But at this moment poor Hugh wanted his candle.
“What did he—what did Sir Thomas tell you?” he asked brokenly.
“That I had an excellent chance. That I was the sort of person who got well. That I was going to get well. That when I got well, I should be younger and better than now. I liked that, Hugh. We shall be more of an age, so they say.”
“Oh, that silly joke,” said he.
“Yes, it will be knocked on the head, and I shall put cold-cream on your venerable nose and give you your gruel, and then go downstairs again to play with the children, when I have tucked you up in bed and shut the window for fear you should catch cold. It will be fun.”
“Don’t, don’t,” said Hugh.
But she was comforting him.
“That will not be in the immediate future, dear,” she said; “and I want to tell now about the immediate future. Now, don’t gasp. To-morrow I must go to Davos. I have looked out the train already; we go—because you are coming too—we go to a place called Landquart, and up from there. I promised Sir Thomas to do that, Hugh. I have to stop there till I am well; it comes to that, practically.”
Then suddenly Edith found she wanted comfort herself, comfort on the lower level, so to speak, not from the high level.
“Ah, that is dreadful,” she cried; “it may be a year, it may be more, before I see our dear home again, and the down all gray and green above it, and the garden and the water-meadows, and—and Mrs. Owen,” she added, comforting herself by that eternal comforter of humour. But she slipped out of its hands again.
“Oh, Hughie,” she said, giving way to the pathos of little things, which are so big, “I love our home so; itwas all so dear and pleasant and cheery. And you sang your exercises in our room, and I added up books in another, and the gales bugled outside. Or it was summer, and the miracle of motherhood came to me. And afterward you and Daisy and Jim, all you children, dressed up, and—and we played Tom Tiddler’s Ground, and Jim caught me, and there was blood on my handkerchief. That is all over.”
Though here it was the lower level of comfort that she required, it was something of the high level that met her. Swift as a spurred horse, Hugh answered to this.
“Over? What are you thinking of?” he said. “Nothing is over. Why, it is just because we have lived those divine days that they are not over. They are here; we have them now. They make us. We won’t look back; there is no need, for all that you say is past is present, bone of our bone, and the flesh on it. You know that. ‘Days that are no more,’ as that silly poem says. There are no days that are no more, except the days we don’t remember. All we remember and rejoice in are the days that have been and are, the days that live, and the things that live, the things that get entwined with love, so that the down above Chalkpits and the river and the water-meadows are all here, here with you and me. How can you be so foolish as to think otherwise?”
It was Edith again who was silent. As the angel moved the waters of Bethesda, so some angel, she knew, had moved Hugh’s soul, and the love-key was already turning in the wards of her own locked chambers. Already, in his last words, the door was ajar, a chink of light shone out. Sorrow, compassion, had enlightened him; it was his very weakness that gave him strength.
He sat upright, facing her, and though his mouthstill quivered and his eyes were wet, those signs came from another source.
“But you don’t think otherwise!” he said. “It is the past that makes the future for us. It was we who made us love the dear home, and it is we who will make us love Davos, and, if need be, Landquart, just as devotedly. We make the place we live in.”
The door swung wide now.
“And whatever comes, God bless it,” said Hugh. “Oh, soul talks to soul, does it not, now? If I get run over by a train it is all right. If you don’t get better, if you die, it is all right. It must be, because we are lovers, you and I. There is nothing more than that in the world. Why should there be? What could there be? Supposing the world was all a hideous joke, and we little people were just puppets on a stage that meant nothing, what then? We still, you and I now, feel as if it was real. We can’t ask more than that, for there is nothing more to ask. It is real to us. We snap our fingers at cancer, consumption, fever, all that people make statistics about. Who cares? Those things are the unreal things.”
Hugh’s voice dropped suddenly; till now it had been almost song. But now it became husky and dim.
“But the down above the house is real,” he said, “since it was there that you told me of Andrew Robb. And the garden seat is real, because you sat there and cried. And, to be egotistic, the nursery at Cookham is real, because—well, because Daisy wouldn’t go to sleep. Moth and rust cannot corrupt those things. Thieves cannot steal anything that is worth stealing, whatever form the thieves take. They may take many forms, illness, disease. Oh, Edith!”
