Michael

E >> E. F. Benson >> Michael


And, indeed, it seemed on this hot July evening that the streets were
populated by philosophers like unto himself. Never had England generally
been more prosperous, more secure, more comfortable. The heavens of
international politics were as serene as the evening sky; not yet was
the storm-cloud that hung over Ireland bigger than a man's hand; east,
west, north and south there brooded the peace of the close of a halcyon
day, and the amazing doings of the Suffragettes but added a slight
incentive to the perusal of the morning paper. The arts flourished,
harvests prospered; the world like a newly-wound clock seemed to be in
for a spell of serene and orderly ticking, with an occasional chime just
to show how the hours were passing.

London was an extraordinarily pleasant place, people were friendly,
amusements beckoned on all sides; and for Francis, as for so many
others, but a very moderate amount of work was necessary to win him
an approved place in the scheme of things, a seat in the slow-wheeling
sunshine. It really was not necessary to want, above all to undergo
annoyances for the sake of what you wanted, since so many pleasurable
distractions, enough to fill day and night twice over, were so richly
spread around.

Some day he supposed he would marry, settle down and become in time one
of those men who presented a bald head in a club window to the gaze
of passers-by. It was difficult, perhaps, to see how you could enjoy
yourself or lead a life that paid its own way in pleasure at the age of
forty, but that he trusted that he would learn in time. At present it
was sufficient to know that in half an hour two excellent friends would
come to dinner, and that they would proceed in a spirit of amiable
content to the Gaiety. After that there was a ball somewhere (he had
forgotten where, but one of the others would be sure to know), and
to-morrow and to-morrow would be like unto to-day. It was idle to
ask questions of oneself when all went so well; the time for asking
questions was when there was matter for complaint, and with him
assuredly there was none. The advantages of being twenty-three years
old, gay and good-looking, without a care in the world, now that he had
Michael's cheque in his pocket, needed no comment, still less complaint.
He, like the crowd who had sufficient to pay for a six-penny seat at a
music-hall, was perfectly content with life in general; to-morrow
would be time enough to do a little more work and glean a little more
pleasure.

It was indeed an admirable England, where it was not necessary even
to desire, for there were so many things, bright, cheerful things to
distract the mind from desire. It was a day of dozing in the sun, like
the submerged, scattered units or duets on the grass of the Green Park,
of behaving like the lilies of the field. . . . Francis found he was
rather late, and proceeded hastily to his mother's house in Savile
Row to array himself, if not "like one of these," like an exceedingly
well-dressed young man, who demanded of his tailor the utmost of his
art; with the prospect, owing to Michael's generosity, of being paid
to-morrow.


Michael, when his cousin had left him, did not at once proceed to his
evening by himself with his piano, though an hour before he had longed
to be alone with it and a pianoforte arrangement of the Meistersingers,
of which he had promised himself a complete perusal that evening.
But Francis's visit had already distracted him, and he found now
that Francis's departure took him even farther away from his designed
evening. Francis, with his good looks and his gay spirits, his easy
friendships and perfect content (except when a small matter of deficit
and dunning letters obscured the sunlight for a moment), was exactly all
that he would have wished to be himself. But the moment he formulated
that wish in his mind, he knew that he would not voluntarily have parted
with one atom of his own individuality in order to be Francis or anybody
else. He was aware how easy and pleasant life would become if he could
look on it with Francis's eyes, and if the world would look on him as it
looked on his cousin. There would be no more bother. . . . In a
moment, he would, by this exchange, have parted with his own unhappy
temperament, his own deplorable body, and have stepped into an amiable
and prosperous little neutral kingdom that had no desires and no
regrets. He would have been free from all wants, except such as could
be gratified so easily by a little work and a great capacity for being
amused; he would have found himself excellently fitting the niche into
which the rulers of birth and death had placed him: an eldest son of
a great territorial magnate, who had what was called a stake in the
country, and desired nothing better.

