Here we come picking up silver and gold,Silver and gold, silver and gold,Here we come picking up silver and gold,All on Tom Tiddler’s ground.
Here we come picking up silver and gold,Silver and gold, silver and gold,Here we come picking up silver and gold,All on Tom Tiddler’s ground.
Here we come picking up silver and gold,Silver and gold, silver and gold,Here we come picking up silver and gold,All on Tom Tiddler’s ground.
For a little while caution was shown on both sides, while Jim darted to left and right, trying to catch the cautious figures that did not venture far out. Then Edith started to run in earnest, and Jim flew after her.She ran up the bank trying to dodge him, and just as she felt him touch her she felt a sudden warm, choking sensation in her throat that made her cough.
“Hurrah!” screamed Jim. “I touched you, Aunt Edith!”
“Yes, Jim, I’m caught,” she said.
Then she put up her handkerchief to her mouth, and looked at it as she withdrew it again. There was a little stain on it, very bright red.
THERE was a big-ribbed looking-glass outside the window of the doctor’s consulting-room, that tilted in the warm, reddish sunlight of the September morning, while through the open sash there stole in the aromatic smell of fresh-laid asphalt. There was not much traffic going on, only occasionally the clip-clop of a horse’s hoofs sounded staccato on the wooden pavement of Harley Street, and Edith could hear without effort all that Sir Thomas was saying.
He hardly led up to it, for she had come there that morning simply to know what the result of his examination had been, and he merely asked her a question or two as to her health since the birth of the baby. And then, without preparing her, for he knew that there is no breaking such news, he told her quite quietly, in a word or two.
Edith had been sitting opposite the window, looking at him with her pleasant, direct gaze, as if giving her very courteous attention to a story that did not particularly entertain her, but in which she was bound, for politeness’ sake, to appear interested. But when he finished she smiled at him as if his tale had had some slightly humorous conclusion. She did not feel in the least stunned, nor had she any consciousness of having received a shock. Only for a moment the little trivial circumstances of the hour and the place grew more vivid; she noticed that the clock on the chimney-piece had stopped, odd in the consulting-room of a great doctor; that Sir Thomas had a scar running across the back ofhis left hand; that one of her own gloves had fallen on to the floor. Then this attention to trivialities subsided again, and she felt perfectly normal, perfectly herself.
“Thank you for telling me so kindly and considerately,” she said. “You see how successful you have been, how little it has upset me? It is then—it is very serious.”
“Yes.”
Again she smiled at him.
“I quite understand,” she said.
Sir Thomas got up and held out his hand to her.
“Ah, my dear lady,” he said, “you are a brave woman. Meet your—your illness with the same bravery day by day. Those are the patients, people like you, who get well, and get well quickly.”
“What are my chances?” she asked briskly.
“They are excellent. Thanks to that little hæmorrhage you had last week, and thanks to your common sense in consulting me about it without losing time, we have detected the disease in an early stage. All depends now—humanly speaking—on yourself, on your obedience to what we tell you to do, and the scrupulous rigour with which you carry out your treatment.”
That allusion to treatment, to obedience to orders, brought Edith closer, more immediately in contact, as it were, with the news.
“You have no doubt whatever that I have consumption?” she asked quickly.
“I am afraid none. Of course the hæmorrhage, as I told you before, might have come from the throat, but the examination I have made since I saw you last proves the presence of what you call the little insects.”
“And what am I to do?” she asked.
“Go out to Davos as soon as ever you can. I would have you leave by this afternoon’s train, if it was possible. And there you will live out of doors day and night as far as possible. Until you check the disease it gains on you. As I told you, you have an excellent chance, and you mustn’t imperil it by delay.”
Edith considered this for a moment.
“I will be at Davos in a fortnight from to-day,” she said. “That is reasonable, is it not?”
“Yes, if you will be an outdoor invalid in the interval,” he said.
Edith was silent, wondering at herself for the perfect calmness which she felt. At first she thought that the suddenness of the news might have partly stunned her, but the minutes were passing, and still she had no consciousness of having received a shock. She understood, too, the gravity of the sentence which had been pronounced; it was not that her mind refused to grasp it. Now she almost laughed.
“I feel I ought to apologise for being so unagitated,” she said, “but I don’t feel the least inclined to be agitated. Perhaps I have been fearing this all these last days, and anyhow the fear is removed, now I know. Now about my plans; I will tell you.”
Edith hesitated again. She had known Sir Thomas from her childhood; he had done all that was possible for her late husband; he had brought her child into the world. She determined to ask him several things which concerned her, so it seemed, more intimately than her illness.
“Can you give me a quarter of an hour now?” she asked. “There are several questions I want to put to you. How dazzling this reflected sun is. Ah, I can sit out of the glare there!”
She moved her place so that she sat with her back to the light and covered her eyes with her hands.
“First, then, about my plans,” she said. “I will be at Davos in a fortnight, but I won’t promise to be an invalid in the interval. I mean to go with my husband to Munich for ten days and hear Wagner opera. We had planned it all, you see, and we shall start in two days. From there I will go to Davos.”
“Ah, I protest against that!” said Sir Thomas. “It means fatigue, excitement, bad air, the three things you must avoid. I will speak to Mr. Grainger myself.”
“No, indeed, you must not,” said she. “It must be I who tell him. Now, I don’t mean to tell him until after we have seen the opera together. Oh, Sir Thomas, I can’t. I simply can’t start my invalid life without one more treat, as the children say, without one more week of Indian summer. After that, I promise to tell him, and I promise to be the most willing and obedient of patients. It does mean such a lot to me! I can’t tell you how much. I shall fret and worry over not having gone there with him if I don’t go. But I intend to. So please tell me how to minimise any harm it may do me.”
There was no doubt she was in earnest over this; that week at Munich with Hugh, even now within half an hour of the news she had heard, seemed to her to matter more than anything else. A far less acute man than Sir Thomas could have seen that.
“Of course, if you intend to fret over not having gone—” he began.
“I don’t intend to; I shan’t be able to avoid it, and, indeed, I will be so good afterwards and so determined to get well. But just a little more happiness first!”
Yes; the thought of missing Munich clearly touchedher more intimately than the knowledge that this deadly disease had built nests in her. It was the child’s cry for “five minutes more” before bedtime, five minutes of romance, of play. Munich and its music, much as she loved it, was, in itself, nothing to her; what she could not bear to miss was this extra week of holiday, this one more week of Hugh’s unsuspecting, joyful companionship. However well he bore this news when he knew, he would still be bearing it. Until she was well again, if she was going to get well, his sky would always be overcast; he would be anxious, solicitous, with fear always in the back of his mind, however well he hid it, and she felt she must be partner for just a little while more of his riotous boyish happiness, which was so “Hugh” to her. Some part of this, no doubt, Sir Thomas guessed; he knew at any rate that she had set her mind on another week of life. He knew, too, from his previous knowledge of her, that she was one of those whose body is in fine obedience to their will, and whose will is set on health and the joy of living.