The inevitable restriction bound the human soul.Reach out as we may toward the infinite, toward what we know is true and real, and indeed concerns us, yet the fact that we are men and women living on this earth and bound bodily by the finite laws of time and space, imposes a similar limitation on the spirit, else it would burst its bonds. And such is the inevitable irony of things, this reaction, this tweak at the rope which binds us to earth, brings about a fall more peremptory and convincing in proportion to the height to which the fluttering soul has soared. And with the cry, “Oh, Edith,” poor Hugh came back to earth with a thump that was unreal perhaps, compared to the realities of which he had just spoken, but was still a terribly good imitation of reality. And as with jugglers some flaming torch is tossed to and fro, never extinguished, but burning ever brighter from its swift passage, so Edith held the light to him now.
“Ah, Hughie,” she said, “you got there, then: you got to the home of our souls. You showed me beautiful things. But it can’t always be equally real to us. There must come discouraging times, times when our patience burns dim, and even hope perhaps burns dim. And it is then, dear, that you will help us both so much just by being yourself, by laughing, by talking nonsense, by being young and foolish. Promise me that you will keep that up.”
The great, grave supreme moment she knew had passed: Hugh had soared up to give to this dreadful blow that had come upon him and her the welcome which was worthiest of him, and she was wise to remind him, though indeed he knew it, that it was impossible to expect that he could remain always in those high places. Reaction, despondency, even despair, was sure to come to them, and the full realisation of things as hehad seen them then was not always at hand: the open vision could not stand open always. But the brave little weapons of every day were there.
She looked at him gravely.
“Promise me that,” she repeated.
“I will do my best,” he said.
“And that is very good, dear. Why, Hughie, it is nearly two! I must go to bed at once, and so must you.”
But she still held his hands in hers.
“Thank you, my darling, for Tristan to-night,” she said, “and thank you for the huge success you made of my little treat. Thank you for love, dear, and your courage, and—and all that you are to me, which no tongue can tell.”
She paused a moment.
“It has been perfect,” she said.
PEGGY hurt herself very much this time, and, having got up, slid gingerly on both skates across to the bench where Hugh was studying a treatise on the difficult art.
“Press the left shoulder back,” he said aloud, “while pressing the master-hip forward. Hullo, Peggy! I say, which is the master-hip? Is it the hip of the unemployed or the other? You seem to be in pain.”
“I have hurt myself more than anybody was ever hurt,” said Peggy. “I fell on all my knees.”
“I know it does shake one up, doesn’t it?” said Hugh with odious calmness. “I wish you would just look at my unemployed a moment.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Peggy.
“As if you couldn’t see!” said Hugh scornfully. “I am going to make the turn just opposite you, and I want you to watch my left leg.”
Hugh skated some distance away, and, with glorious disregard of limb if not of life, put himself on to the inside-back, and, while travelling at express speed, made a desperate attempt to turn. He sat on the ice for a little while after that.
“Your left leg went over your head,” said Peggy, who owed him one, “otherwise, and if you hadn’t fallen down, it would have been a beauty. Get up, Hugh, and come and sit here for a little. Oh, I should like to sing!”
“Don’t let me stop you,” said Hugh politely.
“I won’t. But I shall sing inside so that you won’t hear me. Was there ever such a morning? Oh, thank God for Davos!”
“Amen to that,” said Hugh.
Peggy, in spite of the fact that only a few minutes ago nobody had ever been hurt so much, gave a huge sigh of content, breathing in a gallon of the frozen sunny air, and giving it out again in a great puff as of smoke. All round them rose the white snow-clad hills, rising from shoulder to peak of glistening, dazzling surfaces. Just opposite and above them stretched the long single street of Davos, with its rows of big hotels, tailing off to the right into scattered houses and chalets, and among them she could just see the house where she was staying now with Edith and Hugh and Daisy, standing high above Davos-Platz, with broad wooden balconies, and front turned southward toward the blaze of the sun. Above the village hung little thin blue streamers of smoke from the fires, but these were scarcely visible, for it seemed as if nothing smoky or foggy could live long in this miraculous air. Above the village stretched black blots and clumps of pine-wood, from off which the snow had melted and fallen, as the leaves were warmed with the in-striking of the sun; above that again rose the peaks and spurs of the heaven-seeking hills. And over all stretched an incredible sky, bluer than the mind could otherwise conceive which had not seen it, more crystalline than glass, and as untainted as the snow it looked upon. And, shining there, was the keynote of the whole, the huge golden sun, divinity made visible, enough to turn the sourest Puritan into a Parsee. Sun, hot, unveiled sun, and the cleanness and purity of frost. That was Davos. Davos meant a great deal to Peggy just now; it meant all to Hugh.
