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Cassandra, since she became a diplomatist, and sits on her tripod
and prophesies woe."
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113
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"She asked me about it," said Michael. "I don't think she believes
in his sincerity."
He giggled again.
"That's because I didn't ask her down for his visit," he said.
He rose.
"And what are you going to do, my dear?" he said to his wife.
She looked across to Michael.
"Perhaps Michael will come for a stroll with me," she said.
"No doubt he will. I shall have a round of golf, I think, on this
fine morning. I should like to have a word with you, Michael, when
you've finished your breakfast."
The moment he had gone her whole manner changed: it was suffused
with the glow that had lit her last night.
"And we shall have another talk, dear?" she said. "It was tiresome
being interrupted last night. But your father was better pleased
with you this morning."
Michael's understanding of the situation grew clearer. Whatever
was the change in his mother, whatever, perhaps, it portended, it
was certainly accompanied by two symptoms, the one the late dawning
of mother-love for himself, the other a certain fear of her
husband; for all her married life she had been completely dominated
by him, and had lived but in a twilight of her own; now into that
twilight was beginning to steal a dread of him. His pleasure or
his vexation had begun to affect her emotionally, instead of being
as before, merely recorded in her mind, as she might have recorded
an object quite exterior to herself, and seen out of the window.
Now it was in the room with her. Even as Michael left her to speak
with him, the consciousness of him rose again in her, making her
face anxious.
"And you'll try not to vex him, won't you?" she said.
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His father was in the smoking-room, standing enormously in front of
the fire, and for the first time the sense of his colossal fatuity
struck Michael.
"There are several things I want to tell you about," he said.
"Your career, first of all. I take it that you have no intention
of deferring to my wishes on the subject."
"No, father, I am afraid not," said Michael.
"I want you to understand, then, that, though I shall not speak to
you again about it, my wishes are no less strong than they were.
MICHAEL
114
It is something to me to know that a man whom I respect so much as
the Emperor doesn't feel as I do about it, but that doesn't alter
my view."
"I understand," said Michael.
"The next is about your mother," he said. "Do you notice any
change in her?"
"Yes," said Michael.
"Can you describe it at all?"
Michael hesitated.
"She shows quite a new affection for myself," he said. "She came
and talked to me last night in a way she had never done before."
The irritation which Michael's mere presence produced on his father
was beginning to make itself felt. The fact that Michael was squat
and long-armed and ugly had always a side-blow to deal at Lord
Ashbridge in the reminder that he was his father. He tried to
disregard this--he tried to bring his mind into an impartial
attitude, without seeing for a moment the bitter irony of
considering impartiality the ideal quality when dealing with his
son. He tried to be fair, and Michael was perfectly conscious of
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the effort it cost him.
"I had noticed something of the sort," he said. "Your mother was
always asking after you. You have not been writing very regularly,
Michael. We know little about your life."
"I have written to my mother every week," said Michael.
The magical effects of the Emperor's interest were dying out. Lord
Ashbridge became more keenly aware of the disappointment that
Michael was to him.
"I have not been so fortunate, then," he said.
Michael remembered his mother's anxious face, but he could not let
this pass.
"No, sir," he said, "but you never answered any of my letters. I
thought it quite probable that it displeased you to hear from me."
"I should have expressed my displeasure if I had felt it," said his
father with all the pomposity that was natural to him.
"That had not occurred to me," said Michael. "I am afraid I took
your silence to mean that my letters didn't interest you."
He paused a moment, and his rebellion against the whole of his
father's attitude flared up.
"Besides, I had nothing particular to say," he said. "My life is
MICHAEL
115
passed in the pursuit of which you entirely disapprove."
He felt himself back in boyhood again with this stifling and leaden
atmosphere of authority and disapproval to breathe. He knew that
Francis in his place would have done somehow differently; he could
almost hear Aunt Barbara laughing at the pomposity of the situation
that had suddenly erected itself monstrously in front of him. The
fact that he was Michael Comber vexed his father--there was no
statement of the case so succinctly true.
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Lord Ashbridge moved away towards the window, turning his back on
Michael. Even his back, his homespun Norfolk jacket, his loose
knickerbockers, his stalwart calves expressed disapproval; but when
his father spoke again he realised that he had moved away like
that, and obscured his face for a different reason.
"Have you noticed anything else about your mother?" he asked.
That made Michael understand.
"Yes, father," he said. "I daresay I am wrong about it--"
"Naturally I may not agree with you; but I should like to know what
it is."
"She's afraid of you," said Michael.
Lord Ashbridge continued looking out of the window a little longer,
letting his eyes dwell on his own garden and his own fields, where
towered the leafless elms and the red roofs of the little town
which had given him his own name, and continued to give him so
satisfactory an income. There presented itself to his mind his own
picture, painted and framed and glazed and hung up by himself, the
beneficent nobleman, the conscientious landlord, the essential
vertebra of England's backbone. It was really impossible to impute [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]