Chapter VI

MAX could not have believed that an absence from London for three weeks at Christmas could be so dreary. Usually he rebelled stoutly against the circumstances that kept the London house open and the Sussex house shut, exactly at the time when the pheasants were in their prime, and every reasonable man was shooting them. This time, he would almost have welcomed the news that Farley House had been burned to the ground by Suffragettes, and that his father's usual three weeks away from the bank in December were impossible; and that all shooting invitations were cancelled.

He was beginning, too, no longer even to attempt to hide from himself the reason for this desolation, and the less he hid it, the more the situation darkened round him. For how, to put it plainly, could he possibly announce to his parents that life without a certain young prima donna for whom, obviously they did not care very much, was henceforth for him unthinkable? For he really thought that such was the case with him.

What increased his fever a thousand-fold was that book he had recently bought in Mr. Noble's shop.

He had read, of course, straight through immediately, the chapters dealing with the operas of Lohengrin and Tristan; and the former with especial fervour, since he had first identified Marion with the character of Elsa; and the more he read and re-read the more utterly did the romance of the story infect his very blood and brain, and clothe the image of Marion in his mind with a halo of exquisite glory that did not strictly belong to her. So far as the story was concerned, he knew it by heart.

On the morning after their arrival at Farley Norah, hearing the unfamiliar, though feeble, sound of music from the music-room — for the Merival family had a very large and beautiful music-room in two out of their three houses, and hardly any music at all in at least three out of their four souls — turned the handle of the door at the foot of the stairs, and went in. To her amazement her brother, with a brow furrowed with earnestness and annoyance, was sitting on the music-stool picking out strong notes with one finger. His look became suddenly guilty.

" What on earth are you doing here? " she asked, in a tone which she would have used had she found him in the plate-closet or the larder.

" Only this beastly thing," he said. " I'm... I'm trying to pick out some of these things called motifs." She stopped dead.

" In Lohengrin? " she asked — trying not to show astonishment.

" In the whole book," he said with an appearance of being entirely at his ease.

" What book? " she asked, coming nearer.

He held it up.

" It's all about Wagner," he said. " Norah; I wish you'd strum these things over. I wish to goodness I hadn't forgotten everything I ever knew."

She saw that comment would be cruel. She sat down sedately.

" Which do you want? " she said. " Oh! I see. It's Lohengrin.".

"There! That one," he said.

She played it gingerly through with one finger.

" Is that right? " he asked. " Are you sure? "

She played it again.

" Yes."

"Lord! Four flats!" he said. "And I thought there were only three. Let me do it."

He half pushed her off the stool: and himself played it solemnly through. She regarded him from above.

" Well: what's the point of it? " she asked.

"That's the... the..." (he hastily peered at the print) — " it's the Warning motif. Can't you hear it? It's when he tells her not to ask his name."

" Who tells who? " demanded Norah ungrammatically. He paid no attention.

" Listen to this," he said.

He began to play the Grail motive, in A; but was under the impression that F should be played as a natural.

" There," he said, " can't you hear how — how splendid that is? Think of it "

" You played three wrong notes," she said gravely. " It's F sharp, you know, in the key of A."

He looked keenly at the music.

" It's all your fault," he said. " Coming bothering!"

Norah suddenly laughed. He wheeled on her: but she was grave again.

" Sorry," she said. " Go on: play some more."

" Well this is the Lohengrin motive. Wait a second.

Let's see. Four flats. That's A, B, D and E.... No accidentals."

He played it. Norah leaned against the window and watched him. It was astonishing to her that he could be so transparent and so unaware of it. Really men were not clever. There was Gerald, for instance.

" That's first-rate," she said. " Is she going to sing Isolde, do you know? "

He did not even pretend to misunderstand, as one either more or less subtle might have done.

" She doesn't know herself, yet. Let's see. Where does that come? "

He turned over a few pages.

" Here we are. What's this? Oh! * the delirious ravings of the dying Tristan.' '

He played four wrong notes, firmly.

" No, it isn't," he said. " This is the... the ' saddest melody ever written.' '

" I thought it must be," said Norah gravely.

Again he was not attending. He had turned the page.

