Michael, old boy, how did you do it? You've been studying seriously for a few months only, and so this must all have been in you before. And you've come to the age you are without letting any of it out. I suppose that's why it has come with a rush. You knew it all along, while you were wasting your time over drilling your toy soldiers. Come on, Sylvia, or I shall go without you. Good night, Lady Barbara. Half-past ten to-morrow, Michael."Protest was clearly useless; and, having seen the two off, Michael came upstairs again to Aunt Barbara, who had no intention of going away just yet.
"And so these are the people you have been living with," she said.
"No wonder you had not time to come and see me. Do they always go that sort of pace--it is quicker than when I talk French."Michael sank into a chair.
"Oh, yes, that's Hermann all over," he said. "But--but just think what it means to me! He's going to play my tunes at his concert.
Michael Comber, Op. 1. O Lord! O Lord!"
"And you just met him in the train?" said Aunt Barbara.
"Yes; second class, Victoria Station, with Sylvia on the platform.
I didn't much notice Sylvia then."
This and the inference that naturally followed was as much as could be expected, and Aunt Barbara did not appear to wait for anything more on the subject of Sylvia. She had seen sufficient of the situation to know where Michael was most certainly bound for. Yet the very fact of Sylvia's outspoken friendliness with him made her wonder a little as to what his reception would be. She would hardly have said so plainly that she and her brother were devoted to him if she had been devoted to him with that secret tenderness which, in its essentials, is reticent about itself. Her half-hour's conversation with the girl had given her a certain insight into her; still more had her attitude when she stood by Michael as he played for her, and put her hand on his shoulder precisely as she would have done if it had been another girl who was seated at the piano. Without doubt Michael had a real existence for her, but there was no sign whatever that she hailed it, as a girl so unmistakably does, when she sees it as part of herself.
"More about them," she said. "What are they? Who are they?"He outlined for her, giving the half-English, half-German parentage, the shadow-like mother, the Bavarian father, Sylvia's sudden and comet-like rising in the musical heaven, while her brother, seven years her senior, had spent his time in earning in order to give her the chance which she had so brilliantly taken.
Now it was to be his turn, the shackles of his drudgery no longer impeded him, and he, so Michael radiantly prophesied, was to have his rocket-like leap to the zenith, also.
"And he's German?" she asked.
"Yes. Wasn't he rude about my being a toy soldier? But that's the natural German point of view, I suppose."Michael strolled to the fireplace.
"Hermann's so funny," he said. "For days and weeks together you would think he was entirely English, and then a word slips from him like that, which shows he is entirely German. He was like that in Munich, when the Emperor appeared and sent for me."Aunt Barbara drew her chair a little nearer the fire, and sat up.
"I want to hear about that," she said.
"But I've told you; he was tremendously friendly in a national manner.""And that seemed to you real?" she asked.
Michael considered.
"I don't know that it did," he said. "It all seemed to me rather feverish, I think.""And he asked quantities of questions, I think you said.""Hundreds. He was just like what he was when he came to Ashbridge.
He reviewed the Yeomanry, and shot pheasants, and spent the afternoon in a steam launch, apparently studying the deep-water channel of the river, where it goes underneath my father's place;and then in the evening there was a concert."Aunt Barbara did not heed the concert.
"Do you mean the channel up from Harwich," she asked, "of which the Admiralty have the secret chart?""I fancy they have," said Michael. "And then after the concert there was the torchlight procession, with the bonfire on the top of the hill.""I wasn't there. What else?"
"I think that's all," said Michael. "But what are you driving at, Aunt Barbara?"She was silent a moment.
"I'm driving at this," she said. "The Germans are accumulating a vast quantity of knowledge about England. Tony, for instance, has a German valet, and when he went down to Portsmouth the other day to see the American ship that was there, he took him with him. And the man took a camera and was found photographing where no photography is allowed. Did you see anything of a camera when the Emperor came to Ashbridge?"Michael thought.
"Yes; one of his staff was clicking away all day," he said. "He sent a lot of them to my mother.""And, we may presume, kept some copies himself," remarked Aunt Barbara drily. "Really, for childish simplicity the English are the biggest fools in creation.""But do you mean--"
