But for the moment he interrupted her.
“Oh, but what a heavenly story you are telling me!” he cried. “And the little flower of your own—what do you mean? Are you writing something, or painting, or what?”
“Yes, the fortunate woman who lives down there is hoping to make a little flower of ink. She has already made one, such as it is, and her friends, and even other people as well, like that little ink-flower; though, of course, tastes differ, and others say it is a disgraceful, horrid weed. She has heard several people talk about it. But nobody, except Peggy, knows that it came from her own garden, and though you are going to know this minute, dear Mr. Hugh, you musn’t tell anybody till I give you leave. Because at present everybody thinks that it came from the garden of Andrew Robb. Yes, it is called ‘Gambits.’”
Hugh stood quite silent; then he gave a long sigh, and let his eyes wander over the down, over the trees and house that lay below, the still, sky-reflecting streak of the Kennet through the water-meadows. Then, still quite grave, he looked at her again, as if half dazed by the news that he felt instinctively was big with import for him.
Then he took her hand and kissed it.
“Ah, dear Andrew Robb,” he said, “at last I have found you; at last I can thank you.”
Then suddenly a huge wave of exultation swept over him, though he did not at the moment know its significance, nor from what fathomless and mighty sea it came, and he threw his hat high in the air and caught it again.
“I never heard of anything so splendid in all my life!” he cried.
THE President of the “Literific,” who was wonderfully well equipped for that office, for she habitually spent weeks in London every year, and during them positively lived in galleries, concert-rooms, and theatres and had been to Venice no less than four distinct times, was dining informally, “taking pot-luck,” as Canon Alington expressed it, at his vicarage that night, and he could not but feel that it was a fortunate circumstance that Mrs. Owen should thus be dropping in while Hugh was there, for he distinctly liked Hugh to know that though they lived in the provinces they were not provincial, and that the pulse of artistic and intellectual life beat as strongly, if not more strongly, at Mannington than in town. The last of Mrs. Alington’s fortnightly dinners had taken place only the week before, so that it was impossible to parade the intellect of Mannington in its cohorts, but, as her husband dressed for dinner, he thought that this one informal guest would be likely to give Hugh a better notion of the high mental activity of Mannington than even one of the larger and more formal parties could have done. For Mrs. Owen, the brightest star in their intellectual constellation, really shone best alone, and Agnes often told her husband that he never talked half so well to her as he did to Mrs. Owen.
This was quite true, though the sentiment had no touch of resentment or regret about it, for Agnes was perfectly aware that it was quite natural that it should be so. For she had so identified herself with all thetastes, pursuits and industries of her husband’s life that such a thing as discussion, except on such points as floral decoration or outdoor relief, could hardly exist between them. But Mrs. Owen always had some fresh topic of literary or artistic interest, as indeed a person who was quite in “a set” in London and went to Venice so frequently could not fail to have, and necessarily she could talk about Tintoret to Canon Alington and strike out fresh lights from him in a way that Agnes was incapable of doing, though in the matter of actual familiarity with Venice the husband and wife were exactly on a par, since neither had ever been there. But he had so fine and retentive a memory that he could from photograph-knowledge only quite hold his own in these discussions, and indeed he sometimes corrected her as to the locality of some Titian or Tintoret, and what was referred to by Mrs. Owen as being in S. Giorgio was sometimes allocated by the Canon to its true position in the Scuola di San Rocco or the Accademia, a position which Baedeker, when consulted, confirmed. In fact, these very fruitful discussions on the subject of sixteenth century art sometimes rather narrowed down to the point as to where a particular picture was rather than what were its merits when it was there.
But in the matter of dates Canon Alington readily recognised the immense superiority of the guest’s knowledge, particularly in musical matters. She knew quite unerringly when Wagner was born, when Schubert died, how old Mozart was when he wrote the Jupiter Symphony, and in what year “Faust” was first presented. Nor was her knowledge confined to these bones, so to speak, of music. She herself had composed, and her compositions had been both published and sung, so thaton the first page of theDaily Telegraphone was liable to see that “Galahad’s Good-night” (words and music to Gladys Owen) would be sung at the Drill Hall, Hastings, on the 12th. Her songs were mostly written in what is known as “waltz-time,” which when taken andante is meltingly pathetic, especially when there is a change to the minor in the second and middle part. They were, with the exception of “Galahad’s Good-night,” which was markedly religious throughout, based rather on one general plan. People met (long ago) in the first verse in an orchard or a meadow in which bowers generally rhymed with flowers, and were very loving and light-hearted; tribulations and sorrow (in the minor key) overtook them in the second verse, which was slower and in four time; while in the third, to the accompaniment of grave octaves from the left hand and arpeggios from the right, and the resumption of slow waltz-time, the tremulous hope was expressed that they would meet again “above.” They were equally suitable for either male or female voices (with the exception again of “Galahad’s Good-night”), for the sentiments expressed were perfectly creditable to those of either sex, and there was always an alternative high note on the word “heaven,” or “above,” or “love,” at the end of the third verse, where the tenor could crack the roof or burst himself if he felt inclined. Then the arpeggios ceased, and two or three loud thumps all over the piano denoted the accomplishment of their desires.
Mrs. Owen was tall, rather thin, not exactly pretty, but, as everybody said, she had a very sweet expression. She had pale blue eyes, and even when she was talking on the most grave and serious subjects her mouth was generally smiling, which, no doubt, was largely responsible for the sweet expression. When she laughed, whichshe often did, she quite closed her eyes, and sometimes she clapped her hands softly at that which had amused her. She always dressed in pale, soft colours, cut in a somewhat Greek and classical style, and wore as ornaments a necklace of Greek silver coins and a couple of bracelets composed of the same. Her hair, too, was braided something in the Greek manner, and the flower or two that she wore in it was secured by a Venetian ducat of the dogeship of one of the Mocenigos. Throughout the dinner the conversation had ranged over an infinite variety of topics, deep calling unto deep, and now toward the end, after the Royal Academy, the New Gallery, and the Opera (for she had only just returned from a whole month in London), the drama was being discussed.
“Yes, I adore the theatre,” she was saying, “but London really has been such a whirl that I did not go as often as I should have wished. But I went to see ‘Gambits.’ You have seen ‘Gambits,’ Mr. Grainger?”
“Oh, yes! I have been more than once,” said he.
Mrs. Owen leaned forward.
“Now, I wonder if we agree about it. I thought it was beautiful, so pathetic, and so teaching, if I may borrow one of your words, Canon Alington. It showed us, did it not, how from misery is born misery, and how wretchedness is the result of our mistakes.”
She looked from Hugh to the Canon, whose upper lip had begun to lengthen a little.
“Oh, I am sure you are going to scold me for being a wee bit Bohemian!” she said.
“Well, Hugh agrees with you,” he said. “I should have to scold you both.”
