Michael

E >> E. F. Benson >> Michael

MICHAEL

by E. F. Benson




CHAPTER I


Though there was nothing visibly graceful about Michael Comber, he
apparently had the art of giving gracefully. He had already told his
cousin Francis, who sat on the arm of the sofa by his table, that there
was no earthly excuse for his having run into debt; but now when the
moment came for giving, he wrote the cheque quickly and eagerly, as if
thoroughly enjoying it, and passed it over to him with a smile that was
extraordinarily pleasant.

"There you are, then, Francis," he said; "and I take it from you that
that will put you perfectly square again. You've got to write to me,
remember, in two days' time, saying that you have paid those bills. And
for the rest, I'm delighted that you told me about it. In fact, I should
have been rather hurt if you hadn't."

Francis apparently had the art of accepting gracefully, which is more
difficult than the feat which Michael had so successfully accomplished.

"Mike, you're a brick," he said. "But then you always are a brick.
Thanks awfully."

Michael got up, and shuffled rather than walked across the room to the
bell by the fireplace. As long as he was sitting down his big arms and
broad shoulders gave the impression of strength, and you would have
expected to find when he got up that he was tall and largely made. But
when he rose the extreme shortness of his legs manifested itself, and
he appeared almost deformed. His hands hung nearly to his knees; he was
heavy, short, lumpish.

"But it's more blessed to give than to receive, Francis," he said. "I
have the best of you there."

"Well, it's pretty blessed to receive when you are in a tight place, as
I was," he said, laughing. "And I am so grateful."

"Yes, I know you are. And it's that which makes me feel rather cheap,
because I don't miss what I've given you. But that's distinctly not a
reason for your doing it again. You'll have tea, won't you?"

"Why, yes," said Francis, getting up, also, and leaning his elbow on
the chimney-piece, which was nearly on a level with the top of Michael's
head. And if Michael had gracefulness only in the art of giving,
Francis's gracefulness in receiving was clearly of a piece with the rest
of him. He was tall, slim and alert, with the quick, soft movements of
some wild animal. His face, brown with sunburn and pink with brisk-going
blood, was exceedingly handsome in a boyish and almost effeminate
manner, and though he was only eighteen months younger than his cousin,
he looked as if nine or ten years might have divided their ages.

"But you are a brick, Mike," he said again, laying his long, brown hand
on his cousin's shoulder. "I can't help saying it twice."

"Twice more than was necessary," said Michael, finally dismissing the
subject.

The room where they sat was in Michael's flat in Half Moon Street, and
high up in one of those tall, discreet-looking houses. The windows were
wide open on this hot July afternoon, and the bourdon hum of London,
where Piccadilly poured by at the street end, came in blended and
blunted by distance, but with the suggestion of heat, of movement, of
hurrying affairs. The room was very empty of furniture; there was a rug
or two on the parquet floor, a long, low bookcase taking up the end near
the door, a table, a sofa, three or four chairs, and a piano. Everything
was plain, but equally obviously everything was expensive, and the
general impression given was that the owner had no desire to be
surrounded by things he did not want, but insisted on the superlative
quality of the things he did. The rugs, for instance, happened to be of
silk, the bookcase happened to be Hepplewhite, the piano bore the most
eminent of makers' names. There were three mezzotints on the walls, a
dragon's-blood vase on the high, carved chimney-piece; the whole bore
the unmistakable stamp of a fine, individual taste.

"But there's something else I want to talk to you about, Francis," said
Michael, as presently afterwards they sat over their tea. "I can't say
that I exactly want your advice, but I should like your opinion. I've
done something, in fact, without asking anybody, but now that it's done
I should like to know what you think about it."

Francis laughed.

"That's you all over, Michael," he said. "You always do a thing first,
if you really mean to do it--which I suppose is moral courage--and then
you go anxiously round afterwards to see if other people approve,
which I am afraid looks like moral cowardice. I go on a different
plan altogether. I ascertain the opinion of so many people before I do
anything that I end by forgetting what I wanted to do. At least,
that seems a reasonable explanation for the fact that I so seldom do
anything."

Michael looked affectionately at the handsome boy who lounged
long-legged in the chair opposite him. Like many very shy persons, he
had one friend with whom he was completely unreserved, and that was
this cousin of his, for whose charm and insouciant brilliance he had so
adoring an admiration.

He pointed a broad, big finger at him.

