Michael Part 6

"I am exceedingly sorry to disappoint you in the matter of your wishes,"

he said; "but in the matter of your authority I can't recognise it when the question of my whole life is at stake. I know that I am your son, and I want to be dutiful, but I have my own individuality as well. That only recognises the authority of my own conscience."

That seemed to Lord Ashbridge both tragic and ludicrous. Completely subservient himself to the conventions which he so much enjoyed, it was like the defiance of a child to say such things. He only just checked himself from laughing again.

"I refuse to take that answer from you," he said.

"I have no other to give you," said Michael. "But I should like to say once more that I am sorry to disobey your wishes."

The repet.i.tion took away his desire to laugh. In fact, he could not have laughed.

"I don't want to threaten you, Michael," he said. "But you may know that I have a very free hand in the disposal of my property."

"Is that a threat?" asked Michael.

"It is a hint."

"Then, father, I can only say that I should be perfectly satisfied with anything you may do," said Michael. "I wish you could leave everything you have to Francis. I tell you in all sincerity that I wish he had been my elder brother. You would have been far better pleased with him."

Lord Ashbridge's anger rose. He was naturally so self-complacent as to be seldom disposed to anger, but its rarity was not due to kindliness of nature.

"I have before now noticed your jealousy of your cousin," he observed.

Michael's face went white.

"That is infamous and untrue, father," he said.

Lord Ashbridge turned on him.

"Apologise for that," he said.

Michael looked up at his high towering without a tremor.

"I wait for the withdrawal of your accusation that I am jealous of Francis," he replied.

There was a dead silence. Lord Ashbridge stood there in swollen and speechless indignation, and Michael faced him undismayed. . . . And then suddenly to the boy there came an impulse of pure pity for his father's disappointment in having a son like himself. He saw with the candour which was so real a part of him how hopeless it must be, to a man of his father's mind, to have a millstone like himself unalterably bound round his neck, fit to choke and drown him.

"Indeed, I am not jealous of Francis, father," he said, "and I speak quite truthfully when I say how I sympathise with you in having a son like me. I don't want to vex you. I want to make the best of myself."

Lord Ashbridge stood looking exactly like his statue in the market-place at Ashbridge.

"If that is the case, Michael," he said, "it is within your power. You will write the letter I spoke about."

Michael paused a moment as if waiting for more. It did not seem to him possible that his appeal should bear no further fruit than that. But it was soon clear that there was no more to come.

"I will wish you good night, father," he said.

Sunday was a day on which Lord Ashbridge was almost more himself than during the week, so s.h.i.+ning and public an example did he become of the British n.o.bleman. Instead of having breakfast, according to the middle-cla.s.s custom, rather later than usual, that solid sausagy meal was half an hour earlier, so that all the servants, except those whose presence in the house was imperatively necessary for purposes of lunch, should go to church. Thus "Old George" and Lord Ashbridge's private boat were exceedingly busy for the half-hour preceding church time, the last boat-load holding the family, whose arrival was the signal for service to begin. Lady Ashbridge, however, always went on earlier, for she presided at the organ with the long, camel-like back turned towards the congregation, and started playing a slow, melancholy voluntary when the boy who blew the bellows said to her in an ecclesiastical whisper: "His lords.h.i.+p has arrived, my lady." Those of the household who could sing (singing being construed in the sense of making a loud and cheerful noise in the throat) cl.u.s.tered in the choir-pews near the organ, while the family sat in a large, square box, with a stove in the centre, amply supplied with prayer-books of the time when even Protestants might pray for Queen Caroline. Behind them, separated from the rest of the church by an ornamental ironwork grille, was the Comber chapel, in which antiquarians took nearly as much pleasure as Lord Ashbridge himself.

Here reclined a glorious company of sixteenth century knights, with their honourable ladies at their sides, unyielding marble bolsters at their heads, and grotesque dogs at their feet. Later, when their peerage was conferred, they lost a little of their yeoman simplicity, and became peruked and robed and breeched; one, indeed, in the age of George III., who was blessed with poetical aspirations, appeared in bare feet and a Roman toga with a scroll of ma.n.u.script in his hand; while later again, mere tablets on the walls commemorated their almost uncanny virtues.

And just on the other side of the grille, but a step away, sat the present-day representatives of the line, while Lady Ashbridge finished the last bars of her voluntary, Lord Ashbridge himself and his sister, large and smart and comely, and Michael beside them, short and heavy, with his soul full of the aspirations his father neither could nor cared to understand. According to his invariable custom, Lord Ashbridge read the lessons in a loud, sonorous voice, his large, white hands grasping the wing-feathers of the bra.s.s eagle, and a great carnation in his b.u.t.tonhole; and when the time came for the offertory he put a sovereign in the open plate himself, and proceeded with his minuet-like step to go round the church and collect the gifts of the encouraged congregation.

He followed all the prayers in his book, he made the responses in a voice nearly as loud as that in which he read the lessons; he sang the hymns with a curious buzzing sound, and never for a moment did he lose sight of the fact that he was the head of the Comber family, doing his duty as the custom of the Combers was, and setting an example of G.o.dly piety. Afterwards, as usual, he would change his black coat, eat a good lunch, stroll round the gardens (for he had nothing to say to golf on Sunday), and in the evening the clergyman would dine with him, and would be requested to say grace both before and after the meal. He knew exactly the proper mode of pa.s.sing the Sunday for the landlord on his country estate, and when Lord Ashbridge knew that a thing was proper he did it with invariable precision.

