E. F. Benson

“ 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. ”

“ Now he discovered that the one thing he dreaded more than that England should go to war, was that she should not. The consciousness of national honour, the thing which, with religion, Englishmen are most shy of speaking about, suddenly asserted itself, and he found on the moment that it was bigger than anything else in the world.
“I think we shall go to war,” he said. “I don’t see personally how we can exist any more as a nation if we don’t. We—we shall be damned if we don’t, damned for ever and ever. It’s moral extinction not to.” ”

“ He had never felt towards a girl what that round-faced German boy felt. He was not sure, but he thought he disliked girls; they meant nothing to him, anyhow, and the mere thought of his arm round a girl’s waist only suggested a very embarrassing attitude. He had nothing to say to them, and the knowledge of his inability filled him with an uncomfortable sense of his want of normality, just as did the consciousness of his long arms and stumpy legs. ”

“ Lady Ashbridge’s funeral took place three days afterwards, down in Suffolk, and those hours detached themselves in Michael’s mind from all that had gone before, and all that might follow, like a little piece of blue sky in the midst of storm clouds. The limitations of man’s consciousness, which forbid him to think poignantly about two things at once, hedged that day in with an impenetrable barrier, so that while it lasted, and afterwards for ever in memory, it was unflecked by trouble or anxiety, and hung between heaven and earth in a serenity of its own. ”

“ He ran joyfully, though with a thousand falls and tumbles, through these new and wonderful vistas; he worshipped at the grave, Gothic sanctuaries of Beethoven, he roamed through the enchanted garden of Chopin, he felt the icy and eternal frosts of Russia, and saw in the northern sky the great auroras spread themselves in spear and sword of fire; he listened to the wisdom of Brahms, and passed through the noble and smiling country of Bach. ”

“ At first he had let himself do this much less often than he would have liked, for the shyness of years, his over-sensitive modesty at his own want of charm and lightness, was a self-erected barrier in his way. He was, in spite of his intimacy with Hermann, desperately afraid of being tiresome, of checking by his presence, as he had so often felt himself do before, the ease and high spirits of others. ”

“ It existed just now simply for that reason; to-night, with the curtain of the last act of Parsifal, it had ceased to exist again. It was not that a patriotic desire to honour one of the national heroes in the home where he had been established by the mad genius of a Bavarian king that moved them; it was because for the moment that Baireuth to Germans meant Germany. From Berlin, from Dresden, from Frankfurt, from Luxemburg, from a hundred towns those who were most typically German, whether high or low, rich or poor, made their joyous pilgrimage. ”

“ Once he dashed in close, and with a single lick of his tongue swept the saucer dry of nutriment, and with hoarse barkings proceeded again to dance corybantically about, while Lady Ashbridge with faint cries of dismay waved her embroidery at him. Then, seeing his mistress coming out of the French window from the drawing-room, he bounded calf-like towards her, and Petsy, nearly sick with cream and horror, was gathered to Lady Ashbridge’s bosom.
“My dear Barbara,” she said, “how upsetting your dog is! Poor Petsy’s heart is beating terribly; she does not like dogs. ”

“ I loved Francis, as you know, and I love Hermann, but there is our love, the greatest thing of all. We’ve got it—it’s here. Oh, Sylvia, we must be wise and simple, we must separate things, sort them out, not let them get mixed with one another. We can do it; I know we can. There’s nothing outside us; nothing matters—nothing matters. ”

“ Michael felt himself lured from the ordinary aloofness of attitude and demeanour, which had been somewhat accustomed to view all strangers with suspicion. And yet, though till this moment he had never spoken to him, he could hardly regard Falbe as a stranger, for he had heard him say on the piano what his sister understood by the songs of Brahms and Schubert. He could not help glancing at Falbe’s hands, as they busied themselves with the filling and lighting of a pipe, and felt that he knew something of those long, broad-tipped fingers, smooth and white and strong. ”

“ A little further on was a rail that separated the copse from the roadway, and here out of the wind Michael sat down, and lit a cigarette to stop his yearning for the bubbling stewpot, which would not be broached for half an hour yet. The day, he believed, was Wednesday, but the whole quiet of the place, apart from that drowsy booming on the eastern horizon, made it feel like Sunday. Nobody but the fat Frenchwoman who bustled about had anything to do; there was a Sabbath leisure about everything, about the dozing sow, the buzzing flies, the lounging figures that read letters and papers. ”