Willingly, as he had said, would he have changed circumstances with
Francis, but he knew that he would not, for any bait the world could
draw in front of him, have changed natures with him, even when, to
all appearance, the gain would so vastly have been on his side. It was
better to want and to miss than to be content. Even at this moment,
when Francis had taken the sunshine out of the room with his departure,
Michael clung to his own gloom and his own uncouthness, if by getting
rid of them he would also have been obliged to get rid of his own
temperament, unhappy as it was, but yet capable of strong desire. He did
not want to be content; he wanted to see always ahead of him a golden
mist, through which the shadows of unconjecturable shapes appeared. He
was willing and eager to get lost, if only he might go wandering on,
groping with his big hands, stumbling with his clumsy feet,
desiring . . .

There are the indications of a path visible to all who desire. Michael
knew that his path, the way that seemed to lead in the direction of
the ultimate goal, was music. There, somehow, in that direction lay his
destiny; that was the route. He was not like the majority of his sex
and years, who weave their physical and mental dreams in the loom of a
girl's face, in her glance, in the curves of her mouth. Deliberately,
owing chiefly to his morbid consciousness of his own physical defects,
he had long been accustomed to check the instincts natural to a young
man in this regard. He had seen too often the facility with which
others, more fortunate than he, get delightedly lost in that golden
haze; he had experienced too often the absence of attractiveness in
himself. How could any girl of the London ballroom, he had so frequently
asked himself, tolerate dancing or sitting out with him when there was
Francis, and a hundred others like him, so pleased to take his place?
Nor, so he told himself, was his mind one whit more apt than his body.
It did not move lightly and agreeably with unconscious smiles and easy
laughter. By nature he was monkish, he was celibate. He could but cease
to burn incense at such ineffectual altars, and help, as he had helped
this afternoon, to replenish the censers of more fortunate acolytes.

This was all familiar to him; it passed through his head unbidden,
when Francis had left him, like the refrain of some well-known song,
occurring spontaneously without need of an effort of memory. It was
a possession of his, known by heart, and it no longer, except for
momentary twinges, had any bitterness for him. This afternoon, it is
true, there had been one such, when Francis, gleeful with his cheque,
had gone out to his dinner and his theatre and his dance, inviting him
cheerfully to all of them. In just that had been the bitterness--namely,
that Francis had so overflowing a well-spring of content that he
could be cordial in bidding him cast a certain gloom over these
entertainments. Michael knew, quite unerringly, that Francis and his
friends would not enjoy themselves quite so much if he was with them;
there would be the restraint of polite conversation at dinner instead of
completely idle babble, there would be less outspoken normality at the
Gaiety, a little more decorum about the whole of the boyish proceedings.
He knew all that so well, so terribly well. . . .

His servant had come in with the evening paper, and the implied
suggestion of the propriety of going to dress before he roused himself.
He decided not to dress, as he was going to spend the evening alone,
and, instead, he seated himself at the piano with his copy of the
Meistersingers and, mechanically at first, with the ragged cloud-fleeces
of his reverie hanging about his brain, banged away at the overture.
He had extraordinary dexterity of finger for one who had had so little
training, and his hands, with their great stretch, made light work of
octaves and even tenths. His knowledge of the music enabled him to wake
the singing bird of memory in his head, and before long flute and horn
and string and woodwind began to make themselves heard in his inner ear.
Twice his servant came in to tell him that his dinner was ready, but
Michael had no heed for anything but the sounds which his flying fingers
suggested to him. Francis, his father, his own failure in the life
that had been thrust on him were all gone; he was with the singers of
Nuremberg.


CHAPTER II


The River Ashe, after a drowsy and meandering childhood, passed
peacefully among the sedges and marigolds of its water meadows, suddenly
and somewhat disconcertingly grows up and, without any period of
transition and adolescence, becomes, from being a mere girl of a
rivulet, a male and full-blooded estuary of the sea. At Coton, for
instance, the tips of the sculls of a sauntering pleasure-boat will
almost span its entire width, while, but a mile farther down, you will
see stone-laden barges and tall, red-winged sailing craft coming up with
the tide, and making fast to the grey wooden quay wall of Ashbridge,
rough with barnacles. For the reeds and meadow-sweet of its margin are
exchanged the brown and green growths of the sea, with their sharp,
acrid odour instead of the damp, fresh smell of meadow flowers, and at
low tide the podded bladders of brown weed and long strings of marine
macaroni, among which peevish crabs scuttle sideways, take the place
of the grass and spires of loosestrife; and over the water, instead of
singing larks, hang white companies of chiding seagulls. Here at high
tide extends a sheet of water large enough, when the wind blows up the
estuary, to breed waves that break in foam and spray against the barges,
while at the ebb acres of mud flats are disclosed on which the boats
lean slanting till the flood lifts them again and makes them strain at
the wheezing ropes that tie them to the quay.

