Michael Part 33

"I don't propose to die, if you mean that. Oh, Blackiston had another suggestion also. He wanted to know if we would consider making a short tour in Germany in the autumn. He says that the beloved Fatherland is rather disposed to be interested in us. He thinks we should have good audiences at Leipzig, and so on. There's a tendency, he says, to recognise poor England, a cordial intention, anyhow. I said that in your case there might be domestic considerations which--But I think I shall go in any case. Lord, fancy playing in Germany to Germans again. Fancy being listened to by a German audience; fancy if they approved."

Michael leaned forward, putting his elbow into Hermann's chest. Early December had already been mentioned as a date for their marriage, and as a pre-nuptial journey, this seemed to him a plan ecstatically ideal.

"Yes, Sylvia," he said. "The answer is yes. I shall come with you, you know. I can see it; a triumphal procession, you two making noises, and me listening. A month's tour, Hermann. Middle of October till middle of November. Yes, yes."

All his tremendous pride in her singing, dormant for the moment under the wonder of his love, rose to the surface. He knew what her singing meant to her, and, from their conversation together just now, how keen was her eagerness for the strict judgment of those who knew, how she loved that austere pinnacle of daylight. Here was an ideal opportunity; never yet, since she had won her place as a singer, had she sung in Germany, that Mecca of the musical artist, and in her case, the land from which she sprung. Had the scheme implied a postponement of their marriage, he would still have declared himself for it, for he unerringly felt for her in this; he knew intuitively what delicious beckoning this held for her.

"Yes, yes," he repeated, "I must have you do that, Sylvia. I don't care what Hermann wants or what you want. I want it."

"Yes, but who's to do the playing and the singing?" asked Hermann.

"Isn't it a question, perhaps, for--"

Michael felt quite secure about the feelings of the other two, and rudely interrupted.

"No," he said. "It's a question for me. When the Fatherland hears that I am there it will no doubt ask me to play and sing instead of you two.

Lord! Fancy marrying into such a distinguished family. I burst with pride!"

It required, then, little debate, since all three were agreed, before Hermann was empowered with authority to make arrangements, and they remained simultaneously talking till Mrs. Falbe, again drifting in, announced that the bell for dinner had sounded some minutes before. She had her finger in the last chapter of "Lady Ursula's Ordeal," and laid it face downwards on the table to resume again at the earliest possible moment. This opportunity was granted her when, at the close of dinner, coffee and the evening paper came in together. This Hermann opened at the middle page.

"Hallo!" he said. "That's horrible! The Heir Apparent of the Austrian Emperor has been murdered at Serajevo. Servian plot, apparently."

"Oh, what a dreadful thing," said Mrs. Falbe, opening her book. "Poor man, what had he done?"

Hermann took a cigarette, frowning.

"It may be a match--" he began.

Mrs. Falbe diverted her attention from "Lady Ursula" for a moment.

"They are on the chimney-piece, dear," she said, thinking he spoke of material matches.

Michael felt that Hermann saw something, or conjectured something ominous in this news, for he sat with knitted brow reading, and letting the match burn down.

"Yes; it seems that Servian officers are implicated," he said. "And there are materials enough already for a row between Austria and Servia without this."

"Those tiresome Balkan States," said Mrs. Falbe, slowly immersing herself like a diving submarine in her book. "They are always quarrelling. Why doesn't Austria conquer them all and have done with it?"

This simple and striking solution of the whole Balkan question was her final contribution to the topic, for at this moment she became completely submerged, and cut off, so to speak, from the outer world, in the lucent depths of Lady Ursula.

Hermann glanced through the other pages, and let the paper slide to the floor.

"What will Austria do?" he said. "Supposing she threatens Servia in some outrageous way and Russia says she won't stand it? What then?"

Michael looked across to Sylvia; he was much more interested in the way she dabbled the tips of her hands in the cool water of her finger bowl than in what Hermann was saying. Her fingers had an extraordinary life of their own; just now they were like a group of maidens by a fountain.

. . . But Hermann repeated the question to him personally.

"Oh, I suppose there will be a lot of telegraphing," he said, "and perhaps a board of arbitration. After all, one expected a European conflagration over the war in the Balkan States, and again over their row with Turkey. I don't believe in European conflagrations. We are all too much afraid of each other. We walk round each other like collie dogs on the tips of their toes, gently growling, and then quietly get back to our own territories and lie down again."

Hermann laughed.

"Thank G.o.d, there's that wonderful fire-engine in Germany ready to turn the hose on conflagrations."

"What fire-engine?" asked Michael.

