Michael had recognised him at once as he rushed across the platform; his shouting to Sylvia had but confirmed the recognition; and here on the day of his entering into his new kingdom of liberty was one of its citizens almost thrown into his arms. But for the moment his old invincible habit of shyness and sensitiveness forbade any responsive lightness of welcome, and he was merely formal, merely courteous.
“And all your luggage left behind,” he said. “Won’t you be dreadfully uncomfortable?”
“Uncomfortable? Why?” asked Falbe. “I shall buy a handkerchief and a collar every day, and a shirt and a pair of socks every other day till it arrives.”
Michael felt a sudden, daring impulse. He remembered Aunt Barbara’s salutary remarks about crossness being the equivalent of thinking about oneself. And the effort that it cost him may be taken as the measure of his solitary disposition.
“But you needn’t do that,” he said, “if--if you will be good enough to borrow of me till your things come.”
He blurted it out awkwardly, almost brusquely, and Falbe looked slightly amused at this wholly surprising offer of hospitality.
“But that’s awfully good of you,” he said, laughing and saying nothing direct about his acceptance. “It implies, too, that you are going to Baireuth. We travel together, then, I hope, for it is dismal work travelling alone, isn’t it? My sister tells me that half my friends were picked up in railway carriages. Been there before?”
Michael felt himself lured from the ordinary aloofness of attitude and demeanour, which had been somewhat accustomed to view all strangers with suspicion. And yet, though till this moment he had never spoken to him, he could hardly regard Falbe as a stranger, for he had heard him say on the piano what his sister understood by the songs of Brahms and Schubert. He could not help glancing at Falbe’s hands, as they busied themselves with the filling and lighting of a pipe, and felt that he knew something of those long, broad-tipped fingers, smooth and white and strong. The man himself he found to be quite different to what he had expected; he had seen him before, eager and intent and anxious-faced, absorbed in the task of following another mind; now he looked much younger, much more boyish.