“But will you be sensible during that week at Munich?” he asked. “Will you rest when you are tired, and stop at home and not go to the opera if you feel it is too much for you?”
Edith took her hands away from her eyes with a superb wide gesture. Her need was imperative; she did not care what price was paid for it.
“No, I won’t promise to be in the least sensible during that week,” she said. “I might just as well not go to Munich at all, as be sensible. I mean to have a splendid time just for one week more, to watch Hugh’s complete happiness just for that week, and know that it is mine. And if I die a month sooner in consequence, I will say ‘Thank God for Munich,’ with my latest breath. Afterthat week I will tell Hugh everything; I will be very good, very obedient, and, oh, how cheerful! But I will have this week as we planned it.”
At heart Sir Thomas exulted in the obstinacy of his patient. He loved those who loved the joys of living, and made light of their infirmities even at the risk of increasing them. But he felt professionally bound to apply the brake here.
“But, my dear lady, how can you have a splendid time—which with all my heart I desire for you—if you are feeling very tired and languid? You can’t—your body must react on your mind. Also you will risk having another hæmorrhage; you will risk, for the sake of a week, doing yourself a damage that it may take six months to repair.”
Edith leaned forward in her chair, brilliant, radiant, her brave soul shining like a beacon in her tired eyes.
“You know all about me,” she said; “I have suffered a good deal of mental pain in my life, and I think that that has taught me to despise physical discomfort. Anyhow, I do. I don’t care how tired I get for just this week, and I defy all the little insects in the world to make me enjoy myself less. So that is settled. And now I have one or two more questions, and then, if you please, we will call my sister in, and tell her.”
She leaned back again, and again covered her eyes with her hands. She was getting into more intimate lands now, and was silent a moment.
“Will this age me much?” she asked, “I mean, if I get well, shall I be an old woman? I am, as you know, much older than my husband, and if this will further increase the difference in our ages it might be better——”
Sir Thomas cut this short with some decision.
“It will do nothing of the kind,” he said. “If youdo as you are told, the very cure itself, which heals your disease, will rest you in other ways. When you are well again, you will be better in general health and younger than you are now. At least, I have often seen that happen. Only you must fight the little insects to the death. And you have a good chance of doing so.”
Again the hands came away from her eyes, and the shadow of the fear that had been there before was past away.
“Thank you, my dear friend,” she said. “Now, is Davos a dreadful place? Can a man be there much without being bored to death? And what is the shortest time in which you think I could get well?”
“I have known cures of cases far worse than yours being complete in a year, as far as the actual presence of disease goes. But that means a year of complete invalid life, passed at Davos, or perhaps at some higher place just for the summer months, without ever coming down into lower air.”
“You mean I mustn’t come to England for a year?” asked Edith.
“Not if you want to give yourself the best chance. Davos is delightful in the winter for any man who cares about outdoor sports, but I should say very dull when the ice goes.”
“And what is the risk of infection to others? Would it be better, I mean, for my husband, when he is at Davos to live in a hotel. I suppose I shall take a house, shall I not?”
“The risk would be unappreciable.”
“Or for my sister, or her children, or my baby?”
“There would be no risk if you are sensible about it.You would not, of course, well, kiss anybody. And there are other precautions as well, which of course you will observe.”
Edith nodded at him.
“Yes, I will be very sensible,” she said. “And now please call Peggy in, and I will tell her.”
“I will just examine your heart first,” he said. “It will not take more than a minute or two. I remember there was a little weakness.”
He was satisfied, however, with this.
“No, that is sound enough,” he said. “It is a little weak in its action, but there is nothing wrong. But, my dear lady, you have to concentrate all your forces to fight this new enemy. You must, you absolutely must avoid fatigue and worry.”
But she cut him short.
“Ah then, I must certainly go to Munich,” she said. “It will save me no end of worry. Now let us have Peggy in; I want to tell her at once.”
Peggy was but next door, and the summoning of her in took no longer than the opening of it. At present all she knew was that Edith wanted to get a clean bill of health before starting for Munich. She had confessed to fatigue, but had breathed to her sister no suspicion of her fear, and their coming up to town together was a plan that had been formed several weeks before. And though the length of time that she had been kept in the waiting-room, while Edith saw Sir Thomas alone, had a little disquieted her, yet the serenity of Edith’s face when she was admitted to his consulting-room, immensely reassured her. Then Sir Thomas closed the door behind her, and she sat down opposite her sister. Edith spoke:
“Dear Peggy,” she said, “I suppose I ought to breakit to you, but it’s so ridiculous to break things. I’ve got consumption. Isn’t it dreadful?”
Peggy looked at her blankly, and then this most unorthodox patient leaned back in her chair and burst into shouts of laughter. She simply could not help it, the blankness of Peggy’s face was so excruciatingly funny. Then the infection of the laughter caught her sister also, and they just sat and laughed. Once Peggy tried to compose her face, and said, “Oh, Edith!” in a trembling voice, but that set Edith off again till the tears streamed.
“Oh, I’m better!” she said at length. “But how funny it was. I should never be good at breaking things to people, should I, Sir Thomas? O Peggy, what a pity Hugh wasn’t here, too! He loves laughing. Yes, and we’re going to Munich just as we planned, and after that I go to Davos for a whole year. Then, if I am good, perhaps I shall be quite well again, and younger and better than I am now. That will be an advantage.”
“Oh, my darling,” said Peggy. “I am so—so—there are no words.”
“No, it was much better to laugh. Fancy there being a humorous side to consumption. What a good thing! And since Sir Thomas has allowed me to go to Munich, I shall not tell Hughie till afterward. And from there I go straight to Davos, and behave too beautifully. That is a fair statement of our interview, is it not, Sir Thomas? Now, Peggy, we must go home to lunch. I am so hungry.”
But the doctor could not quite let this pass.
“I’ve been doing my utmost to persuade Mrs. Grainger not to go to Munich,” he said. “Will she listen to you?”
“Not for a single instant,” said Edith.
“My dear lady, be serious for a moment.”
Edith rose.
“Oh, don’t make me laugh again,” she said. “Good-bye, Sir Thomas, you are the kindest man in the world. Please come and see me to-morrow, and tell me whom I shall be under, and all about it. I must have a house there. I hate hotels. Perhaps we had better go to a hotel first, until we can get something to suit us. And you and the children, Peggy, are coming out to stay with me, but I mustn’t kiss you. Sir Thomas, since I am to be idle by your orders, you will probably receive some time next year a small book with the compliments of the author, called ‘Our Life in High Altitudes.’”
They got into the brougham that was waiting and drove off. Then in spite of orders Peggy turned to her sister and kissed her.
“You blessed darling,” she said. “But, oh, Edith, don’t be so splendid about it, or you will break my heart.”