" Ah! here we are. This is something like a key! "

" C natural? " questioned Norah.

" Exactly. Listen to the — the — what's this? — ' the fascinating melody changes to the following lively forms.' "

He struck G, D and E.,

" * Vivace,9 " he quoted.

Norah could restrain herself no longer.

" Oh! Max, what a donkey you are! You don't really like her as much as all that, do you? "

It really was a little easier after he had had a talk to Norah — easier, because at any rate he had said out aloud as much of his interior feelings as a brother ever does or can say to a sister; yet harder because Norah had been terribly plain with him. The conversation, such as it was, was held there and then in the music-room, with the Chinese wall-paper: he on the music-stool, she leaning against the window.

He had spoken chiefly of Marion's genius, paying no heed to Norah's interjection that it was scarcely possible to speak of that yet, since it still remained to be seen whether she had got any. He did not, of course, dream of saying anything definite except that he thought her really splendid; neither did she even dream of saying anything more definite than that there would be the most infernal row — (she used that reprehensible phrase) — if it ever came to the ears of the authorities. Brothers and sisters, unless their relations are peculiarly and exceptionally tender, do not talk to one another of love-affairs with any sort of explicitness. Yet these two, though not in the least tender, understood one another sufficiently. There was only one sharp passage.

" She isn't our sort a bit," said Norah. " Of course she may be a genius, and all that "

" Our sort! Do you mean she isn't a banker's daughter?" snapped Max.

The banker's daughter flushed.

" It's not in the least the question of anything like that," she said. " If you don't know what I mean, I'm sorry for you. It really is very odd that men are so blind."

" No more odd than that women are so spiteful," retorted Max.

Norah flushed a shade more; and moved abruptly towards the door.

" All right," she said. " Manage your own affairs then."

" Sorry," said Max. " Look here, old girl, I've never found any fault with Gerald or... or any of your friends," he added hastily. "Why can't you leave mine alone? "

Norah paused.

" I didn't mean to be nasty," she conceded. " I daresay she is a genius."

" Of course she is! " announced Max, sounding the common chord of C with one hand.

" Let's leave it at that."

They left it at that.

Yet within his fever grew higher; and he could no more diagnose it satisfactorily than a child can diagnose his own whooping-cough. There were the spasms — the sudden flushes of affection that seized him at unexpected moments — as he sat moodily over port-wine with his father and a couple of guests; as he waited alone in wind-swept rides for the pheasants to come over; as he yawned his way upstairs from the smoking-room after a day in the open — spasms in which desire rose like a storm to see her again, to see her radiant little face as he had seen it one day unexpectedly in Kensington Gardens, as she came along the broad walk with her hands deep in her pockets, in the silver fox furs that her friend had given her. They had recognised one another quite a long way off and had begun to smile much too soon, so that he felt like a grinning idiot (as he expressed it to himself afterwards) by the time that he reached her.

Or he pictured her as she had been in the Row in her green habit and green hat with the cock's feather, riding by his side. (One day he went a long morning's ride all alone, simply to pretend that she was with him.) Yet when he asked himself where the attraction lay, he could not tell. Feature by feature and line by line he analysed her. Sometimes he thought that it was her eyes; and sometimes her mouth; and sometimes her voice; and sometimes that neat boyish figure, alert and trim. But he did not understand that, as a matter of fact, it was that curious indefinable thing called personality, and that the exterior details of her person were only inadequate little channels by which this approached him: he did not understand that it was an evasive kind of childish sincerity that drew him; that it was all just a simply natural thirst for a soul that really was adapted to his own.

As Christmas drew near his longing rose yet higher. He had only received one very short note from ter in answer to two letters of his own; and the note tola him nothing at all except that she was working steadily, and really hoped to have Isolde at her fingers' ends by the beginning of the New Year; and this sent him back in a fury of artistic zeal to his Wagner book.

But, somehow, Isolde did not fit her — at least to his imagination. Isolde was too mature, too full-blown in passion, formed on colossal lines; and Marion was, essentially, an Elsa of humanity — a little maiden, taxed beyond her strength, tried beyond bearing, yet as gallant as a blade of steel. He turned back to Elsa, and studied her again; and, more than ever, the halo heightened and glowed about Marion's image.

