Michael

aboutoneself. And the effort that it cost him may be taken as the measure ofhis solitary disposition.

  "But you needn't do that," he said, "if--if you will be good enough toborrow of me till your things come."

  He blurted it out awkwardly, almost brusquely, and Falbe looked slightlyamused at this wholly surprising offer of hospitality.

  "But that's awfully good of you," he said, laughing and saying nothingdirect about his acceptance. "It implies, too, that you are goingto Baireuth. We travel together, then, I hope, for it is dismal worktravelling alone, isn't it? My sister tells me that half my friends werepicked up in railway carriages. Been there before?"

  Michael felt himself lured from the ordinary aloofness of attitude anddemeanour, which had been somewhat accustomed to view all strangers withsuspicion. 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 sayon the piano what his sister understood by the songs of Brahms andSchubert. He could not help glancing at Falbe's hands, as they busiedthemselves with the filling and lighting of a pipe, and felt that heknew something of those long, broad-tipped fingers, smooth and white andstrong. The man himself he found to be quite different to what he hadexpected; he had seen him before, eager and intent and anxious-faced,absorbed in the task of following another mind; now he looked muchyounger, much more boyish.

  "No, it's my first visit to Baireuth," he said, "and I can't tell youhow excited I am about it. I've been looking forward to it so much thatI almost expect to be disappointed."

  Falbe blew out a cloud of smoke and laughter.

  "Oh, you're safe enough," he said. "Baireuth never disappoints. It'sone of the facts--a reliable fact. And Munich? Do you go to Munichafterwards?"

  "Yes. I hope so."

  Falbe clicked with his tongue

  "Lucky fellow," he said. "How I wish I was. But I've got to get backagain after my week. You'll spend the mornings in the galleries, and theafternoons and evenings at the opera. O Lord, Munich!"

  He came across from the other side of the carriage and sat next Michael,putting his feet up on the seat opposite.

  "Talk of Munich," he said. "I was born in Munich, and I happen to knowthat it's the heavenly Jerusalem, neither more nor less."

  "Well, the heavenly Jerusalem is practically next door to Baireuth,"said Michael.

  "I know; but it can't be managed. However, there's a week of unalloyedbliss between me now and the desolation of London in August. What isso maddening is to think of all the people who could go to Munich anddon't."

  Michael held debate within himself. He felt that he ought to tell hisnew acquaintance that he knew who he was, that, however trivial theirconversation might be, it somehow resembled eavesdropping to talk toa chance fellow-passenger as if he were a complete stranger. But itrequired again a certain effort to make the announcement.

  "I think I had better tell you," he said at length, "that I know you,that I've listened to you at least, at your sister's recital a few daysago."

  Falbe turned to him with the friendliest pleasure.

  "Ah! were you there?" he asked. "I hope you listened to her, then, notto me. She sang well, didn't she?"

  "But divinely. At the same time I did listen to you, especially in theFrench songs. There was less song, you know."

  Falbe laughed.

  "And more accompaniment!" he said. "Perhaps you play?"

  Michael was seized with a fit of shyness at the idea of talking to Falbeabout himself.

  "Oh, I just strum," he said.

  Throughout the journey their acquaintanceship ripened; and casually,in dropped remarks, the two began to learn something about each other.Falbe's command of English, as well as his sister's, which was socomplete that it was impossible to believe that a foreigner wasspeaking, was explained, for it came out that his mother wasEnglish, and that from infancy they had spoken German and Englishindiscriminately. His father, who had died some dozen years before, hadbeen a singer of some note in his native land, but was distinguishedmore for his teaching than his practice, and it was he who had taughthis daughter. Hermann Falbe himself had always intended to be a pianist,but the poverty in which they were left at his father's death hadobliged him to give lessons rather than devote himself to his owncareer; but now at the age of thirty he found himself within sight ofthe competence that would allow him to cut down his pupils, and begin tobe a pupil again himself.

