Michael had heard the verdict of the brain specialist, who yesterday had seen his mother, and was sitting in his room beside his unopened piano quietly assimilating it, and, without making plans of his own initiative, contemplating the forms into which the future was beginning to fall, mapping itself out below him, outlining itself as when objects in a room, as the light of morning steals in, take shape again. And even as they take the familiar shapes, so already he felt that he had guessed all this in that week down at Ashbridge, from which he had returned with his father and mother a couple of days before.
She was suffering, without doubt, from some softening of the brain; nothing of remedial nature could possibly be done to arrest or cure the progress of the disease, and all that lay in human power was to secure for her as much content and serenity as possible. In her present condition there was no question of putting her under restraint, nor, indeed, could she be certified by any doctor as insane. She would have to have a trained attendant, she would live a secluded life, from which must be kept as far as possible anything that could agitate or distress her, and after that there was nothing more that could be done except to wait for the inevitable development of her malady. This might come quickly or slowly; there was no means of forecasting that, though the rapid deterioration of her brain, which had taken place during those last two months, made it, on the whole, likely that the progress of the disease would be swift. It was quite possible, on the other hand, that it might remain stationary for months. . . . And in answer to a question of Michael’s, Sir James had looked at him a moment in silence. Then he answered.
“Both for her sake and for the sake of all of you,” he had said, “one hopes that it will be swift.”
Lord Ashbridge had just telephoned that he was coming round to see Michael, a message that considerably astonished him, since it would have been more in his manner, in the unlikely event of his wishing to see his son, to have summoned him to the house in Curzon Street. However, he had announced his advent, and thus, waiting for him, and not much concerning himself about that, Michael let the future map itself. Already it was sharply defined, its boundaries and limits were clear, and though it was yet untravelled it presented to him a familiar aspect, and he felt that he could find his allotted road without fail, though he had never yet traversed it. It was strongly marked; there could be no difficulty or question about it. Indeed, a week ago, when first the recognition of his mother’s condition, with the symptoms attached to it, was known to him, he had seen the signpost that directed him into the future.
Lord Ashbridge made his usual flamboyant entry, prancing and swinging his elbows. Whatever happened he would still be Lord Ashbridge, with his grey top-hat and his large carnation and his enviable position.
“You will have heard what Sir James’s opinion is about your poor mother,” he said. “It was in consequence of what he recommended when he talked over the future with me that I came to see you.”
Michael guessed very well what this recommendation was, but with a certain stubbornness and sense of what was due to himself, he let his father proceed with the not very welcome task of telling him.
“In fact, Michael,” he said, “I have a favour to ask of you.”
The fact of his being Lord Ashbridge, and the fact of Michael being his unsatisfactory son, stiffened him, and he had to qualify the favour.
“Perhaps I should not say I am about to ask you a favour,” he corrected himself, “but rather to point out to you what is your obvious duty.”
Suddenly it struck Michael that his father was not thinking about Lady Ashbridge at all, nor about him, but in the main about himself. All had to be done from the dominant standpoint; he owed it to himself to alleviate the conditions under which his wife must live; he owed it to himself that his son should do his part as a Comber. There was no longer any possible doubt as to what this favour, or this direction of duty, must be, but still Michael chose that his father should state it. He pushed a chair forward for him.
“Won’t you sit down?” he said.
“Thank you, I would rather stand. Yes; it is not so much a favour as the indication of your duty. I do not know if you will see it in the same light as I; you have shown me before now that we do not take the same view.”
Michael felt himself bristling. His father certainly had the effect of drawing out in him all the feelings that were better suppressed.
“I think we need not talk of that now, sir,” he remarked.
“Certainly it is not the subject of my interview with you now. The fact is this. In some way your presence gives a certain serenity and content to your mother. I noticed that at Ashbridge, and, indeed, there has been some trouble with her this morning because I could not take her to come to see you with me. I ask you, therefore, for her sake, to be with us as much as you can, in short, to come and live with us.”
Michael nodded, saluting, so to speak, the signpost into the future as he passed it.
“I had already determined to do that,” he said. “I had determined, at any rate, to ask your permission to do so. It is clear that my mother wants me, and no other consideration can weigh with that.”
Lord Ashbridge still remained completely self-sufficient.
“I am glad you take that view of it,” he said. “I think that is all I have to say.”
Now Michael was an adept at giving; as indicated before, when he gave, he gave nobly, and he could not only outwardly disregard, but he inwardly cancelled the wonderful ungenerosity with which his father received. That did not concern him.