He thought of her now as an Elsa in London at large, not only upon the stage, waiting for the Knight to come and free her from all that confined and held her in. She was Elsa to him as he followed her in imagination going down Kensington High Street towards Addison Road, whither the von Giinthers had lately moved; Elsa as she walked with Maggie Brent in Kensington Gardens; Elsa as she sat over the fire in the music-room, and, of course, thought about him. And therefore, little by little, inevitably, he began to conceive of himself as a Lohengrin, not, indeed, with any ridiculous conceit — at least, with no more than that to which a young man in love is fully entitled — but as a strong man who steps down from a higher platform in answer to her call, rather than as one who is to raise her to his own. In a word, he be-came one mass of honourable romance; the limelight of his imagination — a little crude, perhaps, as limelight always is, and yet with the exciting quality which it undoubtedly possesses — played upon the stage of his thoughts; and there, in the midst of the stage was himself in silver armour with the golden horn at his belt, and beside him she in white, with the daisies on her skirt and about her throat and arms.

Ill

It was a joyous morning, three days before Christmas, when his father, opening his letters, suddenly announced that they must get back to town three days earlier than had been intended. He did not explain why: such was not his way.

" But there's the shooting-party on the twenty-eighth," observed Lady Merival, meekly.

" My dear," he explained, with great self-restraint, " they must just be written to. It is unavoidable.

Will you kindly see to that? Unless " His eye strayed to his son.

" I'm afraid I can't stop, father," said Max, with immense presence of mind. " I was going to ask if I might go up earlier, anyhow. But the twenty-seventh will suit me, really."

"Very good."

The tickets for the fourth of January had, of course, been secured long ago. Lady Merival had consented to come: and even Gerald had written to say that he would make an exception for once, and be present also. They had a small box on the second tier, fairly near the middle of the house, that seated four.

" I hope poor Miss Tenterden will not be too nervous," Lady Merival had observed on the arrival of the tickets. " I hear the house is practically sold out."

" Do you mean because we are to be there? " asked Norah.

" My dear, I do not mean anything so foolish. I mean at the ordeal altogether. It must be very trying

— a first performance too, with so much depending on it. But I daresay she does not feel it very keenly. People like that very often don't."

Max was extraordinarily sulky on the way up to town

— at least such was the impression he made upon his family. They went up in their large Rolls-Royce, as the day was fine and frosty; and all that his family saw of him was a motionless head, planted by the chauffeur, half enveloped in a fur collar. Norah tapped on the glass once or twice, but there was no response. The engine went wrong once, just outside Croydon, and Max sat heavy and motionless while the chauffeur climbed past his knees. They arrived just after dark, and went up to the drawing-room.

" Aren't you coming up? " demanded Norah, half-way upstairs.

"No," said Max.

As she entered the drawing-room she heard the front-door bang.

" Whatever is the matter with Max? " asked Lady Merival plaintively as she made the tea.

The music-room was full of shadows, as Marion sat playing softly to herself. She had been taking it very easily these last few days, since she knew her part as perfectly as she would ever know it, and now energy and vitality were the principal necessaries. Yesterday she sat in the sun in Kensington Gardens; the day before, as has been seen, she had gone to St. Paul's and had practised only for an hour after tea. She went to bed early and slept late every morning. She was doing Swedish exercises too, and in spite of her steadily increasing anxiety as the fourth drew nearer, her physical vitality was as high as she had ever known it.

It may have been this, partly, that made her so sensitive to very clear intimations, founded, however, on details so slight as to have been negligible, under other circumstances, that in some manner the orbit of Max was coming very near her own. He had written to her twice, and once again a very short note announcing that they were all coming up to town to-day and that he proposed to come and see her. He did not say for what purpose he was coming: he used no conventional excuses: he simply stated the fact. She had not answered this; for, honestly, she had not felt herself capable of framing sentences that would not say too much or too little. Neither had she rehearsed any particular words that she would use: she had only the substance of it perfectly clear.

