered the errand on which he went, and when it occurred to him it instantly sank out of sight again, lost in the recollection of the music which he had heard to-day and which belonged to the art that claimed the allegiance of his soul. The rattle of the wheels was alchemised into song, and as with half-closed eyes he listened to it, there swam across it now the full face of the singer, now the profile of the pianist, that had stood out white and intent against the dark panelling behind his head. He had gleaned one fact at the box-office as he hurried out to ca
tch his train: this Hermann was the singer’s brother, a teacher of the piano in London, and apparently highly thought of.
CHAPTER III
Michael’s train, as his mother had so infallibly pronounced, was late, and he had arrived only just in time to hurry to his room and dress quickly, in order not to add to his crimes the additional one of unpunctuality, for unpunctuality, so Lord Ashbridge held, was the politeness not only of kings, but of all who had any pretence to decent breeding. His father gave him a carefully-iced welcome, his mother the tip of her long, camel-like lips, and they waited solemnly for the appearance of Aunt Barbara, who, it would seem, had forfeited her claims to family by her marriage. A man-servant and a half looked after each of them at dinner, and the twelve Lord Ashbridges in uniform looked down from their illuminated frames on their degenerate descendant.
The only bright spot in this portentous banquet was Aunt Barbara, who had chosen that evening, with what intention may possibly be guessed, to put on an immense diamond tiara and a breastplate of rubies, while Og, after one futile attempt to play with the footmen, yielded himself up to the chilling atmosphere of good breeding, and ate his mutton-chops with great composure. But Aunt Barbara, fortified by her gems, ate an excellent dinner, and talked all the time with occasional bursts of unexplained laughter.
Afterwards, when Michael was left alone with his father, he found that his best efforts at conversation elicited only monosyllabic replies, and at last, in the despairing desire to bring things to a head, he asked him if he had received his letter. An affirmative monosyllable, followed by the hissing of Lord Ashbridge’s cigarette end as he dropped it into his coffee cup, answered him, and he perceived that the approaching storm was to be rendered duly impressive by the thundery stillness that preceded it. Then his father rose, and as he passed Michael, who held the door open for him, said:
“If you can spare the time, Michael, I would like to have a talk with you when your mother and aunt have gone to bed.”
That was not very long delayed; Michael imagined that Aunt Barbara must have had a hint, for before half-past ten she announced with a skilfully suppressed laugh that she was about to retire, and kissed Michael affectionately. Both her laugh and her salute were encouraging; he felt that he was being backed up. Then a procession of footmen came into the room bearing lemonade and soda water and whiskey and a plate of plain biscuits, and the moment after he was alone with his father.
Lord Ashbridge rose and walked, very tall and majestic, to the fireplace, where he stood for a moment with his back to his son. Then he turned round.
“Now about this nonsense of your resigning your commission, Michael,” he said. “I don’t propose to argue about it, and I am just going to tell you. If, as you have informed me, you have actually sent it in, you will write to-morrow with due apologies and ask that it may be withdrawn. I will see your letter before you send it.”
Michael had intended to be as quiet and respectful as possible, consistent with firmness, but a sentence here gave him a spasm of anger.
“I don’t know what you mean, sir,” he said, “by saying ‘if I have sent it in.’ You have received my letter in which I tell you that I have done so.”
Already, even at the first words, there was bad blood between them. Michael’s face had clouded with that gloom which his father would certainly call sulky, and for himself he resented the tone of Michael’s reply. To make matters worse he gave his little falsetto cackle, which no doubt was intended to convey the impression of confident good humour. But there was, it must be confessed, very little good humour about it, though he still felt no serious doubt about the result of this interview.
“I’m afraid, perhaps, then, that I did not take your letter quite seriously, my dear Michael,” he said, in the bantering tone that froze Michael’s cordiality completely up. “I glanced through it; I saw a lot of nonsense — or so it struck me — about your resigning your commission and studying music; I think you mentioned Baireuth, and settling down in London afterwards.”
“Yes. I said all that,” said Michael. “But you make a mistake if you do not see that it was written seriously.”
His father glanced across at him, where he sat with his heavy, plain face, his long arms and short legs, and the sight merely irritated him. With his passion for convention (and one of the most important conventions was that Combers should be fine, strapping, normal people) he hated the thought that it was his son who presented that appearance. And his son’s mind seemed to him at this moment as ungainly as his person. Again, very unwisely, he laughed, still thinking to carry this off by the high hand.