  His sister, moreover, for whom he had slaved for years in order that shemight continue her own singing education unchecked, was now more thanable, especially after these last three months in London, where she hadsuddenly leaped into eminence, to support herself and contributed to theexpenses of their common home. But there was still, so Michael gathered,no great superabundance of money, and he guessed that Falbe's inabilityto go to Munich was due to the question of expense.

  All this came out by inference and allusion rather than by directinformation, while Michael, naturally reticent and feeling that hisown uneventful affairs could have no interest for anybody, wasless communicative. And, indeed, while shunning the appearanceof inquisitiveness, he was far too eager to get hold of his newacquaintance to think of volunteering much himself. Here to him was thiscitizen of the new country who all his life had lived in the palace ofart, and that in no dilettante fashion, but with set aim and seriouspurpose. And Falbe abounded in such topics; he knew the singers andthe musicians of the world, and, which was much more than that, he washimself of them; humble, no doubt, in circumstances and achievement asyet, but clearly to Michael of the blood royal of artistry. That wasthe essential thing about him as regards his relations with hisfellow-traveller, though, when next morning the spires of Cologne andthe swift river of his Fatherland came into sight, he burst out into asort of rhapsody of patriotism that mockingly covered a great sincerity.

  "Ah! beloved land!" he cried. "Soil of heaven and of divine harmony!Hail to thee! Hail to thee! Rhine, Rhine deep and true and steadfast.". . . And he waved his hat and sang the greeting of Brunnhilde. Then heturned laughingly to Michael.

  "I am sufficiently English to know how ridiculous that must seem toyou," he said, "for I love England also, and the passengers on the boatwould merely think me mad if I apostrophised the cliffs of Dover andthe mud of the English roads. But here I am a German again, and I wouldwillingly kiss the soil. You English--we English, I may say, for I am asmuch English as German--I believe have got the same feeling somewhere inour hearts, but we lock it up and hide it away. Pray God I shall neverhave to choose to which nation I belong, though for that matter there inno choice in it at all, for I am certainly a German subject. Guten Tag,Koln; let us instantly have our coffee. There is no coffee like Germancoffee, though the French coffee is undeniably pleasanter to the meresuperficial palate. But it doesn't touch the heart, as everything Germantouches my heart when I come back to the Fatherland."

  He chattered on in tremendous high spirits.

  "And to think that to-night we shall sleep in true German beds," hesaid. "I allow that the duvet is not so convenient as blankets, and thatthere is a watershed always up the middle of your bed, so that duringthe night your person descends to one side while the duvet rollsdown the other; but it is German, which makes up for any triflinginconvenience. Baireuth, too; perhaps it will strike you as a dull andstinking little town, and so I dare say it is. But after lunch we shallgo up the hillside to where the theatre stands, at the edge of thepine-woods, and from the porch the trumpets will give out the motif ofthe Grail, and we shall pass out of the heat into the cool darkness ofthe theatre. Aren't you thrilled, Comber? Doesn't a holy awe pervadeyou! Are you worthy, do you think?"

  All this youthful, unrestrained enthusiasm was a revelation to Michael.Intentionally absurd as Falbe's rhapsody on the Fatherland had been,Michael knew that it sprang from a solid sincerity which was not ashamedof expressing itself. Living, as he had always done, in the ratherformal and reticent atmosphere of his class and environment, he wouldhave thought this fervour of pat
riotism in an English mouth ridiculous,or, if persevered in, merely bad form. Yet when Falbe hailed the Rhineand the spires of Cologne, it was clear that there was no bad form aboutit at all. He felt like that; and, indeed, as Michael was beginning toperceive, he felt with a similar intensity on all subjects about whichhe felt at all. There was something of the same vivid quality about AuntBarbara, but Aunt Barbara's vividness was chiefly devoted to the huntof the absurdities of her friends, and it was always the concretelyridiculous that she pursued. But this handsome, vital young man, withhis eagerness and his welcome for the world, who had fallen withso delightful a cordiality into Michael's company, had already anattraction for him of a sort