CHAPTER XII

Michael was sitting in the big studio at the Falbes' house late one afternoon at the end of June, and the warmth and murmur of the full-blown summer filled the air. The day had so far declined that the rays of the sun, level in its setting, poured slantingly in through the big window to the north, and shining through the foliage of the plane-trees outside made a diaper of rosy illuminated spots and angled shadows on the whitewashed wall. As the leaves stirred in the evening breeze, this pattern shifted and twinkled; now, as the wind blew aside a bunch of foliage, a lake of rosy gold would spring up on the wall; then, as the breath of movement died, the green shadows grew thicker again faintly stirring. Through the window to the south, which Hermann had caused to be cut there, since the studio was not used for painting purposes, Michael could see into the patch of high-walled garden, where Mrs. Falbe was sitting in a low basket chair, completely absorbed in a book of high-born and ludicrous adventures. She had made a mild attempt when she found that Michael intended to wait for Sylvia's return to entertain him till she came; but, with a little oblique encouragement, remarking on the beauty and warmth of the evening, and the pleasure of sitting out of doors, Michael had induced her to go out again, and leave him alone in the studio, free to live over again that which, twenty-four hours ago, had changed life for him.

He reconstructed it as he sat on the sofa and dwelt on the pearl-moments of it. Just this time yesterday he had come in and found Sylvia alone.

She had got up, he remembered, to give him greeting, and just opposite the fireplace they had come face to face. She held in her hand a small white rose which she had plucked in the tiny garden here in the middle of London. It was not a very fine specimen, but it was a rose, and she had said in answer to his depreciatory glance: "But you must see it when I have washed it. One has to wash London flowers."

Then . . . the miracle happened. Michael, with the hand that had just taken hers, stroked a petal of this prized vegetable, with no thought in his mind stronger than the thoughts that had been indigenous there since Christmas. As his finger first touched the rim of the town-bred petals, undersized yet not quite lacking in "rose-quality," he had intended nothing more than to salute the flower, as Sylvia made her apology for it. "One has to wash London flowers." But as he touched it he looked up at her, and the quiet, usual song of his thoughts towards her grew suddenly loud and stupefyingly sweet. It was as if from the vacant hive-door the bees swarmed. In her eyes, as they met his, he thought he saw an expectancy, a welcome, and his hand, instead of stroking the rose-petals, closed on the rose and on the hand that held it, and kept them close imprisoned and strongly gripped. He could not remember if he had spoken any word, but he had seen that in her face which rendered all speech unnecessary, and, knowing in the bones and the blood of him that he was right, he kissed her. And then she had said, "Yes, Michael."

His hand still was tight on hers that held the crumpled rose, and when he opened it, lover-like, to stroke and kiss it, there was a spot of blood in the palm of it, where a rose-thorn had p.r.i.c.ked her, just one drop of Sylvia's blood. As he kissed it, he had wiped it away with the tip of his tongue between his lips, and she smiling had said, "Oh, Michael, how silly!"

They had sat together on the sofa where this afternoon he sat alone waiting for her. Every moment of that half hour was as distinct as the outline of trees and hills just before a storm, and yet it was still entirely dream-like. He knew it had happened, for nothing but the happening of it would account now for the fact of himself; but, though there was nothing in the world so true, there was nothing so incredible.

Yet it was all as clean-cut in his mind as etched lines, and round each line sprang flowers and singing birds. For a long s.p.a.ce there was silence after they had sat down, and then she said, "I think I always loved you, Michael, only I didn't know it. . . ." Thereafter, foolish love talk: he had claimed a superiority there, for he had always loved her and had always known it. Much time had been wasted owing to her ignorance . . . she ought to have known. But all the time that existed was theirs now. In all the world there was no more time than what they had. The crumpled rose had its petals rehabilitated, the thorn that had p.r.i.c.ked her was peeled off. They wondered if Hermann had come in yet.

Then, by some vague process of locomotion, they found themselves at the piano, and with her arm around his neck Sylvia has whispered half a verse of the song of herself. . . .

