"It will happen quickly," she said. "There is that little cloud in the east like a man's hand today, and rather like that mailed fist which our sweet peaceful friend in Germany is so fond of talking about. But it will spread over the sky, I tell you, like some tropical storm. France is unready, Russia is unready; only Germany and her marionette, Austria, the strings of which she pulls, is ready.""Go on prophesying," said Michael.
"I wish I could. Ever since that Sarajevo murder I have thought of nothing else day and night. But how events will develop then Ican't imagine. What will England do? Who knows? I only know what Germany thinks she will do, and that is, stand aside because she can't stir, with this Irish mill-stone round her neck. If Germany thought otherwise, she is perfectly capable of sending a dozen submarines over to our naval manoeuvres and torpedoing our battleships right and left."Michael laughed outright at this.
"While a fleet of Zeppelins hovers over London, and drops bombs on the War Office and the Admiralty," he suggested.
But Aunt Barbara was not in the least diverted by this.
"And if England stands aside," she said, "Der Tag will only dawn a little later, when Germany has settled with France and Russia. We shall live to see Der Tag, Michael, unless we are run over by motor-buses, and pray God we shall see it soon, for the sooner the better. Your adorable Falbes, now, Sylvia and Hermann. What do they think of it?""Hermann was certainly rather--rather upset when he read of the Sarajevo murders," he said. "But he pins his faith on the German Emperor, whom he alluded to as a fire-engine which would put out any conflagration."Aunt Barbara rose in violent incredulity.
"Pish and bosh!" she remarked. "If he had alluded to him as an incendiary bomb, there would have been more sense in his simile.""Anyhow, he and Sylvia are planning a musical tour in Germany in the autumn," said Michael.
"'It's a long, long way to Tipperary,'" remarked Aunt Barbara enigmatically.
"Why Tipperary?" asked Michael.
"Oh, it's just a song I heard at a music-hall the other night.
There's a jolly catchy tune to it, which has rung in my head ever since. That's the sort of music I like, something you can carry away with you. And your music, Michael?""Rather in abeyance. There are--other things to think about."Aunt Barbara got up.
"Ah, tell me more about them," she said. "I want to get this nightmare out of my head. Sylvia, now. Sylvia is a good cure for the nightmare. Is she kind as she is fair, Michael?"Michael was silent for a moment. Then he turned a quiet, radiant face to her.
"I can't talk about it," he said. "I can't get accustomed to the wonder of it.""That will do. That's a completely satisfactory account. But go on."Michael laughed.
"How can I?" he asked. "There's no end and no beginning. I can't 'go on' as you order me about a thing like that. There is Sylvia;there is me."
"I must be content with that, then," she said, smiling.
"We are," said Michael.
Lady Barbara waited a moment without speaking.
"And your mother?" she asked.
He shook his head.
"She still refuses to see me," he said. "She still thinks it was Iwho made the plot to take her away and shut her up. She is often angry with me, poor darling, but--but you see it isn't she who is angry: it's just her malady.""Yes, my dear," said Lady Barbara. "I am so glad you see it like that.""How else could I see it? It was my real mother whom I began to know last Christmas, and whom I was with in town for the three months that followed. That's how I think of her: I can't think of her as anything else.""And how is she otherwise?"
Again he shook his head.
"She is wretched, though they say that all she feels is dim and veiled, that we mustn't think of her as actually unhappy.
Sometimes there are good days, when she takes a certain pleasure in her walks and in looking after a little plot of ground where she gardens. And, thank God, that sudden outburst when she tried to kill me seems to have entirely passed from her mind. They don't think she remembers it at all. But then the good days are rare, and are growing rarer, and often now she sits doing nothing at all but crying."Aunt Barbara laid her hand on him.
"Oh, my dear," she said.
Michael paused for a moment, his brown eyes shining.
"If only she could come back just for a little to what she was in January," he said. "She was happier then, I think, than she ever was before. I can't help wondering if anyhow I could have prolonged those days, by giving myself up to her more completely.""My dear, you needn't wonder about that," said Aunt Barbara. "Sir James told me that it was your love and nothing else at all that gave her those days."Michael's lips quivered.
"I can't tell you what they were to me," he said, "for she and Ifound each other then, and we both felt we had missed each other so much and so long. She was happy then, and I, too. And now everything has been taken from her, and still, in spite of that, my cup is full to overflowing.""That's how she would have it, Michael," said Barbara.
"Yes, I know that. I remind myself of that."Again he paused.
"They don't think she will live very long," he said. "She is getting physically much weaker. But during this last week or two she has been less unhappy, they think. They say some new change may come any time: it may be only the great change--I mean her death; but it is possible before that that her mind will clear again. Sir James told me that occasionally happened, like--like a ray of sunlight after a stormy day. It would be good if that happened. I would give almost anything to feel that she and I were together again, as we were."Barbara, childless, felt something of motherhood. Michael's simplicity and his sincerity were already known to her, but she had never yet known the strength of him. You could lean on Michael.
In his quiet, undemonstrative way he supported you completely, as a son should; there was no possibility of insecurity. . . .
"God bless you, my dear," she said.
