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 cla.s.sical 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 ident.i.ty 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 embarra.s.s 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 embarra.s.sment 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 embarra.s.sed, 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 ma.s.ses 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.