They became a little more definite over lover-confessions. Michael had, so to speak, nothing to confess: he had loved all along--he had wanted her all along; there never had been the least pretence or nonsense about it. Her path was a little more difficult to trace, but once it had been traversed it was clear enough. She had liked him always; she had felt sister-like from the moment when Hermann brought him to the house, and sister-like she had continued to feel, even when Michael had definitely declared there was "no thoroughfare" there. She had missed that relationship when it stopped: she did not mind telling him that now, since it was abandoned by them both; but not for the world would she have confessed before that she had missed it. She had loved being asked to come and see his mother, and it was during those visits that she had helped to pile the barricade across the "sister-thoroughfare" with her own hands. She began to share Michael's sense of the impossibility of that road. They could not walk down it together, for they had to be either more or less to each other than that. And, during these visits, she had begun to understand (and her face a little hid itself) what Michael's love meant. She saw it manifested towards his mother; she was taught by it; she learned it; and, she supposed, she loved it. Anyhow, having seen it, she could not want Michael as a brother any longer, and if he still wanted anything else, she supposed (so she supposed) that some time he would mention that fact. Yes: she began to hope that he would not be very long about it. . . .

Michael went over this very deliberately as he sat waiting for her twenty-four hours later. He rehea.r.s.ed this moment and that over and over again: in mind he followed himself and Sylvia across to the piano, not hurrying their steps, and going through the verse of the song she sang at the pace at which she actually sang it. And, as he dreamed and recollected, he heard a little stir in the quiet house, and Sylvia came.

They met just as they met yesterday in front of the fireplace.

"Oh, Michael, have you been waiting long?" she said.

"Yes, hours, or perhaps a couple of minutes. I don't know."

"Ah, but which? If hours, I shall apologise, and then excuse myself by saying that you must have come earlier than you intended. If minutes I shall praise myself for being so exceedingly punctual."

"Minutes, then," said he. "I'll praise you instead. Praise is more convincing if somebody else does it."

"Yes, but you aren't somebody else. Now be sensible. Have you done all the things you told me you were going to do?"

"Yes."

Sylvia released her hands from his.

"Tell me, then," she said. "You've seen your father?"

There was no cloud on Michael's face. There was such sunlight where his soul sat that no shadow could fall across it.

"Oh, yes, I saw him," he said.

He captured Sylvia's hand again.

"And what is more he saw me, so to speak," he said. "He realised that I had an existence independent of him. I used to be a--a sort of clock to him; he could put its hands to point to any hour he chose. Well, he has realised--he has really--that I am ticking along on my own account.

He was quite respectful, not only to me, which doesn't matter, but to you--which does." Michael laughed, as he plaited his fingers in with hers.

"My father is so comic," he said, "and unlike most great humourists his humour is absolutely unconscious. He was perfectly well aware that I meant to marry you, for I told him that last Christmas, adding that you did not mean to marry me. So since then I think he's got used to you.

Used to you--fancy getting used to you!"

"Especially since he had never seen me," said the girl.

"That makes it less odd. Getting used to you after seeing you would be much more incredible. I was saying that in a way he had got used to you, just as he's got used to my being a person, and not a clock on his chimney-piece, and what seems to have made so much difference is what Aunt Barbara told him last night, namely, that your mother was a Tracy.

Sylvia, don't let it be too much for you, but in a certain far-away manner he realises that you are 'one of us.' Isn't he a comic? He's going to make the best of you, it appears. To make the best of you! You can't beat that, you know. In fact, he told me to ask if he might come and pay his respects to your mother to-morrow.

"And what about my singing, my career?" she asked.

Michael laughed again.

"He was funny about that also," he said. "My father took it absolutely for granted that having made this tremendous social advance, you would bury your past, all but the Tracy part of it, as if it had been something disgraceful which the exalted Comber family agreed to overlook."

"And what did you say?"

"I? Oh, I told him that, of course, you would do as you pleased about that, but that for my part I should urge you most strongly to do nothing of the kind."

"And he?"

"He got four inches taller. What is so odd is that as long as I never opposed my father's wishes, as long as I was the clock on the chimney piece, I was terrified at him. The thought of opposing myself to him made my knees quake. But the moment I began doing so, I found there was nothing to be frightened at."