"Yes, but when you are like that," he said, "you can just float along.
Other people float you. But I should sink heavily if I did nothing. I've
got to swim all the time."

"Well, you are in the army," said Francis. "That's as much swimming as
anyone expects of a fellow who has expectations. In fact, it's I who
have to swim all the time, if you come to think of it. You are somebody;
I'm not!"

Michael sat up and took a cigarette.

"But I'm not in the army any longer," he said. "That's just what I am
wanting to tell you."

Francis laughed.

"What do you mean?" he asked. "Have you been cashiered or shot or
something?"

"I mean that I wrote and resigned my commission yesterday," said
Michael. "If you had dined with me last night--as, by the way, you
promised to do--I should have told you then."

Francis got up and leaned against the chimney-piece. He was conscious of
not thinking this abrupt news as important as he felt he ought to think
it. That was characteristic of him; he floated, as Michael had lately
told him, finding the world an extremely pleasant place, full of warm
currents that took you gently forward without entailing the slightest
exertion. But Michael's grave and expectant face--that Michael who had
been so eagerly kind about meeting his debts for him--warned him that,
however gossamer-like his own emotions were, he must attempt to ballast
himself over this.

"Are you speaking seriously?" he asked.

"Quite seriously. I never did anything that was so serious."

"And that is what you want my opinion about?" he asked. "If so, you
must tell me more, Mike. I can't have an opinion unless you give me the
reasons why you did it. The thing itself--well, the thing itself doesn't
seem to matter so immensely. The significance of it is why you did it."

Michael's big, heavy-browed face lightened a moment. "For a fellow who
never thinks," he said, "you think uncommonly well. But the reasons are
obvious enough. You can guess sufficient reasons to account for it."

"Let's hear them anyhow," said Francis.

Michael clouded again.

"Surely they are obvious," he said. "No one knows better than me, unless
it is you, that I'm not like the rest of you. My mind isn't the build of
a guardsman's mind, any more than my unfortunate body is. Half our work,
as you know quite well, consists in being pleasant and in liking it.
Well, I'm not pleasant. I'm not breezy and cordial. I can't do it.
I make a task of what is a pastime to all of you, and I only shuffle
through my task. I'm not popular, I'm not liked. It's no earthly use
saying I am. I don't like the life; it seems to me senseless. And those
who live it don't like me. They think me heavy--just heavy. And I have
enough sensitiveness to know it."

Michael need not have stated his reasons, for his cousin could certainly
have guessed them; he could, too, have confessed to the truth of them.
Michael had not the light hand, which is so necessary when young men
work together in a companionship of which the cordiality is an essential
part of the work; neither had he in the social side of life that
particular and inimitable sort of easy self-confidence which, as he had
said just now, enables its owner to float. Except in years he was not
young; he could not manage to be "clubable"; he was serious and awkward
at a supper party; he was altogether without the effervescence which is
necessary in order to avoid flatness. He did his work also in the same
conscientious but leaden way; officers and men alike felt it. All this
Francis knew perfectly well; but instead of acknowledging it, he tried
quite fruitlessly to smooth it over.

"Aren't you exaggerating?" he asked.

Michael shook his head.

"Oh, don't tone it down, Francis!" he said. "Even if I was
exaggerating--which I don't for a moment admit--the effect on my general
efficiency would be the same. I think what I say is true."

Francis became more practical.

"But you've only been in the regiment three years," he said. "It won't
be very popular resigning after only three years."

"I have nothing much to lose on the score of popularity," remarked
Michael.

There was nothing pertinent that could be consoling here.

"And have you told your father?" asked Francis. "Does Uncle Robert
know?"

"Yes; I wrote to father this morning, and I'm going down to Ashbridge
to-morrow. I shall be very sorry if he disapproves."

"Then you'll be sorry," said Francis.

"I know, but it won't make any difference to my action. After all, I'm
twenty-five; if I can't begin to manage my life now, you may be sure I
never shall. But I know I'm right. I would bet on my infallibility. At
present I've only told you half my reasons for resigning, and already
you agree with me."

Francis did not contradict this.

"Let's hear the rest, then," he said.

"You shall. The rest is far more important, and rather resembles a
sermon."

Francis appropriately sat down again.

