by E. F. Benson
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 of 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.
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?”