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an Army List, Michael went to his bedroom, he was utterly
astonished, when he gave a "Come in" to a tapping at his door, to
see his mother enter. Her maid was standing behind her holding the
inevitable Petsy, and she herself hovered hesitatingly in the
doorway.
"I heard you come up, Michael," she said, "and I wondered if it
would annoy you if I came in to have a little talk with you. But I
won't come in if it would annoy you. I only thought I should like
a little chat with you, quietly, secure from interruptions."
Michael instantly got up from the chair in front of his fire, in
which he had already begun to see images of Sylvia. This intrusion
of his mother's was a thing utterly unprecedented, and somehow he
at once connected its innovation with the strange manner he had
remarked already. But there was complete cordiality in his
welcome, and he wheeled up a chair for her.
"But by all means come in, mother," he said. "I was not going to
bed yet."
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108
Lady Ashbridge looked round for her maid.
"And will Petsy not annoy you if he sits quietly on my knee?" she
asked.
"Of course not."
Lady Ashbridge took the dog.
"There, that is nice," she said. "I told them to see you had a
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good fire on this cold night. Has it been very cold in London?"
This question had already been asked and answered twice, now for
the third time Michael admitted the severity of the weather.
"I hope you wrap up well," she said. "I should be sorry if you
caught cold, and so, I am sure, your father would be. I wish you
could make up your mind not to vex him any more, but go back into
the Guards."
"I'm afraid that's impossible, mother," he said.
"Well, if it's impossible there is no use in saying anything more
about it. But it vexed him very much. He is still vexed with you.
I wish he was not vexed. It is a sad thing when father and son
fall out. But you do wrap up, I hope, in the cold weather?"
Michael felt a sudden pang of anxiety and alarm. Each separate
thing that his mother said was sensible enough, but in the sum they
were nonsense.
"You have been in London since September," she went on. "That is a
long time to be in London. Tell me about your life there. Do you
work hard? Not too hard, I hope?"
"No! hard enough to keep me busy," he said.
"Tell me about it all. I am afraid I have not been a very good
mother to you; I have not entered into your life enough. I want to
do so now. But I don't think you ever wanted to confide in me. It
is sad when sons don't confide in their mothers. But I daresay it
was my fault, and now I know so little about you."
She paused a moment, stroking her dog's ears, which twitched under
her touch.
"I hope you are happy, Michael," she said. "I don't think I am so
happy as I used to be. But don't tell your father; I feel sure he
does not notice it, and it would vex him. But I want you to be
happy; you used not to be when you were little; you were always
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sensitive and queer. But you do seem happier now, and that's a
good thing."
Here again this was all sensible, when taken in bits, but its
aspect was different when considered together. She looked at
Michael anxiously a moment, and then drew her chair closer to him,
MICHAEL
109
laying her thin, veined hand, sparkling with many rings, on his
knee.
"But it wasn't I who made you happier," she said, "and that's so
dreadful. I never made anybody happy. Your father always made
himself happy, and he liked being himself, but I suspect you
haven't liked being yourself, poor Michael. But now that you're
living the life you chose, which vexes your father, is it better
with you?"
The shyness had gone from the gaze that he had seen her direct at
him at dinner, which fugitively fluttered away when she saw that it
was observed, and now that it was bent so unwaveringly on him he
saw shining through it what he had never seen before, namely, the
mother-love which he had missed all his life. Now, for the first
time, he saw it; recognising it, as by divination, when, with ray
serene and untroubled, it burst through the mists that seemed to
hang about his mother's mind. Before, noticing her change of
manner, her restless questions, he had been vaguely alarmed, and as
they went on the alarm had become more pronounced; but at this
moment, when there shone forth the mother-instinct which had never
come out or blossomed in her life, but had been overlaid completely
with routine and conventionality, rendering it too indolent to put
forth petals, Michael had no thought but for that which she had
never given him yet, and which, now it began to expand before him,
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he knew he had missed all his life.
She took up his big hand that lay on his knee and began timidly
stroking it.
"Since you have been away," she said, "and since your father has
been vexed with you, I have begun to see how lonely you must have
been. What taught me that, I am afraid, was only that I have begun
to feel lonely, too. Nobody wants me; even Petsy, when she died,
didn't want me to be near her, and then it began to strike me that
perhaps you might want me. There was no one else, and who should
want me if my son did not? I never gave you the chance before, God
forgive me, and now perhaps it is too late. You have learned to do
without me."
That was bitterly true; the truth of it stabbed Michael. On his
side, as he knew, he had made no effort either, or if he had they
had been but childish efforts, easily repulsed. He had not
troubled about it, and if she was to blame, the blame was his also.
She had been slow to show the mother-instinct, but he had been just
as wanting in the tenderness of the son.
He was profoundly touched by this humble timidity, by the
sincerity, vague but unquestionable, that lay behind it.
"It's never too late, is it?" he said, bending down and kissing the
thin white hands that held his. "We are in time, after all, aren't
we?"
She gave a little shiver.
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"Oh, don't kiss my hands, Michael," she said. "It hurts me that [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]