He and Edith had come straight here after Munich,before the snow fell, and privately Hugh thought he had never seen so dreadful and dingy a place. The summer had been very hot, and where now the ineffable whiteness of the snow was spread, making the eye to dance and the heart to be glad, there stretched long weary spaces of faded green. And the worst of it was that it reminded them both in some distorted homesick manner of the down above Chalkpits. But the down above Chalkpits was to them, even as Hugh had said, the first act of the love-duet, where Edith had told him who was Andrew Robb, whereas the gray-yellow stretches of mountainside here were, so to speak, the walls and windows of a sickroom. Then had come rain, dreary, unremitting rain, when the heavens were shrouded, and a tiring, enervating wind called Föhn, blew out of the southwest. And the very interesting fact that the word Föhn was undoubtedly a corruption of the LatinFavoniusdid not seem to make it any better. Also they could not find a suitable house.
There was worse than that. The invalid life that Edith had to lead was an iron hand upon them both. She who had been so active, so indefatigable, had to lie down most of the day, out in a slightly leaky balcony, and watch the cloud-shroud over the hills, and the thick-ruled streaks of rain. She had to take her temperature and enter it on a chart; she had to adopt all the nameless little devices of the illness from which she suffered. To her it was all hateful to her pride, to him it was a degradation that she should have to suffer in these mean little ways. She, always splendid but always rebellious against the surrender to ailments, could scarcely bear that Hugh should see her thus. But slowly, by patience and by habit, the first-fruits of patience, she had grown used to it. Yet she felt at the end of the first threeweeks that if she had known how horrible it was going to be, she would almost have refused to come here at all, have died standing and defiant, rather than fight her foe by these mean submissions. Also for the first fortnight the disease certainly attacked her more fiercely than before. Often she had felt tired at Munich, but not till now did she really know what mere tiredness could mean. She went to bed tired, but awoke to an infinitely greater degree of fatigue. Physical pain she had known before, but never had pain so undermined her as this. Then once she had another return of hæmorrhage, and Hugh had sat by her while a servant ran for the doctor, sponging, wiping.... She longed to tell him to go, to tell him that she would so infinitely sooner be alone. But he could not have borne that. Also she could not speak.
Yet in spite of the fiercer onslaught of the disease, in spite of the hæmorrhage, in spite of the dreadful fatigue, she felt that deep down somewhere, so deep that it showed as yet no surface-sign, she was better at the end of those first three weeks. She could not tell how; indeed, she had never felt so ill, yet there was, so to speak, a little raft of recovery beginning to form. Through hours of helplessness she felt it forming, and in spite of bad reports, gently told her, she knew it to be so. Foundations have to be dug, so that a house may arise, and the masons and builders have to go down that they may build up. It was thus that she felt it.
Then came a change. Rain ceased, and snow began. For four days it snowed without cessation, and still she lay out on her balcony, Hugh sitting by her, and rising now and again to shake the fallen flakes off the rug that covered her. And gradually through those four days they both began to be conscious of the change.It was very distant at first, and very faint, and it was through the nostril even more than through the eye which now saw, though veiled in the falling curtain of snow, the changed aspect, that it revealed itself. Something cold and clean was coming, the stale odour of dried grass had gone, and there was filtering into the air the odour of nothing at all, the absence of odour, the negative smell of the absence of smelling things. During these four days, too, Edith lost her temper at picquet, a game that occupied much of their evenings. Hugh hailed that secretly, privately, as he would have hailed an angel from Heaven. She had been utterly apathetic before; they had played but to pass the hours.