“I will make arrangements to come at once,” he said, “if you can receive me to-day.”
“That will hardly be worth while, will it? I am taking your mother back to Ashbridge tomorrow.”
Michael got up in silence. After all, this gift of himself, of his time, of his liberty, of all that constituted life to him, was made not to his father, but to his mother. It was made, as his heart knew, not ungrudgingly only, but eagerly, and if it had been recommended by the doctor that she should go to Ashbridge, he would have entirely disregarded the large additional sacrifice on himself which it entailed. Thus it was not owing to any retraction of his gift, or reconsideration of it, that he demurred.
“I hope you will—will meet me half-way about this, sir,” he said. “You must remember that all my work lies in London. I want, naturally, to continue that as far as I can. If you go to Ashbridge it is completely interrupted. My friends are here too; everything I have is here.”
His father seemed to swell a little; he appeared to fill the room.
“And all my duties lie at Ashbridge,” he said. “As you know, I am not of the type of absentee landlords. It is quite impossible that I should spend these months in idleness in town. I have never done such a thing yet, nor, I may say, would our class hold the position they do if we did. We shall come up to town after Easter, should your mother’s health permit it, but till then I could not dream of neglecting my duties in the country.”
Now Michael knew perfectly well what his father’s duties on that excellently managed estate were. They consisted of a bi-weekly interview in the “business-room” (an abode of files and stags’ heads, in which Lord Ashbridge received various reports of building schemes and repairs), of a round of golf every afternoon, and of reading the lessons and handing the offertory-box on Sunday. That, at least, was the sum-total as it presented itself to him, and on which he framed his conclusions. But he left out altogether the moral effect of the big landlord living on his own land, and being surrounded by his own dependents, which his father, on the other hand, so vastly over-estimated. It was clear that there was not likely to be much accord between them on this subject.
“But could you not go down there perhaps once or twice a week, and get Bailey to come and consult you here?” he asked.
Lord Ashbridge held his head very high.
“That would be completely out of the question,” he said.
All this, Michael felt, had nothing to do with the problem of his mother and himself. It was outside it altogether, and concerned only his father’s convenience. He was willing to press this point as far as possible.
“I had imagined you would stop in London,” he said. “Supposing under these circumstances I refuse to live with you?”
“I should draw my own conclusion as to the sincerity of your profession of duty towards your mother.”
“And practically what would you do?” asked Michael.
“Your mother and I would go to Ashbridge tomorrow all the same.”
Another alternative suddenly suggested itself to Michael which he was almost ashamed of proposing, for it implied that his father put his own convenience as outweighing any other consideration. But he saw that if only Lord Ashbridge was selfish enough to consent to it, it had manifest merits. His mother would be alone with him, free of the presence that so disconcerted her.
“I propose, then,” he said, “that she and I should remain in town, as you want to be at Ashbridge.”
He had been almost ashamed of suggesting it, but no such shame was reflected in his father’s mind. This would relieve him of the perpetual embarrassment of his wife’s presence, and the perpetual irritation of Michael’s. He had persuaded himself that he was making a tremendous personal sacrifice in proposing that Michael should live with them, and this relieved him of the necessity.
“Upon my word, Michael,” he said, with the first hint of cordiality that he had displayed, “that is very well thought of. Let us consider; it is certainly the case that this derangement in your poor mother’s mind has caused her to take what I might almost call a dislike to me. I mentioned that to Sir James, though it was very painful for me to do so, and he said that it was a common and most distressing symptom of brain disease, that the sufferer often turned against those he loved best. Your plan would have the effect of removing that.”
He paused a moment, and became even more sublimely fatuous.
“You, too,” he said, “it would obviate the interruption of your work, about which you feel so keenly. You would be able to go on with it. Of myself, I don’t think at all. I shall be lonely, no doubt, at Ashbridge, but my own personal feelings must not be taken into account. Yes; it seems to me a very sensible notion. We shall have to see what your mother says to it. She might not like me to be away from her, in spite of her apparent—er—dislike of me. It must all depend on her attitude. But for my part I think very well of your scheme. Thank you, Michael, for suggesting it.”
