For the next hour or two after her husband had left her, Lady Ashbridge occupied herself in the thoroughly lady-like pursuit of doing nothing whatever; she just existed in her comfortable chair, since Barbara might come any moment, and she would have to entertain her, which she frequently did unawares. But as Barbara continued not to come, she took up her perennial piece of needlework, feeling rather busy and pressed, and had hardly done so when her sister-in-law arrived.
She was preceded by an enormous stag-hound, who, having been shut up in her motor all the way from London, bounded delightedly, with the sense of young limbs released, on to the terrace, and made wild leaps in a circle round the horrified Petsy, who had just received a second saucerful of cream. Once he dashed in close, and with a single lick of his tongue swept the saucer dry of nutriment, and with hoarse barkings proceeded again to dance corybantically about, while Lady Ashbridge with faint cries of dismay waved her embroidery at him. Then, seeing his mistress coming out of the French window from the drawing-room, he bounded calf-like towards her, and Petsy, nearly sick with cream and horror, was gathered to Lady Ashbridge’s bosom.
“My dear Barbara,” she said, “how upsetting your dog is! Poor Petsy’s heart is beating terribly; she does not like dogs. But I am very pleased to see you, and I have given you the blue room.”
It was clearly suitable that Barbara Jerome should have a large dog, for both in mind and body she was on the large scale herself. She had a pleasant, high-coloured face, was very tall, enormously stout, and moved with great briskness and vigour. She had something to say on any subject that came on the board; and, what was less usual in these days of universal knowledge, there was invariably some point in what she said. She had, in the ordinary sense of the word, no manners at all, but essentially made up for this lack by her sincere and humourous kindliness. She saw with acute vividness the ludicrous side of everybody, herself included, and to her mind the arch-humourist of all was her brother, whom she was quite unable to take seriously. She dressed as if she had looted a milliner’s shop and had put on in a great hurry anything that came to hand. She towered over her sister-in-law as she kissed her, and Petsy, safe in her citadel, barked shrilly.
“My dear, which is the blue room?” she said. “I hope it is big enough for Og and me. Yes, that is Og, which is short for dog. He takes two mutton-chops for dinner, and a little something during the night if he feels disposed, because he is still growing. Tony drove down with me, and is in the car now. He would not come in for fear of seeing Robert, so I ventured to tell them to take him a cup of tea there, which he will drink with the blinds down, and then drive back to town again. He has been made American ambassador, by the way, and will go in to dinner before Robert. My dear, I can think of few things which Robert is less fitted to bear than that. However, we all have our crosses, even those of us who have our coronets also.”
Lady Ashbridge’s hospitable instincts asserted themselves. “But your husband must come in,” she said. “I will go and tell him. And Robert has gone to play golf.”
Barbara laughed.
“I am quite sure Tony won’t come in,” she said. “I promised him he shouldn’t, and he only drove down with me on the express stipulation that no risks were to be run about his seeing Robert. We must take no chances, so let him have his tea quietly in the motor and then drive away again. And who else is there? Anybody? Michael?”
“Michael comes this evening.”
“I am glad; I am particularly fond of Michael. Also he will play to us after dinner, and though I don’t know one note from another, it will relieve me of sitting in a stately circle watching Robert cheat at patience. I always find the evenings here rather trying; they remind me of being in church. I feel as if I were part of a corporate body, which leads to misplaced decorum. Ah! there is the sound of Tony’s retreating motor; his strategic movement has come off. And now give me some news, if you can get in a word. Dear me, there is Robert coming back across the lawn. What a mercy that Tony did not leave the motor. Robert always walks as if he was dancing a minuet. Look, there is Og imitating him! Or is he stalking him, thinking he is an enemy. Og, come here!”
She whistled shrilly on her fingers, and rose to greet her brother, whom Og was still menacing, as he advanced towards her with staccato steps. Barbara, however, got between Og and his prey, and threw her parasol at him.
“My dear, how are you?” she said. “And how did the golf go? And did you beat the professional?”
He suspected flippancy here, and became markedly dignified.
“An excellent match,” he said, “and Macpherson tells me I played a very sound game. I am delighted to see you, Barbara. And did Michael come down with you?”
“No. I drove from town. It saves time, but not expense, with your awful trains.”
“And you are well, and Mr. Jerome?” he asked. He always called his brother-in-law Mr. Jerome, to indicate the gulf between them. Barbara gave a little spurt of laughter.
“Yes, his excellency is quite well,” she said. “You must call him excellency now, my dear.”