Sylvia got up and began walking up and down the long room.

"But what am I to do about it, Michael?" she asked. "Oh, I blush when I think of a conversation I had with Hermann about you, just before Christmas, when I knew you were going to propose to me. I said that I could never give up my singing. Can you picture the self-importance of that? Why, it doesn't seem to me to matter two straws whether I do or not. Naturally, I don't want to earn my living by it any more, but whether I sing or not doesn't matter. And even as the words are in my mouth I try to imagine myself not singing any more, and I can't. It's become part of me, and while I blush to think of what I said to Hermann, I wonder whether it's not true."

She came and sat down by him again.

"I believe you have got enough artistic instinct to understand that, Michael," she said, "and to know what a tremendous help it is to one's art to be a professional, and to be judged seriously. I suppose that, ideally, if one loves music as I do one ought to be able to do one's very best, whether one is singing professionally or not, but it is hardly possible. Why, the whole difference between amateurs and professionals is that amateurs sing charmingly and professionals just sing. Only they sing as well as they possibly can, not only because they love it, but because if they don't they will be dropped on to, and if they continue not singing their best, will lose their place which they have so hardly won. I can see myself, perhaps, not singing at all, literally never opening my lips in song again, but I can't see myself coming down to the Drill Hall at Brixton, extremely beautifully dressed, with rows of pearls, and arriving rather late, and just singing charmingly. It's such a spur to know that serious musicians judge one's performance by the highest possible standard. It's so relaxing to think that one can easily sing well enough, that one can delight ninety-nine hundredths of the audience without any real effort. I could sing 'The Lost Chord' and move the whole Drill Hall at Brixton to tears. But there might be one man there who knew, you or Hermann or some other, and at the end he would just shrug his shoulders ever so slightly, and I would wish I had never been born."

She paused a moment.

"I'll not sing any more at all, ever," she said, "or I must sing to those who will take me seriously and judge me ruthlessly. To sing just well enough to please isn't possible. I'll do either you like."

Mrs. Falbe strayed in at this moment with her finger in her book, but otherwise as purposeless as a wandering mist.

"I was afraid it might be going to get chilly," she remarked. "After a hot day there is often a cool evening. Will you stop and dine, Lord--I mean, Michael?"

"Please; certainly!" said Michael.

"Then I hope there will be something for you to eat. Sylvia, is there something to eat? No doubt you will see to that, darling. I shall just rest upstairs for a little before dinner, and perhaps finish my book. So pleased you are stopping."

She drifted towards the studio door, in thistledown fashion catching at corners a little, and then moving smoothly on again, talking gently half to herself, half to the others.

"And Hermann's not in yet, but if Lord--I mean, Michael, is going to stop here till dinnertime, it won't matter whether Hermann comes in in time to dress or not, as Michael is not dressed either. Oh, there is the postman's knock! What a noise! I am not expecting any letters."

The knock in question, however, proved to be Hermann, who, as was generally the case, had forgotten his latchkey. He ran into his mother at the studio door, and came and sat down, regardless of whether he was wanted or not, between the two on the sofa, and took an arm of each.

"I probably intrude," he said, "but such is my intention. I've just seen Lady Barbara, who says that the shock has not been too much for Mike's father. That is a good thing; she says he is taking nourishment much as usual. I suppose I oughtn't to jest on so serious a subject, but I took my cue from Lady Barbara. It appears that we have blue blood too, Sylvia, and we must behave more like aristocrats. A Tracy in the time of King John flirted, if no more, with a Comber. And what about your career, Sylvia? Are you going to continue to urge your wild career, or not? I ask with a purpose, as Blackiston proposes we should give a concert together in the third week in July. The Queen's Hall is vacant one afternoon, and he thinks we might sing and play to them. I'm on if you are. It will be about the last concert of the season, too, so we shall have to do our best. Otherwise we, or I, anyhow, will start again in the autumn with a black mark. By the way, are you going to start again in the autumn? It wouldn't surprise me one bit to hear that you and Mike had been talking about just that."

"Don't be too clever to live, Hermann," said Sylvia.