The music-room at Campden Hill ran out at the back of the house into a kind of long oblong of space into which all the studios emerged, protected by the houses from the noise of the street, so that no more sound penetrated here than a murmur, rising sometimes into a boom, as a motorbus lumbered past the end, and falling again to almost complete stillness. It was impossible then to know whether any visitor were coming until the inner door of the hall shook suddenly as the outer was opened.

She had turned off all the lights, as she often did when the fire was high enough, and was extemporising softly to herself. She had done her singing for the day; and even her professional anxiety was disappearing under this increasing conviction that Max was on his way to see her. She had at first thought that the Merivals might come up in the morning, and had stayed in till about three, in case he came immediately after lunch. Then she had gone down to von Giinther for an hour, and had come back to tea. Maggie was out, in the Carmelite church, probably, or perhaps making the round of her servant-maids — and Marion had gone to the piano immediately, and had been playing ever since.

Then, suddenly, as she heard the inner door shake, she was aware that he was come. Humanly speaking it might have been any one else; in fact the simple probability was in favour of the theory that Maggie had returned. Yet she knew with absolute certitude that it was Max. Her fingers hesitated for an instant; she turned and switched on the piano lights; then again her fingers came down on the keys as the door opened, and Max appeared on the top of the two steps.

" Mr. Merival," said Jenny's voice. And the door shut; and the music ceased.

She stood up, saying nothing at all, and came round the piano as he came down into the room. The lights on the piano shed enough illumination forward into the room for her to see his face. His lips were a little open, as if he had been running, and his eyes were at once anxious and glad. He looked for a moment like some one else.

" Here you are, then," she said, putting out her hand. " I thought perhaps "

It came quicker than she had thought. He was in his heavy fur coat, and carried a hat in his hand. He dropped this instantly, with a swift indrawing of his breath. Then he had taken her hand in both of his, and kissed it, sinking forward on to his knees. It was eloquent and graceful, because it was so obviously spontaneous. She had not expected it: she had looked for a little formality first, and an explanation.

" My darling — — " he began, in a curious, unfamiliar voice.

Then she recovered, and drew her hand away.

" Max," she said; " please don't do that. Please... please sit down."

It was hopelessly commonplace, as she knew. Yet what else could she say, knowing what she had to say presently? He looked up at her a moment: then he stood.

" Yes," he said, " you're perfectly right. May I! — may I take off my coat? "

As he did this she went to the bell. He was coining back towards the hearth as Jenny came in.

" Jenny," said Marion, wondering whether her voice was under command. " If Miss Brent comes, just tell her I'm engaged with some one. And I'm not at home if any one else calls."

" Yes'm," said Jenny; and retired, with a long round-eyed look at Max's back.

Max went and stood with his back to the fire. He was in a country suit she had seen him wear in Scotland. She herself sat down in the big chair with wings.

" Look here," he said abruptly. " I've got an awful lot to say. Just hear me out to the end, will you? "

She nodded.

" Well: it's obvious what I've come for, isn't it? " he smiled nervously — " and... and I'm not such a conceited ass as to assume anything at all. In fact — well, let me begin at the wrong end. I'm entirely dependent on my father. He gives me a good allowance, but that's all: and he could take it away with a word. Also I haven't any profession whatever. That was his own wish. I made a mull of the bank; and he told me

I'd better not try again, but... but just learn how to run things at home and so on. Like an ass I consented: and there it is. I'm entirely at his mercy."

He stopped a moment. Marion did not look at him. She had shaded her eyes with her hand, and her teeth gripped her lower lip.

Then his voice went on, with a tremble in it:

" Number two is that I cannot conceive his consenting to... to what I've come to ask you for — at least at present. It'll need a lot of time. It may be that he'll never consent. He's a deadly hard man: and I don't know him a bit. That's a fact. But I'm beginning to think that if I showed myself obstinate, and demanded a profession after all, he might put me into something. That'ud kill two birds with one stone, wouldn't it — in a way? "

He was speaking sharply and brusquely; but she loved it. It made her own part easier too, when her turn should come. But she said nothing.