Michael, of course, was in disgrace; his father, pending some further course of action, neither spoke to him nor looked at him; indeed, it seemed doubtful whether he would hand him the offertory plate, and it was perhaps a pity that he unbent even to this extent, for Michael happened to have none of the symbols of thankfulness about his person, and he saw a slight quiver pa.s.s through Aunt Barbara's hymn-book. After a rather portentous lunch, however, there came some relief, for his father did not ask his company on the usual Sunday afternoon stroll, and Aunt Barbara never walked at all unless she was obliged. In consequence, when the thunderstorm had stepped airily away across the park, Michael joined her on the terrace, with the intention of talking the situation over with her.

Aunt Barbara was perfectly willing to do this, and she opened the discussion very pleasantly with peals of laughter.

"My dear, I delight in you," she said; "and altogether this is the most entertaining day I have ever spent here. Combers are supposed to be very serious, solid people, but for unconscious humour there isn't a family in England or even in the States to compare with them. Our lunch just now; if you could put it into a satirical comedy called The Aristocracy it would make the fortune of any theatre."

A dawning smile began to break through Michael's tragedy face.

"I suppose it was rather funny," he said. "But really I'm wretched about it, Aunt Barbara."

"My dear, what is there to be wretched about? You might have been wretched if you had found you couldn't stand up to your father, but I gather, though I know nothing directly, that you did. At least, your mother has said to me three times, twice on the way to church and once coming back: 'Michael has vexed his father very much.' And the offertory plate, my dear, and, as I was saying, lunch! I am in disgrace too, because I said perfectly plainly yesterday that I was on your side; and there we were at lunch, with your father apparently unable to see either you or me, and unconscious of our presence. Fancy pretending not to see me! You can't help seeing me, a large, bright object like me! And what will happen next? That's what tickles me to death, as they say on my side of the Atlantic. Will he gradually begin to perceive us again, like objects looming through a fog, or shall we come into view suddenly, as if going round a corner? And you are just as funny, my dear, with your long face, and air of depressed determination. Why be heavy, Michael? So many people are heavy, and none of them can tell you why."

It was impossible not to feel the unfreezing effect of this. Michael thawed to it, as he would have thawed to Francis.

"Perhaps they can't help it, Aunt Barbara," he said. "At least, I know I can't. I really wish I could learn how to. I--I don't see the funny side of things till it is pointed out. I thought lunch a sort of h.e.l.l, you know. Of course, it was funny, his appearing not to see either of us. But it stands for more than that; it stands for his complete misunderstanding of me."

Aunt Barbara had the sense to see that the real Michael was speaking.

When people were being unreal, when they were pompous or adopting att.i.tudes, she could attend to nothing but their absurdity, which engrossed her altogether. But she never laughed at real things; real things were not funny, but were facts.

"He quite misunderstands," went on Michael, with the eagerness with which the shy welcome comprehension. "He thinks I can make my mind like his if I choose; and if I don't choose, or rather can't choose, he thinks that his wishes, his authority, should be sufficient to make me act as if it was. Well, I won't do that. He may go on,"--and that pleasant smile lit up Michael's plain face--"he may go on being unaware of my presence as long as he pleases. I am very sorry it should be so, but I can't help it. And the worst of it is, that opposition of that sort--his sort--makes me more determined than ever."

Aunt Barbara nodded.

"And your friends?" she asked. "What will they think?"

Michael looked at her quite simply and directly.

"Friends?" he said. "I haven't got any."

"Ah, my dear, that's nonsense!" she said.

"I wish it was. Oh, Francis is a friend, I know. He thinks me an odd old thing, but he likes me. Other people don't. And I can't see why they should. I'm sure it's my fault. It's because I'm heavy. You said I was, yourself."

"Then I was a great a.s.s," remarked Aunt Barbara. "You wouldn't be heavy with people who understood you. You aren't heavy with me, for instance; but, my dear, lead isn't in it when you are with your father."

"But what am I to do, if I'm like that?" asked the boy.

She held up her large, fat hand, and marked the points off on her fingers.

"Three things," she said. "Firstly, get away from people who don't understand you, and whom, incidentally, you don't understand. Secondly, try to see how ridiculous you and everybody else always are; and, thirdly, which is much the most important, don't think about yourself.

If I thought about myself I should consider how old and fat and ugly I am. I'm not ugly, really; you needn't be foolish and tell me so. I should spoil my life by trying to be young, and only eating devilled codfish and drinking hot plum-juice, or whatever is the accepted remedy for what we call obesity. We're all odd old things, as you say. We can only get away from that depressing fact by doing something, and not thinking about ourselves. We can all try not to be egoists. Egoism is the really heavy quality in the world."

She paused a moment in this inspired discourse and whistled to Og, who had stretched his weary limbs across a bed of particularly fine geraniums.

"There!" she said, pointing, "if your dog had done that, you would be submerged in depression at the thought of how vexed your father would be. That would be because you are thinking of the effect on yourself. As it's my dog that has done it--dear me, they do look squashed now he has got up--you don't really mind about your father's vexation, because you won't have to think about yourself. That is wise of you; if you were a little wiser still, you would picture to yourself how ridiculous I shall look apologising for Og. Kindly kick him, Michael; he will understand.

Naughty! And as for your not having any friends, that would be exceedingly sad, if you had gone the right way to get them and failed.