“Yes, but I can’t take that rubbish seriously,” he said. “I am asking your permission now to inquire, without any nonsense, into what you mean.”
Michael frowned. He felt the insincerity of his father’s laugh, and rebelled against the unfairness of it. The question, he knew well, was sarcastically asked, the flavour of irony in the “permission to inquire” was not there by accident. To speak like that implied contempt of his opposition; he felt that he was being treated like a child over some nursery rebellion, in which, subsequently, there is no real possibility of disobedience. He felt his anger rising in spite of himself.
“If you refer to it as rubbish, sir, there is the end of the matter.”
“Ah! I thought we should soon agree,” said Lord Ashbridge, chuckling.
“You mistake me,” said Michael. “There is the end of the matter, because I won’t discuss it any more, if you treat me like this. I will say good night, if you intend to persist in the idea that you can just brush my resolves away like that.”
This clearly took his father aback; it was a perfectly dignified and proper attitude to take in the face of ridicule, and Lord Ashbridge, though somewhat an adept at the art of self-deception — as, for instance, when he habitually beat the golf professional — could not disguise from himself that his policy had been to laugh and blow away Michael’s absurd ideas. But it was abundantly clear at this moment that this apparently easy operation was out of his reach.
He got up with more amenity in his manner than he had yet shown, and laid his hand on Michael’s shoulder as he stood in front of him, evidently quite prepared to go away.
“Come, my dear Michael. This won’t do,” he said. “I thought it best to treat your absurd schemes with a certain lightness, and I have only succeeded in irritating you.”
Michael was perfectly aware that he had scored. And as his object was to score he made another criticism.
“When you say ‘absurd schemes,’ sir,” he said, with quiet respect, “are you not still laughing at them?”
Lord Ashbridge again retreated strategically.
“Very well; I withdraw absurd,” he said. “Now sit down again, and we will talk. Tell me what is in your mind.”
Michael made a great effort with himself. He desired, in the secret, real Michael, to be reasonable and cordial, to behave filially, while all the time his nerves were on edge with his father’s ridicule, and with his instinctive knowledge of his father’s distaste for him.
“Well, it’s like this, father,” he said. “I’m doing no good as I am. I went into the Guards, as you know, because it was the right thing to do. A business man’s son is put into business for the same reason. And I’m not good at it.”
Michael paused a moment.
“My heart isn’t in it,” he said, “and I dislike it. It seems to me useless. We’re for show. And my heart is quite entirely in music. It’s the thing I care for more than anything else.”
Again he paused; all that came so easily to his tongue when he was speaking to Francis was congealed now when he felt the contempt with which, though unexpressed, he knew he inspired his father.
Lord Ashbridge waited with careful politeness, his eyes fixed on the ceiling, his large person completely filling his chair, just as his atmosphere filled the room. He said nothing at all until the silence rang in Michael’s ears.
“That is all
I can tell you,” he said at length.
Lord Ashbridge carefully conveyed the ash from his cigarette to the fireplace before he spoke. He felt that the time had come for his most impressive effort.
“Very well, then, listen to me,” he said. “What you suffer from, Michael, is a mere want of self-confidence and from modesty. You don’t seem to grasp — I have often noticed this — who you are and what your importance is — an importance which everybody is willing to recognise if you will only assume it. You have the privileges of your position, which you don’t sufficiently value, but you have, also, the responsibilities of it, which I am afraid you are inclined to shirk. You haven’t got the large view; you haven’t the sense of patriotism. There are a great many things in my position — the position into which you will step — which I would much sooner be without. But we have received a tradition, and we are bound to hand it on intact. You may think that this has nothing to do with your being in the Guards, but it has. We” — and he seemed to swell a little— “we are bound in honour to take the lead in the service of our country, and we must do it whether we like it or not. We have to till, with our own efforts, ‘our goodly heritage.’ You have to learn the meaning of such words as patriotism, and caste, and duty.”
Lord Ashbridge thought that he was really putting this very well indeed, and he had the sustaining consciousness of sincerity. He entirely believed what he said, and felt that it must carry conviction to anyone who listened to it with anything like an open mind. The only thing that he did not allow for was that he personally immensely enjoyed his social and dominant position, thinking it indeed the only position which was really worth having. This naturally gave an aid to comprehension, and he did not take into account that Michael was not so blessed as he, and indeed lacked this very superior individual enlightenment. But his own words kindled the flame of this illumination, and without noticing the blank stolidity of Michael’s face he went on with gathering confidence: