The music-room, with its spare and austere decoration, seemed to Michael a fit place for the quiet contemplation of the tale of love he had lately heard.
Whatever of false shame, of self-consciousness, of shock remained was driven away by Stella’s triumphant music. It was as if he were sitting beneath a mountain waterfall that, graceful and unsubstantial as wind-blown tresses, was yet most incomparably strong, and wrought an ice-cold, a stern purification.
Then Stella played with healing gentleness, and Michael in the darkness kissed his mother and stole away to bed, not to dream of Lily that night, not to toss enfevered, but quietly to lie awake, devising how to show his mother that he loved her as much now as he had loved her in the dim sunlight of most early childhood.
About ten days later Mrs. Fane came to Michael and Stella with a letter.
“I want to read you something,” she said. “Your father’s last letter has come.”
“ We are in Pretoria now, and I think the war will soon be over. But of course there’s a lot to be done yet. I’m feeling seedy to-night, and I’m rather sighing for England. I wonder if I’m going to be ill. I have a presentiment that things are going wrong with me—at least not wrong, because in a way I would be glad. No, I wouldn’t, that reads as if I were afraid to keep going .
“ I keep thinking of Michael and Stella. Michael must be told soon. He must forgive me for leaving him no name. I keep thinking of those Siamese stamps he asked for when I last saw him. I wish I’d seen him again before I went. But I dare say you were right. He would have guessed who I was, and he might have gone away resentful .”
Michael looked at his mother, and thanked her implicitly for excusing him. He was glad that his father had not known he had declined to see him.
“ I don’t worry so much over Stella. If she really has the stuff in her to make the name you think she will, she does not need any name but her own. But it maddens me to think that Michael is cut out of everything. I can scarcely bear to realize that I am the last. I’m glad he’s going to Oxford, and I’m very glad that he chose St. Mary’s. I was only up at Christ Church a year, and St. Mary’s was a much smaller college in those days. Now of course it’s absolutely one of the best. Whatever Michael wants to do he will be able to do, thank God. I don’t expect, from what you tell me of him, he’ll choose the Service. However, he’ll do what he likes. When I come back, I must see him and I shall be able to explain what will perhaps strike him at first as the injustice of his position. I dare say he’ll think less hardly of me when I’ve told him all the circumstances. Poor old chap! I feel that I’ve been selfish, and yet ....
“ I wonder if I’m going to be ill. I feel rotten. But don’t worry. Only, if by any chance I can’t write again, will you give my love to the children, and say I hope they’ll not hate the thought of me? That piano was the best Prescott could get. I hope Stella is pleased with it .”