" Well: that's number two. And what I propose is that I should say nothing to him at present. He's got a lot to bother him. But I think that if I went to him at the end of the season — say in July or August — and told him I was sick of doing nothing, he might put me into something, say in October. I'd tell him I'd give up Scotland and everything else. It would be worth trying, anyhow: and I do believe it would succeed. I'd insist on an independent income, of course. I mean I wouldn't just take a place from him direct. It wouldn't be much at first; but my name would be worth something, I expect. Say I was making — well — five hundred a year in a year from now? And that's putting things at their very worst — I mean that's assuming he's still obstinate about the... the other thing."

His voice had taken on it something of a pleading note. She bit her lip still harder.

"Well: that's the situation. That's all I can say.... Er — what do you think? "

Then his self-restraint broke, as still she did not answer. At that moment she could not. But, as again he threw himself down on his knees and snatched at her hand, she recovered and sprang up.

" No, no," she cried. " Stand back a minute. I must speak first.... Sit down: sit down, please. Suppose — suppose any one came in! I've a lot to say, too."

It was not until he was sitting down, as sedate, to all appearances as any casual visitor, that she consented to go on.

" Now look here, Max: this is what I've got to say. And I'm going to be as businesslike as you were."

" But, good Lord! " began Max, starting forward.

" No: I entirely approve," sard the girl. " Listen to me. Remember that up to this moment you haven't said anything at all except to tell me about your prospects — well, and... and... an impulsive expression, let us say, at the beginning, that might mean anything."

Her face was alight with merriment as he looked up at her; for her heart was dancing.

" No: I'm being quite serious," she said. " We're both going to be. You've said your say: and I'm going to say mine. This is mine. I imagine that you... you came to say something which you haven't yet said. Well: I don't want you to say it for... for eight days exactly. In eight days from now I shall sing

Elsa at Covent Garden. If you say it now, I shall say No. But in eight days I sing Elsa; and the whole of this world, and most of the next depends on what happens. Well: I won't hear a single word till that's over. It... it would upset me — we'll say it's that. At any rate I won't. But, if you choose to come and see me afterwards — in my dressing-room: and if I admit you, you... you may say what you like."

He was on his feet.

" You mean that? " he cried.

" Sit down, please. Yes, I mean precisely that. If you wish to come: and if I admit you. Those are two ifs. You may not wish to come. And even if you do, I may not let you in. It depends wholly and entirely on what happens. If I fail " she added slowly.

"Yes?"

" If I fail, I shall never see you again. I shall go away. I mean that, absolutely. I'm going to remain a failure. I'm not going to... to console myself "

" My darling, you don't mean "

Her face was set and rather hard.

" I mean it with my whole soul. If... if I listen to you, it'll be because I'm not ashamed."

"But "

A touch of humour came back to her face.

" But if I don't fail — if I'm not ashamed — I would have you remember, please — to return to business-affairs again — that a successful prima donna is generally tolerably well off. She'll have even more than five hundred a year. By the end of the season — or, say, at the beginning of next winter season — it should be something like five thousand."

Again he was on his feet.

" You don't think " he began indignantly.

" I don't think at all," she said; " I know. I know that it's time that a silly conversation should cease; and that it doesn't matter a straw from which side the money comes. Max: don't be ridiculous."

There was a pause as he sat back. She still remained standing.

" In any case," she said, " I shall understand that the affair is to be kept entirely private at least until July or August. I quite see that a profession is an excellent thing for a man, as it is for a woman too; and I entirely approve of your suggestion about Lord Merival. Therefore, by all means — if all those ifs are fulfilled

— I really mean them, you know • Oh! Max, I mustn't fail! Don't let me fail."

Her voice suddenly rose to a wail. He sprang up.

" My darling; how can you fail "

" No: stand back. I might fail: I dream of it, night after night. People have failed, you know. I dream of it. I dream that all the audience laugh at me, like... like thunder: or that they're very kind and only go out, quietly, one by one, till the theatre's empty."

Her voice had a dreadful sob in it. He was trying to take her in his arms; but she kept him off.

" Or I dream that my voice suddenly goes, and that I'm dumb — dumb: and that I try to sing, and no sound comes. And now, with this too "

She half turned to him with the pleading gesture of a child; and his arms were round her in a moment. She clung to him and sobbed, with her head on his shoulder. Then she raised her piteous face.

" But I mean every word," she said. " If I fail "