He left immediately after this to ascertain Lady Ashbridge’s feelings about it, and walked home with a complete resumption of his usual exuberance. It indeed seemed an admirable plan. It relieved him from the nightmare of his wife’s continual presence, and this he expressed to himself by thinking that it relieved her from his. It was not that he was deficient in sympathy for her, for in his self-centred way he was fond of her, but he could sympathise with her just as well at Ashbridge. He could do no good to her, and he had not for her that instinct of love which would make it impossible for him to leave her. He would also be spared the constant irritation of having Michael in the house, and this he expressed to himself by saying that Michael disliked him, and would be far more at his ease without him. Furthermore, Michael would be able to continue his studies . . . of this too, in spite of the fact that he had always done his best to discourage them, he made a self-laudatory translation, by telling himself that he was very glad not to have to cause Michael to discontinue them. In fine, he persuaded himself, without any difficulty, that he was a very fine fellow in consenting to a plan that suited him so admirably, and only wondered that he had not thought of it himself. There was nothing, after his wife had expressed her joyful acceptance of it, to detain him in town, and he left for Ashbridge that afternoon, while Michael moved into the house in Curzon Street.
Michael entered upon his new life without the smallest sense of having done anything exceptional or even creditable. It was so perfectly obvious to him that he had to be with his mother that he had no inclination to regard himself at all in the matter; the thing was as simple as it had been to him to help Francis out of financial difficulties with a gift of money. There was no effort of will, no sense of sacrifice about it, it was merely the assertion of a paramount instinct. The life limited his freedom, for, for a great part of the day he was with his mother, and between his music and his attendance on her, he had but little leisure. Occasionally he went out to see his friends, but any prolonged absence on his part always made her uneasy, and he would often find her, on his return, sitting in the hall, waiting for him, so as to enjoy his presence from the first moment that he re-entered the house. But though he found no food for reflection in himself, Aunt Barbara, who came to see them some few days after Michael had been installed here, found a good deal.
They had all had tea together, and afterwards Lady Ashbridge’s nurse had come down to fetch her upstairs to rest. And then Aunt Barbara surprised Michael, for she came across the room to him, with her kind eyes full of tears, and kissed him.
“My dear, I must say it once,” she said, “and then you will know that it is always in my mind. You have behaved nobly, Michael; it’s a big word, but I know no other. As for your father—”
Michael interrupted her.
“Oh, I don’t understand him,” he said. “At least, that’s the best way to look at it. Let’s leave him out.”
He paused a moment.
“After all, it is a much better plan than our living all three of us at Ashbridge. It’s better for my mother, and for me, and for him.”
“I know, but how he could consent to the better plan,” she said. “Well, let us leave him out. Poor Robert! He and his golf. My dear, your father is a very ludicrous person, you know. But about you, Michael, do you think you can stand it?”
He smiled at her.
“Why, of course I can,” he said. “Indeed, I don’t think I’ll accept that statement of it. It’s—it’s such a score to be able to be of use, you know. I can make my mother happy. Nobody else can. I think I’m getting rather conceited about it.”
“Yes, dear; I find you insufferable,” remarked Aunt Barbara parenthetically.
“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 to-morrow.”
“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. “To-morrow 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 to-night 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 sufficient 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.
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.
At the back of the house on to which these windows looked was a garden of some half acre, a square of somewhat sooty grass, bounded by high walls, with a few trees at the further end. Into it, too, had the message that thrilled through his bones penetrated, and this little oasis of doubtful grass and blackened shrubs had a totally different aspect to-day from that which it had worn all those weeks. The sparrows that had sat with fluffed-up feathers in corners sheltered from the gales, were suddenly busy and shrilly vocal, chirruping and dragging about straws, and flying from limb to limb of the trees with twigs in their beaks. For the first time he noticed that little verdant cabochons of folded leaf had globed themselves on the lilac bushes below the window, crocuses had budded, and in the garden beds had shot up the pushing spikes of bulbs, while in the sooty grass he could see specks and patches of vivid green, the first growth of the year.
He opened the window and strolled out. The whole taste and savour of the air was changed, and borne on the primrose-coloured sunshine came the smell of damp earth, no longer dead and reeking of the decay of autumn, but redolent with some new element, something fertile and fecund, something daintily, indefinably laden with the secret of life and restoration. The grey, lumpy clouds were gone, and instead chariots of dazzling white bowled along the infinite blue expanse, harnessed to the southwest wind. But, above all, the sparrows dragged straws to and fro, loudly chirruping. All spring was indexed there.
For a moment Michael was entranced with the exquisite moment, and stood sunning his soul in spring. But then he felt the fetters of his own individual winter heavy on him again, and he could only see what was happening without feeling it. For that moment he had felt the leap in his blood, but the next he was conscious again of the immense fatigue that for weeks had been growing on him. The task which he had voluntarily taken on himself had become no lighter with habit, the incessant attendance on his mother and the strain of it got heavier day by day. For some time now her childlike content in his presence had been clouded and, instead, she was constantly depressed and constantly querulous with him, finding fault with his words and his silences, and in her confused and muffled manner blaming him and affixing sinister motives to his most innocent actions. But she was still entirely dependent on him, and if he left her for an hour or two, she would wait in an agony of anxiety for his return, and when he came back overwhelmed him with tearful caresses and the exaction of promises not to go away again. Then, feeling certain of him once more, she would start again on complaints and reproaches. Her doctor had warned him that it looked as if some new phase of her illness was approaching, which might necessitate the complete curtailment of her liberty; but day had succeeded to day and she still remained in the same condition, neither better nor worse, but making every moment a burden to Michael.
It had been necessary that Sylvia should discontinue her visits, for some weeks ago Lady Ashbridge had suddenly taken a dislike to her, and, when she came, would sit in silent and lofty displeasure, speaking to her as little as possible, and treating her with a chilling and awful politeness. Michael had enough influence with his mother to prevent her telling the girl what her crime had been, which was her refusal to marry him; but, when he was alone with his mother, he had to listen to torrents of these complaints. Lady Ashbridge, with a wealth of language that had lain dormant in her all her life, sarcastically supposed that Miss Falbe was a princess in disguise (“very impenetrable disguise, for I’m sure she reminds me of a barmaid more than a princess”), and thought that such a marriage would be beneath her. Or, another time, she hinted that Miss Falbe might be already married; indeed, this seemed a very plausible explanation of her attitude. She desired, in fact, that Sylvia should not come to see her any more, and now, when she did not, there was scarcely a day in which Lady Ashbridge would not talk in a pointed manner about pretended friends who leave you alone, and won’t even take the trouble to take a two-penny ‘bus (if they are so poor as all that) to come from Chelsea to Curzon Street.
Michael knew that his mother’s steps were getting nearer and nearer to that border line which separates the sane from the insane, and with all the wearing strain of the days as they passed, had but the one desire in his heart, namely, to keep her on the right side for as long as was humanly possible. But something might happen, some new symptom develop which would make it impossible for her to go on living with him as she did now, and the dread of that moment haunted his waking hours and his dreams. Two months ago her doctor had told him that, for the sake of everyone concerned, it was to be hoped that the progress of her disease would be swift; but, for his part, Michael passionately disclaimed such a wish. In spite of her constant complaints and strictures, she was still possessed of her love for him, and, wearing though every day was, he grudged the passing of the hours that brought her nearer to the awful boundary line. Had a deed been presented to him for his signature, which bound him indefinitely to his mother’s service, on the condition that she got no worse, his pen would have spluttered with his eagerness to sign.
In consequence of his mother’s dislike to Sylvia, Michael had hardly seen her during this last month. Once, when owing to some small physical disturbance, Lady Ashbridge had gone to bed early on a Sunday evening, he had gone to one of the Falbes’ weekly parties, and had tried to fling himself with enjoyment into the friendly welcoming atmosphere. But for the present, he felt himself detached from it all, for this life with his mother was close round him with a sort of nightmare obsession, through which outside influence and desire could only faintly trickle. He knew that the other life was there, he knew that in his heart he longed for Sylvia as much as ever; but, in his present detachment, his desire for her was a drowsy ache, a remote emptiness, and the veil that lay over his mother seemed to lie over him also. Once, indeed, during the evening, when he had played for her, the veil had lifted and for the drowsy ache he had the sunlit, stabbing pang; but, as he left, the veil dropped again, and he let himself into the big, mute house, sorry that he had left it. In the same way, too, his music was in abeyance: he could not concentrate himself or find it worth while to make the effort to absorb himself in it, and he knew that short of that, there was neither profit nor pleasure for him in his piano. Everything seemed remote compared with the immediate foreground: there was a gap, a gulf between it and all the rest of the world.
His father wrote to him from time to time, laying stress on the extreme importance of all he was doing in the country, and giving no hint of his coming up to town at present. But he faintly adumbrated the time when in the natural course of events he would have to attend to his national duties in the House of Lords, and wondered whether it would not (about then) be good for his wife to have a change, and enjoy the country when the weather became more propitious. Michael, with an excusable unfilialness, did not answer these amazing epistles; but, having basked in their unconscious humour, sent them on to Aunt Barbara. Weekly reports were sent by Lady Ashbridge’s nurse to his father, and Michael had nothing whatever to add to these. His fear of him had given place to a quiet contempt, which he did not care to think about, and certainly did not care to express.
Every now and then Lady Ashbridge had what Michael thought of as a good hour or two, when she went back to her content and childlike joy in his presence, and it was clear, when presently she came downstairs as he still lingered in the garden, reading the daily paper in the sun, that one of these better intervals had visited her. She, too, it appeared, felt the waving of the magic wand of spring, and she noted the signs of it with a joy that was infinitely pathetic.
“My dear,” she said, “what a beautiful morning! Is it wise to sit out of doors without your hat, Michael? Shall not I go and fetch it for you? No? Then let us sit here and talk. It is spring, is it not? Look how the birds are collecting twigs for their nests! I wonder how they know that the time has come round again. Sweet little birds! How bold and merry they are.”
She edged her way a little nearer him, so that her shoulder leaned on his arm.
“My dear, I wish you were going to nest, too,” she said. “I wonder—do you think I have been ill-natured and unkind to your Sylvia, and that makes her not come to see me now? I do remember being vexed at her for not wanting to marry you, and perhaps I talked unkindly about her. I am sorry, for my being cross to her will do no good; it will only make her more unwilling than ever to marry a man who has such an unpleasant mamma. Will she come to see me again, do you think, if I ask her?”
These good hours were too rare in their appearances and swift in their vanishings to warrant the certainty that she would feel the same this afternoon, and Michael tried to turn the subject.
“Ah, we shall have to think about that, mother,” he said. “Look, there is a quarrel going on between those two sparrows. They both want the same straw.”
She followed his pointing finger, easily diverted.
“Oh, I wish they would not quarrel,” she said. “It is so sad and stupid to quarrel, instead of being agreeable and pleasant. I do not like them to do that. There, one has flown away! And see, the crocuses are coming up. Indeed it is spring. I should like to see the country to-day. If you are not busy, Michael, would you take me out into the country? We might go to Richmond Park perhaps, for that is in the opposite direction from Ashbridge, and look at the deer and the budding trees. Oh, Michael, might we take lunch with us, and eat it out of doors? I want to enjoy as much as I can of this spring day.”
She clung closer to Michael.
“Everything seems so fragile, dear,” she whispered. “Everything may break. . . . Sometimes I am frightened.”
The little expedition was soon moving, after a slight altercation between Lady Ashbridge and her nurse, whom she wished to leave behind in order to enjoy Michael’s undiluted society. But Miss Baker, who had already spoken to Michael, telling him she was not quite happy in her mind about her patient, was firm about accompanying them, though she obligingly effaced herself as far as possible by taking the box-seat by the chauffeur as they drove down, and when they arrived, and Michael and his mother strolled about in the warm sunshine before lunch, keeping carefully in the background, just ready to come if she was wanted. But indeed it seemed as if no such precautions were necessary, for never had Lady Ashbridge been more amenable, more blissfully content in her son’s companionship. The vernal hour, that first smell of the rejuvenated earth, as it stirred and awoke from its winter sleep had reached her no less than it had reached the springing grass and the heart of buried bulbs, and never perhaps in all her life had she been happier than on that balmy morning of early March. Here the stir of spring that had crept across miles of smoky houses to the gardens behind Curzon Street, was more actively effervescent, and the “bare, leafless choirs” of the trees, which had been empty of song all winter, were once more resonant with feathered worshippers. Through the tussocks of the grey grass of last year were pricking the vivid shoots of green, and over the grove of young birches and hazel the dim, purple veil of spring hung mistlike. Down by the water-edge of the Penn ponds they strayed, where moor-hens scuttled out of rhododendron bushes that overhung the lake, and hurried across the surface of the water, half swimming, half flying, for the shelter of some securer retreat. There, too, they found a plantation of willows, already in bud with soft moleskin buttons, and a tortoiseshell butterfly, evoked by the sun from its hibernation, settled on one of the twigs, opening and shutting its diapered wings, and spreading them to the warmth to thaw out the stiffness and inaction of winter. Blackbirds fluted in the busy thickets, a lark shot up near them soaring and singing till it became invisible in the luminous air, a suspended carol in the blue, and bold male chaffinches, seeking their mates with twittered songs, fluttered with burr of throbbing wings. All the promise of spring was there—dim, fragile, but sure, on this day of days, this pearl that emerged from the darkness and the stress of winter, iridescent with the tender colours of the dawning year.
They lunched in the open motor, Miss Baker again obligingly removing herself to the box seat, and spreading rugs on the grass sat in the sunshine, while Lady Ashbridge talked or silently watched Michael as he smoked, but always with a smile. The one little note of sadness which she had sounded when she said she was frightened lest everything should break, had not rung again, and yet all day Michael heard it echoing somewhere dimly behind the song of the wind and the birds, and the shoots of growing trees. It lurked in the thickets, just eluding him, and not presenting itself to his direct gaze; but he felt that he saw it out of the corner of his eye, only to lose it when he looked at it. And yet for weeks his mother had never seemed so well: the cloud had lifted off her this morning, and, but for some vague presage of trouble that somehow haunted his mind, refusing to be disentangled, he could have believed that, after all, medical opinion might be at fault, and that, instead of her passing more deeply into the shadows as he had been warned was inevitable, she might at least maintain the level to which she had returned to-day. All day she had been as she was before the darkness and discontent of those last weeks had come upon her: he who knew her now so well could certainly have affirmed that she had recovered the serenity of a month ago. It was so much, so tremendously much that she should do this, and if only she could remain as she had been all day, she would at any rate be happy, happier, perhaps, than she had consciously been in all the stifled years which had preceded this. Nothing else at the moment seemed to matter except the preservation to her of such content, and how eagerly would he have given all the service that his young manhood had to offer, if by that he could keep her from going further into the bewildering darkness that he had been told awaited her.
There was some little trouble, though no more than the shadow of a passing cloud, when at last he said that they must be getting back to town, for the afternoon was beginning to wane. She besought him for five minutes more of sitting here in the sunshine that was still warm, and when those minutes were over, she begged for yet another postponement. But then the quiet imposition of his will suddenly conquered her, and she got up.
“My dear, you shall do what you like with me,” she said, “for you have given me such a happy day. Will you remember that, Michael? It has been a nice day. And might we, do you think, ask Miss Falbe to come to tea with us when we get back? She can but say ‘no,’ and if she comes, I will be very good and not vex her.”
As she got back into the motor she stood up for a moment, her vague blue eyes scanning the sky, the trees, the stretch of sunlit park.
“Good-bye, lake, happy lake and moor-hens,” she said. “Good-bye, trees and grass that are growing green again. Good-bye, all pretty, peaceful things.”
Michael had no hesitation in telephoning to Sylvia when they got back to town, asking her if she could come and have tea with his mother, for the gentle, affectionate mood of the morning still lasted, and her eagerness to see Sylvia was only equalled by her eagerness to be agreeable to her. He was greedy, whenever it could be done, to secure a pleasure for his mother, and this one seemed in her present mood a perfectly safe one. Added to that impulse, in itself sufficient, there was his own longing to see her again, that thirst that never left him, and soon after they had got back to Curzon Street Sylvia was with them, and, as before, in preparation for a long visit, she had taken off her hat. To-day she divested herself of it without any suggestion on Lady Ashbridge’s part, and this immensely pleased her.
“Look, Michael,” she said. “Miss Falbe means to stop a long time. That is sweet of her, is it not? She is not in such a hurry to get away today. Sugar, Miss Falbe? Yes, I remember you take sugar and milk, but no cream. Well, I do think this is nice!”
Sylvia had seen neither mother nor son for a couple of weeks, and her eyes coming fresh to them noticed much change in them both. In Lady Ashbridge this change, though marked, was indefinable enough: she seemed to the girl to have somehow gone much further off than she had been before; she had faded, become indistinct. It was evident that she found, except when she was talking to Michael, a far greater difficulty in expressing herself, the channels of communication, as it were, were getting choked. . . . With Michael, the change was easily stated, he looked terribly tired, and it was evident that the strain of these weeks was telling heavily on him. And yet, as Sylvia noticed with a sudden sense of personal pride in him, not one jot of his patient tenderness for his mother was abated. Tired as he was, nervous, on edge, whenever he dealt with her, either talking to her, or watching for any little attention she might need, his face was alert with love. But she noticed that when the footman brought in tea, and in arranging the cups let a spoon slip jangling from its saucer, Michael jumped as if a bomb had gone off, and under his breath said to the man, “You clumsy fool!” Little as the incident was, she, knowing Michael’s courtesy and politeness, found it significant, as bearing on the evidence of his tired face. Then, next moment his mother said something to him, and instantly his love transformed and irradiated it.
To-day, more than ever before, Lady Ashbridge seemed to exist only through him. As Sylvia knew, she had been for the last few weeks constantly disagreeable to him; but she wondered whether this exacting, meticulous affection was not harder to bear. Yet Michael, in spite of the nervous strain which now showed itself so clearly, seemed to find no difficulty at all in responding to it. It might have worn his nerves to tatters, but the tenderness and love of him passed unhampered through the frayed communications, for it was he himself who was brought into play. It was of that Michael, now more and more triumphantly revealed, that Sylvia felt so proud, as if he had been a possession, an achievement wholly personal to her. He was her Michael—it was just that which was becoming evident, since nothing else would account for her claim of him, unconsciously whispered by herself to herself.
