Part 39 (1/2)

I never wanted you so much. I have been sitting in the dark desolate--desolate. And oh! my darling, what a beast I am to think of nothing but myself. I am ashamed. What of your mother, Michael?”

She turned on the light as they walked back across the studio, and Michael saw that her eyes, which were a little dazzled by the change from the dark into the light, were dim with unshed tears, and her hands clung to him as never before had they clung. She needed him now with that imperative need which in trouble can only turn to love for comfort.

She wanted that only; the fact of him with her, in this land in which she had suddenly become an alien, an enemy, though all her friends except Hermann were here. And instantaneously, as a baby at the breast, she found that all his strength and serenity were hers.

They sat down on the sofa by the piano, side by side, with hands intertwined before Michael answered. He looked up at her as he spoke, and in his eyes was the quiet of love and death.

”My mother died an hour ago,” he said. ”I was with her, and as I had longed might happen, she came back to me before she died. For two or three minutes she was herself. And then she said to me, 'My son,' and soon she ceased breathing.”

”Oh, Michael,” she said, and for a little while there was silence, and in turn it was her presence that he clung to. Presently he spoke again.

”Sylvia, I'm so frightfully hungry,” he said. ”I don't think I've eaten anything since breakfast. May we go and forage?”

”Oh, you poor thing!” she cried. ”Yes, let's go and see what there is.”

Instantly she busied herself.

”Hermann left the cellar key on the chimney-piece, Michael,” she said.

”Get some wine out, dear. Mother and I don't drink any. And there's some ham, I know. While you are getting wine, I'll broil some. And there were some strawberries. I shall have some supper with you. What a good thought! And you must be famished.”

As they ate they talked perfectly simply and naturally of the hundred a.s.sociations which this studio meal at the end of the evening called up concerning the Sunday night parties. There was an occasion on which Hermann tried to recollect how to mull beer, with results that smelled like a brickfield; there was another when a poached egg had fallen, exploding softly as it fell into the piano. There was the occasion, the first on which Michael had been present, when two eminent actors imitated each other; another when Francis came and made himself so immensely agreeable. It was after that one that Sylvia and Hermann had sat and talked in front of the stove, discussing, as Sylvia laughed to remember, what she would say when Michael proposed to her. Then had come the break in Michael's attendances and, as Sylvia allowed, a certain falling-off in gaiety.

”But it was really Hermann and I who made you gay originally,” she said.

”We take a wonderful deal of credit for that.”

All this was as completely natural for them as was the impromptu meal, and soon without effort Michael spoke of his mother again, and presently afterwards of the news of war. But with him by her side Sylvia found her courage come back to her; the news itself, all that it certainly implied, and all the horror that it held, no longer filled her with the sense that it was impossibly terrible. Michael did not diminish the awfulness of it, but he gave her the power of looking out bravely at it.

Nor did he shrink from speaking of all that had been to her so grim a nightmare.

”You haven't heard from Hermann?” he asked.

”No. And I suppose we can't hear now. He is with his regiment, that's all; nor shall we hear of him till there is peace again.”

She came a little closer to him.

”Michael, I have to face it, that I may never see Hermann again,” she said. ”Mother doesn't fear it, you know. She--the darling--she lives in a sort of dream. I don't want her to wake from it. But how can I get accustomed to the thought that perhaps I shan't see Hermann again? I must get accustomed to it: I've got to live with it, and not quarrel with it.”

He took up her hand, enclosing it in his.

”But, one doesn't quarrel with the big things of life,” he said. ”Isn't it so? We haven't any quarrel with things like death and duty. Dear me, I'm afraid I'm preaching.”

”Preach, then,” she said.

”Well, it's just that. We don't quarrel with them: they manage themselves. Hermann's going managed itself. It had to be.”

Her voice quivered as she spoke now.

”Are you going?” she asked. ”Will that have to be?”

Michael looked at her a moment with infinite tenderness.

”Oh, my dear, of course it will,” he said. ”Of course, one doesn't know yet what the War Office will do about the Army. I suppose it's possible that they will send troops to France. All that concerns me is that I shall rejoin again if they call up the Reserves.”

”And they will?”