about eight you will find food; if you come later you will alsofind food of a sketchier kind. People have a habit of dropping in onSunday evening. There's music if anyone feels inclined to make any, andif they don't they are made to. Some people come early, others late,and they stop to breakfast if they wish. It's a gaudeamus, you know, ajolly, a jamboree. One has to relax sometimes."
Michael felt all his old unfitness for dreadful crowds return to him.
"Oh, I'm so bad at that sort of thing," he said. "I am a frightfulkill-joy, Hermann."
Hermann sat down on the treble part of his piano.
"That's the most conceited thing I've heard you say yet," he remarked."Nobody will pay any attention to you; you won't kill anybody's joy.Also it's rather rude of you."
"I didn't mean to be rude," said Michael.
"Then we must suppose you were rude by accident. That is the worst sortof rudeness."
"I'm sorry; I'll come," said Michael.
"That's right. You might even find yourself enjoying it by accident, youknow. If you don't, you can go away. There's music; Sylvia sings quiteseriously sometimes, and other people sing or bring violins, and thosewho don't like it, talk--and then we get less serious. Have a try,Michael. See if you can't be less serious, too."
Michael slipped despairingly from his seat.
"If only I knew how!" he said. "I believe my nurse never taught me toplay, only to remember that I was a little gentleman. All the same, whenI am with you, or with my cousin Francis, I can manage it to a certainextent."
Falbe looked at him encouragingly.
"Oh, you're getting on," he said. "You take yourself more for grantedthan you used to. I remember you when you used to be polite on purpose.It's doing things on purpose that makes one serious. If you ever playthe fool on purpose, you instantly cease playing the fool."
"Is that it?" said Michael.
"Yes, of course. So come on Sunday, and forget all about it, exceptcoming. And now, do you mind going away? I want to put in a couple ofhours before lunch. You know what to practise till Tuesday, don't you?"
That was the first Sunday evening that Michael had spent with hisfriends; after that, up till this present date in November, he had notmissed a single one of those gatherings. They consisted almost entirelyof men, and of the men there were many types, and many ages. Actors andartists, musicians and authors were indiscriminately mingled; it was thestrangest conglomeration of diverse interests. But one interest, so itseemed to Michael, bound them all together; they were all doing in theirdifferent lives the things they most delighted in doing. There was thekey that unlocked all the locks--namely, the enjoyment that inspiredtheir work. The freemasonry of art and the freemasonry of the eager mindthat looks out without verdict, but with only expectation and delight inexperiment, passed like an open secret among them, secret because nonespoke of it, open because it was so transparently obvious. And sincethis was so, every member of that heterogeneous community had a respectfor his companions; the fact that they were there together showed thatthey had all passed this initiation, and knew what for them life meant.
Very soon after dinner all sitting accommodation, other than the floor,was occupied; but then the floor held the later comers, and thesmoke from many cigarettes and the babble of many voices made aconstantly-ascending incense before the altar dedicated to the gods thatinspire all enjoyable endeavour. Then Sylvia sang, and both those whocared to hear exquisite singing and those who did not were alike silent,for this was a prayer to the gods they all worshipped; and Falbe played,and there was a quartet of strings.
After that less serious affairs held the rooms; an eminent actor waspleased to parody another eminent actor who was also present. This ledto a scene in which each caricatured the other, and a French poet didgymnastic feats on the floor and upset a tray of soda-water, and aGerman conductor fluffed out his hair and died like Marguerite. And whenin the earlier hours of the morning part of the guests had gone away,and part were broiling ham in the kitchen, Sylvia sang again, quiteseriously, and Michael, in Hermann's absence, volunteered to play heraccompaniment for her. She stood behind him, and by a finger on hisshoulder directed him in the way she would have him go. Michael foundhimself suddenly and inexplicably understanding this; her finger, by itspressure or its light tapping, seemed to him to speak in a language thathe found himself familiar with, and he slowed down stroking the notes,or quickened with staccato touch, as she wordlessly directed him.