Mrs. Owen looked down at her plate a moment. “You have seen it?” she asked.
“No; but I have read a review of it. That, as I told Hugh, was enough.”
Mrs. Owen hesitated.
“Now I’m going to be very brave,” she said. “I am going to ask you to see it. There is something in it, is there not, Mr. Grainger, which somehow redeems the painful character of the plot. It is not wrong-doing that one condones, I think; it is the dreadful punishment that one pities. Surely one may pity everyone who is being punished, however justly.”
Then Canon Alington made an enormous concession.
“I do not wish to condemn the play unheard,” he said. “And when I am in town next I will go to see it. But I don’t think anybody but you could have persuaded me to! You see, I hold very strong views on the question of what are fit subjects for Art to treat of. I believe that the object of all Art is to raise our aspirations, to make us braver, better than we were. But pity, I allow, is a Christian virtue. I confess I had not thought of the play in that light. From what I read, I drew a very different conclusion; indeed, it inspired me with the subject I am going to talk about on Tuesday at the Literific.”
Mrs. Owen clapped her hands, not having heard what was known in Mannington as the Canon’s “last portmanteau-word.”
“Literific!” she cried. “How delightful! What a sweet portmanteau. And is the paper written? And what is its title? Is it fair to ask?”
“Yes, Agnes sent out the cards this afternoon, did you not, dear? So it is no longer a secret. I call it: ‘The True Test of Literary and Artistic Immortality.’”
Mrs. Owen’s face beamed at the thought.
“And now,” she said, “I am going to be very braveagain. Might we, dear Canon Alington, hear a little of it, just a little, if it would not tire you, after dinner? It would be such a treat!”
Ambrose, as has been mentioned, though he did not dine, sat with his parents during dinner, either reading or drawing some simple object on the table, or joining in the conversation. As a rule he went to bed at dessert-time, having been given two or three strawberries (which were not reckoned among his ration), but when Mrs. Owen dined he was allowed to sit up and hear her sing one song. Here he turned to his father.
“Oh, papa,” he said, “may I for a great treat sit up a little later to-night and hear you read? I shall have heard Mrs. Owen sing, and have heard you read: it will make me so happy.”
“You wouldn’t understand it, my son,” said Canon Alington.
This was interpreted by Mrs. Owen to mean that he would read to them, and she clapped her hands again.
“How it pays to be brave!” she said. “Oh, thank you, dear Canon Alington!”
Ambrose never interrupted, and he waited, looking at his father through his spectacles till she had finished.
“But I could try, papa,” he said; “and I’m sure I should understand some of it, because it’s about books and pictures and music being meant to make us better, and I understand that. And when Uncle Hugh sings or Mrs. Owen sings I always feel that I want to be good. So I do understand some of it.”
“And it will make you happy?” asked his father.
“Yes.”
“Well, as I heard of a little boy to-day who gave away his strawberries to make a poor old woman happy, you shall sit up till half-past nine.”
Hugh had given a slight groan at Ambrose’s allusion to the moral effects of his singing, but even if heard, it was at once forgotten in the boy’s cries of joy who ran galloping round the table with very high action of his small knickerbockered legs to kiss his father, while Agnes, having told Mrs. Owen in good, firm French, so that Ambrose should not understand, the story of the little boy who gave the old woman the strawberries, rose to go.
“You mustn’t sit long over your cigarettes, Dick,” she said, “or we shall never get through with all we are going to do.”
“No, we won’t be long,” he said; “there’s a heavy programme in front of us, eh, Mrs. Owen?”
“I’m sure your part of it won’t be heavy,” she said.
Dick passed the port to Hugh when the ladies had left the room with Ambrose prancing on ahead.
“A very charming, cultivated woman,” he said. “She knows Venice as I know my parish. And I would be far from asserting off-hand that there was not something to be said of her view of ‘Gambits.’ It was an idea that hadn’t occurred to me. You found a valuable ally there, eh, Hugh?”
Hugh poured out a glass of port, lit a cigarette, and then drank off the port merely with the air of a thirsty man, neither tasting it nor thinking about it. That sort of thing always rather annoyed the Canon, who paid high prices for sound wine, though he did not take it himself.
“Oh, I don’t know that one wants allies if one is quite convinced of a thing,” he said. “In matters of conviction you are perfectly content to stand alone, if nobody agrees with you.”
Hugh always spoke very quickly, but in the speedof this his brother-in-law thought he detected the note of impatience.
“You rather imply that you would sooner Mrs. Owen didn’t agree with you,” he said.
“Yes, I think I do. I’m sure her view of the play is founded on reason which is a faculty perfectly incapable of judging works of art.”
“Indeed, what do you judge by, then?”
“Why, by impulse, by instinct. You don’t want to reason about beautiful things, or find out why they are beautiful. You want just to enjoy them, to lose yourself in their beauty.”
“A rather dangerous view, surely?”
“Why dangerous?” asked Hugh.
The upper lip again lengthened itself.
“Because it rather implies that you exempt beauty from other standards, such as those of morals and enlightenment. Of course, I am sure you can’t mean that. Shall we go?”
Hugh got up.
“Do I mean that?” he asked. “I’m not sure that I don’t.”
“My dear fellow, of course you can’t. I should like to discuss it with you, but we have received our marching orders, have we not? But, indeed, the point is rather fully discussed in the paper that Mrs. Owen insists on my reading.”
Mrs. Owen always brought “her music” with her when she went out to dine, because it was always quite certain that she would be asked to sing, and she always consented, saying that she did happen to have brought a song or two which was in the hall with her cloak. She always said hall, especially if it happened to be a very narrow passage with a barometer on one side and a hatrack on the other and a rich smell of cooking coming from kitchen stairs at the end. For she was incapable of sarcasm, and thus if the hall happened to be an artery of this description, it merely made her hosts think that the “entry” was larger than they had supposed. Canon Alington, however, in his commodious vicarage had a hall, and almost immediately after joining the ladies in the drawing-room he, with Ambrose again prancing in front of him, went to fetch “the music” in. Ambrose asked to be allowed to carry it, and this boon was granted him. Mrs. Owen always played her own accompaniments, and Ambrose, who was full of treats to-night, turned over for her, being already able to follow music if it did not go too fast, which Mrs. Owen’s songs did not. But at the end of this particular combination of orchards, tribulation and heaven above, he was terribly torn in half, for on the one hand Mrs. Owen was perfectly willing to sing again, and on the other bedtime was inexorably fixed for half-past nine, so that the longer Mrs. Owen sang the less he would hear of his father’s paper for the Literific. So with the simplicity of childhood he settled that “mamma should choose,” and mamma, as she could hardly fail to do, chose another song first.