"Well, it's this," said Michael. "I'm twenty-five, and it is time that
I began trying to be what perhaps I may be able to be, instead of not
trying very much--because it's hopeless--to be what I can't be. I'm
going to study music. I believe that I could perhaps do something there,
and in any case I love it more than anything else. And if you love a
thing, you have certainly a better chance of succeeding in it than in
something that you don't love at all. I was stuck into the army for no
reason except that soldiering is among the few employments which it is
considered proper for fellows in my position--good Lord! how awful it
sounds!--proper for me to adopt. The other things that were open were
that I should be a sailor or a member of Parliament. But the soldier was
what father chose. I looked round the picture gallery at home the other
day; there are twelve Lord Ashbridges in uniform. So, as I shall be
Lord Ashbridge when father dies, I was stuck into uniform too, to be the
ill-starred thirteenth. But what has it all come to? If you think of it,
when did the majority of them wear their smart uniforms? Chiefly when
they went on peaceful parades or to court balls, or to the Sir Joshua
Reynolds of the period to be painted. They've been tin soldiers,
Francis! You're a tin soldier, and I've just ceased to be a tin soldier.
If there was the smallest chance of being useful in the army, by which
I mean standing up and being shot at because I am English, I would not
dream of throwing it up. But there's no such chance."

Michael paused a moment in his sermon, and beat out the ashes from his
pipe against the grate.

"Anyhow the chance is too remote," he said. "All the nations with armies
and navies are too much afraid of each other to do more than growl. Also
I happen to want to do something different with my life, and you can't
do anything unless you believe in what you are doing. I want to leave
behind me something more than the portrait of a tin soldier in the
dining-room at Ashbridge. After all, isn't an artistic profession
the greatest there is? For what counts, what is of value in the
world to-day? Greek statues, the Italian pictures, the symphonies of
Beethoven, the plays of Shakespeare. The people who have made beautiful
things are they who are the benefactors of mankind. At least, so the
people who love beautiful things think."

Francis glanced at his cousin. He knew this interesting vital side of
Michael; he was aware, too, that had anybody except himself been in the
room, Michael could not have shown it. Perhaps there might be people
to whom he could show it but certainly they were not those among whom
Michael's life was passed.

"Go on," he said encouragingly. "You're ripping, Mike."

"Well, the nuisance of it is that the things I am ripping about appear
to father to be a sort of indoor game. It's all right to play the piano,
if it's too wet to play golf. You can amuse yourself with painting if
there aren't any pheasants to shoot. In fact, he will think that my
wanting to become a musician is much the same thing as if I wanted to
become a billiard-marker. And if he and I talked about it till we were a
hundred years old, he could never possibly appreciate my point of view."

Michael got up and began walking up and down the room with his slow,
ponderous movement.

"Francis, it's a thousand pities that you and I can't change places," he
said. "You are exactly the son father would like to have, and I should
so much prefer being his nephew. However, you come next; that's one
comfort."

He paused a moment.

"You see, the fact is that he doesn't like me," he said. "He has no
sympathy whatever with my tastes, nor with what I am. I'm an awful trial
to him, and I don't see how to help it. It's pure waste of time, my
going on in the Guards. I do it badly, and I hate it. Now, you're made
for it; you're that sort, and that sort is my father's sort. But I'm
not; no one knows that better than myself. Then there's the question of
marriage, too."

Michael gave a mirthless laugh.

"I'm twenty-five, you see," he said, "and it's the family custom for the
eldest son to marry at twenty-five, just as he's baptised when he's a
certain number of weeks old, and confirmed when he is fifteen. It's part
of the family plan, and the Medes and Persians aren't in it when the
family plan is in question. Then, again, the lucky young woman has to be
suitable; that is to say, she must be what my father calls 'one of us.'
How I loathe that phrase! So my mother has a list of the suitable, and
they come down to Ashbridge in gloomy succession, and she and I are
sent out to play golf together or go on the river. And when, to our
unutterable relief, that is over, we hurry back to the house, and I
escape to my piano, and she goes and flirts with you, if you are there.
Don't deny it. And then another one comes, and she is drearier than the
last--at least, I am."

Francis lay back and laughed at this dismal picture of the rejection of
the fittest.

"But you're so confoundedly hard to please, Mike," he said. "There was
an awfully nice girl down at Ashbridge at Easter when I was there, who
was simply pining to take you. I've forgotten her name."

Michael clicked his fingers in a summary manner.

"There you are!" he said. "You and she flirted all the time, and three
months afterwards you don't even remember her name. If you had only been
me, you would have married her. As it was, she and I bored each other
stiff. There's an irony for you! But as for pining, I ask you whether
any girl in her senses could pine for me. Look at me, and tell me! Or
rather, don't look at me; I can't bear to be looked at."