It was not long before Lady Ashbridge’s nurse appeared, to take her upstairs to rest. At that her patient became suddenly and unaccountably agitated: all the happy content of the day was wiped off her mind. She clung to Michael.
“No, no, Michael,” she said, “they mustn’t take me away. I know they are going to take me away from you altogether. You mustn’t leave me.”
Nurse Baker came towards her.
“Now, my lady, you mustn’t behave like that,” she said. “You know you are only going upstairs to rest as usual before dinner. You will see Lord Comber again then.”
She shrank from her, shielding herself behind Michael’s shoulder.
“No, Michael, no!” she repeated. “I’m going to be taken away from you. And look, Miss—ah, my dear, I have forgotten your name—look, she has got no hat on. She was going to stop with me a long time. Michael, must I go?”
Michael saw the nurse looking at her, watching her with that quiet eye of the trained attendant.
Then she spoke to Michael.
“Well, if Lord Comber will just step outside with me,” she said, “we’ll see if we can arrange for you to stop a little longer.”
“And you’ll come back, Michael,” said she.
Michael saw that the nurse wanted to say something to him, and with infinite gentleness disentangled the clinging of Lady Ashbridge’s hand.
“Why, of course I will,” he said. “And won’t you give Miss Falbe another cup of tea?”
Lady Ashbridge hesitated a moment.
“Yes, I’ll do that,” she said. “And by the time I’ve done that you will be back again, won’t you?”
Michael followed the nurse from the room, who closed the door without shutting it.
“There’s something I don’t like about her this evening,” she said. “All day I have been rather anxious. She must be watched very carefully. Now I want you to get her to come upstairs, and I’ll try to make her go to bed.”
Michael felt his mouth go suddenly dry.
“What do you expect?” he said.
“I don’t expect anything, but we must be prepared. A change comes very quickly.”
Michael nodded, and they went back together.
“Now, mother darling,” he said, “up you go with Nurse Baker. You’ve been out all day, and you must have a good rest before dinner. Shall I come up and see you soon?”
A curious, sly look came into Lady Ashbridge’s face.
“Yes, but where am I going to?” she said. “How do I know Nurse Baker will take me to my own room?”
“Because I promise you she will,” said Michael.
That instantly reassured her. Mood after mood, as Michael saw, were passing like shadows over her mind.
“Ah, that’s enough!” she said. “Good-bye, Miss—there! the name’s gone again! But won’t you sit here and have a talk to Michael, and let him show you over the house to see if you like it against the time—Oh, Michael said I mustn’t worry you about that. And won’t you stop and have dinner with us, and afterwards we can sing.”
Michael put his arm around her.
“We’ll talk about that while you’re resting,” he said. “Don’t keep Nurse Baker waiting any longer, mother.”
She nodded and smiled.
“No, no; mustn’t keep anybody waiting,” she said. “Your father taught me to be punctual.”
When they had left the room together, Sylvia turned to Michael.
“Michael, my dear,” she said, “I think you are—well, I think you are Michael.”
She saw that at the moment he was not thinking of her at all, and her heart honoured him for that.
“I’m anxious about my mother to-night,” he said. “She has been so—I suppose you must call it—well all day, but the nurse isn’t easy about her.”
Suddenly all his fears and his fatigue and his trouble looked out of his eyes.
“I’m frightened,” he said, “and it’s so unutterably feeble of me. And I’m tired: you don’t know how tired, and try as I may I feel that all the time it is no use. My mother is slipping, slipping away.”
“But, my dear, no wonder you are tired,” she said. “Michael, can’t anybody help? It isn’t right you should do everything.”
He shook his head, smiling.
“They can’t help,” he said. “I’m the only person who can help her. And I—”
He stood up, bracing mind and body.
“And I’m so brutally proud of it,” he said. “She wants me. Well, that’s a lot for a son to be able to say. Sylvia, I would give anything to keep her.”
Still he was not thinking of her, and knowing that, she came close to him and put her arm in his. She longed to give him some feeling of comradeship. She could be sisterly to him over this without suggesting to him what she could not be to him. Her instinct had divined right, and she felt the answering pressure of his elbow that acknowledged her sympathy, welcomed it, and thought no more about it.
“You are giving everything to keep her,” she said. “You are giving yourself. What further gift is there, Michael?”