“ In the village, lying low in the clear dusk, scattered lights began to appear, the smoke of evening fires to ascend, and the aromatic odour of the burning wood strayed towards them up the wind.
Falbe, whose hand lay in the crook of Michael’s arm, pointed downwards to the village that lay there sequestered and rural.
“That’s Germany,” he said; “it’s that which lies at the back of every German heart. There lie the springs of the Rhine. It’s out of that originally that there came all that Germany stands for, its music, its poetry, its philosophy, its kultur. ”

“ I can’t have my career disregarded, covered up with awkward silences, alluded to as a painful subject; and, as I say, even Aunt Barbara seemed to take it for granted that if I became Lady Comber I should cease to be Miss Falbe. Well, there she’s wrong, my dear; I shall continue to be Miss Falbe whether I’m Lady Comber, or Lady Ashbridge, or the Duchess of anything you please. And—here the difficulty really comes in—they must all see how right I am. Difficulty, did I say? It’s more like an impossibility.”
Hermann threw the end of his cigarette into the ashes of the dying fire. ”

“ Joy and solemnity, exultation and the yearning that could never be satisfied drew them here. And even as music was in Michael’s heart, so Germany was there also. They were the people who understood; they did not go to the opera as a be-diamonded interlude between a dinner and a dance; they came to this dreadful little town, the discomforts of which, the utter provinciality of which was transformed into the air of the heavenly Jerusalem, as Hermann Falbe had said, because their souls were fed here with wine and manna. He would find the same thing at Munich, so Falbe had told him, the next week. ”

“ If a nation’s existence depends on it?” she asked. “Oh, Michael, I don’t know! I don’t know! For a little I am entirely English, and then something calls to me from beyond the Rhine! There’s the hopelessness of it for me and such as me. You are English; there’s no question about it for you. But for us! I love England: I needn’t tell you that. But can one ever forget the land of one’s birth? Can I help feeling the necessity Germany is under? I can’t believe that she has wantonly provoked war with you.” ”

“ Michael looked at him for a moment in silence.
“No, it is unsaid,” he replied.
Hermann looked round as the clock on the chimney-piece chimed.
“I must be going,” he said, “I needn’t say anything to you about Sylvia, because all I could say is in your heart already. Well, we’ve met in this jolly world, Mike, and we’ve been great friends. Neither you nor I could find a greater friend than we’ve been to each other. I bless God for this last year. It’s been the happiest in my life. Now what else is there? Your music: don’t ever be lazy about your music. ”

“ In his heart, as surely as he knew her love, Michael knew that this great shadow under which England lay was shot with sunlight for Sylvia, that the anxiety, the awful suspense that made his fingers cold as he opened the daily papers, brought into it to her an echo of victorious music that beat to the tramp of advancing feet that marched ever forward leaving the glittering Rhine leagues upon leagues in their rear. ”

“ That sweet thing; is it Brahms or Mendelssohn?’ But I can’t really help you towards that; you can do that for yourself. But if you’ve got the other, I can and will teach you all that you really know already.”
“Go on!” said Michael.
“That’s just the devil with the piano,” said Falbe. “It’s the easiest instrument of all to make a show on, and it is the rarest sort of person who can play on it. That’s why, all those years, I have hated giving lessons. If one has to, as I have had to, one must take any awful miss with a pigtail, and make a sham pianist of her. One can always do that. ”

“ You make what you are, and you never are because you are always becoming. You must excuse me; but Germans are always metaphysicians, and they can’t help it.”
“Go on; be German,” said Michael.
“Lieber Gott! As if I could be anything else,” said Falbe, laughing. “We are the only nation which makes a science of experimentalism; we try everything, just as a puppy tries everything. It tries mutton bones, and match-boxes, and soap and boots; it tries to find out what its tail is for, and bites it till it hurts, on which it draws the conclusion that it is not meant to eat. ”

“ Sylvia went back home with a little heartache for Michael, wondering, if she was in his place, if her mother, instead of being absorbed in her novels, demanded such incessant attentions, whether she had sufficient love in her heart to render them with the exquisite simplicity, the tender patience that Michael showed. Well as she knew him, greatly as she liked him, she had not imagined that he, or indeed any man could have behaved quite like that. ”

“ Michael laughed.
“How can I?” he asked. “There’s no end and no beginning. I can’t ‘go on’ as you order me about a thing like that. There is Sylvia; there is me.”
“I must be content with that, then,” she said, smiling.
“We are,” said Michael.
Lady Barbara waited a moment without speaking.
“And your mother?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“She still refuses to see me,” he said. “She still thinks it was I who made the plot to take her away and shut her up. She is often angry with me, poor darling, but—but you see it isn’t she who is angry: it’s just her malady.” ”