Edith still had that radiant look with which she had heard her sentence.
“Splendid?” she said. “I’m not splendid. I am behaving exactly as I feel inclined. Is it odd, do you think? I don’t. Besides, what would be the use of curling up and snivelling? I’m not made like that.”
“No, you dear,” said Peggy, half-sobbing, “that’s just it. That’s just the splendidness that makes me cry.”
Edith took her sister’s hand.
“Ah, don’t Peggy!” she said. “Don’t let us give way for a single second if we can help. Don’t let us ever think about giving way, or else that will become natural. I won’t. I won’t! I will not!” she said with great emphasis.
There was silence a moment, then Edith spoke again.
“Now I shall sit out on my balcony all afternoon,” she said, “and hold this all in front of me, till I am quite certain that I fully realise it. And then, Peggy, this evening I will talk it over with you just once, and from then until—until the time that I am well again, we will never allude to it any more.”
“Yes, dear,” said she.
Then Edith’s face broadened into a great smile again.
“And, oh, what a beautiful laugh we had,” she said. “I can truly say in the future, if I am very much amused about something, ‘I haven’t laughed so much since they told me I had consumption.’”
“Don’t, don’t!” said Peggy.
Peggy, even in September, was full of business. There was a factory to be visited, a school of work to be inspected, and a “home” where surprise-descents were distinctly good for the matron, who was not wholly satisfactory, and it was not till after six that she got back to Rye House. But busy though she had been, it had required all her force and determination to get through her errands, for her mind kept flying back like a released spring to Edith, whom she had left sitting out in the warm autumn sunshine, facing what she had been told, adjusting, as she would have to do, her mind and her whole self to new conditions. When Peggy got back, they were to have their talk, just the one talk.
The hours had passed quickly for Edith, and if anyone had watched her, not knowing what occupied her mind so intensely, he would have said that here was a woman with a true gift of lotus-eating, so quietly she sat, so content to do nothing whatever. Once or twice only in those hours did anything of a disquieting nature seem to cross her mind, and even then a couple of sharp-drawn breaths, or a sudden look as of pain or fright inher eyes, soon past, was all the surface sign of it. And at the end, when she heard Peggy’s motor draw up at the door, it was with the same patient and smiling content, which for the most of the afternoon had lain like sunlight on her face, that she went downstairs.
The two had tea together in Peggy’s sitting-room, and then Edith took her favourite chair and spoke. Again there was no transition possible from the topics of the day which had occupied them at tea, and she began without preamble.
“Yes, dear, I have thought it all out,” she said, “and I know at this moment just how I feel about it, and what I hope I shall continue to feel. Peggy, it is so simple; big things always are, I think. Isn’t that a blessing? Now I shall begin at the beginning, not like Hugh’s stories, which begin in the middle, and go on till I get to the end, and then I shall stop. I don’t want you to say anything at all. It’s my innings.”
“Peggy, I don’t want to die, and I don’t intend to die if I can help. I want and mean to get well, and I shall do all I can to get well. But when one is told that one has consumption, one has to realise that it may mean that one is not going to get well. So about dying. You must take care of Hugh, won’t you? And you must make him marry again. I tell you that because—oh, my dear, the flesh is so strong—though I mean to tell him that myself if I find I am getting worse instead of better, I can’t be certain that I shall be able to. All that is at all decent in me will urge me to tell him, but there is a lot in me that isn’t, and I find, and shall find, it difficult to think of him as another woman’s husband. And perhaps my tongue will quite refuse to ask him to promise that he will marry again. So I ask you to tell him in case I don’t.
“That is the most important thing if I die. And, oh, Peggy, if I am to die, pray that it may come quick, and pray that I shall not be afraid. I hope I shall not, but one can’t tell. And pray that my darling will be with me when it comes, that his face will be the last I see here. Just as I know—oh, how I know it—that when he joins me, mine will be the first that he sees on the other side.
“Then this afternoon I wondered also how matters could be arranged, what about Dennis? And as I couldn’t possibly know, it was no use thinking about that.”
“Peggy, next to Hugh and baby, you are the person I am most sorry to leave. Don’t miss me too much although I should be frantic if I thought you wouldn’t. And remember that if I die, I now, in my sober senses, bless and praise God for the exquisite happiness I have had. I should have loved to have had other children, to have seen them grow up; I can’t help being sorry, if that is not to be. That is why I don’t want to die. But, oh, what a splendid time I have had. I thank God for it. Remember that.”
Edith had been speaking again with her hands over her eyes just as she had spoken to the doctor this morning, but here she took them away, and grasped one of her sister’s hands in both hers.
“And one thing more about dying, and I have done,” she said. “You mustn’t let it hurt you to hear me talk of it, Peggy. It is just this. You know how you dissuaded me from marrying Hugh, saying the years which made me old would leave him young. Well, perhaps you were right, and perhaps this is the solution of it. If so, I am quite content. I would infinitely rather die than have that wintry tragedy. I just want to assure you of that, and that is all about dying.”
Edith sat silent a moment, and Peggy could not speak, for it was all she could do not to break into open weeping. Had Edith been less gallant, less courageous of soul, she could have consoled and strengthened her. But she stood in no need of that; and the tears that stood in Peggy’s eyes were more of love and admiration than of pity.
Then Edith rose.
“Now all that is gone,” she said. “We put it all behind us; it is not to be. I am going to live, and, oh, my dear, do you know what that old angel, Sir Thomas, told me? He said that if I got well as I intend to do—I should be younger and better than I am now. There is the other solution. I would dearly like to renew my youth a little, to have the health and vigour of the past year over again for a few years more. That is worth living for. Some day I shall write a list of things worth living for. There are heaps of them. Sunshine and snow, and Hugh, and music and you, and ‘Gambits’ and baby. Those are only the first few that occur to me, but there are about twenty million others and I am going to live for them all. They are ‘Things in General,’ in fact, which we spoke of the other day, and are all delightful. As you said, one has to make them part of you. And I am going to do exactly what I am told, and leave nothing undone that can help to make me well, and do nothing that can stand in the way of that. Ah, I forgot Munich! But please don’t argue about Munich. I intend to go there. Also, Peggy, I am going to tell Hugh a lie about it. I shall tell him that Sir Thomas said it couldn’t possibly hurt me, in fact, that he recommended me to go. Otherwise, you see, Hugh will think it very wrong of me not to have told him first, so that he might refuse to go. I daresay it is wrong, and it is also selfish, because I am doing it simply for mypleasure. But I don’t care. I will start being good next Tuesday week, and not before. Oh, and one more arrangement! I wish you would take care of baby and his nurse until we get settled at Davos.”
“Why, of course!” said Peggy.
“That is dear of you. And you must come out with the children and be with us a great deal, both for Hugh’s sake and mine. Oh, Peggy, Hugh mustn’t get bored, and I don’t see how to help it. He mustn’t stop with me out there after the ice goes. I can’t cut into his life like that. Ah! well—one needn’t think about that yet. And, my dear, if ever you see me faltering and being cowardly or despondent or ungrateful, try not to notice it. It won’t be me: it will be these nasty little insects. I shall be doing my best! I promise you that. And that is all, I think.”
Again she held out her hands for Peggy, but that would not do for Peggy.
“Ah! you mustn’t kiss me,” cried Edith. “I promised not to kiss anybody.”
But Peggy clung to her.
“Thank God for people like you!” she said.
Hugh was to arrive (and did so) next day, for he and his wife were starting from town the morning after for Munich, and he arrived rather in the manner of a loquacious whirlwind in the middle of lunch. He greeted neither Peggy nor Edith, but waved a telegraphic form at them.
“I’ve got to say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ at once!” he cried. “It was handed to me at the station at Mannington, but I couldn’t reply before I saw you, Edith, as Munich is your treat. Burgmann is ill, and they ask if I will sing ‘Tristan’ on Monday week in his place. Yes, atMunich, of course, I said so. Heavens! Do you grasp the inwardness of this sacred fact? An Englishman asked to sing ‘Tristan’ in Germany, to the high ge-born Tedeschi! Lord, what fun! I shall go mad, as Mr. Tree said. But how frightfullychicit would be to say ‘No.’ Yes, chicken, please.”
He sat down and turned to Edith.
“It’s our last evening there,” he said, “and it’s the last performance of the cycle. Which shall we do? Shall we sing, or shall we see? I want you to settle.”
Edith took the prepaid form which Hugh had been waving about with the other.
“I don’t settle,” she said; “it settles itself. Of course you sing. Please have this sent at once, will you, Peggy?”
“Oh! but that’s rather sudden,” said Hugh. “You don’t consider me. I shall have no more fun now until it’s over. No cigarettes, no anything but scales. It may be awfully nice for you—I say, that sounds so gloriously conceited, but I won’t alter it—but it will absolutely spoil Munich for me.”
“Oh! Hughie, it crowns it for both of us,” said she.
“I travelled up with Mrs. Owen,” said Hugh, eating very rapidly, “and I think she’s going to the dogs, and if so, it’s your influence Edith. She smoked a cigarette in the train. I don’t think your influence is a very good one. You domineer, too: you domineer most frightfully. That sending of the telegram was mere brute force.”
“But you told me to settle. I did so. Why, Hugh, it is the most gorgeous thing that ever happened. It’s the best birthday present I ever received.”
Hugh dropped his knife and fork with a crash, and jumped up.
“Why, I remembered this morning,” he said, “and that silly telegram drove it out of my head again. Edith, my darling, many, many happy returns——”
He bent over her to kiss her, and, forgetful for the moment, she raised her face to his. Then, and it was like a stab to her, she remembered. Hugh’s face was close to hers, his lips all but touched her.
“Ah! no,” she cried quickly; “you mustn’t kiss me. I’ve—I’ve got a cold, and if I gave it you, you might not be able to sing. Thank you, dear, a thousand times, for your good wishes.”
Hugh looked at her for a moment in mild astonishment.
“As if I cared,” he said.
“Ah, but I do,” said Edith. “You catch cold so easily, too.”
Hugh went back to his seat.
“I don’t like your having colds,” he said, “independently of the fact that I mayn’t kiss you on your birthday. You had one in August; now you’ve got another. I’ve a good mind—” And then he stopped.
“Hugh, it’s very rude to begin sentences and not finish them,” said Peggy.
“Yes, isn’t it? By the way, all my music is down at Mannington. I must go and get a copy of ‘Tristan’ this afternoon, as I shall have to begin learning it up again at once. What are my ladies going to do?”
Peggy, it appeared, was at leisure, and offered to drive him where he wanted in the motor; Edith had “things,” so she comprehensively expressed it, and was at nobody’s disposal till tea. This, as a matter of fact, suited Hugh’s “good mind” very well, and soon after lunch he set out with Peggy. But no sooner were they alone than he announced a strangely disconcerting manœuvre.
“Yes, let’s go and get ‘Tristan’ first,” he said, “and then I want you to drop me at Sir Thomas Ransom’s. Edith’s got no business to have colds. I shall get him to come and see her. I’ve several times thought she wasn’t very well, but she always said she was. Do you think she’s well, Peggy?”
This was awkward, but after an extremely rapid consideration, Peggy concluded that she had a prior engagement of secrecy to Edith, which entailed what is elegantly called “diplomacy,” in dealing with Hugh.
“No, since you ask me, I don’t,” she began.
“Then, why didn’t you tell me?”
After all diplomatic truth would serve her purpose. And she proceeded to use extremely misleading accuracy.
“Because Edith knows it herself,” she said; “and as a matter of fact, went to see Sir Thomas yesterday, so there is no need for you to go. In any case, Hugh, you can’t spring a doctor on a grown-up person, as if she was a child. But I know she saw Sir Thomas yesterday. In fact”—Peggy paused a moment, wondering how far astray truth-telling would lead her—“in fact, I went with her.”
“And what did he say?” asked Hugh, with inconvenient abruptness.
Peggy looked firmly out of the window.
“Oh! what doctors always say; avoid over-excitement and curried prawns, and hot rooms and fatigue.”
“Then, did he know she was going to Munich?”
“Yes; oh, yes—I am certain of that! He—he encouraged her to go.”
Peggy was beginning to feel slightly feverish with the strain of this, and there was a heartache in every word. But she had promised secrecy, and secrecy implied that she would do her best that Hugh shouldsuspect nothing. But it was rather hard work, for Hugh showed no sign of being tired of questioning her. Diplomatic truth, too, having served its turn, was discarded, and diplomatic inexactitude had become necessary.
“She needed encouragement, then,” said Hugh. “She felt not quite up to it.”
“Not at all. She wanted to go very much, and he encouraged her, as I said.”
The motor stopped at this moment by the music shop where Hugh was to buy “Tristan,” and he got out.
“I shan’t be a minute,” he said. “Will you wait for me and drive me to Harley Street?”
For a moment after Hugh had left her Peggy seriously considered the propriety of telling the worse lie, breaking the previous engagement. She knew quite well that what she and Sir Thomas had been unable to do Hugh could do with the utmost ease. In a moment Edith would consent to go to Davos at once if Hugh wished it, but Hugh, in order to wish it, had to know what Peggy knew and was bound not to tell him. Yet her mind hesitated between the two courses, and for the first minute of waiting she had no idea whether she would break faith to Edith or really lie—properly lie to Hugh. She had seen that he was already more than half way toward suspicion. Either she had to quiet that by really magnificent lying, or by lying, quite as magnificent, break faith with her sister, and tell him all. Then, too, he was determined to see Sir Thomas. Perhaps Sir Thomas might not see his way to lying, if Hugh asked, as he probably would, more of these direct questions. And if Sir Thomas was to tell him, it was clearly much better that she should do so first. If anybody was to tell the truth, she had much better be the first to tell it.
And then the determining factor came into her mind,and that was the freedom and individuality of all persons. When vital matters, matters of life and death and love, came on to the stage, the ordering of the stage, the ordering of the crowd, the lights, the whole arrangement, must be made to fit the chief actor. Edith on this half-tragic, half-triumphant stage that was set for her had chosen the manner of the enactment. Peggy was but a figure in the crowd; Edith ordered her to stand thus, and to do thus, and to say thus. It was Edith’s show. She had ordered Hugh also into his place, that place where her heart was. And her lover, her beloved, had to obey no less than Peggy. This week of Munich was ordained. Edith knew the risks she ran, and she chose to run them, and, after all, it was her business. It might be expensive, but it was fine. It was young, too—gloriously, unwisely young—so young that it made Peggy feel dreadfully old. There was no calculation about it, no counting of cost. Edith was willing to risk anything to have the week she wanted, the week of the boisterous, unsuspecting Hugh. Oh! that passionate enjoyment of the pleasure of somebody else! The seven veils of the sanctuary lift there. It was the abandonment of love; and whether the tragedy to be paid for was long weeks of lingering illness, or any other supreme torture, the price was cheap. Peggy divined that; Edith knew it. And mentally Peggy abased herself when the light of that vision shone upon her, as it did while she waited in Berners Street for Hugh.
He did not keep her waiting long, and Peggy at once began to weave the web of the deceit that was forced on her. Few people had had less practice in that difficult art than she, and as she conducted this piece of diplomacy, she felt that she really must have a great natural gift that way. At the same time she rememberedhaving been diplomatic to Hugh over the question of their going to Mannington in the summer, and her diplomacy had been blessed with singular success. Now she had two objects in view, one that Hugh should not go to Sir Thomas, the other that the vague uneasiness that was certainly rising, mist-like, from his mind should be dispelled. Edith should have the sunny week that her soul desired, and for that an unanxious, unsuspecting Hugh was necessary. She should have him, if Peggy could procure him.
“Such a wise idea of yours to go and see Sir Thomas!” she said, with extraordinary craft, “because he will certainly laugh at you, and that perhaps will set your mind at ease. And it’s most important that it should be at rest. Really it matters more than anything else.”
“Why? How is that?” asked Hugh.
“Oh! dear me, how stupid men are! Can’t you see that Edith is looking forward to Munich with the keenest, most vivid anticipations? Well, at the risk of making you more conceited than you are already, I will tell you why. It’s because she is going to be alone with you and your enjoyment. There is nothing in the world she loves as much as seeing you have a good time. And it will spoil it all for her if you are uneasy and causelessly anxious. That’s why I urge you to see Sir Thomas.”
This had a very distinct effect on Hugh.
“My seeing Sir Thomas is nothing,” he said. “But I felt as if you were keeping something back. Can’t you tell me what he said?”
“I can’t go into medical details,” said Peggy; “but I can tell you this, that when Edith called me in after she had consulted him and told me what he had said we both simply sat and roared with laughter. And I rather think he joined.”
Hugh gave a great sigh of relief, and Peggy ejaculated “God forgive me!” below her breath.
“Oh, why didn’t you tell me that?” he said.
“Because I thought it so much better that you should see Sir Thomas,” said Peggy quite glibly.
Hugh turned on her.
“You have the making of a diplomatist,” he said. “What’s the use of my seeing Sir Thomas now you have told me that? And Edith really looks forward to Munich, and it will spoil it if I’m not in tearing spirits? Lord! I won’t spoil it. Where shall we go instead?”
“The Zoo,” said Peggy without hesitation.
Hugh called the changed direction out of the window to the chauffeur, and sat silent awhile.
“After all, it was absurd of me to think there could be anything wrong,” he said, “or of course she would have told me.”
Peggy sighed, an elaborate, effective sigh.
“I was wondering when that would occur to you,” she observed.
Hugh let this pass.
“So I’ve just got to—to shout and sing?” he asked.
“Yes, if you want Edith to have a good time. I can tell you, too, that I have never seen her look forward with such pleasure to anything as this Munich trip. It’s taken her fancy.”
“I’m her man, then,” said Hugh.
Peggy thought it incumbent on her to tell Edith what had occurred, feeling that she might view this deliberate deception in a different light to the mere concealment which was all that she had contemplated. But Edith poured scorn on her scruples.
“Peggy, you are a true friend!” she said, “and howeasily you seem to have—well, told the truth. It’s quite Bismarckian. Have you been practising lately?”
Peggy was slowly pulling off her gloves.
“No, I don’t think I have,” she said. “Oh! I was diplomatic with Hugh once in the summer, I remember, and I rather enjoyed it. But, oh! Edith, it gave me the heartache this afternoon. And what will Hugh think of me when he knows?”
“He will think that you have been a true friend to me,” said her sister. “He will love you for it when—when he understands. Ah! but we are on forbidden ground again.”
Edith paused.
“I remember once talking to you about Hugh’s first appearance in town,” she said. “I told you then that if he failed, which was impossible, I should not be sorry, because I would have to comfort him again, and make him happy. Well, that is closer to me now. When I tell him what Sir Thomas told me yesterday he will want that comfort. But now he will really want it, for I am more to him than his art.”
Edith gently smoothed the sofa cushion beside her.
“I am—I really am!” she said.
. . . . . . . .
The dressing-gong sounded sonorously and its echoes died into silence.
“You will see,” said Edith.
EDITH finished writing the words “gigantic success,” and then laid down her pen, having filled the very small space allotted to correspondence on a picture postcard that bore on its back a highly-coloured view of the opera-house in Munich, and on the space allotted to the address the name of Peggy. Then she tore it up. She wanted to say more than that to Peggy, and though she was tired, she felt she must write her a letter which should give her in less meagre quantity (and in quality things more private than could be sent face upward through Europe) some little impression of the week that had elapsed since she left England. And in order to do that she found that she must arrange and sound her thoughts and her memory, for she had lived simply from the minute to the minute, enjoying each to the uttermost, yet somehow not grudging their passage, for each was sufficient in itself.
Her windows were wide open, but the sun had slanted westward, so that the balcony outside was in shade, though ever so little way beyond the white glare fell on the road with its avenue of dusty trees. Though September was near to its end, and during the first three days of their stay here there had been cold and frosty nights, it seemed as if the sun had repented of his winter-heralding withdrawal, and had come back to give them a few hours more of summer days. And at this moment it struck Edith, yet with no touch of sadness, how like to this beneficent return of June-like heat was her own case. In London, ten days ago, the forerunning footof winter had struck her, yet now in her life, no less than in the ordering of the season of the year, summer with shout and banners renewed for a moment its miracle. Outside it was hot and windless and dry, and as she moved to her window she drew in a long breath of the eternal, unfading air. There even the sensitive leaves of the white poplars were still; there was but little traffic in the street, the awnings below her room and above her balcony neither stirred nor flapped in the blazing tranquillity. Calm, omnipotent summer reigned. And to-night Hugh was to sing in “Tristan.”
It was not in Munich, so she felt, it was not on the Cornish coast, it was not by the banks of the Scheldt or the Pegnitz, nor even in the giant-built towers of Walhalla, that she had lived during this week that would come to a close to-night. She and Hugh had lived far away from any human place, yet in a place that, lovers and music-lovers, each had felt to be his own, and more familiar and dear than any other home. Heart and treasure lay there, and even Walhalla was leagues, immeasurable leagues, below it. Trouble and anxiety and fear were strangers to it, or at the most (and that only for one of them) lay as some thunderstorm in an Alpine valley lies far below the feet and the eyes of those who have climbed above it into the clear, passionate altitudes that are domed in sky and floored by ice. All week long they had mounted, mounted through the fine austere air; and life, all they knew of life, had been put in a crucible and distilled for their drinking. All that was to be, whatever that was, had for these days been expunged from memory and from anticipation; it had been all to sit on this rose-coloured peak, hand-entwined, without seeing the troubled cloud below, without hearing the thunder and the voices that cried out of it. She haddetermined not to think of the descent, not to conjecture about the dangers and misty passages of the journey till the time for descent had come. It would come to-night, but before it came there would come the divinest hour of all, the rosiest flames of sunset, when she would sit in the hushed house and hear....
The week had been her treat to Hugh, and the compact had been that he should ask no questions. Possibly it was child-like, possibly it was a barbaric notion of hospitality; but it had given her enormous pleasure to throw money about for him, to take the most expensive suite of rooms, to have masses of fresh flowers in day after day, to have a really smart carriage always waiting, to have meals in a private dining-room. Somehow, on the material plane, infinitesimal though it all was, she wanted to express that which so filled and flooded her; she would have liked to furnish this room afresh, to have railings of gold for the balconies and frescoes for the walls, and then at the end of the week to burn and destroy it all. She had, in fact, gone as far as was consistent with sanity, but not being insane had not gone farther.
Tired! Oh! how tired she had been again and again, and how indomitably she had spurned fatigue! The glory, the jest of it, too! Again and again Hugh had said that he really must, if she didn’t mind, lie down and rest, if he was to keep awake during the opera. She had beaten him at his own game, at youth, and time and again he had confessed as much. He had even confided to her his projected errand to Sir Thomas on their last day in London, in order to satisfy himself that she was “up to Munich.” Now it was he who had wondered if he was. But all the time she had clung to her supposed cold; she had insisted that she had a reallybad one, and that she would not permit Hugh the least risk of catching it. And at such moments a cloud came over her sun, there was an echo of heart-breaking things from the valley below, and hunger on these heights.
Yes; fear had been there; she knew that her ears had heard that echo and her heart had felt that hunger, though for a stray moment or two only. As quick as hands could move her fingers had stopped her ears, and nimbly had put before her heart the feast that was spread for it now. And it was only of the perfection of the present hour that she wrote to Peggy; no hint of the coming winter was there, though measured by the actual lapse of minutes it was but an hour or two before summer would cease. But before summer ceased she would see Tristan once more, her Tristan.
By the time her letter to Peggy was finished it was time for her to dress for the opera. Hugh had already gone down to the house, and she had a little soup and a cutlet only, for, as usual, they were going to have supper together after the opera. To-night, however, since Hugh was going to sing, he had eaten nothing for some hours before, and their supper was to be of substantial nature. She had planned it all; she had ordered the dishes that she liked as well as he. They were going to have some cold soup, a dish of blue trout, a partridge, and a savoury. All this was bathed in the setting rays of this last day of summer sun; it would illumine, too, their coffee, and the cigarette which Hugh would smoke with it. And during that cigarette, so she determined, summer was to cease. It was then she would tell him.
For a moment, as she dressed for the opera, shewondered how he would take it. It was worse for him than her; her whole attitude toward life and her instinct told her that with the same certainty with which she knew that it was easier, vastly easier for her to know that she had consumption than it would have been to learn that Hugh had. That was what love meant; just that one simple fact that to the woman who loves, her husband is more truly herself than she. That was no news to her; she had known it ever since she had known Hugh. And it could not have been true of her if it had not been true of him also. Oh, poor Hugh, poor Hugh!
Then with complete erasure she banished the thoughts of what that hour round about midnight this evening would bring. She was still in love with life, with the huge exultant happiness that is the birthright of clean and normal souls who love another. Such happiness, the highest and the best of all earthly bliss, is no niggardly distillation of human life; to produce it a hundred or a myriad souls have not to be boiled down in torment of fire or refined through starvation of joy so that, basil-like, it may put forth its flowers from roots that have been enriched with the life-blood and tears of the many, nor is it rare or recondite and only to be perceived by the Æolian harps of the world. Instead it is a common, common bliss; none seek it or strain after it, but there are but few who do not find it. Her sweet simple soul loved Hugh; Hugh, as simple as herself, loved her. And if shadows of the dark valley were near, that would be the all-sufficing lamp which would dissipate them.
Then crowning this crown, which was hers, was a further gem-like circlet. To him the supreme gift of song had been given, to her the supremacy of appreciation....And it was time to go downstairs and drive to the opera to hear “Tristan.”
. . . . . . . .
It had been arranged that, since the opera-house was so close to their hotel, she should not wait for Hugh when it was over, but come straight home, and she waited there some time before he joined her in an exultation of happiness. The ceasing of summer, which was now so close in the measure of minutes, not hours any longer, was banished from her consciousness. Hugh and Tristan, inextricably intermingled, usurped it all. She tried to reconstruct the events of the evening, and found them misty. She only knew that the audience, German, instinctively opposed to an English artist, but critical, lancet-like, and, after all, when their emotions were roused, fair, had lost their heads. Fat London had been moved over Hugh’s Lohengrin; but Germany, not fat, like London, in matters of perception and appreciation, had been much more than moved.
What had happened exactly?... The end of the first act? Yes, Hugh had been nervous, quite obviously nervous, and had not done himself justice, nor had he done justice to the gloriousrôlefor which he was cast. And then? Edith had sent round a note to him, saying:
“My darling, I am playing Isolde, and I don’t find you. Isolde, Isolde.”
And a note had come back to her.
“I’m so nervous I can’t do anything. But I’ll try, Isolde.”
It appeared that he had tried. As the curtain went down on the second act the theatre rose as if the Emperor had entered. But it was Hugh.