Here was one of Michael's morbid sensitivenesses. He seldom forgot his
own physical appearance, the fact of which was to him appalling. His
stumpy figure with its big body, his broad, blunt-featured face, his
long arms, his large hands and feet, his clumsiness in movement were to
him of the nature of a constant nightmare, and it was only with Francis
and the ease that his solitary presence gave, or when he was occupied
with music that he wholly lost his self-consciousness in this respect.
It seemed to him that he must be as repulsive to others as he was to
himself, which was a distorted view of the case. Plain without doubt he
was, and of heavy and ungainly build; but his belief in the finality of
his uncouthness was morbid and imaginary, and half his inability to get
on with his fellows, no less than with the maidens who were brought
down in single file to Ashbridge, was due to this. He knew very well
how light-heartedly they escaped to the geniality and attractiveness of
Francis, and in the clutch of his own introspective temperament he could
not free himself from the handicap of his own sensitiveness, and, like
others, take himself for granted. He crushed his own power to please by
the weight of his judgments on himself.

"So there's another reason to complain of the irony of fate," he said.
"I don't want to marry anybody, and God knows nobody wants to marry me.
But, then, it's my duty to become the father of another Lord Ashbridge,
as if there had not been enough of them already, and his mother must
be a certain kind of girl, with whom I have nothing in common. So I
say that if only we could have changed places, you would have filled
my niche so perfectly, and I should have been free to bury myself in
Leipzig or Munich, and lived like the grub I certainly am, and have
drowned myself in a sea of music. As it is, goodness knows what my
father will say to the letter I wrote him yesterday, which he will have
received this morning. However, that will soon be patent, for I go down
there to-morrow. I wish you were coming with me. Can't you manage to for
a day or two, and help things along? Aunt Barbara will be there."

Francis consulted a small, green morocco pocket-book.

"Can't to-morrow," he said, "nor yet the day after. But perhaps I could
get a few days' leave next week."

"Next week's no use. I go to Baireuth next week."

"Baireuth? Who's Baireuth?" asked Francis.

"Oh, a man I know. His other name was Wagner, and he wrote some tunes."

Francis nodded.

"Oh, but I've heard of him," he said. "They're rather long tunes, aren't
they? At least I found them so when I went to the opera the other night.
Go on with your plans, Mike. What do you mean to do after that?"

"Go on to Munich and hear the same tunes over, again. After that I shall
come back and settle down in town and study."

"Play the piano?" asked Francis, amiably trying to enter into his
cousin's schemes.

Michael laughed.

"No doubt that will come into it," he said. "But it's rather as if
you told somebody you were a soldier, and he said: 'Oh, is that quick
march?'"

"So it is. Soldiering largely consists of quick march, especially when
it's more than usually hot."

"Well, I shall learn to play the piano," said Michael.

"But you play so rippingly already," said Francis cordially. "You played
all those songs the other night which you had never seen before. If you
can do that, there is nothing more you want to learn with the piano, is
there?"

"You are talking rather as father will talk," observed Michael.

"Am I? Well, I seem to be talking sense."

"You weren't doing what you seemed, then. I've got absolutely everything
to learn about the piano."

Francis rose.

"Then it is clear I don't understand anything about it," he said. "Nor,
I suppose, does Uncle Robert. But, really, I rather envy you, Mike.
Anyhow, you want to do and be something so much that you are gaily going
to face unpleasantnesses with Uncle Robert about it. Now, I wouldn't
face unpleasantnesses with anybody about anything I wanted to do, and I
suppose the reason must be that I don't want to do anything enough."

"The malady of not wanting," quoted Michael.

"Yes, I've got that malady. The ordinary things that one naturally does
are all so pleasant, and take all the time there is, that I don't want
anything particular, especially now that you've been such a brick--"

"Stop it," said Michael.

"Right; I got it in rather cleverly. I was saying that it must be rather
nice to want a thing so much that you'll go through a lot to get it.
Most fellows aren't like that."

"A good many fellows are jelly-fish," observed Michael.

"I suppose so. I'm one, you know. I drift and float. But I don't think I
sting. What are you doing to-night, by the way?"

"Playing the piano, I hope. Why?"

"Only that two fellows are dining with me, and I thought perhaps you
would come. Aunt Barbara sent me the ticket for a box at the Gaiety,
too, and we might look in there. Then there's a dance somewhere."

