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discouraged. And now her wanting 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 there comes a gleam in the
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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 present
she did not hear. It sounded a little louder, and her ears caught
the running of footsteps on the stairs outside. Next moment the
door opened, and Lady Ashbridge's maid put in a pale face.
MICHAEL
148
"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.
Please let me wait."
Lady Ashbridge's room was on the floor above, and Michael ran up
the intervening stairs three at a time. He knocked and entered and
wondered why he had been sent for, for she was sitting quietly on
her sofa near the 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
he met her eyes he knew why he had been sent for, why at this
moment Sir James was being summoned. For she looked at him not
with the clouded eyes of affection, not with the mother-spirit
striving to break through the shrouding trouble of her brain, but
with eyes of blank non-recognition. She saw him with the bodily
organs of her vision, but the picture of him was conveyed no
further: there was a blank wall behind her eyes.
Michael did not hesitate. It was possible that he still might be
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something to her, that he, his presence, might penetrate.
"But you are not resting, mother," he said. "Why are you sitting
up? I came 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 hand in hand with recognition there leaped into them
hate. Instantly that was veiled again. But it had been there, and
now it was not banished; it lurked behind in the shadows, crouching
and waiting.
She answered him at once, but in a voice that was quite toneless.
It seemed like that of a child repeating a lesson which it had
learned by heart, and could be pronounced while it was thinking of
something quite different.
"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
at her 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 it up near her sofa, he looked at the nurse. She
moved her hand slightly towards the left, and interpreting this, he
moved the chair a little to the left, so that he would not sit, as
he had intended, quite close to the sofa.
MICHAEL
149
"And you enjoyed your day in the country, mother?" asked Michael.
She looked at him sideways and slowly. Then again, as if
recollecting a task 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.
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"Bring your chair a little closer, my darling," she said. "You are
so far off. And why do you wait, nurse? I will call you if I want
you."
Michael felt one moment of sickening spiritual terror. He
understood quite 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 black horror, that the sane and the sensitive
must always feel when they are brought intimately in contact with
some blind derangement of instinct in those most nearly allied to
them. Physically, on the material plane, he had no fear at all.
He made a movement, grasping the arm of his chair, as if to wheel
it closer, but he came actually no nearer her.
"Why don't you go away, nurse?" said Lady Ashbridge, "and leave my
son and 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
Lord Comber. We all enjoyed it together."
It seemed to Michael that his mother made some violent effort
towards self-control. He saw one of her hands that were lying on
her knee clench itself, so that the knuckles stood out white.
"Yes, we will all talk together, then," she said. "Or--er--shall I
have a little doze first? I am rather sleepy with so much pleasant
air. And you 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 am fresh again, you shall come back, nurse, and
we will talk over our pleasant day."
When he entered the room, Michael had not quite closed the door,
and now, as half an hour before, he heard steps on the stairs. A
moment afterwards his mother heard them too.
"What is that?" she said. "Who is coming now to disturb me, just
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when I wanted to have a nap?"
There came a knock at the door. Nurse Baker did not move her head,
but continued watching her patient, with hands ready to act.
"Come in," she said, not looking round.
MICHAEL
150
Lady Ashbridge's face was towards the door. As Sir James entered,
she suddenly sprang up, and in her right hand that lay beside her
was a knife, which she had no doubt taken from the tea-table when
she came upstairs. She turned swiftly towards Michael, and stabbed
at him with it.
"It's a trap," she cried. "You've led me into a trap. They are
going to take me away."
Michael had thrown up his arm to shield his head. The blow fell
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