“Indeed! That is a great step.”
“Considering that Tony began as an office-boy. How richly rewarding you are, my dear. And shan’t I make an odd ambassadress! I haven’t been to a Court since the dark ages, when I went to those beloved States. We will practise after dinner, dear, and you and Marion shall be the King and Queen, and I will try to walk backwards without tumbling on my head. You will like being the King, Robert. And then we will be ourselves again, all except Og, who shall be Tony and shall go out of the room before you.”
He gave his treble little giggle, for on the whole it answered better not to be dignified with Barbara, whenever he could remember not to be; and Lady Ashbridge, still nursing Petsy, threw a bombshell of the obvious to explode the conversation.
“Og has two mutton-chops for his dinner,” she said, “and he is growing still. Fancy!”
Lord Ashbridge took a refreshing glance at the broad stretch of country that all belonged to him.
“I am rather glad to have this opportunity of talking to you, my dear Barbara,” he said, “before Michael comes.”
“His train gets in half an hour before dinner” said Lady Ashbridge. “He has to change at Stoneborough.”
“Quite so. I heard from Michael this morning, saying that he has resigned his commission in the Guards, and is going to take up music seriously.”
Barbara gave a delighted exclamation.
“But how perfectly splendid!” she said. “Fancy a Comber doing anything original! Michael and I are the only Combers who ever have, since Combers ‘arose from out the azure main’ in the year one. I married an American; that’s something, though it’s not up to Michael!”
“That is not quite my view of it,” said he. “As for its being original, it would be original enough if Marion eloped with a Patagonian.”
Lady Ashbridge let fall her embroidery at this monstrous suggestion.
“You are talking very wildly, Robert,” she said, in a pained voice.
“My dear, get on with your sacred carpet,” said he. “I am talking to Barbara. I have already ascertained your—your lack of views on the subject. I was saying, Barbara, that mere originality is not a merit.”
“No, you never said that,” remarked Lady Ashbridge.
“I should have if you had allowed me to. And as for your saying that he has done it, Barbara, that is very wide of the mark, and I intend shall continue to be so.”
“Dear great Bashaw, that is just what you said to me when I told you I was going to marry his Excellency. But I did. And I think it is a glorious move on Michael’s part. It requires brain to find out what you like, and character to go and do it. Combers haven’t got brains as a rule, you see. If they ever had any, they have degenerated into conservative instincts.”
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 catch his train: this Hermann was the singer’s brother, a teacher of the piano in London, and apparently highly thought of.
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:
“I am sure you are high-minded, my dear Michael,” he said. “And it is to your high-mindedness that I—yes, I don’t mind saying it—that I appeal. In a moment of unreflectiveness you have thrown overboard what I am sure is real to you, the sense, broadly speaking, that you are English and of the highest English class, and have intended to devote yourself to more selfish and pleasure-loving aims, and to dwell in a tinkle of pleasant sounds that please your ear; and I’m sure I don’t wonder, because, as your mother and I both know, you play charmingly. But I feel confident that your better mind does not really confuse the mere diversions of life with its serious issues.”
Michael suddenly rose to his feet.
“Father, I’m afraid this is no use at all,” he said. “All that I feel, and all that I can’t say, I know is unintelligible to you. You have called it rubbish once, and you think it is rubbish still.”
Lord Ashbridge’s eloquence was suddenly arrested. He had been cantering gleefully along, and had the very distinct impression of having run up against a stone wall. He dismounted, hurt, but in no way broken.
“I am anxious to understand you, Michael,” he said.
“Yes, father, but you don’t,” said he. “You have been explaining me all wrong. For instance, I don’t regard music as a diversion. That is the only explanation there is of me.”
“And as regards my wishes and my authority?” asked his father.
Michael squared his shoulders and his mind.
“I am exceedingly sorry to disappoint you in the matter of your wishes,” he said; “but in the matter of your authority I can’t recognise it when the question of my whole life is at stake. I know that I am your son, and I want to be dutiful, but I have my own individuality as well. That only recognises the authority of my own conscience.”
That seemed to Lord Ashbridge both tragic and ludicrous. Completely subservient himself to the conventions which he so much enjoyed, it was like the defiance of a child to say such things. He only just checked himself from laughing again.
“I refuse to take that answer from you,” he said.
“I have no other to give you,” said Michael. “But I should like to say once more that I am sorry to disobey your wishes.”
The repetition took away his desire to laugh. In fact, he could not have laughed.
“I don’t want to threaten you, Michael,” he said. “But you may know that I have a very free hand in the disposal of my property.”
“Is that a threat?” asked Michael.
“It is a hint.”
“Then, father, I can only say that I should be perfectly satisfied with anything you may do,” said Michael. “I wish you could leave everything you have to Francis. I tell you in all sincerity that I wish he had been my elder brother. You would have been far better pleased with him.”
Lord Ashbridge’s anger rose. He was naturally so self-complacent as to be seldom disposed to anger, but its rarity was not due to kindliness of nature.
“I have before now noticed your jealousy of your cousin,” he observed.
Michael’s face went white.
“That is infamous and untrue, father,” he said.
Lord Ashbridge turned on him.
“Apologise for that,” he said.
Michael looked up at his high towering without a tremor.
“I wait for the withdrawal of your accusation that I am jealous of Francis,” he replied.
There was a dead silence. Lord Ashbridge stood there in swollen and speechless indignation, and Michael faced him undismayed. . . . And then suddenly to the boy there came an impulse of pure pity for his father’s disappointment in having a son like himself. He saw with the candour which was so real a part of him how hopeless it must be, to a man of his father’s mind, to have a millstone like himself unalterably bound round his neck, fit to choke and drown him.
“Indeed, I am not jealous of Francis, father,” he said, “and I speak quite truthfully when I say how I sympathise with you in having a son like me. I don’t want to vex you. I want to make the best of myself.”
Lord Ashbridge stood looking exactly like his statue in the market-place at Ashbridge.
“If that is the case, Michael,” he said, “it is within your power. You will write the letter I spoke about.”
Michael paused a moment as if waiting for more. It did not seem to him possible that his appeal should bear no further fruit than that. But it was soon clear that there was no more to come.
“I will wish you good night, father,” he said.
Sunday was a day on which Lord Ashbridge was almost more himself than during the week, so shining and public an example did he become of the British nobleman. Instead of having breakfast, according to the middle-class custom, rather later than usual, that solid sausagy meal was half an hour earlier, so that all the servants, except those whose presence in the house was imperatively necessary for purposes of lunch, should go to church. Thus “Old George” and Lord Ashbridge’s private boat were exceedingly busy for the half-hour preceding church time, the last boat-load holding the family, whose arrival was the signal for service to begin. Lady Ashbridge, however, always went on earlier, for she presided at the organ with the long, camel-like back turned towards the congregation, and started playing a slow, melancholy voluntary when the boy who blew the bellows said to her in an ecclesiastical whisper: “His lordship has arrived, my lady.” Those of the household who could sing (singing being construed in the sense of making a loud and cheerful noise in the throat) clustered in the choir-pews near the organ, while the family sat in a large, square box, with a stove in the centre, amply supplied with prayer-books of the time when even Protestants might pray for Queen Caroline. Behind them, separated from the rest of the church by an ornamental ironwork grille, was the Comber chapel, in which antiquarians took nearly as much pleasure as Lord Ashbridge himself. Here reclined a glorious company of sixteenth century knights, with their honourable ladies at their sides, unyielding marble bolsters at their heads, and grotesque dogs at their feet. Later, when their peerage was conferred, they lost a little of their yeoman simplicity, and became peruked and robed and breeched; one, indeed, in the age of George III., who was blessed with poetical aspirations, appeared in bare feet and a Roman toga with a scroll of manuscript in his hand; while later again, mere tablets on the walls commemorated their almost uncanny virtues.
And just on the other side of the grille, but a step away, sat the present-day representatives of the line, while Lady Ashbridge finished the last bars of her voluntary, Lord Ashbridge himself and his sister, large and smart and comely, and Michael beside them, short and heavy, with his soul full of the aspirations his father neither could nor cared to understand. According to his invariable custom, Lord Ashbridge read the lessons in a loud, sonorous voice, his large, white hands grasping the wing-feathers of the brass eagle, and a great carnation in his buttonhole; and when the time came for the offertory he put a sovereign in the open plate himself, and proceeded with his minuet-like step to go round the church and collect the gifts of the encouraged congregation. He followed all the prayers in his book, he made the responses in a voice nearly as loud as that in which he read the lessons; he sang the hymns with a curious buzzing sound, and never for a moment did he lose sight of the fact that he was the head of the Comber family, doing his duty as the custom of the Combers was, and setting an example of godly piety. Afterwards, as usual, he would change his black coat, eat a good lunch, stroll round the gardens (for he had nothing to say to golf on Sunday), and in the evening the clergyman would dine with him, and would be requested to say grace both before and after the meal. He knew exactly the proper mode of passing the Sunday for the landlord on his country estate, and when Lord Ashbridge knew that a thing was proper he did it with invariable precision.
Michael, of course, was in disgrace; his father, pending some further course of action, neither spoke to him nor looked at him; indeed, it seemed doubtful whether he would hand him the offertory plate, and it was perhaps a pity that he unbent even to this extent, for Michael happened to have none of the symbols of thankfulness about his person, and he saw a slight quiver pass through Aunt Barbara’s hymn-book. After a rather portentous lunch, however, there came some relief, for his father did not ask his company on the usual Sunday afternoon stroll, and Aunt Barbara never walked at all unless she was obliged. In consequence, when the thunderstorm had stepped airily away across the park, Michael joined her on the terrace, with the intention of talking the situation over with her.
Aunt Barbara was perfectly willing to do this, and she opened the discussion very pleasantly with peals of laughter.
“My dear, I delight in you,” she said; “and altogether this is the most entertaining day I have ever spent here. Combers are supposed to be very serious, solid people, but for unconscious humour there isn’t a family in England or even in the States to compare with them. Our lunch just now; if you could put it into a satirical comedy called The Aristocracy it would make the fortune of any theatre.”
A dawning smile began to break through Michael’s tragedy face.
“I suppose it was rather funny,” he said. “But really I’m wretched about it, Aunt Barbara.”
“My dear, what is there to be wretched about? You might have been wretched if you had found you couldn’t stand up to your father, but I gather, though I know nothing directly, that you did. At least, your mother has said to me three times, twice on the way to church and once coming back: ‘Michael has vexed his father very much.’ And the offertory plate, my dear, and, as I was saying, lunch! I am in disgrace too, because I said perfectly plainly yesterday that I was on your side; and there we were at lunch, with your father apparently unable to see either you or me, and unconscious of our presence. Fancy pretending not to see me! You can’t help seeing me, a large, bright object like me! And what will happen next? That’s what tickles me to death, as they say on my side of the Atlantic. Will he gradually begin to perceive us again, like objects looming through a fog, or shall we come into view suddenly, as if going round a corner? And you are just as funny, my dear, with your long face, and air of depressed determination. Why be heavy, Michael? So many people are heavy, and none of them can tell you why.”
It was impossible not to feel the unfreezing effect of this. Michael thawed to it, as he would have thawed to Francis.
“Perhaps they can’t help it, Aunt Barbara,” he said. “At least, I know I can’t. I really wish I could learn how to. I—I don’t see the funny side of things till it is pointed out. I thought lunch a sort of hell, you know. Of course, it was funny, his appearing not to see either of us. But it stands for more than that; it stands for his complete misunderstanding of me.”
Aunt Barbara had the sense to see that the real Michael was speaking. When people were being unreal, when they were pompous or adopting attitudes, she could attend to nothing but their absurdity, which engrossed her altogether. But she never laughed at real things; real things were not funny, but were facts.
“He quite misunderstands,” went on Michael, with the eagerness with which the shy welcome comprehension. “He thinks I can make my mind like his if I choose; and if I don’t choose, or rather can’t choose, he thinks that his wishes, his authority, should be sufficient to make me act as if it was. Well, I won’t do that. He may go on,”—and that pleasant smile lit up Michael’s plain face—“he may go on being unaware of my presence as long as he pleases. I am very sorry it should be so, but I can’t help it. And the worst of it is, that opposition of that sort—his sort—makes me more determined than ever.”
Aunt Barbara nodded.
“And your friends?” she asked. “What will they think?”
Michael looked at her quite simply and directly.
“Friends?” he said. “I haven’t got any.”
“Ah, my dear, that’s nonsense!” she said.
“I wish it was. Oh, Francis is a friend, I know. He thinks me an odd old thing, but he likes me. Other people don’t. And I can’t see why they should. I’m sure it’s my fault. It’s because I’m heavy. You said I was, yourself.”
“Then I was a great ass,” remarked Aunt Barbara. “You wouldn’t be heavy with people who understood you. You aren’t heavy with me, for instance; but, my dear, lead isn’t in it when you are with your father.”
“But what am I to do, if I’m like that?” asked the boy.
She held up her large, fat hand, and marked the points off on her fingers.
“Three things,” she said. “Firstly, get away from people who don’t understand you, and whom, incidentally, you don’t understand. Secondly, try to see how ridiculous you and everybody else always are; and, thirdly, which is much the most important, don’t think about yourself. If I thought about myself I should consider how old and fat and ugly I am. I’m not ugly, really; you needn’t be foolish and tell me so. I should spoil my life by trying to be young, and only eating devilled codfish and drinking hot plum-juice, or whatever is the accepted remedy for what we call obesity. We’re all odd old things, as you say. We can only get away from that depressing fact by doing something, and not thinking about ourselves. We can all try not to be egoists. Egoism is the really heavy quality in the world.”
She paused a moment in this inspired discourse and whistled to Og, who had stretched his weary limbs across a bed of particularly fine geraniums.
“There!” she said, pointing, “if your dog had done that, you would be submerged in depression at the thought of how vexed your father would be. That would be because you are thinking of the effect on yourself. As it’s my dog that has done it—dear me, they do look squashed now he has got up—you don’t really mind about your father’s vexation, because you won’t have to think about yourself. That is wise of you; if you were a little wiser still, you would picture to yourself how ridiculous I shall look apologising for Og. Kindly kick him, Michael; he will understand. Naughty! And as for your not having any friends, that would be exceedingly sad, if you had gone the right way to get them and failed. But you haven’t. You haven’t even gone among the people who could be your friends. Your friends, broadly speaking, must like the same sort of things as you. There must be a common basis. You can’t even argue with somebody, or disagree with somebody unless you have a common ground to start from. If I say that black is white, and you think it is blue, we can’t get on. It leads nowhere. And, finally—”
She turned round and faced him directly.
“Finally, don’t be so cross, my dear,” she said.
“But am I?” asked he.
“Yes. You don’t know it, or else probably, since you are a very decent fellow, you wouldn’t be. You expect not to be liked, and that is cross of you. A good-humoured person expects to be liked, and almost always is. You expect not to be understood, and that’s dreadfully cross. You think your father doesn’t understand you; no more he does, but don’t go on thinking about it. You think it is a great bore to be your father’s only son, and wish Francis was instead. That’s cross; you may think it’s fine, but it isn’t, and it is also ungrateful. You can have great fun if you will only be good-tempered!”
“How did you know that—about Francis, I mean?” asked Michael.
“Does it happen to be true? Of course it does. Every cross young man wishes he was somebody else.”
“No, not quite that,” began Michael.
“Don’t interrupt. It is sufficiently accurate. And you think about your appearance, my dear. It will do quite well. You might have had two noses, or only one eye, whereas you have two rather jolly ones. And do try to see the joke in other people, Michael. You didn’t see the joke in your interview last night with your father. It must have been excruciatingly funny. I don’t say it wasn’t sad and serious as well. But it was funny too; there were points.”
Michael shook his head.
“I didn’t see them,” he said.
“But I should have, and I should have been right. All dignity is funny, simply because it is sham. When dignity is real, you don’t know it’s dignity. But your father knew he was being dignified, and you knew you were being dignified. My dear, what a pair of you!”
Michael frowned.
“But is nothing serious, then?” he asked. “Surely it was serious enough last night. There was I in rank rebellion to my father, and it vexed him horribly; it did more, it grieved him.”
She laid her hand on Michael’s knee.
“As if I didn’t know that!” she said. “We’re all sorry for that, though I should have been much sorrier if you had given in and ceased to vex him. But there it is! Accept that, and then, my dear, swiftly apply yourself to perceive the humour of it. And now, about your plans!”
“I shall go to Baireuth on Wednesday, and then on to Munich,” began Michael.
“That, of course. Perhaps you may find the humour of a Channel crossing. I look for it in vain. Yet I don’t know. . . . The man who puts on a yachting-cap, and asks if there’s a bit of a sea on. It proves to be the case, and he is excessively unwell. I must look out for him next time I cross. And then?”
“Then I shall settle in town and study. Oh, here’s my father coming home.”
Lord Ashbridge approached down the terrace. He stopped for a moment at the desecrated geranium bed, saw the two sitting together, and turned at right angles and went into the house. Almost immediately a footman came out with a long dog-lead and advanced hesitatingly to Og. Og was convinced that he had come to play with him, and crouched and growled and retreated and advanced with engaging affability. Out of the windows of the library looked Lord Ashbridge’s baleful face. . . . Aunt Barbara swayed out of her chair, and laid a trembling hand on Michael’s shoulder.
“I shall go and apologise for Og,” she said. “I shall do it quite sincerely, my dear. But there are points.”