Michael. E. F. Benson
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apparently unable to see either you or me, and unconscious of our presence. Fancy pretending not to see me! You can’t help seeing me, a large, bright object like me! And what will happen next? That’s what tickles me to death, as they say on my side of the Atlantic. Will he gradually begin to perceive us again, like objects looming through a fog, or shall we come into view suddenly, as if going round a corner? And you are just as funny, my dear, with your long face, and air of depressed determination. Why be heavy, Michael? So many people are heavy, and none of them can tell you why.”
It was impossible not to feel the unfreezing effect of this. Michael thawed to it, as he would have thawed to Francis.
“Perhaps they can’t help it, Aunt Barbara,” he said. “At least, I know I can’t. I really wish I could learn how to. I—I don’t see the funny side of things till it is pointed out. I thought lunch a sort of hell, you know. Of course, it was funny, his appearing not to see either of us. But it stands for more than that; it stands for his complete misunderstanding of me.”
Aunt Barbara had the sense to see that the real Michael was speaking. When people were being unreal, when they were pompous or adopting attitudes, she could attend to nothing but their absurdity, which engrossed her altogether. But she never laughed at real things; real things were not funny, but were facts.
“He quite misunderstands,” went on Michael, with the eagerness with which the shy welcome comprehension. “He thinks I can make my mind like his if I choose; and if I don’t choose, or rather can’t choose, he thinks that his wishes, his authority, should be sufficient to make me act as if it was. Well, I won’t do that. He may go on,”—and that pleasant smile lit up Michael’s plain face—“he may go on being unaware of my presence as long as he pleases. I am very sorry it should be so, but I can’t help it. And the worst of it is, that opposition of that sort—his sort—makes me more determined than ever.”
Aunt Barbara nodded.
“And your friends?” she asked. “What will they think?”
Michael looked at her quite simply and directly.
“Friends?” he said. “I haven’t got any.”
“Ah, my dear, that’s nonsense!” she said.
“I wish it was. Oh, Francis is a friend, I know. He thinks me an odd old thing, but he likes me. Other people don’t. And I can’t see why they should. I’m sure it’s my fault. It’s because I’m heavy. You said I was, yourself.”
“Then I was a great ass,” remarked Aunt Barbara. “You wouldn’t be heavy with people who understood you. You aren’t heavy with me, for instance; but, my dear, lead isn’t in it when you are with your father.”
“But what am I to do, if I’m like that?” asked the boy.
She held up her large, fat hand, and marked the points off on her fingers.
“Three things,” she said. “Firstly, get away from people who don’t understand you, and whom, incidentally, you don’t understand. Secondly, try to see how ridiculous you and everybody else always are; and, thirdly, which is much the most important, don’t think about yourself. If I thought about myself I should consider how old and fat and ugly I am. I’m not ugly, really; you needn’t be foolish and tell me so. I should spoil my life by trying to be young, and only eating devilled codfish and drinking hot plum-juice, or whatever is the accepted remedy for what we call obesity. We’re all odd old things, as you say. We can only get away from that depressing fact by doing something, and not thinking about ourselves. We can all try not to be egoists. Egoism is the really heavy quality in the world.”
She paused a moment in this inspired discourse and whistled to Og, who had stretched his weary limbs across a bed of particularly fine geraniums.
“There!” she said, pointing, “if your dog had done that, you would be submerged in depression at the thought of how vexed your father would be. That would be because you are thinking of the effect on yourself. As it’s my dog that has done it—dear me, they do look squashed now he has got up—you don’t really mind about your father’s vexation, because you won’t have to think about yourself. That is wise of you; if you were a little wiser still, you would picture to yourself how ridiculous I shall look apologising for Og. Kindly kick him, Michael; he will understand. Naughty! And as for your not having any friends, that would be exceedingly sad, if you had gone the right way to get them and failed. But you haven’t. You haven’t even gone among the people who could be your friends. Your friends, broadly speaking, must like the same sort of things as you. There must be a common basis. You can’t even argue with somebody, or disagree with somebody unless you have a common ground to start from. If I say that black is white, and you think it is blue, we can’t get on. It leads nowhere. And, finally—”
She turned round and faced him directly.
“Finally, don’t be so cross, my dear,” she said.
“But am I?” asked he.
“Yes. You don’t know it, or else probably, since you are a very decent fellow, you wouldn’t be. You expect not to be liked, and that is cross of you. A good-humoured person expects to be liked, and almost always is. You expect not to be understood, and that’s dreadfully cross. You think your father doesn’t understand you; no more he does, but don’t go on thinking about it. You think it is a great bore to be your father’s only son, and wish Francis was instead. That’s cross; you may think it’s fine, but it isn’t, and it is also ungrateful. You can have great fun if you will only be good-tempered!”
“How did you know that—about Francis, I mean?” asked Michael.
“Does it happen to be true? Of course it does. Every cross young man wishes he was somebody else.”
“No, not quite that,” began Michael.
“Don’t interrupt. It is sufficiently accurate. And you think about your appearance, my dear. It will do quite well. You might have had two noses, or only one eye, whereas you have two rather jolly ones. And do try to see the joke in other people, Michael. You didn’t see the joke in your interview last night with your father. It must have been excruciatingly funny. I don’t say it wasn’t sad and serious as well. But it was funny too; there were points.”
Michael shook his head.
“I didn’t see them,” he said.
“But I should have, and I should have been right. All dignity is funny, simply because it is sham. When dignity is real, you don’t know it’s dignity. But your father knew he was being dignified, and you knew you were being dignified. My dear, what a pair of you!”
Michael frowned.
“But is nothing serious, then?” he asked. “Surely it was serious enough last night. There was I in rank rebellion to my father, and it vexed him horribly; it did more, it grieved him.”
She laid her hand on Michael’s knee.
“As if I didn’t know that!” she said. “We’re all sorry for that, though I should have been much sorrier if you had given in and ceased to vex him. But there it is! Accept that, and then, my dear, swiftly apply yourself to perceive the humour of it. And now, about your plans!”
“I shall go to Baireuth on Wednesday, and then on to Munich,” began Michael.
“That, of course. Perhaps you may find the humour of a Channel crossing. I look for it in vain. Yet I don’t know. … The man who puts on a yachting-cap, and asks if there’s a bit of a sea on. It proves to be the case, and he is excessively unwell. I must look out for him next time I cross. And then?”
“Then I shall settle in town and study. Oh, here’s my father coming home.”
Lord Ashbridge approached down the terrace. He stopped for a moment at the desecrated geranium bed, saw the two sitting together, and turned at right angles and went into the house. Almost immediately a footman came out with a long dog-lead and