He kept her arm close pressed by him, and she knew by the frankness of that holding caress he was thinking of her still either not at all, or, she hoped, as a comrade who could perhaps be of assistance to courage and clear-sightedness in difficult hours. She wanted to be no more than that to him just now; it was the most she could do for him, but with a desire, the most acute she had ever felt for him, she wanted him to accept that—to take her comradeship as he would have surely taken her brother’s. Once, in the last intimate moments they had had together, he had refused to accept that attitude from her—had felt it a relationship altogether impossible. She had seen his point of view, and recognised the justice of the embarrassment. Now, very simply but very eagerly, she hoped, as with some tugging strain, that he would not reject it. She knew she had missed this brother, who had refused to be brother to her. But he had been about his own business, and he had been doing his own business, with a quiet splendour that drew her eyes to him, and as they stood there, thus linked, she wondered if her heart was following. . . . She had seen, last December, how reasonable it was of him to refuse this domestic sort of intimacy with her; now, she found herself intensely longing that he would not persist in his refusal.
Suddenly Michael awoke to the fact of her presence, and abruptly he moved away from her.
“Thanks, Sylvia,” he said. “I know I have your—your good wishes. But—well, I am sure you understand.”
She understood perfectly well. And the understanding of it cut her to the quick.
“Have you got any right to behave like that to me, Michael?” she asked. “What have I done that you should treat me quite like that?”
He looked at her, completely recalled in mind to her alone. All the hopes and desires of the autumn smote him with encompassing blows.
“Yes, every right,” he said. “I wasn’t heeding you. I only thought of my mother, and the fact that there was a very dear friend by me. And then I came to myself: I remembered who the friend was.”
They stood there in silence, apart, for a moment. Then Michael came closer. The desire for human sympathy, and that the sympathy he most longed for, gripped him again.
“I’m a brute,” he said. “It was awfully nice of you to—to offer me that. I accept it so gladly. I’m wretchedly anxious.”
He looked up at her.
“Take my arm again,” he said.
She felt the crook of his elbow tighten again on her wrist. She had not known before how much she prized that.
“But are you sure you are right in being anxious, Mike?” she asked. “Isn’t it perhaps your own tired nerves that make you anxious?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “I’ve been tired a long time, you see, and I never felt about my mother like this. She has been so bright and content all day, and yet there were little lapses, if you understand. It was as if she knew: she said good-bye to the lake and the jolly moor-hens and the grass. And her nurse thinks so, too. She called me out of the room just now to tell me that. . . . I don’t know why I should tell you these depressing things.”
“Don’t you?” she asked. “But I do. It’s because you know I care. Otherwise you wouldn’t tell me: you couldn’t.”
For a moment the balance quavered in his mind between Sylvia the beloved and Sylvia the friend. It inclined to the friend.
“Yes, that’s why,” he said. “And I reproach myself, you know. All these years I might, if I had tried harder, have been something to my mother. I might have managed it. I thought—at least I felt—that she didn’t encourage me. But I was a beast to have been discouraged. And now her wanting me has come just when it isn’t her unclouded self that wants me. It’s as if—as if it had been raining all day, and just on sunset there comes a gleam in the west. And so soon after it’s night.”
“You made the gleam,” said Sylvia.
“But so late; so awfully late.”
Suddenly he stood stiff, listening to some sound which at present she did not hear. It sounded a little louder, and her ears caught the running of footsteps on the stairs outside. Next moment the door opened, and Lady Ashbridge’s maid put in a pale face.
“Will you go to her ladyship, my lord?” she said. “Her nurse wants you. She told me to telephone to Sir James.”
Sylvia moved with him, not disengaging her arm, towards the door.
“Michael, may I wait?” she said. “You might want me, you know. Please let me wait.”
Lady Ashbridge’s room was on the floor above, and Michael ran up the intervening stairs three at a time. He knocked and entered and wondered why he had been sent for, for she was sitting quietly on her sofa near the window. But he noticed that Nurse Baker stood very close to her. Otherwise there was nothing that was in any way out of the ordinary.
“And here he is,” said the nurse reassuringly as he entered.
Lady Ashbridge turned towards the door as Michael came in, and when he met her eyes he knew why he had been sent for, why at this moment Sir James was being summoned. For she looked at him not with the clouded eyes of affection, not with the mother-spirit striving to break through the shrouding trouble of her brain, but with eyes of blank non-recognition. She saw him with the bodily organs of her vision, but the picture of him was conveyed no further: there was a blank wall behind her eyes.
Michael did not hesitate. It was possible that he still might be something to her, that he, his presence, might penetrate.