Then, still while the clean, sweet snow was falling, he found a house that might suit them. For days before they had constantly talked over the sort of house they wanted, and for days it appeared to be a matter of absolute indifference to Edith. To-night, however, it did not.
“Oh! but how stupid of you, Hughie!” she had said. “Why, of course, you ought to have gone to see the kitchen. All houses are uninhabitable unless the servants are comfortable. We had far better be in a hotel than in a house where the kitchen is a coal-cellar!”
“I’m sorry!” said Hugh. “I’ll go and look at it again to-morrow.”
“Yes, but you probably don’t know a good kitchen from a bad one,” said Edith sharply.
It was that sort of thing that so often during these weeks made his heart bleed. He knew—how well he knew—that it was not she who spoke, but only this hideous disease. He never confused the one with the other, for he knew Edith too well for that. All these weeks she had been fighting her battle, desperately, splendidly, and all these weeks she had been constantlyimpatient with him, irritated by him. And quietly, proudly, he wore that like a decoration. It was just because she loved him that she was like that with him. With her nurse, whom she detested, she was studiously, evenly polite, thanking her for all sorts of infinitesimal services, hoping she was not tired, fearing to disturb her. But Hugh divined the cause of her impatience with him, and knew that she divined it too.
Then swiftly came the rest of the heavenly change. Edith, utterly weary, had gone to bed one night while the snow still fell, and Hugh, not long after, though it was still early, had followed. The drowsiness of snow was on him and he slept heavily, expecting even in sleep to awaken to that numb, torpid pain of soul that had been his all these weeks. But he did not wake thus.
It was a new heaven and a new earth. Sun and frost had entered. Blue weather.
Trouble had passed, and joy came with that morning. It came in all manners, big and small. The kitchen of the possible house proved to be palatial. Peggy, by the morning post, announced that she and Jim and Daisy would all come out for Christmas. And Edith, so she said, when he went to her, felt different.
“Oh, Hughie! the sun has come,” she said as he entered; “and how good the air smells. I don’t feel nearly so tired, either.”
“And that is the top of the morning,” said he.
She looked at him, then avoided his eye.
“I have been horrible to you all these weeks,” she said quietly. “I knew it perfectly well. Have I hurt you, Hughie?”
That was one of the bad moments.
“How could you hurt me?” he asked. “You have never hurt me.”
She still did not look at him, but lay with her cheek on the pillow. She felt that he had more to say, though the words ceased.
“Yes?” she said. “Go on.”
“Oh, whenever I thought you hurt me, I knew at once it was not you,” he said.
Then she looked at him.
“No, my darling, it was not,” she said. “Do try to remember that.”
“There is no trying and no remembering,” he said.
It was on that morning that golden days began again. Week by week Edith had steadily improved. A few little set-backs had come, but still the tide flowed. All her determination to get well had come back to her; her will was no longer apathetic, watching the course of events, but active, directing them.
And to-day, for the first time, by permission, she was to come down to the rink where Hugh and Peggy sat, and see them attempt to pass the skating-test which would admit them on to the English rink. It is impossible to say to whom—themselves, Edith, or the English community in general—their passing seemed most important, but probably to them. Daisy was coming up for judgment, too, but it was quite certain that she would pass. The case of her mother and uncle, however was far more open to doubt. Peggy, sycophantically, had induced Edith to ask the two amiable gentlemen, who were going to judge their capacity, to dinner last night, and had been almost loathsomely fulsome to them. The doors of Rye House, she had really given them to understand, starved for their presence. And must the unemployed leg be absolutely still? If she moved it ever so little she could make the turn, too beautifully.... Oh! yes she was sure that Hughwould be only too honoured to sing at the concert at the Belvedere in aid of—oh, quite so, the Colonial Chaplaincy Fund.
“Hugh, Mr. Simpkins, who is going to judge us to-morrow, wants you to sing at the Belvedere, and, of course, you will. Tuesday night: yes, we are not doing anything. And you will judge us at half-past twelve? that will suit beautifully, and I can practise first. Half-past twelve, Hugh. Bring a flask of brandy.”