Out of all these things, which were but trivialities, pleasant,unthinking hours for all else concerned, several points stood out forMichael, points new and illuminating. The first was the simplicity of itall, the spontaneousness with which pleasure was born if only you tookoff your clothes, so to speak, and left them on the bank while youjumped in. All his life he had buttoned his jacket and crammed his haton to his head. The second was the sense, indefinable but certain, thatHermann and Sylvia between them were the high priests of this memorableorgie.
He himself had met, at dreadful, solemn evenings when Lady Ashbridge andhis father stood at the head of the stairs, the two eminent actors whohad romped to-night, and found them exceedingly stately personages, justas no doubt they had found him an icy and awkward young man. But they,like him, had taken their note on those different occasions from theirenvironment. Perhaps if his father and mother came here . . . butMichael's imagination quailed before such a supposition.
The third point, which gradually through these weeks began to haunt himmore and more, was the personality of Sylvia. He had never come acrossa girl who in the least resembled her, probably because he had notattempted even to find in a girl, or to display in himself, the signals,winked across from one to the other, of human companionship. Alwayshe had found a difficulty in talking to a girl, because he had, in hisself-consciousness, thought about what he should say. There had been thecabalistic question of sex ever in front of him, a thing that troubledand deterred him. But Sylvia, with her hand on his shoulder, absorbed inher singing, and directing him only as she would have pressed the pedalof the piano if she had been playing to herself, was no more agitatingthan if she had been a man; she was just singing, just using him to helpher singing. And even while Michael registered to himself this charmingannihilation of sex, which allowed her to be to him no more than herbrother was--less, in fact, but on the same plane--she had come tothe end of her song, patted him on the back, as she would have pattedanybody else, with a word of thanks, and, for him, suddenly leaped intosignificance. It was not only a singer who had sung, but an individualone called Sylvia Falbe. She took her place, at present a mostinconspicuous one, on the back-cloth before which Michael's life wasacted, towards which, when no action, so to speak, was taking place,his eyes naturally turned themselves. His father and mother were there,Francis also and Aunt Barbara, and of course, larger than the rest,Hermann. Now Sylvia was discernible, and, as the days went by andtheir meetings multiplied, she became bigger, walked into a nearerperspective. It did not occur to Michael, rightly, to imagine himself atall in love with her, for he was not. Only she had asserted herself onhis consciousness.
Not yet had she begun to trouble him, and there was no sign, eitherexternal or intimate, in his mind that he was sickening with thesplendid malady. Indeed, the significance she held for him was ratherthat, though she was a girl, she presented none of the embarrassmentswhich that sex had always held for him. She grew in comradeship; hefound himself as much at ease with her as with her brother, and hercharm was just that which had so quickly and strongly attracted Michaelto Hermann. She was vivid in the same way as he was; she had the samewarm, welcoming kindliness--the same complete absence of pose. You knewwhere you were with her, and hitherto, when Michael was with one of theyoung ladies brought down to Ashbridge to be looked at, he only wishedthat wherever he was he was somewhere else. But with Sylvia he had noneof this self-consciousness; she was bonne camarade for him in exactlythe same way as she was bonne camarade to the rest of the multitudewhich thronged the Sunday evenings, perfectly at ea
se with them, as theywith her, in relationship entirely unsentimental.
But through these weeks, up to this foggy November afternoon, Michael'smost conscious preoccupation was his music. Falbe's principles inteaching were entirely heretical according to the traditional school;he gave Michael no scale to play, no dismal finger-exercise to fill thehours.
"What is the good of them?" he asked. "They can only give you nimblenessand strength. Well, you shall acquire your nimbleness and strength byplaying what is worth playing. Take good music, take Chopin or Bach orBeethoven, and practise one particular etude or fugue or sonata; you maychoose anything you like, and learn your nimbleness and strength thatway. Read, too; read for a couple of hours every day. The writtenlanguage of music must become so familiar to