A year before the flame of war went roaring through Europe in
unquenchable conflagration it would have seemed that nothing could
possibly rouse Ashbridge from its red-brick Georgian repose. There was
never a town so inimitably drowsy or so sternly uncompetitive. A hundred
years ago it must have presented almost precisely the same appearance as
it did in the summer of 1913, if we leave out of reckoning a few
dozen of modern upstart villas that line its outskirts, and the very
inconspicuous railway station that hides itself behind the warehouses
near the river's bank. Most of the trains, too, quite ignore its
existence, and pass through it on their way to more rewarding
stopping-places, hardly recognising it even by a spurt of steam from
their whistles, and it is only if you travel by those that require
the most frequent pauses in their progress that you will be enabled to
alight at its thin and depopulated platform.

Just outside the station there perennially waits a low-roofed and
sanguine omnibus that under daily discouragement continues to hope that
in the long-delayed fulness of time somebody will want to be driven
somewhere. (This nobody ever does, since the distance to any house is so
small, and a porter follows with luggage on a barrow.) It carries on its
floor a quantity of fresh straw, in the manner of the stage coaches, in
which the problematic passenger, should he ever appear, will no doubt
bury his feet. On its side, just below the window that is not made to
open, it carries the legend that shows that it belongs to the Comber
Arms, a hostelry so self-effacing that it is discoverable only by the
sharpest-eyed of pilgrims. Narrow roadways, flanked by proportionately
narrower pavements, lie ribbon-like between huddled shops and
squarely-spacious Georgian houses; and an air of leisure and content,
amounting almost to stupefaction, is the moral atmosphere of the place.

On the outskirts of the town, crowning the gentle hills that lie to the
north and west, villas in acre plots, belonging to business men in the
county town some ten miles distant, "prick their Cockney ears" and are
strangely at variance with the sober gravity of the indigenous houses.
So, too, are the manners and customs of their owners, who go to
Stoneborough every morning to their work, and return by the train that
brings them home in time for dinner. They do other exotic and unsuitable
things also, like driving swiftly about in motors, in playing golf on
the other side of the river at Coton, and in having parties at each
other's houses. But apart from them nobody ever seems to leave Ashbridge
(though a stroll to the station about the time that the evening train
arrives is a recognised diversion) or, in consequence, ever to come
back. Ashbridge, in fact, is self-contained, and desires neither to
meddle with others nor to be meddled with.

The estuary opposite the town is some quarter of a mile broad at high
tide, and in order to cross to the other side, where lie the woods and
park of Ashbridge House, it is necessary to shout and make staccato
prancings in order to attract the attention of the antique ferryman, who
is invariably at the other side of the river and generally asleep at the
bottom of his boat. If you are strong-lunged and can prance and shout
for a long time, he may eventually stagger to his feet, come across
for you and row you over. Otherwise you will stand but little chance of
arousing him from his slumbers, and you will stop where you are, unless
you choose to walk round by the bridge at Coton, a mile above.

Periodical attempts are made by the brisker inhabitants of Ashbridge,
who do not understand its spirit, to substitute for this aged and
ineffectual Charon someone who is occasionally awake, but nothing ever
results from these revolutionary moves, and the requests addressed to
the town council on the subject are never heard of again. "Old George"
was ferryman there before any members of the town council were born, and
he seems to have established a right to go to sleep on the other side of
the river which is now inalienable from him. Besides, asleep or awake,
he is always perfectly sober, which, after all, is really one of the
first requirements for a suitable ferryman. Even the representations of
Lord Ashbridge himself who, when in residence, frequently has occasion
to use the ferry when crossing from his house to the town, failed to
produce the smallest effect, and he was compelled to build a boathouse
of his own on the farther bank, and be paddled across by himself or
one of the servants. Often he rowed himself, for he used to be a fine
oarsman, and it was good for the lounger on the quay to see the foaming
prow of his vigorous progress and the dignity of physical toil.

