Part 39 (2/2)

”Yes, I should think that is inevitable. And you know there's something big about it. I'm not warlike, you know, but I could not fail to be a soldier under these new conditions, any more than I could continue being a soldier when all it meant was to be ornamental. Hermann in bursts of pride and patriotism used to call us toy-soldiers. But he's wrong now; we're not going to be toy-soldiers any more.”

She did not answer him, but he felt her hand press close in the palm of his.

”I can't tell you how I dreaded we shouldn't go to war,” he said. ”That has been a nightmare, if you like. It would have been the end of us if we had stood aside and seen Germany violate a solemn treaty.”

Even with Michael close to her, the call of her blood made itself audible to Sylvia. Instinctively she withdrew her hand from his.

”Ah, you don't understand Germany at all,” she said. ”Hermann always felt that too. He told me he felt he was talking gibberish to you when he spoke of it. It is clearly life and death to Germany to move against France as quickly as possible.”

”But there's a direct frontier between the two,” said he.

”No doubt, but an impossible one.”

Michael frowned, drawing his big eyebrows together.

”But nothing can justify the violation of a national oath,” he said.

”That's the basis of civilisation, a thing like that.”

”But if it's a necessity? 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.”

”But consider--” said he.

She got up suddenly.

”I can't argue about it,” she said. ”I am English and I am German. You must make the best of me as I am. But do be sorry for me, and never, never forget that I love you entirely. That's the root fact between us.

I can't go deeper than that, because that reaches to the very bottom of my soul. Shall we leave it so, Michael, and not ever talk of it again?

Wouldn't that be best?”

There was no question of choice for Michael in accepting that appeal.

He knew with the inmost fibre of his being that, Sylvia being Sylvia, nothing that she could say or do or feel could possibly part him from her. When he looked at it directly and simply like that, there was nothing that could blur the verity of it. But the truth of what she said, the reality of that call of the blood, seemed to cast a shadow over it. He knew beyond all other knowledge that it was there: only it looked out at him with a shadow, faint, but unmistakable, fallen across it. But the sense of that made him the more eagerly accept her suggestion.

”Yes, darling, we'll never speak of it again,” he said. ”That would be much wisest.”

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.

The coffin lay that night in his mother's bedroom, which was next to Michael's, and when he went up to bed he found himself listening for any sound that came from there. It seemed but yesterday when he had gone rather early upstairs, and after sitting a minute or two in front of his fire, had heard that timid knock on the door, which had meant the opening of a mother's heart to him. He felt it would scarcely be strange if that knock came again, and if she entered once more to be with him.

From the moment he came upstairs, the rest of the world was shut down to him; he entered his bedroom as if he entered a sanctuary that was scented with the incense of her love. He knew exactly how her knock had sounded when she came in here that night when first it burned for him: his ears were alert for it to come again. Once his blind tapped against the frame of his open window, and, though knowing it was that, he heard himself whisper--for she could hear his whisper--”Come in, mother,” and sat up in his deep chair, looking towards the door. But only the blind tapped again, and outside in the moonlit dusk an owl hooted.

He remembered she liked owls. Once, when they lived alone in Curzon Street, some noise outside reminded her of the owls that hooted at Ashbridge--she had imitated their note, saying it sounded like sleep.

. . . She had sat in a chintz-covered chair close to him when at Christmas she paid him that visit, and now he again drew it close to his own, and laid his hand on its arm. Petsy II. had come in with her, and she had hoped that he would not annoy Michael.

There were steps in the pa.s.sage outside his room, and he heard a little shrill bark. He opened his door and found his mother's maid there, trying to entice Petsy away from the room next to his. The little dog was curled up against it, and now and then he turned round scratching at it, asking to enter. ”He won't come away, my lord,” said the maid; ”he's gone back a dozen times to the door.”

<script>