So now on this momentous morning, and in spite of the ordeal that would have to be gone through at twelve-thirty, Peggy drew in and gave out the long breaths of content. There was no doubt that Edith was much better; a week ago even she was still in the lying-down regime; to-day she was going to walk to the rink, observe their antics, lunch with them there, and be driven home. She, Peggy, had interviewed the doctor herself this morning. It was all as good as it could be. It was better even than the doctor had hoped. Her weight had gone up, her general health had improved, vigour and health were marching on the high-road toward her. And the one thing that they had to be careful about, did not at this moment trouble Peggy. Edith’s heart was not strong. No, there was nothing organically wrong, but it was possible that some lower place than Davos might be as good for her lungs, and not so trying, so stimulating to the heart. But he did not for a moment suggest her leaving Davos. A place that had already done her so much good was not to be lightly abandoned.
Peggy breathed her long sighs, and fell to talking of skating again, when Hugh had recovered from his rather complicated fall.
“Oh, it does matter so much,” she said, “and Edith feels it matters so much. She wants us dreadfully topass our test. Oh, Hugh! how very big quite little things are. It will really make her happier if we can do these things. And it will make us happier too. Do—do be serious. I am going to do outside edge back, quite slowly and smoothly. It is the only way.”
Hugh was content to sit still a little longer, and watch Peggy skating in the only way. Her whole face and figure altered so radically when she was skating, as to be almost unrecognisable. She naturally stood erect and upright, but on skates, in pursuance of “form,” she became stiffer than the Life Guards; she was cast in iron and heroic mould. Her face, too, pleasant and humorous in the affairs of everyday life, became a thing portentous, grim, determined, inexorable. She had been told to look up, to hold her head back when she was skating, and in pursuance of this she fixed a savage and unrelenting eye on the unoffending Belvedere Hotel, as if she was going to command its instant demolition. Then when a crisis approached, when the turn had to be made, her aspect changed again, the relentless expression was relaxed, pity and terror usurped her face. And, the crisis being successfully surmounted, a look of fathomless, idiotic joy beamed from her. Then that faded like some regretful sunset, and grim determination, the inexorableness of Rhadamanthus, again reigned.
He watched Peggy a little, while she receded into the crowd that was growing thick on the rink, cutting, or rather not being able to recognise, her friends, while employed in these majestic backward manœuvres, and casting glances of deep withering reproach on any who came near her sacred person, and with the recession of Peggy other matters receded, too, till he was left alone with the only matter that really had value in his eyes. And this morning for the first time, he felt safe in lettinghimself go, in abandoning himself to the ecstasy that the removal of anxiety brought him. Again and again, after these first three dreadful weeks were passed, the doctor had given him excellent reports; she was going on as well as possible, but not till to-day had Hugh felt himself be comforted. He had always been prepared, at the back of his mind, for bad news, for the information that she was not making progress, and none knew but he what a dreadful uphill task had been his, in performing the promise he had made to Edith on the night at Munich when she told him, and in being gay, being foolish, and natural. Sometimes it had seemed to him that she must guess how hideously hollow his apparent high spirits were, but a letter she wrote to Peggy, shortly before the latter came out, which Peggy had told him of, was his reward. In it Edith had expressed the removal of her own great anxiety that Hugh would find nothing to do, and feel that the place was intolerable. But, so she wrote, it was not so. Hugh had gone quite mad about winter-sports, and spent ecstatic days in trying to break his limbs over some apparatus for sliding, whether over skis or toboggans or skates it seemed to make no difference. The point clearly was to cripple yourself in some way. He was keeping up his singing, too, with really commendable diligence, and a decent Steinway had at length arrived. He was wonderfully cheerful, too; he did her no end of good. Peggy had stopped there and not told him what the letter went on about—Edith’s bitter pathetic reproaches against herself for the unfathomable depression that she so often suffered under, and which made her often so cross and irritable to Hugh. “But I think my darling knows it isn’t me,” she had finished. But that was not for Hugh to hear.
But to-day for the first time in all these weeks, he felt he could be cheerful, uproarious even, out of his own self, because his spirit wished to laugh and sing. “Immense, almost incredible improvement,” had been the report, and to endorse that, she was allowed to walk down to the rink, a matter of nearly a mile. Many months, as he well knew, given that all went well, must lie between her and complete recovery, and it was to-day for the first time that Hugh had let himself even look forward to that, to contemplate it at all. Even now he could not look at it long, and he had to look at it, so to speak, with half-closed eyes, for it dazzled him. But it was within the field of his vision, remote perhaps, but shining.
