some tugging strain, that he would not reject it. Sheknew she had missed this brother, who had refused to be brother to her.But he had been about his own business, and he had been doing his ownbusiness, with a quiet splendour that drew her eyes to him, and as theystood there, thus linked, she wondered if her heart was following. . . .She had seen, last December, how reasonable it was of him to refuse thisdomestic sort of intimacy with her; now, she found herself intenselylonging that he would not persist in his refusal.
Suddenly Michael awoke to the fact of her presence, and abruptly hemoved away from her.
"Thanks, Sylvia," he said. "I know I have your--your good wishes.But--well, I am sure you understand."
She understood perfectly well. And the understanding of it cut her tothe quick.
"Have you got any right to behave like that to me, Michael?" she asked."What have I done that you should treat me quite like that?"
He looked at her, completely recalled in mind to her alone. All thehopes and desires of the autumn smote him with encompassing blows.
"Yes, every right," he said. "I wasn't heeding you. I only thought of mymother, and the fact that there was a very dear friend by me. And then Icame to myself: I remembered who the friend was."
They stood there in silence, apart, for a moment. Then Michael camecloser. The desire for human sympathy, and that the sympathy he mostlonged for, gripped him again.
"I'm a brute," he said. "It was awfully nice of you to--to offer methat. I accept it so gladly. I'm wretchedly anxious."
He looked up at her.
"Take my arm again," he said.
She felt the crook of his elbow tighten again on her wrist. She had notknown before how much she prized that.
"But are you sure you are right in being anxious, Mike?" she asked."Isn't it perhaps your own tired nerves that make you anxious?"
"I don't think so," he said. "I've been tired a long time, you see,and I never felt about my mother like this. She has been so bright andcontent all day, and yet there were little lapses, if you understand.It was as if she knew: she said good-bye to the lake and the jollymoor-hens and the grass. And her nurse thinks so, too. She called me outof the room just now to tell me that. . . . I don't know why I shouldtell you these depressing things."
"Don't you?" she asked. "But I do. It's because you know I care.Otherwise you wouldn't tell me: you couldn't."
For a moment the balance quavered in his mind between Sylvia the belovedand Sylvia the friend. It inclined to the friend.
"Yes, that's why," he said. "And I reproach myself, you know. All theseyears I might, if I had tried harder, have been something to my mother.I might have managed it. I thought--at least I felt--that she didn'tencourage me. But I was a beast to have been discouraged. And now herwanting me has come just when it isn't her unclouded self that wants me.It's as if--as if it had been raining all day, and just on sunset therecomes a gleam in the west. And so soon after it's night."
"You made the gleam," said Sylvia.
"But so late; so awfully late."
Suddenly he stood stiff, listening to some sound which at presentshe did not hear. It sounded a little louder, and her ears caught therunning of footsteps on the stairs outside. Next moment the door opened,and Lady Ashbridge's maid put in a pale face.
"Will you go to her ladyship, my lord?" she said. "Her nurse wants you.She told me to telephone to Sir James."
Sylvia moved with him, not disengaging her arm, towards the door.
"Michael, may I wait?" she said. "You might want me, you know. Pleaselet me wait."
Lady Ashbridge's room was on the floor above, and Michael ran up theintervening stairs three at a time. He knocked and entered and wonderedwhy he had been sent for, for she was sitting quietly on her sofa nearthe window. But he noticed that Nurse Baker stood very close to her.Otherwise there was nothing that was in any way out of the ordinary.
"And here he is," said the nurse reassuringly as he entered.
Lady Ashbridge turned towards the door as Michael came in, and when hemet her eyes he knew why he had been sent for, why at this moment SirJames was being summoned. For she looked at him not with the cloudedeyes of affection, not with the mother-spirit striving to breakthrough the shrouding trouble of her brain, but with eyes of blanknon-recognition. She saw him with the bodily organs of her vision,but the picture of him was conveyed no further: there was a blank wallbehind her eyes.
Michael did not hesitate. It was possible that he still might besomething to her, that he, his presence, might penetrate.
"But you are not resting, mother," he said. "Why are you sitting up? Icame to talk to you, as I said I would, while you rested."
Suddenly into those blank, irresponsive eyes there leaped recognition.He saw the pupils contract as they focused themselves on him, and handin hand with recognition there leaped into them hate. Instantly thatwas veiled again. But it had been there, and now it was not banished; itlurked behind in the shadows, crouching and waiting.
She answered him at once, but in a voice that was quite toneless. Itseemed like that of a child repeating a lesson which it had learned byheart, and could be pronounced while it was thinking of something quitedifferent.
"I was waiting till you came, my dear," she said. "Now I will lie down.Come and sit by me, Michael."
She watched him narrowly while she spoke, then gave a quick glance ather nurse, as if to see that they were not making signals to each other.There was an easy chair just behind her head, and as Michael wheeled itup near her sofa, he looked at the nurse. She moved her hand slightlytowards the left, and interpreting this, he moved the chair a little tothe left, so that he would not sit, as he had intended, quite close tothe sofa.
"And you enjoyed your day in the country, mother?" asked Michael.
She looked at him sideways and slowly. Then again, as if recollecting atask she had committed to memory, she answered.
"Yes, so much," she said. "All the trees and the birds and the sunshine.I enjoyed them so much."
She paused a moment.
"Bring your chair a little closer, my darling," she said. "You are sofar off. And why do you wait, nurse? I will call you if I want you."
Michael felt one moment of sickening spiritual terror. He understoodquite plainly why Nurse Baker did not want him to go near to his mother,and the reason of it gave him this pang, not of nervousness but of blackhorror, that the sane and the sensitive must always feel when they arebrought intimately in contact with some blind derangement of instinct inthose most nearly allied to them. Physically, on the material plane, hehad no fear at all.
He made a movement, grasping the arm of his chair, as if to wheel itcloser, but he came actually no nearer her.
"Why don't you go away, nurse?" said Lady Ashbridge, "and leave my sonand me to talk about our nice day in the country?"
Nurse Baker answered quite naturally.
"I want to talk, too, my lady," she said. "I went with you and LordComber. We all enjoyed it together."
It seemed to Michael that his mother made some violent effort towardsself-control. He saw one of her hands that were lying on her knee clenchitself, so that the knuckles stood out white.
"Yes, we will all talk together, then," she said. "Or--er--shall I havea little doze first? I am rather sleepy with so much pleasant air. Andyou are sleepy, too, are you not, Michael? Yes, I see you look sleepy.Shall we have a little nap, as I often do after tea? Then, when I amfresh again, you shall come back, nurse, and we will talk over ourpleasant day."
When he entered the room, Michael had not quite closed the door, andnow, as half an hour before, he heard steps on the stairs. A momentafterwards his mother heard them too.
"What is that?" she said. "Who is coming now to disturb me, just when Iwanted to have a nap?"
There came a knock at the door. Nurse Baker did not move her head, butcontinued watching her patient, with hands ready to act.
"Come in," she said, not looking round.
Lady Ashbridge's face was towards the
door. As Sir James entered, shesuddenly sprang up, and in her right hand that lay beside her was aknife, which she had no doubt taken from the tea-table when she cameupstairs. She turned swiftly towards Michael, and stabbed at him withit.
"It's a trap," she cried. "You've led me into a trap. They are going totake me away."
Michael had thrown up his arm to shield his head. The blow fell betweenshoulder and elbow, and he felt the edge of the knife grate on his bone.
And from deep in his heart sprang the leaping fountains of compassionand love and yearning pity.
CHAPTER XII
Michael was sitting in the big studio at the Falbes' house lateone afternoon at the end