It was Hugh in the third act. Hugh! And criticalGermany during the third act committed a unique fault of taste. It had been foreshadowed in a way, because once and again as Tristan yearned for the coming of the ship a sort of under-breathed groan had gone through the packed house. Then, when Tristan had sung his last note, the interruption occurred. The play was stopped; the orchestra, inaudible beneath the shouts, were stopped also, and a huge roar of applause went up, damning the artistic reputation of Munich for years to come. “Tristan! Tristan!” was the cry. But to Edith the cry was “Hugh!”
Ah! but how proud she was of him then, not for that which he had done, but for that which he did not do. He had fallen, loose jointed, and lay with face toward the house, and not a quiver of eyelash, not a movement of the nightingale throat, not a curl of his mouth answered the thunder of the applause. Edith had not, even when that thunder rose to its highest, been afraid that he would respond, but it was glorious to her to see how still he lay. An almost irresistible appeal had come from the thousand throats, but the artist since it was personal, since it was to his voice and his personality to which it was made, was utterly unconscious of it. Tristan, who he was, lay dead. Soon after Isolde sang theLiebestod.
“The death song,” thought Edith. “What if I sing another? Oh, Hugh, Hugh!”
It was then that Hugh came in, as she sat in the window, while the table laid for their supper stood ready. Munich had gone mad about him, and from where she sat in the window she had heard the distant roar that had greeted him as he came out of the theatre, which had grown gradually louder and louder till now the square outside was packed with the music-mad. She hadguessed at once what that distant roar meant, and her guess had grown into certainty as it grew louder and nearer. And Hugh came in.
“Ah! your note to me,” he said—“it was that. Oh! isn’t it fun? I told you it would be! And they took the horses out and dragged me, the darlings!”
The agitated proprietor tapped and entered, and a short conference ensued. The upshot was that if the high-born would of his graciousness show himself or sing on the balcony, all would be well, otherwise the inhabitants of the hotel might have a night that began very late. If the high-born gave permission, the proprietor would announce the fact.
“But I’m so hungry!” said Hugh.
The proprietor had been present at the opera.
“I beseech you!” he said.
“Yes, Hugh,” said Edith.
“Then you will come with me?” asked Hugh.
Ah! but how the summer sun blazed then. She but nodded to him, and with a reverence of extraordinary amplitude to them both, the proprietor shouted a few guttural words from the balcony. Then he bowed and came back into the room.
Hugh took Edith’s arm.
“Together,” he said; and together they went out on to the balcony. The night was windless, and the flame of the gas-lamps burned without wavering. The whole square was packed with faces, and full of a low hubbub of talk. But when the two appeared the hubbub ceased and silence like an incoming tide spread everywhere. Then Hugh turned quickly to the proprietor.
“Hi! did you say I was going to sing?” he asked.
“I said it was possible. A thousand pardons,” said this perfidious man, manœuvring into a better place.
Hugh drew a long breath, and with his arm in Edith’s stepped on to the edge of the balcony. Then he turned side-face to the crowd, unlinked his arm from hers, and took both her hands in his. He did not look out over the crowd; he looked at her. And he sang:
“Du meine Seele, du mein Herz.”
At the end there was dead silence, for he unloosed one of his hands and held it to the crowd.
“Good-night, friends,” he said in good, firm German; “and we are all going to sleep. Hush! Thank you.”
Then he took Edith’s arm again, and they went back to the waiting supper. The window, through which they had entered again, he had left wide open, but the only sound that came in was the movement of feet dispersing.
“And that was the best of all, Hughie!” said she.
Edith could not quite rise to the superficial heights of gaiety during their supper, but it was even more impossible for her to rise—or sink—to any tragic level. Some equable level was there; she neither feared what she had to tell, nor did she rise to it by any exaltation of spirit that commanded her to think that nothing mattered, when happiness shone like this. Life and death and sickness and health in her mind took their natural level; all of them were to her the commonplace of souls that lived; to every soul these things happened; they were all on the same plane, because they were so big.
Just as she had anticipated, Hugh took a cigarette with his coffee, and she watched the burning ash get nearer to his fingers. When it got quite close she would speak. At present it was half an inch off. So she still talked of that of which they had talked.
“But why Tristan did not come to life when theLiebestodwas sung over him,” she said, “is what I cannot imagine. Surely it was enough to make the dead live.”
“Sing it over me, then,” said Hugh, “when you watch by my corpse. I will come to life, I promise you, which is more than I did to-night. What Vandals, to interrupt like that!”
“Yes, Vandals,” said she; “but I didn’t feel surprised.”
“O, that’s all rot,” said Hugh. “But how I loved the interruption, and how I longed to open one eyelid. But I didn’t.”
“No, you didn’t.”
Hugh leaned forward over the table, his eyes and his hands toward his wife.
“My life!” he said. “How stupid that sort of phrase used to sound until one knew that it was true. My life! Yes, I look at you, my life; that has become literally true. Oh, true in big ways and small ways alike.”
The cigarette was getting shorter, and Hugh took a long inhalation of it, and flipped off a piece of charred paper.
“Yes, big ways and small ways,” he repeated. “Big ways, because you gave me myself, which is you, and small ways because I sang to-night, both in the silly opera-house and on that silly balcony, because I was you. Don’t you understand? Sometimes I think you don’t and it is so odd that you shouldn’t.”
Still Edith was silent, for she would have to speak very soon now, and without a pause Hugh went on—
“Considering that it is you who made me begin to understand,” he said, “it is odd that you shouldn’t know what you have done. I don’t know who and whatyou are, or who or what I am, but I do know that we are It. It, life, call it what you please. And how is your cold?” he asked suddenly, placing his cigarette-end in his coffeecup.
The burning ash hissed in protest, and was still. Then Edith answered him.
“It isn’t any better, Hughie,” she said. “It won’t be better for a long time. Are you comfortable there? If not, let us move, because I have to talk to you.”
Once before she remembered having said to Peggy that she almost wanted Hugh to be unhappy so that she might comfort him, for she knew, or thought she knew, that she could always do that. But she had to make him unhappy first—strike this dreadful blow. Already, so to speak, he had seen her arm raised against him in the few words she had just spoken: he knew that some blow impended, and though his face was still eager and vivid, the expression on it seemed suddenly fixed. He waited—tense, rigid, while his hand that had just dropped the cigarette-end into his cup turned over at the wrist, like a dead hand, and dropped on to the table-cloth. Then he spoke below his breath.
“Quick—tell me quickly,” he said; “I can bear anything except waiting.”
She took the hand that lay on the table-cloth in both of hers, but it still lay, as if dead, not responding to her pressure.
“I have got consumption,” she said.
Hugh drew back his head a moment, blinking and wincing as if from a physical blow, and summer stopped.
Neither moved, neither spoke. Edith, having struck the inevitable blow, laid down the weapon, and her soul stood waiting, so to speak, listening eagerly for Hugh to call to her in his pain, so that she might go to himand comfort him and bind up the wound she had made. There was nothing nearer to her heart than that, nothing that she so desired, and nothing of all that had been could be so exquisite. Summer might have stopped, but on this winter’s day there was splendour of sun and snow. She had not foreseen that.