But how different it made everything else look! Everything was enlightened; even Ambrose, who approached him at this moment on skates about four sizes too large and black goggles perched on his inquiring nose, was welcome.
“I came down to see you and Aunt Peggy and Daisy skate for the English club,” said this incomparable youth; “and I do so hope you will all get in. It will make me so happy, Uncle Hugh. And I am happy already because papa told me that Aunt Edith was ever so much better. Aren’t you pleased, too?”
“Yes, old boy,” said Hugh; “and why don’t you practise and get in the English club, too? Daisy is sure to pass, and she’s younger than you, isn’t she?”
Ambrose put his head a little sideways, as he did when he was saying his catechism, or when thoughts of exceptional nobility occurred to him.
“Well, I have thought about it,” he said; “but, you see, I am sure it has been a great expense to papa to bring me out here, and he never would have come out himself if I hadn’t been ill, and I should have to pay asubscription, shouldn’t I, if I passed? Papa isn’t going in for it either, and, of course, he could pass as easy as anything if he tried, couldn’t he?”
“Oh! that’s all right, then,” said Hugh, neglecting this last topic. “I’ll pay your subscription for you, if you get through.”
Ambrose clapped his hands together—he had caught it from Mrs. Owen—and forgetting that he was on skates tried to jump in the air to show his joy. He fell down instead, but even at the moment of contact continued to talk in his penetrating treble.
“Oh, thank you, Uncle Hugh!” he cried. “How kind everybody is to me! I shall go and practise at once. Oh, my spectacles have fallen off! Would you please give them me, as I promised papa never to look at anything out-of-doors without them, so I must shut my eyes till I have them on again.”
Canon Alington and Ambrose had been here a fortnight, for the Canon had long wanted to spend a winter in Switzerland, and the fact that Ambrose, who had been a good deal pulled down by an attack of scarlatina, was advised to go to some bracing place, made a duty of what he had only thought of as a pleasure. He himself, too, so Agnes assured him, had been much tried by incessant work and a very rainy autumn in England, and reminding him how his fortnight’s yachting in the summer had set him up, she urged him to go and be set up again. In fact, the idea of its being a pleasure at all had long faded from his memory. Agnes recommended it for him, just as the doctor recommended it for Ambrose. It was a necessary expense, heavy, no doubt, but unavoidable. But they had come out second-class and lived on the fifth floor. Also—it really seemed providential—theresident chaplain at Davos had been taken ill a fortnight ago, and Canon Alington, saying that he had gone back to his own curate-days, had taken his place at the current stipend. He had preached last Sunday, taking for his text “Oh, ye ice and snow, bless ye the Lord!” Hugh, to his own malicious satisfaction, had guessed what the text would be, and, indeed, betted on the subject with Peggy (she had bet on “Oh, ye mountains and hills”) before it was given out. He won five francs, and put them in the offertory.
So Ambrose retired into a corner to practise for his test, and soon Peggy returned on her majestic outside-back. She, too, saw the difference in Hugh this morning, and his almost solemn joy over Ambrose’s conversation rang true.
“For the cream of it is,” said Hugh, “that for years and years the admirable Dick has swaggered to me about his skating, because, you see, there have been no frosts in England. Oh! perhaps that is unfair, because the first day he came out here he paraded the rink doing what I think he called Dutch roll. Anyhow, both feet were on the ice simultaneously. But nobody was very much struck; here they prefer skating on one foot at a time, you see. So foolish!”
Peggy gave a long sigh.
“Oh, Ice and Snow!” she exclaimed. “I beg your pardon. Go on.”
“Well, since then Ice and Snow has been practising for all he’s worth, in sequestered corners. I doubt if he thinks about parish affairs at all, and the dream of his life is to get into the English club. He will come up as soon as he has the slightest chance of passing, if not before. But I feel convinced that he has conveyed to Ambrose that it is an unnecessary expense, and Ambrosehas told me that he thought of it himself. Aren’t they divine?”