In all other respects, except in this case of "Old George," Lord
Ashbridge's wishes were law to the local authorities, for in this
tranquil East-coast district the spirit of the feudal system with
a beneficent lord and contented tenants strongly survived. It had
triumphed even over such modern innovations as railroads, for Lord
Ashbridge had the undoubted right to stop any train he pleased by signal
at Ashbridge station. This he certainly enjoyed doing; it fed his sense
of the fitness of things to progress along the platform with his genial,
important tiptoe walk, and elbows squarely stuck out, to the carriage
that was at once reserved for him, to touch the brim of his grey top-hat
(if travelling up to town) to the obsequious guard, and to observe the
heads of passengers who wondered why their express was arrested, thrust
out of carriage windows to look at him. A livened footman, as well as a
valet, followed him, bearing a coat and a rug and a morning or evening
paper and a dispatch-box with a large gilt coronet on it, and bestowed
these solaces to a railway journey on the empty seats near him. And
not only his sense of fitness was hereby fed, but that also of the
station-master and the solitary porter and the newsboy, and such
inhabitants of Ashbridge as happened to have strolled on to the
platform. For he was THEIR Earl of Ashbridge, kind, courteous and
dominant, a local king; it was all very pleasant.

But this arrest of express trains was a strictly personal privilege;
when Lady Ashbridge or Michael travelled they always went in the slow
train to Stoneborough, changed there and abided their time on the
platform like ordinary mortals. Though he could undoubtedly have
extended his rights to the stopping of a train for his wife or son, he
wisely reserved this for himself, lest it should lose prestige. There
was sufficient glory already (to probe his mind to the bottom) for Lady
Ashbridge in being his wife; it was sufficient also for Michael that he
was his son.

It may be inferred that there was a touch of pomposity about this
admirable gentleman, who was so excellent a landlord and so hard working
a member of the British aristocracy. But pomposity would be far too
superficial a word to apply to him; it would not adequately connote
his deep-abiding and essential conviction that on one of the days of
Creation (that, probably, on which the decree was made that there should
be Light) there leaped into being the great landowners of England.

But Lord Ashbridge, though himself a peer, by no means accepted the
peerage en bloc as representing the English aristocracy; to be, in
his phrase, "one of us" implied that you belonged to certain
well-ascertained families where brewers and distinguished soldiers
had no place, unless it was theirs already. He was ready to pay all
reasonable homage to those who were distinguished by their abilities,
their riches, their exalted positions in Church and State, but his
homage to such was transfused with a courteous condescension, and he
only treated as his equals and really revered those who belonged to the
families that were "one of us."

His wife, of course, was "one of us," since he would never have
permitted himself to be allied to a woman who was not, though for beauty
and wisdom she might have been Aphrodite and Athene rolled compactly
into one peerless identity. As a matter of fact, Lady Ashbridge had
not the faintest resemblance to either of these effulgent goddesses. In
person she resembled a camel, long and lean, with a drooping mouth and
tired, patient eyes, while in mind she was stunned. No idea other than
an obvious one ever had birth behind her high, smooth forehead, and she
habitually brought conversation to a close by the dry enunciation of
something indubitably true, which had no direct relation to the point
under discussion. But she had faint, ineradicable prejudices, and
instincts not quite dormant. There was a large quantity of mild
affection in her nature, the quality of which may be illustrated by
the fact that when her father died she cried a little every day after
breakfast for about six weeks. Then she did not cry any more. It was
impossible not to like what there was of her, but there was really very
little to like, for she belonged heart and soul to the generation and
the breeding among which it is enough for a woman to be a lady, and
visit the keeper's wife when she has a baby.

