The six working days of the week, however, were as a rule too full both for the Falbes and for Michael to do more than have, apart from the music lessons, flying glimpses of each other; for the day was taken up with work, concerts and opera occurred often in the evening, and the shuttles of London took their threads in divergent directions. But on Sunday the house at Maidstone Crescent ceased, as Hermann said, to be a junction, and became a temporary terminus.
“We burst from our chrysalis, in fact,” he said. “If you find it clearer to understand this way, we burst from our chrysalis and become a caterpillar. Do chrysalides become caterpillars! We do, anyhow. If you come about eight you will find food; if you come later you will also find food of a sketchier kind. People have a habit of dropping in on Sunday evening. There’s music if anyone feels inclined to make any, and if they don’t they are made to. Some people come early, others late, and they stop to breakfast if they wish. It’s a gaudeamus, you know, a jolly, a jamboree. One has to relax sometimes.”
Michael felt all his old unfitness for dreadful crowds return to him.
“Oh, I’m so bad at that sort of thing,” he said. “I am a frightful kill-joy, Hermann.”
Hermann sat down on the treble part of his piano.
“That’s the most conceited thing I’ve heard you say yet,” he remarked. “Nobody will pay any attention to you; you won’t kill anybody’s joy. Also it’s rather rude of you.”
“I didn’t mean to be rude,” said Michael.
“Then we must suppose you were rude by accident. That is the worst sort of rudeness.”
“That’s right. You might even find yourself enjoying it by accident, you know. If you don’t, you can go away. There’s music; Sylvia sings quite seriously sometimes, and other people sing or bring violins, and those who don’t like it, talk--and then we get less serious. Have a try, Michael. See if you can’t be less serious, too.”
Michael slipped despairingly from his seat.
“If only I knew how!” he said. “I believe my nurse never taught me to play, only to remember that I was a little gentleman. All the same, when I am with you, or with my cousin Francis, I can manage it to a certain extent.”
“Oh, you’re getting on,” he said. “You take yourself more for granted than you used to. I remember you when you used to be polite on purpose. It’s doing things on purpose that makes one serious. If you ever play the fool on purpose, you instantly cease playing the fool.”