do anything.”
Michael looked affectionately at the handsome boy who lounged long-legged in the chair opposite him. Like many very shy persons, he had one friend with whom he was completely unreserved, and that was this cousin of his, for whose charm and insouciant brilliance he had so adoring an admiration.
He pointed a broad, big finger at him.
“Yes, but when you are like that,” he said, “you can just float along. Other people float you. But I should sink heavily if I did nothing. I’ve got to swim all the time.”
“Well, you are in the army,” said Francis. “That’s as much swimming as anyone expects of a fellow who has expectations. In fact, it’s I who have to swim all the time, if you come to think of it. You are somebody; I’m not!”
Michael sat up and took a cigarette.
“But I’m not in the army any longer,” he said. “That’s just what I am wanting to tell you.”
Francis laughed.
“What do you mean?” he asked. “Have you been cashiered or shot or something?”
“I mean that I wrote and resigned my commission yesterday,” said Michael. “If you had dined with me last night—as, by the way, you promised to do—I should have told you then.”
Francis got up and leaned against the chimney-piece. He was conscious of not thinking this abrupt news as important as he felt he ought to think it. That was characteristic of him; he floated, as Michael had lately told him, finding the world an extremely pleasant place, full of warm currents that took you gently forward without entailing the slightest exertion. But Michael’s grave and expectant face—that Michael who had been so eagerly kind about meeting his debts for him—warned him that, however gossamer-like his own emotions were, he must attempt to ballast himself over this.
“Are you speaking seriously?” he asked.
“Quite seriously. I never did anything that was so serious.”
“And that is what you want my opinion about?” he asked. “If so, you must tell me more, Mike. I can’t have an opinion unless you give me the reasons why you did it. The thing itself—well, the thing itself doesn’t seem to matter so immensely. The significance of it is why you did it.”
Michael’s big, heavy-browed face lightened a moment. “For a fellow who never thinks,” he said, “you think uncommonly well. But the reasons are obvious enough. You can guess sufficient reasons to account for it.”
“Let’s hear them anyhow,” said Francis.
Michael clouded again.
“Surely they are obvious,” he said. “No one knows better than me, unless it is you, that I’m not like the rest of you. My mind isn’t the build of a guardsman’s mind, any more than my unfortunate body is. Half our work, as you know quite well, consists in being pleasant and in liking it. Well, I’m not pleasant. I’m not breezy and cordial. I can’t do it. I make a task of what is a pastime to all of you, and I only shuffle through my task. I’m not popular, I’m not liked. It’s no earthly use saying I am. I don’t like the life; it seems to me senseless. And those who live it don’t like me. They think me heavy—just heavy. And I have enough sensitiveness to know it.”
Michael need not have stated his reasons, for his cousin could certainly have guessed them; he could, too, have confessed to the truth of them. Michael had not the light hand, which is so necessary when young men work together in a companionship of which the cordiality is an essential part of the work; neither had he in the social side of life that particular and inimitable sort of easy self-confidence which, as he had said just now, enables its owner to float. Except in years he was not young; he could not manage to be “clubable”; he was serious and awkward at a supper party; he was altogether without the effervescence which is necessary in order to avoid flatness. He did his work also in the same conscientious but leaden way; officers and men alike felt it. All this Francis knew perfectly well; but instead of acknowledging it, he tried quite fruitlessly to smooth it over.
“Aren’t you exaggerating?” he asked.
Michael shook his head.
“Oh, don’t tone it down, Francis!” he said. “Even if I was exaggerating—which I don’t for a moment admit—the effect on my general efficiency would be the same. I think what I say is true.”
Francis became more practical.
“But you’ve only been in the regiment three years,” he said. “It won’t be very popular resigning after only three years.”
“I have nothing much to lose on the score of popularity,” remarked Michael.
There was nothing pertinent that could be consoling here.
“And have you told your father?” asked Francis. “Does Uncle Robert know?”
“Yes; I wrote to father this morning, and I’m going down to Ashbridge to-morrow. I shall be very sorry if he disapproves.”
“Then you’ll be sorry,” said Francis.
“I know, but it won’t make any difference to my action. After all, I’m twenty-five; if I can’t begin to manage my life now, you may be sure I never shall. But I know I’m right. I would bet on my infallibility. At present I’ve only told you half my reasons for resigning, and already you agree with me.”
Francis did not contradict this.
“Let’s hear the rest, then,” he said.
“You shall. The rest is far more important, and rather resembles a sermon.”
Francis appropriately sat down again.
“Well, it’s this,” said Michael. “I’m twenty-five, and it is time that I began trying to be what perhaps I may be able to be, instead of not trying very much—because it’s hopeless—to be what I can’t be. I’m going to study music. I believe that I could perhaps do something there, and in any case I love it more than anything else. And if you love a thing, you have certainly a better chance of succeeding in it than in something that you don’t love at all. I was stuck into the army for no reason except that soldiering is among the few employments which it is considered proper for fellows in my position—good Lord! how awful it sounds!—proper for me to adopt. The other things that were open were that I should be a sailor or a member of Parliament. But the soldier was what father chose. I looked round the picture gallery at home the other day; there are twelve Lord Ashbridges in uniform. So, as I shall be Lord Ashbridge when father dies, I was stuck into uniform too, to be the ill-starred thirteenth. But what has it all come to? If you think of it, when did the majority of them wear their smart uniforms? Chiefly when they went on peaceful parades or to court balls, or to the Sir Joshua Reynolds of the period to be painted. They’ve been tin soldiers, Francis! You’re a tin soldier, and I’ve just ceased to be a tin soldier. If there was the smallest chance of being useful in the army, by which I mean standing up and being shot at because I am English, I would not dream of throwing it up. But there’s no such chance.”
Michael paused a moment in his sermon, and beat out the ashes from his pipe against the grate.
“Anyhow the chance