There was no time for Hugh to sing after this, if the tests of immortality in literature and art were to be really inquired into, and, indeed, he had with some adroitness protested that it would be too hard to make him sing after Mrs. Owen, feeling quite sure that no sarcastic intention could possibly be imputed to him, since both his sister and Dick considered that Mrs. Owen sang with more expression than anyone they had ever heard, professional or amateur. Thus there was a full half-hour of reading for Ambrose before half-past nine sounded, and a full half-hour of reading for the restof them afterwards, for the author’s suggestion that he should leave out or abridge his work was strongly deprecated by Mrs. Owen if he was quite sure it did not hurt his throat, and he felt perfectly certain it did not.
Hugh went up to bed that night rather early, though, as a matter of fact, he felt particularly wakeful, for he wanted, somewhere deep down inside him, to get away alone, to lie on his bed and think, or, better still—a plan which he put into operation—to get behind the curtains of his window and lean out into the night. He wanted to be alone, but to be in the presence of the very simple things of the world, the night, the large silent sky, the things that grew unconsciously and did not improve themselves or anyone else, and, he added rather viciously to himself, did not sing. He had passed his evening with perfectly sincere and unaffected people (with the exception of Ambrose, for with the best will in the world he could not believe that Ambrose really liked giving his strawberries to an old woman, and even if he did, a child had no right to be unselfish and kind at that age, and ought to be smacked for it), yet in spite of their sincerity he felt that the whole evening had been unreal. He was sure that Mrs. Owen was genuine in her musical tastes, but it was not real music that she liked, but false sentiment. He was sure that his brother-in-law was desperately in earnest on the true tests of immortality in art, but what he really liked was writing about it. He was certain that Agnes was genuinely interested in parish work, true tests of immortality, music and all the topics of the evening, but not of her own self, only because they were of interest to her husband. All the sincerity, he felt, was second-hand; they none of them cared for things quite simply and passionately with the mere love of life for the things of life.There had been, too, whole lumps of knowledge flying about all evening in every direction: they had all kept up a perfect fusillade of facts; but what of wisdom? Where should wisdom be found? He had once compared his brother-in-law’s mind to a rich sort of cake, that consists entirely of other things—you came upon an almond one moment, a raisin the next, a piece of spice, or sometimes a large hard stone. These were all (except the stone) proper ingredients for making cake, but, somehow, there wasn’t any cake: it was all ingredients. There was his golf, his gardening, his literary abilities, his fragments of rock from Nazareth, his mottoes, his knowledge of the galleries of Venice, but where was It, the man, the personality, the deeps? And all the time he was aware that both Agnes and Dick felt that he himself wanted deepening, and very likely Mrs. Owen and Ambrose thought so, too. And he felt himself injured and inflamed at the thought, so that he was moved to say out loud: “Thank God, I don’t want any of your deepening, not at any price.” As likely as not Dick and his sister were talking over the evening now, feeling, dear, good souls! that amusement had been combined with instruction, and that sun of culture had shone on the scene without intermission.
Hugh felt rather better when he had announced to the night that he did not wish to be subjected to this process of deepening, and leaned further out into the soft darkness. The moon was not yet risen, but behind the gray square Norman tower of the church that rose on the right the sky was dove-coloured and the stars burned with a half-quenched light, showing that moon-rise would not be long delayed. Just below his windows stretched the herbaceous bed that led down each side of the road to the gate, and in the deep dusk of thissummer night it was only white flowers like the tobacco-plant and the Madonna lily that could be distinguished in the fragrant huddle of the summer. A little breeze stirred there occasionally, making the purple clematis that climbed up on each side of his window tremble and vibrate, and like wavelets lisping on the edge of a calm sea it whispered and bore to him the veiled odours of the beds and the damp smell of the dew-drenched lawn. Beyond lay the water-meadows of the Kennet, with wisps and streamers of white mist lying here and there like gauzy raiment of the fairies hung out to dry, while down the centre wandered the steel-coloured stream; and again, but with diminished viciousness, Hugh thought to himself that he was glad that he knew nothing whatever about the formation of dew or the cooling that made the moisture of the atmosphere condense. His own enjoyment and appreciation of it, his mental likening it to fairy raiment was quite enough for him, nor did he believe he would be deeper if he knew about its formation. To the left stood the elms of the hedgerow, black blots against the sky, and outlined with stars, while glimmering here and there against the black hillside he caught glimpses of the white road along which he had walked that morning. Far away, too, in another grove of trees there glimmered a light or two from the windows of the house he had visited that morning.
He had been conscious all day that somewhere deep inside him, far below the superficial perceptions and interests that had gone to make up the ordinary mental life of the others, a current was moving slowly and irresistibly in one direction. He knew, too, that it called to him to come down out of the sunlight and surface of things, and though he longed to obey this summons which all the time he knew he could not resist, yet hefeared it, with the awe that hangs about the unknown. Ever since that evening of June a month ago, when he had come into the lit tent where dinner was in progress on the lawn at Cookham, the call of the deep had been in his ears, very softly at first and very distantly, but gradually getting more insistent, till the whole air by now had become thick with it. All this month, too, another hidden river had been flowing within him—his worship, for it was no less than that, for the beautiful unknown mind which had spoken to him so often and so intimately across the footlights. This morning those two rivers had met and joined; they flowed down mingled together now, and the two voices were one. The river had its name too; it was River Edith.
And with that, swift as a stone falls through the divided air, he took the plunge that had been so long delayed, down from the surface of everyday happenings, from the comedies and the pleasant sunny ways of life, into the depths and well-springs of being, surrendering himself and all he was or had, and by the very completeness of surrender unfolding the banner of the conqueror.
All this, this leap into the infinite, was measured in the world of time but by one deep-drawn breath and drunk in with the full inspiration of the singer, head back so that song could come from the open throat, and next moment whispered below his breath, yet with each note round and shining as a pearl, came the first line of the Schumann song he had sung to her and Peggy on that evening by the riverside. But now he sang it alone, but he sang it to her; wherever she was, he was there too, his spirit enfolded and embraced hers. He sang no more than that first line; it was all there on the birthday of his life.
And then, swift as the plunge itself, which had beena spiritual thing, there rushed in (for the mind is mated with the spirit and acts but infinitesimally less quickly) the stubborn actuality, and he was heaved back into the confines of things probable and real, and the humility, the knowledge of utter unworthiness that always goes hand in hand with the winged irresistible god came to him. How had he ever allowed himself to imagine, though only for this one second or two, that she could ever look at him presenting himself in the capacity of lover? She would not laugh at him, for she was too kind for that, but how gently her heart would pity him, and how that pity would hurt! How kindly and with what real regret—for he could assert that they were friends, which is a big word—would she look at him out of those wonderful eyes; how softly, how tremulously perhaps for she was so kind, would her mouth say the inevitable word! How gently would she reject him! And then—somehow he felt sure she would not find it necessary to speak those unspeakable banalities about hoping that they would still remain great friends. Her wisdom would do better than that. Yet what could it do? She would know.
But love never acquiesces long in that sort of surrender; its true surrender is the surrender he had felt before, when above his head as he gave up his sword floated the scarlet and gold of the triumphant banner. Again, as he looked out across the water-meadows hung with the skeins and wisps of mist, to where a light or two still burned very small and distantly in the house among the trees, the imperiousness of love that admits no defeat, and in thought breaks any obstacle or impossibility away as a heedless foot breaks away the gossamer webs that are woven in the dark between stems of meadow grass, invaded and occupied him. And, had he butknown it, even then by a window the light of which had been that moment quenched there stood another also looking out into the velvet dusk of the night across those same meadows between them toward the house from which he looked. And, as she let the blind fall again over the open sash, she said below her breath that first line of song which he had whispered to the night and her.
The moon by now had risen and the shadow of the window-bars lay black on the blind she had drawn down. Outside the air was very still, but every now and then the little breeze that had stirred among the flowers in the garden at St. Olaf’s moved here also, and tapped with the wooden roller of the blind against the window-frame as the soft leaden-footed hours passed. But though she lay without closing her eyes until the dawn began to lift tired eyelids in the east, she was conscious of none of the tedium and fret that often goes with watchfulness. She had not the wish to sleep even, the desire for it was as remote from her as the power. She lay there thinking intently. She wanted first of all to find out and lay before herself as before the tribunal of her mind exactly what had happened.
It was so few weeks ago that she had said to Peggy that she did not expect very much from life, though she believed that many pleasant things would be hers, and that little joys and occupations would keep her busy and cheerful. And when she had said that it was absolutely true. But to-day she knew it was true no longer. All that had then seemed so cheerful and bright was at this moment as gray as ash to her; indoors, perhaps, it would still be possible to see that fire lived and burned in those embers, but they were now as if the sun had shone on them, dimming and rendering invisible in thatglorious blaze the lesser illumination of the sticks and coals. With what honesty, too, and complete straightforwardness of purpose she had come down to settle here in Mannington, to absorb herself, in pursuance of the future she had sketched out to Peggy, in the quiet occupations with which her garden and the little local interests of the place would supply her, while she pushed forward over the gray sea of elderly years. And then, without warning almost, so swift had been its coming, the bomb had exploded, so to speak, in the middle of her flower-beds. She loved Hugh, no longer with the pale snowdrop love of girls, but with the full colour and glory of her mature womanhood. So much was certain.
She believed as she lay there, hearing the tapping blind, seeing the darkness-shrouded shapes of the things in her room, that more than this was certain. Vivid, full of moods and brightnesses as he was, she had never seen on his face until to-day the look that was there when she told him who that was for whom he had been seeking so diligently, whose was the mind that had conceived and the hand that wrote the work which had inspired him with so heartfelt a sympathy and admiration. All the last month they had been advancing daily in intimacy and friendliness, but there was something in the blank silence with which he received her announcement, something in his quiet salute of the hand that had written “Gambits,” something in the boyish shout of exultation with which he had thrown up his hat into the air, that told her that it was as if his soul had leaped some stream or barrier across which up till now they had done no more than shake friendly hands, and that they stood together now, not friends any longer, but lovers. In the stillness and loneliness of night, when above all othertimes a woman is honest with herself, neither exaggerating nor extenuating, but setting down quietly and firmly what she believes, Edith believed that. She could not and did not attempt to reason her way to the conclusion, any more than a bird measures the distance of the branch on which her nest is built or calculates the speed of flight when she would drop there. She just lights there, without calculation, by the nest-side, where love “keeping her feet” has guided her.
Again, for a little space, as she turned in her cool rustling bed, she detached these thoughts from herself and but listened to the tapping of the blind against her window. But it was for few seconds that that detachment was possible, for all her warm woman’s heart, tender and kind and starving to give and to receive this love which was its appointed, God-ordained food, beat upon her and shook her into life again. It was no wind that tapped there; it was he who tapped at her heart and had been admitted with doors flung back and kingly welcome. And, half laughing to herself, laughter that comes not out of the lips or of the amused brain, but of the deep bubbling with the well-spring of the heart, “Come in, Hughie, come in!” she whispered, and looked toward the window, knowing that it was but her imagination that made her speak, yet feeling it would not be strange if she saw there, across the shadow of the window-bars, the shadow of his head. And what then? She would go across to the window, not frightened, knowing it was he, and he would say the words that were wine to her, and she would give him wine for his wine.
Then suddenly the character and significance of the tapping blind changed altogether, and she sat up in her bed, frightened at its new message. It warned her,and warned her with terrible distinctness. He was so young, it told her, while for her all youth was gone. There might be one or two bright warm November days for her, a week perhaps of Indian summer, but after that, chill and the fogs of November and its frosts; she would be no match for that dear spirit of spring that had lost its way and come here by mistake, making it shiver, making it long to escape. It would be unable to see below the rime and the fog; it would judge, as all youth did, by appearance, by the flush of smooth cheeks, by the brightness of the eye in its unwrinkled frame, by the gloss of abundant hair, by laughter and the indefatigable joy of day and night; and since these things would be soon missing to her, it would think that the surface rime pierced below, that the depths were hard with the iron of age, that the heart was silvered with frost even as the head was silvered.
She got quickly out of bed and lit her candles, for this was nightmare, and placing them one on each side of her looking-glass, looked long at herself, critically and honestly. And as she looked courage and hope came back to her. Where were the wrinkles she had feared, or where the frosted hair? Thick and black and untouched by white it lay round her head, and her face was smooth and unpitted by the years that had gone, and her eyes were bright with the dawn of the fulfilment of her womanhood, which she had missed so long, but was now streaking her heaven in lines of gold and crimson, and flush of delicate green, even as outside across the water-meadows and behind the gray tower of St. Olaf’s dawn was coming swiftly. Surely it had been but for a moment that night had been heavy, and on the wings of the morning came joy.
Canon Alington, as his wife often told him, had a greatdeal of tact, and how prodigious was the amount with which Nature had endowed him may be gathered from the fact that he never asked any of the guests who might happen to be staying at St. Olaf’s over a Sunday whether or no they were going to church. He was, such was his liberal doctrine, primarily their host, and as such was bound to give them religious as well as all other liberties, and consequently when Hugh at about ten minutes to eleven came through the hall, where Ambrose was prancing about in a slightly subdued and Sabbatical manner with a hymn-book and prayer-book and a Bible in his hand, and a threepenny bit in his pocket, and met Canon Alington just coming out of his study on his way to church, Hugh’s appearance in gray flannels and a straw hat roused no comment of disapprobation. Indeed, Canon Alington said, “It will be cool in the garden.” But Ambrose’s tact was not equal to his father’s. He looked up at Hugh with the light shining on his spectacles.
“Aren’t you coming to church, Uncle Hugh?” he asked.
“No, not this morning.”
“Aren’t you well, Uncle Hugh? I’m so sorry! Shall I stop behind, as mamma does when I’m not well, and read the psalms and lessons to you? Or shall I go to church and tell you about the sermon afterward?”
“Yes, thanks awfully, old boy!” said Hugh; “I think that would be the best plan. Now run after your father, or else you will be late.”
Canon Alington had purposely walked on at the beginning of this colloquy, and into his head there came the words “a little child shall lead them.” He was a trifle disconcerted when he found that his little child was notleading anybody, until Ambrose explained the plan about the sermon.
But there was for Hugh no coolness of the garden, not, at any rate, of this garden, and he only waited for the low thunder of the organ to come booming out from the open church door, to set out, at a pace most unsuited to this hot morning, along the road up which he had gone at much about the same time yesterday. All the doubts and questioning of the evening before were gone, or if not gone were invisible in the flame that consumed them, were perhaps but the sticks and fuel that contributed to the brightness of its burning. He had to declare to her his love; that was his part, and nothing else was his part. He had no spare emotion with which to feel nervous or afraid; all he felt or was, it seemed to him, was caught up into the burning, into the beacon that leaped in flame within him. He did not know whether the road seemed long or short, or the morning hot or cold; the minor consciousness of life had no existence for him just then. In a few minutes he would be with the reality of life, the best was no more than shadow. And once again he was told she was in the garden, and once again, hatless, he followed the butler out.
She saw and knew; it was the face of her lover that looked at her dumbly, eagerly, and both waited, for he had but the one word to say to her, till they were alone. Then he came a step closer to her, and his eyes were like hot coals.
“Meine Seele, mein Herz,” he said, still very quietly, still without putting out his hand even to her.
And but for those burning eyes, and his mouth that trembled a little, you would have said that nothingmomentous, nothing that concerned life and death and the deeps of the human soul, was passing on that quiet, sunny terrace.
But how well she knew it, and how it seemed to her that her heart must take wings and fly to him. Yet even as it poised, fluttering, in act to go, all the warnings of the tapping window blind last night came into her mind. He was so young, and the years that would make her old would but be adding strength and vigour to his manhood. And she put up her hand, as if to keep him off.
“No, no,” she said. “You don’t mean it, Hugh, you don’t consider—you don’t know.”
“It is all I know,” he said.
There was a moment’s absolute silence; he had said all that he had come to say, but from her answer he had to say more.
“Do you send me away?” he asked.
She turned from him, and looked out across the blue haze of heat that hung on the meadows.
“Ah, no, not that!” she half moaned to herself.
“What then?” said he quietly.
Then she turned to him again, and in her eyes no less than in his shone the authentic fire. Whatever trouble was there, whatever perplexity, it paled in the brightness of that shining.
“Just this, dear Hugh,” she said—“that I ask you—oh, how feeble it seems!—I ask you to give me a little time, to let me think and determine. It is all so new and strange, and—and so wonderful. I ask you to go away now, but not in the way you meant. Thank you for your love for me—it is precious, so precious! But I had never thought of it, never guessed it till yesterday.”
Hugh’s mouth had suddenly gone quite dry. Hetried to moisten his lips to speak, but could not, and it was but a whisper that came.
“You love me?” he asked.
“Ah! you mustn’t ask me any more now. I have had enough. I—there, go, dear. I want——”
And she threw herself down on the garden bench where they had sat yesterday and burst into a passion of sobbing.
PEGGY had brought her season to an end on the same day on which Hugh had gone down to St. Olaf’s, and had retired with the sense of a child home from its holidays to spend a whole week with the children at Cookham, before taking her husband out to Marienbad for three weeks’ cure. She had taken Arthur Crowfoot down with her for the Sunday, but he did so much deep breathing (for in the cycle of things that had come up again) and wanted such very extraordinary things to eat that he was as bad as a party in the house. Even that, though she had come down in order to do nothing, she would not have minded, had he not insisted on talking quite continuously about the impossibility of preserving even the semblance of decent health if your diet comprised anything outside nuts, cheese, and brown bread. Indeed, on Sunday evening, when he had sent for a pair of goloshes to put over his shoes, for they were dining in the tent, and the second thickest of his Angora wool rugs to put over his knees, she clapped her hands in his face.
“You are getting tiresome, Arthur,” she said, “and as a friend I warn you. Nobody cares about your waste products or nuts, nor whether you catch cold; but they care very much whether you bore them or not. People always consider a bore a waste product.”
Arthur pushed back his rather thin and scanty hair, for the sake of which he never wore a hat. This clapping of Peggy’s hands in his face had considerably startled him.
“How violent you are!” he said, “and how unfair! I think it is one’s duty to keep oneself as well as possible.”
“Yes, I daresay it is,” said she; “but it is no part of your duty to tell me about it. I am charmed that you feel well, and you may eat anything you choose, only I don’t want to know about it. Personally I eat somewhat large quantities of meat, and feel extremely well, but I don’t tell everybody about it. I dare say also it’s your duty to be kind and thoughtful, but that would form a very poor subject of conversation!”
Arthur Crowfoot’s goloshes and second thickest rug had come by this time, and this probably restored any loss of equanimity that Peggy’s criticisms could have produced.
“Well, let us talk about somebody else’s virtues,” he said.
“Mine,” suggested Toby, who had not yet spoken, from the other side of the table.
“Your virtues are that you are going off to Marienbad on Thursday, like a good boy,” said Peggy.
“I know I am. What a filthy hole! Are you sure you’ll come, Peggy?”
“Quite certain, otherwise you will eat all the things you shouldn’t, and drink none of the things you should, and lie in bed instead of getting up at six, and sit up instead of going to bed at ten!”
Toby groaned slightly, and made a sign to a servant that he wanted more chocolate soufflée.
“Let me eat and drink, for to-morrow I go to Marienbad,” he said. “Peggy, if we are going, let’s go to-morrow, and get it over soon.”
“I can’t; I promised to go to the fiftieth performance of ‘Gambits’ with Hugh on Wednesday.”
Arthur Crowfoot drew the rug a little closer over his knees.
“Talk of waste products,” he said, “or of my talking of them! Why, the last time I saw Hugh he quoted me large chunks of ‘Gambits.’ I can’t think of anything more intensely waste product than that, especially if one hasn’t seen the play!”
“But won’t the forty-ninth performance do?” asked Toby.
“No, because the author, Andrew Robb, whom nobody knows who he is, if you will excuse the grammar, is going to appear that night,” said Peggy, “and we are all dying to see him.”
Arthur gave a short and scornful laugh.
“Why, it’s clearly Hugh,” he said. “Will you bet?”
“Yes,” said Peggy precipitately.
Then she considered the case.
“No, I won’t,” she said, “because I know it is not Hugh. Oh, dear! here’s a telegram.”
A servant handed it to her, and she tore it open in that silence which always takes possession of a small party when a telegram is opened, even when addressed to a person like Peggy, with whom correspondence was chiefly conducted by such means.
“Edith,” she announced. “She wants to come down here to-morrow for the night to see me particularly, and wants no reply unless not. What a curious parsimony of words people have over telegrams. No answer,” she said to the man.
“Where is she?” asked Toby.
“Down at Mannington; I heard from her yesterday. She said she meant to stop there for months and not stir.”
“Something at Mannington has stirred her,” remarked Mr. Crowfoot. “That is the sort of thing that always happens. One goes up to town and is fearfully busy all the week, and nothing happens, and then goes intothe country for the week-end and finds nothing to eat except beef and—I beg your pardon,” he added.
Toby had finished his second helping of soufflée, refused dessert, and drank a glass of strictly forbidden port.
“I see Hugh Grainger will sing at the opera next year,” he said; “it was announced in theDaily Something.”
Peggy, on whose tongue remonstrance with regard to the port was rising, threw off at this.
“What!” she said. “Hugh is going to sing? Why, only a few weeks ago he told me that he had made up his mind not to!”
“Ah, but Hugh is one of those people to whom an enormous number of things happen in a few weeks,” said he.
For one moment Peggy felt a little hurt that Hugh had not told her. She hated that public papers should be the means of communication between herself and her friends. But on the instant she smothered her resentment.
“That is splendid news!” she said. “I must remember to tell Edith. Hugh told us that the syndicate had approached him, and she was so frantic at the idea of his refusal. I wonder what has made him change his mind.”
Then she recollected something.
“I dare say he has already told her,” she added; “I know he was going down to Mannington last Friday.”
“To stay with her?” asked Arthur.
“Oh, no! with his sister, Mrs. Alington. But probably he and Edith met. In fact, he promised to go and see her! They are great friends.”
Peggy heard nothing more of her sister, and so could not meet any train for her at Cookham next day. BothArthur Crowfoot and her husband, who was going to attend something grandly masonic, went up to town next morning, and as Toby would not be back that night she planned a gorgeously inactive day for herself, intending in the morning to punt herself up not quite so far as Cookham lock, and to tie up under the trees there till lunch-time, with a book that had to be first cut, and then read. She meant to lunch with the children, and to take them down the river toward Maidenhead, and make tea in the punt. The lighting of the spirit-lamp, indeed, would be the only effort she would be called upon to make in the afternoon, for Jim and Daisy, with shrill recrimination, and a good deal of circular movement in mid-Thames, would be responsible for the locomotion, and also for the setting out of tea, all except this lighting of the spirit-lamp, while she would sit still, and be splashed, at not infrequent intervals, for paddles, not punt poles, which were too sensational, were the implements to be applied by the children. And even though their verdict had been that she did not “play” nearly as well as Hugh, this depreciatory criticism did not spoil her own pleasure in being alone all the afternoon with these darling children, and in being real again herself, their mother. London, of course, with its friends, its manifold businesses into which all her time and energies went, was quite real too, but after the months and the fatigue of it, the incessant rush, the froth and bubble in which she so delighted, she felt more real somehow when Jim at the prow and Daisy at the helm abused each other in shrill trebles and appealed to her for decision. Woman of the world as she was to her finger-tips, she was yet woman of the home, and when all was said and done, and all her energies, which were so much a part of her, relaxed,there was still nothing so much a part of her as the children. Often for days together in town she hardly set eyes on them; but that was a fault not of hers, but of her environment, and to live in accordance with that, to slave and toil for that, was her duty also.
And then in the evening, by the dinner-train probably, arriving here after the children had gone to bed, would come the woman she loved most in all the world, to whom she would have given so much of her own happiness if out of that gift there could be made even a little for her, to make up to her for those years during which with all the materials and potentialities for happiness in herself, and with all the birthright of it, Edith had found only bitterness and terror. For somehow, in spite of all Edith’s huge delight at the success of her play, in spite of the eagerness with which she had flung herself into her garden-making at Mannington, her absorption in that and in this new work of her brain which occupied her so greatly, Peggy could not believe that the inward happiness of the heart could spring from this soil if the soil was a woman’s heart. With a man it was different; husbandhood was not to a man of the same essentiality as was wifehood to a woman, and a thousand times more, surely, fatherhood was nothing compared to motherhood. She longed to see Edith married again, she longed to see her with a child in her arms before the envious years took these priceless possibilities from her.
Peggy had punted herself up to the little tree-sheltered corner where she had designed to spend her morning, first cutting and then reading this very interesting work on the internal affairs of Russia, but having tied up, she sat for some little while lost in these thoughts. All around her the life of Nature eternally renewed fromyear to year rioted and flourished, fed by the imperishable river and these summer suns. All the murmurs of the forest were in her ears, birds called to each other, bees were busy drinking from honey-laden chalices of the meadow flowers, and the melodious rush and plunge of the weir just above seemed the very sound of the outpouring of life. But somehow there was a great change in the face of things since the last time she had been here with Hugh and Edith. June was not over then, and the river banks were sprayed with the pink of the briarrose or their springy leaping tendrils. Blue mists of forget-me-not lay on the margin of the stream, lit as it were by the bold yellow suns of the marsh-marigold, and waved upon by the purple of the loose-strife. The flowers of the lime-trees, so much the colour of the foliage that the bees, small wonder, must find their way to them by scent alone, were over, and though the year was still at its height, it was impossible not to remember that after this came autumn, whereas after the other came summer. It was the same with people too; some had their summer still in front of them, to others——
A wave of pity, intense and very tender, swept over Peggy. Youth was so short, and to women, if not to men, in youth was all the honey of life. It was capable to some extent, no doubt, of being stored, of being enjoyed afterward, when children and children’s children, maybe, grew up round one, but could anything be like the first mornings of spring when one gathered it oneself from the dewy flowers? And some poor dears had never known the sweetness of those May-dews, and to some their sweetness had but been bitterness. That bitterness, too, like the honey, was garnered and eaten afterward and though, even as the garnered honeywas not so sweet as the May-dew, so the garnered bitterness was not so sharp in the gall of its wormwood, yet how could it be right that this should be a woman’s harvesting? No doubt, as Peggy fully believed, there would be a readjustment, a compensation in the house of many mansions, but that, she added to herself without any touch of irreverence, is not the same thing.
Then she gave a great sigh, took up her book and an immense ivory paper-cutter, and began to travel in the realms of gold, as Canon Alington would have said. Then for a moment she paused, and, book in one hand and paper-cutter in the other, she held them up in front of her as if in supplication.
“Dear God, make everybody very happy always!” she said aloud.
Russia seemed to Peggy a very terrible but rather vague place, since she certainly did not devote to it an undivided attention, and the quality of her information about it took a decided turn for the worse when, before very long, this ivory paper-cutter, which she had mistakenly laid down on the side of the punt while she was turning over a few severed leaves (the book was one of those tiresome ones which require to be cut now at the side, now at the top, now apparently in every possible direction), slipped with a loud splash into the bosom of Father Thames, and was lost in him. Thereafter her knowledge of Russian affairs grew more scrappy and disjointed, for after a short attempt to supply the place of the paper-cutter with a hairpin, she had to glean her information by peeping between leaves, while others remained sealed to her. Soon, in fact, she abandoned the attempt altogether.
Summer, summer everywhere! Summer on these green Thames-side woods and in the water in which shedabbled her hand, warm almost with its long leisurely travel through so many noons of July since it left the spring of its uprising, where the winter rains had stored it. And very notably was it summer in her own heart, for growth and life she felt were at their fullest there. She was happy in her friends, happy in the multitudinous activities of her busy life, and, above all, happy in her home, her husband, and her children. Nor was her happiness of the stolid brooding order, for just as heat in summer weather always roused her body to greater exertion, so this summer of her heart made her reach out to all the world in a benevolence that longed for the happiness of others. And then, fearing for one brief and terrible moment that she was becoming like Ambrose, of whom Hugh had sent her a perfectly fair or even flattering description, she untied her punt and pushed out into the stream again.
The afternoon was all that it should be, and a story she told the children earned the remarkable distinction of being considered by Jim as of a merit equal to some of Hugh’s, and though Daisy snorted scornfully at such a notion, Peggy felt humbly gratified that in the opinion of one of her children she was getting on. Daisy, however, afraid that the snorting was not quite kind to her mother, explained the position.
“Darling mummy,” she said, “I love you more than anybody, and you make tea ever so much better than Hughie does—oh, he makes it so badly and generally spills—but if I was to tell you you sang better than Hughie, it would be silly, wouldn’t it?”
Jim slapped the water with the flat of his paddle.
“Oh, you goose,” he said, “you’re trying to—to—— What was it that nurse did to me when I had to go to the dentist?”
“Put on your hat?” suggested Peggy.
“No,” squealed Jim, “I had my hat on. I know, break it to me. Daisy’s trying to break it to you that she doesn’t think you tell stories as well as Hugh, and so she tells you you make tea better. She’s a girl. Now, when I think a thing I say it straight out.”
“Yes, darling, I know you do,” remarked his mother, with certain vivid passages in her mind.
“Oh, Jim, shut up!” said Daisy. “You see, mummy darling, you make tea better because you are so much older than Hugh—oh, ever so much older!—and I think he tells stories better because he’s only a boy. You can’t have everything, can you? If you’re old and go in to dinner you can’t eat the ices on the stairs.”
Jim again belaboured the unoffending Thames.
“When I grow up I shall have everything,” he exclaimed. “I shall go in to dinner and eat everything, and then go out and eat ices on the stairs. And spotted-dog!” he added.
But Daisy was regarding her mother with a frown on her wise little face.
“You see, don’t you?” she said. “Of course, Aunt Edith can tell beautiful stories, but then she’s so frightfully clever that she can make believe to be young, so that you really do believe it.”
“Yes, darling, I see,” said Peggy.
“Two helpings of spotted-dog!” shrieked Jim, finding his ultimatum had not received an answer.
“Then you’ll have pains in your inside,” said his mother, “and have to go to bed till next Friday.”
“Saturday!” screamed Daisy, with a sudden lapse from the philosophic.
“Now, darlings, take care don’t tip up the punt. Have you both finished your tea?”
“Ages ago,” said Jim.
“Very well, put all the things back into the tea-basket.”
“And may I pour the rest of the tea into the river?” asked Daisy.
“Yes, and Jim shall give the rest of that bun to the swans.”
“And then will you tell us another story? Please!”
“Yes, if you like, and then we shall have to get home, to be there when Aunt Edith comes.”
Daisy was pouring the tea away very slowly to make it last longer.
“If I was Aunt Edith,” she said, “I should marry Hughie.”
“Pooh, that’s because you’re a girl!” said Jim. “Catch Hughie marrying anybody! Besides, he’s promised to live with me in the cave underneath where the water comes out of the weir.”
Daisy paused in her occupation.
“Oh, Jim, did he? When?” she asked.
“Oh, on one of the Sundays! And the frog-footman’s going to say we’re not at home to anybody.”
“As if anybody would want to come!” said Daisy scornfully, but rather hurt in her mind.
“Well, they wouldn’t if they did!”
A short silence, and Daisy yielded.
“I shall come,” she said.
“Not you!”
“Then I shall turn the water off, and what’ll happen to your silly old cave then?” she asked.
Relations were getting a little strained, and Peggy interposed.
“No, Daisy and I will live in the kingfisher’s nest,” she said, “and Mr. Kingfisher will peckanybody who ever looks in. And Aunt Edith shall live with us.”
This was too much for Jim.
“Perhaps we had all better live together,” he said. “I vote we do, and then we can have two houses each!”
Edith arrived as her sister had expected by the dinner-train, and a brain less quick and eyes less loving than Peggy’s could easily see that something had happened. But since Edith did not at present speak about this reason for which she particularly wanted to see her, Peggy, with the respect for the confidence of friends that with her extended even into the region of thought and conjecture, forbore from exercising her mind at all over what it was. She merely registered the fact that Edith looked splendid. So they dined outside in the tent by the river, and while the servants were in attendance talked not indeed of indifferent things, but of a hundred things that interested them both, until they should be alone and this “particular” thing come on the board of talk. And in process of time the table was cleared, and the evening papers put out, and then coffeecups were jingled away on the tray to the house. Peggy, still with the idea of not wishing even to seem to hurry a confidence, had taken up some pink sheet or other, but Edith suddenly rose and stood before her.
“Put down your paper, dear Peggy,” she said, “and listen to me. I have something to tell you, that for which I wanted to see you. Oh, Peggy, Hugh has asked me to marry him.”
The paper slid from Peggy’s knees, and she stared for one moment in sheer astonishment. At the instant the exclamation “Oh, poor Hughie!” had risen to her lips at the thought of what Edith’s answer must surely be, and almost passed them, but as instantaneouslyshe saw how utterly off the mark was any thought of pity for Hugh. Again and again she had longed for the happiness of love and the light of it to come to her sister’s face, and she saw it there now. But that it should come like this and for him was so utterly unexpected that when Daisy had suggested the same thing this afternoon it had been no more real than Jim’s announcement that Hugh was going to live with him in the cave of water at the weir.
But now it was real; here were her sister’s hands stretched to her for congratulation, her face bent to hers for her kiss. But before she need grasp her hands or kiss her there was a reasonable question to ask.
“And what did you say, dear?” she asked.
“I told him how unexpected it was, that I could not answer him at once. But he knows, I think,” she added softly.
Peggy looked round quickly.
“Let us go indoors,” she said. “We can’t talk here, it is too open. The trees will hear, or the servants, and it’s dark. Come Edith!”
For one moment the brightness of Edith’s face faded, as if a cloud had passed over it, but it cleared again, and the two sisters, Peggy walking in front, entered the drawing-room that looked on to the lawn. And with the same instinct for privacy, Peggy closed the windows. Then she turned to her sister.
“Oh, Edith, what are you going to say to him?” she asked. “Surely it was possible to give him his answer at once—and you said he knew!”
But these words were only half-uttered, for even before they were spoken Peggy knew the futility of pretence like this. But even that only dimmed the brightness of Edith’s face as some light film of mistmay dim the apparent brightness of the sun—ever so little a distance up in air, the films are below.
“Yes, I think he knew,” she said, “and it was stupid of me. For I knew too!”
“Then do you mean you are going to accept him?” asked Peggy.
“I have, in all but telling him so.”
For one moment Peggy felt utterly helpless, but then there came to her aid that passion for the happiness of others that was so urgent within her, and which had prompted that sincere little heart’s-cry in the punt this morning—and it was that and that alone that prompted her to speak.
“Yet you came here to tell me before you answered him,” she said. “Why?”
Edith looked grave for a moment—searching, indeed, for the reason that had prompted what had been an instinct to her.
“I think one always wants to consult a person one loves and trusts before taking any step at all,” she said quite simply.
“Ah, you dear,” said Peggy, impulsively kissing her, “and all I say, all I think, you know, is said and thought by such a one.”
That filmy mist had thickened, for whatever love beckons it cannot quench that love which has sprung from common blood, and has been deepened and strengthened through years of affection and esteem. If the one is irresistible, the other clings ivy-hard, and though both sisters knew that it was impossible that that cord of love which had begun at birth between them could be severed, yet there was no doubt that it would be stretched and strained.
Peggy sat down.
“You came to consult me,” she said, “and so it would be futile if I did not give you all that is most sincere in me. Oh, Edith, it would be madness in you to do this! While one is in this life, and bounded by the limitation of years, one has to use common sense, and not go trespassing, and—and masquerading. You are a beautiful woman, dear, and Heaven knows, and I do, how lovable. You are clever, you have knowledge of life——”
Edith just moved in her chair.
“By the way, I told him I wrote ‘Gambits,’”she said; “it was after that that he proposed to me!”
Peggy shook her head.
“That is nothing,” she said; “he would soon have known, and next week makes no difference. But it was with you he fell in love, with the mind that made that and the hand that wrote it, and the clear eye that saw so much of human things and was so pitiful and kind—oh, me, Edith, if only we poor women were kindly and painlessly put away at the age of fifty how much better for everybody. No, I don’t really think that, because there are lots of things which can only be done by women over fifty, like—like understanding people, which no man ever did, and no woman till she was old. And to understand is so much, and, having understood, to smile and be kind, and——”
“And cease to be oneself,” said Edith quietly.
“No, not that, but to be one’s children, to——”
Edith got up quickly, with the sun shining again.
“But I have no children, dear Peggy,” she said. “Look at my point of view for a moment. Indeed, all the time that the years were passing so beautifully for mothers, for people like you, what was I? You know. And then, when the chains were broken, I did live downthose years, I tell you that, and it is true. I hunted every piece of bitterness out of my heart. By God’s grace I cleansed and renewed it, and it is ready—I say it—for the man who loves me. Oh, how often I rebelled, and said that my life had been spoiled, that the years that should have been beautiful had been a succession of days on each of which I wished that I was dead. But He chose that I should not die. Why? I was prepared for other things; God knows that if this had never come into my life I should have continued to live pleasantly and very far from complaining, with a hundred interests, a hundred schemes, and in one’s infinitesimal way trying to make people on the whole glad that one is alive. But now how can I help seeing that all that was in twilight? Hugh came!”
Peggy clasped her hands together.
“Oh, it is hard,” she cried, “I can guess how hard. For I know Hugh, and I love him as I love the sun and the trees, and if one loved him as a man, I can guess, I can imagine what that would be. But think, my darling, just think—what of ten years from now; the years that will but still be bringing nearer his prime of life. What will he be in ten years? Just thirty-five, with five thirties and ten forties still in front of him. And then what? Fifty still! And you? Why, you are seventeen years older than he! What does that matter now? Nothing, of course. But then—his life will be in full swing, the best of its activities still in full force. He will be singing at the opera still. And you? At home, too! It is that which matters. He planning still for the future, and you able only to answer his plans with memories of the past. Yes, perhaps it is grotesque to look forward twenty-five years. But look forward ten only.”
Peggy went to the window she had shut when they came in and flung it open again.
“Ah, if only one was renewed like the night and the river,” she said, “it would be different. But one is not; age comes so quickly when youth is over. And our tragedy is that we feel young still! Have pity on Hugh, dear. Even more have pity on yourself; spare yourself the endless, ceaseless struggle that you will make for yourself in the years to come if you marry him. Oh, Edith, I do want you to be happy so much, and a month ago you were so happy—you looked forward to such happy years.”
“Would that content you?” asked Edith—“the things, I mean, that made my happiness a month ago?”
“No; how could they, dear, if it meant that for the rest of my life Toby and the children and all were to be lost to me?”
“Nor could they content me now,” said Edith, “if this had to be lost to me.”
Then she got up, and stood by her sister again.
“Ah, don’t you see how almost all you have said tells the other way?” she said, speaking quickly. “It is just because there is no renewal for us, just because age comes so quickly when youth is over that I cannot miss it. I have missed too much already, and I cannot miss more. I rage for life, and when I can have it, I must. If some dreadful blow should take everything from you, Peggy, and leave you just with a garden and a brain of a kind, as I was left, it would be more reasonable for you to be content than it would for me. You have had all these things—the love of your husband, the love of your children, they would be memories to you, and rose-gardens where any woman might wander happily. But what are my memories? The best Ican do is to have none. And now Love come—what further memory should I be left with if I rejected it?”
Edith caught hold of her sister’s hands and drew her down by her side on to the sofa. Her hands, Peggy felt, were trembling, that beautiful mouth was trembling too, but those tremours, and the moisture that stood in her eyes, were not the signs of sorrow; they were but tokens of the love and the joy that had so taken possession of her, of the eternal youth that invaded and held her. And the eternal youth of love transformed her; it was the rapture of a girl’s first love that trembled on her lips and fell in hesitating speech.