"The Emperor, of course. We should have been at war ten times over but for him."

Sylvia dried her finger-tips one by one.

"Lady Barbara doesn't quite take that view of him, does she, Mike?" she asked.

Michael suddenly remembered how one night in the flat Aunt Barbara had suddenly turned the conversation from the discussion of cognate topics, on hearing that the Falbes were Germans, only to resume it again when they had gone.

"I don't fancy she does," he said. "But then, as you know, Aunt Barbara has original views on every subject."

Hermann did not take the possible hint here conveyed to drop the matter.

"Well, then, what do you think about him?" he asked.

Michael laughed.

"My dear Hermann," he said, "how often have you told me that we English don't pay the smallest attention to international politics. I am aware that I don't; I know nothing whatever about them."

Hermann shook off the cloud of preoccupation that so unaccountably, to Michael's thinking, had descended on him, and walked across to the window.

"Well, long may ignorance be bliss," he said. "Lord, what a divine evening! 'Uber allen gipfeln ist Ruhe.' At least, there is peace on the only summits visible, which are house roofs. There's not a breath of wind in the trees and chimney-pots; and it's hot, it's really hot."

"I was afraid there was going to be a chill at sunset," remarked Mrs.

Falbe subaqueously.

"Then you were afraid even where no fear was, mother darling," said he, "and if you would like to sit out in the garden I'll take a chair out for you, and a table and candles. Let's all sit out; it's a divine hour, this hour after sunset. There are but a score of days in the whole year when the hour after sunset is warm like this. It's such a pity to waste one indoors. The young people"--and he pointed to Sylvia and Michael--"will gaze into each other's hearts, and Mamma's will beat in unison with Lady Ursula's, and I will sit and look at the sky and become profoundly sentimental, like a good German."

Hermann and Michael bestirred themselves, and presently the whole little party had encamped on chairs placed in an oasis of rugs (this was done at the special request of Mrs. Falbe, since Lady Ursula had caught a chill that developed into consumption) in the small, high-walled garden.

Beyond at the bottom lay the road along the embankment and the grey-blue Thames, and the dim woods of Battersea Park across the river. When they came out, sparrows were still chirping in the ivy on the studio wall and in the tall angle-leaved planes at the bottom of the little plot, discussing, no doubt, the domestic arrangements for their comfort during the night. But presently a sudden hush fell upon them, and their shrillness was sharp no more against the drowsy hum of the city. The sky overhead was of veiled blue, growing gradually more toneless as the light faded, and was unflecked by any cloud, except where, high in the zenith, a fleece of rosy vapour still caught the light of the sunken sun, and flamed with the soft radiance of some snow-summit. Near it there burned a molten planet, growing momentarily brighter as the night gathered and presently beginning to be dimmed again as a tawny moon three days past the full rose in the east above the low river horizon.

Occasionally a steamer hooted from the Thames and the noise of churned waters sounded, or the crunch of a motor's wheels, or the tapping of the heels of a foot pa.s.senger on the pavement below the garden wall. But such evidence of outside seemed but to accentuate the perfect peace of this secluded little garden where the four sat: the hour and the place were cut off from all turmoil and activities: for a moment the stream of all their lives had flowed into a backwater, where it rested immobile before the travel that was yet to come. So it seemed to Michael then, and so years afterwards it seemed to him, as vividly as on this evening when the tawny moon grew golden as it climbed the empty heavens, dimming the stars around it.

What they talked of, even though it was Sylvia who spoke, seemed external to the spirit of the hour. They seemed to have reached a point, some momentary halting-place, where speech and thought even lay outside, and the need of the spirit was merely to exist and be conscious of its existence. Sometimes for a moment his past life with its self-repression, its mute yearnings, its chrysalis stirrings, formed a mist that dispersed again, sometimes for a moment in wonder at what the future held, what joys and troubles, what achings, perhaps, and anguishes, the unknown knocked stealthily at the door of his mind, but then stole away unanswered and unwelcome, and for that hour, while Mrs.

Falbe finished with Lady Ursula, while Hermann smoked and sighed like a sentimental German, and while he and Sylvia sat, speaking occasionally, but more often silent, he was in some kind of Nirvana for which its own existence was everything. Movement had ceased: he held his breath while that divine pause lasted.

When it was broken, there was no shattering of it: it simply died away like a long-drawn chord as Mrs. Falbe closed her book.

"She died," she said, "I knew she would."

Hermann gave a great shout of laughter.

"Darling mother, I'm ever so much obliged," he said. "We had to return to earth somehow. Where has everybody else been?"

Michael stirred in his chair.