"Thanks very much, but I think I won't," said Michael. "I'm rather
looking forward to an evening alone."

"And that's an odd thing to look forward to," remarked Francis.

"Not when you want to play the piano. I shall have a chop here at eight,
and probably thump away till midnight."

Francis looked round for his hat and stick.

"I must go," he said. "I ought to have gone long ago, but I didn't want
to. The malady came in again. Most of the world have got it, you know,
Michael."

Michael rose and stood by his tall cousin.

"I think we English have got it," he said. "At least, the English you
and I know have got it. But I don't believe the Germans, for instance,
have. They're in deadly earnest about all sorts of things--music among
them, which is the point that concerns me. The music of the world is
German, you know!"

Francis demurred to this.

"Oh, I don't think so," he said. "This thing at the Gaiety is ripping, I
believe. Do come and see."


Michael resisted this chance of revising his opinion about the German
origin of music, and Francis drifted out into Piccadilly. It was already
getting on for seven o'clock, and the roadway and pavements were full of
people who seemed rather to contradict Michael's theory that the nation
generally suffered from the malady of not wanting, so eagerly and
numerously were they on the quest for amusement. Already the street was
a mass of taxicabs and private motors containing, each one of them, men
and women in evening dress, hurrying out to dine before the theatre
or the opera. Bright, eager faces peered out, with sheen of silk and
glitter of gems; they all seemed alert and prosperous and keen for the
daily hours of evening entertainment. A crowd similar in spirit pervaded
the pavements, white-shirted men with coat on arm stepped in and out
of swinging club doors and the example set by the leisured class seemed
copiously copied by those whom desks and shops had made prisoners
all day. The air of the whole town, swarming with the nation that is
supposed to make so grave an affair of its amusements, was indescribably
gay and lighthearted; the whole city seemed set on enjoying itself.
The buses that boomed along were packed inside and out, and each
was placarded with advertisement of some popular piece at theatre or
music-hall. Inside the Green Park the grass was populous with lounging
figures, who, unable to pay for indoor entertainment, were making the
most of what the coolness of sunset and grass supplied them with gratis;
the newsboards of itinerant sellers contained nothing of more serious
import than the result of cricket matches; and, as the dusk began to
fall, street lamps and signs were lit, like early rising stars, so that
no hint of the gathering night should be permitted to intrude on the
perpetually illuminated city. All that was sordid and sad, all that was
busy (except on these gay errands of pleasure) was shuffled away out of
sight, so that the pleasure seekers might be excused for believing that
there was nothing in the world that could demand their attention except
the need of amusing themselves successfully. The workers toiled in order
that when the working day was over the fruits of their labour might
yield a harvest of a few hours' enjoyment; silkworms had spun so that
from carriage windows might glimmer the wrappings made from their
cocoons; divers had been imperilled in deep seas so that the pearls they
had won might embellish the necks of these fair wearers.

To Francis this all seemed very natural and proper, part of the
recognised order of things that made up the series of sensations known
to him as life. He did not, as he had said, very particularly care
about anything, and it was undoubtedly true that there was no motive
or conscious purpose in his life for which he would voluntarily have
undergone any important stress of discomfort or annoyance. It was true
that in pursuance of his profession there was a certain amount of "quick
marching" and drill to be done in the heat, but that was incidental to
the fact that he was in the Guards, and more than compensated for by the
pleasures that were also naturally incidental to it. He would have been
quite unable to think of anything that he would sooner do than what
he did; and he had sufficient of the ingrained human tendency to do
something of the sort, which was a matter of routine rather than effort,
than have nothing whatever, except the gratification of momentary
whims, to fill his day. Besides, it was one of the conventions or even
conditions of life that every boy on leaving school "did" something for
a certain number of years. Some went into business in order to acquire
the wealth that should procure them leisure; some, like himself, became
soldiers or sailors, not because they liked guns and ships, but because
to boys of a certain class these professions supplied honourable
employment and a pleasant time. Without being in any way slack in his
regimental duties, he performed them as many others did, without the
smallest grain of passion, and without any imaginative forecast as to
what fruit, if any, there might be to these hours spent in drill and
discipline. He was but one of a very large number who do their work
without seriously bothering their heads about its possible meaning or
application. His particular job gave a young man a pleasant position
and an easy path to general popularity, given that he was willing to be
sociable and amused. He was extremely ready to be both the one and the
other, and there his philosophy of life stopped.