But just yet Hugh could not call to her, he could not even need her yet, for he was dizzy and reeling with the blow. He had no power to move: the very fact that a moment before all the depths of his nature—all the strength of his love for her—had been so dominant, so triumphant, made this paralysis the more complete. And in this stunning of his true and essential self, the surface perception, the mere habitual work of eyes and ears and touch seemed suddenly quickened, just as Edith’s had been when Sir Thomas told her this same thing. A little odour as of caramel came from the cup where he had dropped his cigarette-end, from the sugar no doubt, which had been burned before the sweet dregs quenched the red-hot ash: as his hand turned over on to the table-cloth he had knocked the spoon out of the saucer, and the clink of it as it fell sounded in his ears more clearly than even those four words which Edith had spoken. The lace curtains by the window out of which so short a time ago he and Edith had stepped on to the balcony just stirred in a little breeze that had arisen during the last half-hour; on the mantelpiece a striking clock jarred to show the hour was approaching. And the touch of Edith’s hands on his meant no more to him than would the touch of any other hand have meant. Hands touched him, anybody’s hands. Eyes looked at him, too, from that beloved face opposite, but they were anybody’s eyes, it was anybody’s face.
Then the sensitiveness of surface-perception grew alittle deadened as the paralysis of the internal perception began, very slowly, starting from the surface and working gradually inward, to pass off.
“And we were so happy!” he said.
So he was beginning to need her.
“Yes, thank God, my darling,” said she. “Let us often think how happy we have been.”
He could not receive, assimilate more than that at once. It was for the moment no use, so she felt, to speak hopefully, determinedly of the future, of her unquenchable resolve to get well. He would be ready for that soon, but not quite yet, poor darling. So she waited.
“When did you know?” asked he quietly.
“Just before we left London. I could not do without this beautiful week we have just had, Hughie. So I did not tell you till it was over.”
“Then—then your having a cold meant that?” he asked.
“Yes.”
Hugh pushed back his chair with sudden vehemence, got up, and roughly, strongly, so that she was both hurt and startled, flung his arms round her, pinioning hers, and kissed her. He devoured her face with kisses, eyes and mouth, forehead and hair and neck were sealed with the redness and fervour of his lips. It was vain for her to struggle with this almost savage outburst of love; it was in vain for her to remonstrate, for he stopped her breath with his. Yet she tried; but, oh, how sweet it was to find her struggle, her remonstrance, useless. How during this last ten days she had missed and yearned for the caress of his eager breath, the roughness and smoothness of his face, his eyes burning close to hers as they burned now. And for him that physicalcontact which the tumult of his love demanded shook off the paralysis and the stunning. It was as if a man struck by apoplexy had had his blood let, as in the primitive surgery of old days. It was this strong flow of it that restored him to himself.
“Oh, my soul, my soul,” he whispered, “to think that you have borne it alone. Thank God, that is over. But you cut me to the heart in not telling me. I didn’t deserve that from you.”
His lip quivered, his eyes were brimming with tears that soon ran over, and it was she who kissed them away. Just for that moment she could not help it. “Be sensible, not kiss anybody”—the words of the doctor sounded like gibberish. Hugh was crying, the doctor did not allow for that contingency. Nothing in the world mattered at this moment but that she should comfort him. He had never cried before, as far as she knew, and the sobs came from so deep within him.
“Oh, if it was selfish, forgive me,” she said; “but it was not thus that I meant it. I did want one week more so much, my darling, one week to crown all the others.”
She had told Peggy that she meant quite distinctly to lie to Hugh, to tell him that Sir Thomas had recommended her to go to Munich. But quite suddenly she found she could not lie to him. No question arose in her mind as to the morality of telling the truth or the immorality of falsehood. It was not a moral choice that was now flashed before her, it was a mere question of what was possible and what was not.
“It has crowned the others,” she said, “and I am exultant that we have got it. Oh, Hughie, we have captured this week, snatched it from all the foolish physicians who forbade it. Yes, dear, my selfishness went as far as that. He told me not to come. So Icame, and I am more glad than I can say. He told me also to be sensible, not to kiss anybody. I have disobeyed him there too. So forgive me for both.”
Hugh had drawn his chair close to hers.
“Oh, forgive, forgive,” he said. “What word is that between us?”
“No; it is a foolish word from me to you,” she said; “but understand then. Can’t you understand? Just now you wondered at me for not understanding what you said I had done. I wonder at you now for not understanding what joy your joy has been to me. Why, it is mine, and more mine because it is yours. Hughie, though I asked you just now to forgive, I tell you that I am delighted with what I have done. It is like—a dog that has stolen a bone, and looks deprecating. All the time he licks his lips. He has had it; it tasted so good, and though he may be beaten subsequently, his mouth still waters at the remembrance. Mine does. There would have been a shadow over this week if you had known.”
“There would never have been this week at all,” he broke in.
“Oh, don’t be too sure—I am very obstinate when I want a thing.”
Yes; she was comforting him already, and though he did not know it, she did. He thought that she spoke but of the past, she knew that she was already bracing him for the future. And his smile assured her. And gently, cunningly, she continued to build out of the past.
“Oh, Hughie,” she said, “it was the funniest scene—dear old Sir Thomas told me, and then we called Peggy in, and I said, ‘Oh, Peggy, I’ve got consumption.’ And then I burst out laughing, and Peggy laughed too. We sat and roared.”
Hugh frowned at this.
“Peggy knew?” he asked. “She lied to me, then; that is what it comes to. She told me that she laughed when you told her what Sir Thomas said was the matter with you, so that I might think it was nothing.”
“Yes, dear,” said Edith, “she had already promised not to interfere. If she had—well, not equivocated to you, she would have lied to me. It was very awkward for her, but she did her best. It was a conspiracy——”
“Directed against me.”
“Yes, darling; directed against you. I have already asked your forgiveness, you know.”
Hugh looked round the room with mute, appealing eyes.
“Is it real?” he asked. “Is this horror real?”
Edith said nothing. He was not facing it yet with his best self; Hugh had better than that to give. She knew it would come, for it was there. And the infinite pity of love waited for it. When it came it would prove to have been worth waiting for. Soon he would speak words which came from her own heart. He would say whatshefelt, and more, what she sought to feel. There was more in Hugh than was, so to speak, accessible, unlocked in her own soul. The love-key would open it. All the wordless sensations, impressions, strivings, of this week when she had been alone with her secret knowledge were in him. The winter sun of the comfort she could bring to him would be blinded by a brighter light. It was he who was going to unveil it. Often and often, so she almost hoped, in the weeks and months that lay before them, she would have to light his candle of patience and hope. But all the time his sun would light her path.