But though there was so little of her, the balance was made up for
by the fact that there was so much of her husband. His large, rather
flamboyant person, his big white face and curling brown beard, his loud
voice and his falsetto laugh, his absolutely certain opinions, above all
the fervency of his consciousness of being Lord Ashbridge and all which
that implied, completely filled any place he happened to be in, so
that a room empty except for him gave the impression of being almost
uncomfortably crowded. This keen consciousness of his identity was
naturally sufficient to make him very good humoured, since he was
himself a fine example of the type that he admired most. Probably only
two persons in the world had the power of causing him annoyance, but
both of these, by an irony of fate that it seemed scarcely possible to
consider accidental, were closely connected with him, for one was his
sister, the other his only son.

The grounds of their potentiality in this respect can be easily
stated. Barbara Comber, his sister (and so "one of us"), had married an
extremely wealthy American, who, in Lord Ashbridge's view, could not be
considered one of anybody at all; in other words, his imagination failed
to picture a whole class of people who resembled Anthony Jerome. He had
hoped when his sister announced her intention of taking this deplorable
step that his future brother-in-law would at any rate prove to be a
snob--he had a vague notion that all Americans were snobs--and that thus
Mr. Jerome would have the saving grace to admire and toady him. But Mr.
Jerome showed no signs of doing anything of the sort; he treated him
with an austere and distant politeness that Lord Ashbridge could
not construe as being founded on admiration and a sense of his own
inferiority, for it was so clearly founded on dislike. That, however,
did not annoy Lord Ashbridge, for it was easy to suppose that poor Mr.
Jerome knew no better. But Barbara annoyed him, for not only had she
shown herself a renegade in marrying a man who was not "one of us," but
with all the advantages she had enjoyed since birth of knowing what
"we" were, she gloried in her new relations, saying, without any proper
reticence about the matter, that they were Real People, whose character
and wits vastly transcended anything that Combers had to show.

Michael was an even more vexatious case, and in moments of depression
his father thought that he would really turn in his grave at the dismal
idea of Michael having stepped into his honourable shoes. Physically he
was utterly unlike a Comber, and his mind, his general attitude
towards life seemed to have diverged even farther from that healthy and
unreflective pattern. Only this morning his father had received a letter
from him that summed Michael up, that fulfilled all the doubts and fears
that had hung about him; for after three years in the Guards he had,
without consultation with anybody, resigned his commission on the
inexplicable grounds that he wanted to do something with his life. To
begin with that was rankly heretical; if you were a Comber there was no
need to do anything with your life; life did everything for you. . . .
And what this un-Comberish young man wanted to do with his life was to
be a musician. That musicians, artists, actors, had a right to exist
Lord Ashbridge did not question. They were no doubt (or might be)
very excellent people in their way, and as a matter of fact he often
recognised their existence by going to the opera, to the private view
of the Academy, or to the play, and he took a very considerable pride of
proprietorship in his own admirable collection of family portraits. But
then those were pictures of Combers; Reynolds and Romney and the rest of
them had enjoyed the privilege of perpetuating on their canvases these
big, fine men and charming women. But that a Comber--and that one
positively the next Lord Ashbridge--should intend to devote his energies
to an artistic calling, and allude to that scheme as doing something
with his life, was a thing as unthinkable as if the butler had developed
a fixed idea that he was "one of us."

The blow was a recent one; Michael's letter had only reached his father
this morning, and at the present moment Lord Ashbridge was attempting
over a cup of tea on the long south terrace overlooking the estuary to
convey--not very successfully--to his wife something of his feelings
on the subject. She, according to her custom, was drinking a little hot
water herself, and providing her Chinese pug with a mixture of cream
and crumbled rusks. Though the dog was of undoubtedly high lineage, Lord
Ashbridge rather detested her.

"A musical career!" he exclaimed, referring to Michael's letter. "What
sort of a career for a Comber is a musical career? I shall tell Michael
pretty roundly when he arrives this evening what I think of it all. We
shall have Francis next saying that he wants to resign, too, and become
a dentist."

Lady Ashbridge considered this for a moment in her stunned mind.

"Dear me, Robert, I hope not," she said. "I do not think it the least
likely that Francis would do anything of the kind. Look, Petsy is
better; she has drunk her cream and rusks quite up. I think it was only
the heat."