Peggy got up at once.
“I shall go and talk to Ambrose instantly,” she said, “and find out whether his father did convey that impression.”
“I know you can be diplomatic,” remarked Hugh.
She returned in a few minutes.
“Yes, it is so,” she said. “Ice and Snow alluded to expense, and said that the English rink was not so good as the public one. Oh, Hugh, if only he goes up for the test after that!”
But at that moment Hugh forgot all this; he forgot Peggy, he forgot the fatal hour of half-past twelve, for somebody waved to him from the snow bank that bounded the rink. He clambered awkwardly up the wooden steps, and stamped his way along the frozen snow.
“Ah, but this is good,” he cried, “this is the very best. And you’ve walked all the way? And you are not tired? Are you sure you are not tired?”
“Not a bit; I’ve enjoyed it. Oh, Hugh, it’s nearly half-past twelve, and I am so agitated. You must get through. Where’s Peggy?”
Peggy had followed Hugh to the edge of the ice.
“Oh, Edith, how splendid,” she cried, “and you are just in time to see us all ploughed. Get her a chair, Hugh, on the edge of the rink. Oh, here’s Daisy. Daisy, you little fiend, if you pass and I don’t, I shall stop your allowance for a month.”
An agitating half-hour followed. Daisy, to do her justice, was, if possible, more anxious that her mother should pass than was Peggy herself, and, having acquitted herself triumphantly before the judges, and sailed through her test, endured agonies of anxiety as Peggywobbled when she should have been firm. But the grim determination of her face never varied, and she still looked skyward. But eventually the effort of weeks, and a perseverance which Robert Bruce’s spider might have envied, was crowned, and she and Hugh emerged victorious.
Ah, but how good it was, Edith felt, to see the others really taking this wild interest in little things again; how good also to take it herself. Vitally and eagerly constituted as they all were, it was like them, the moment that good news came about that which was nearest their hearts they should all behave in this perfectly childish manner, and treat this skating episode (which for this very reason has been given at length) as if Eternal Salvation was on tap at the English rink, to which, through much tribulation, Peggy and Hugh had been admitted. There was no make-believe about it to-day, and if before both Peggy and Hugh while they rested some aching limb found no rest for the ache of their hearts, to-day there was ache neither in heart nor limb; all was forgotten in the sun of Edith’s improvement. “Immense, incredible improvement!” Hugh whispered it to her over and over again as they waited for their lunch to arrive from the house. And in the same breath, as was natural to his youth, he told her about the deep machinations of Dick, the assumption of Ambrose, and then and there founded an Ambrose club. Far away, too, at the corner of the public, common, lower rink, the Canon’s manly form could be discerned diligently circling, till Hugh could bear it no longer and left Edith, ostensibly to ask him to join them at lunch, in reality to patronise him. Ambrose was looking at his father in the deepest admiration, and the latter, just as Hugh came up, having made a suddeninvoluntary change of edge (a thing he had been trying to do voluntarily for days), exclaimed—
“Ah, that’s it, Ambrose. That’s what you were asking me to show you. Why, here’s Hugh! Well, Hugh, joining us again down here? Not quite fit for the Olympian yet?”
Hugh could not resist a little swagger. He was exalted.
“Oh, we got through quite, quite easily,” he said; “all of us in fact. Peggy, Daisy, and I. I expect Ambrose will get through next.”
This was deep: it was almost fiendish. Hugh knew his brother-in-law was practising till sleep forsook him at night. Dick thought that he was equally aware that Hugh could have no notion of it, since Ambrose (so properly) had mentioned to him the conversation about expense which that child had already held with Hugh.
Canon Alington showed an eager interest in this.
“Ambrose tells me you have been good enough to promise to pay his subscription if he passes,” he said. “Come, Ambrose, show Hugh what you can do.”
Ambrose could not do anything at all, and his father knew it. So Dick, with an eye on Hugh, showed him what had to be done. He displayed a completely accurate knowledge of what the test was, which was strange, since he did not contemplate going in for it. But his practical idea, how to skate it, in fact, was rather sketchy. Hugh hugged himself in silence. So often had Dick told him exactly how all sorts of complicated manœuvres had to be done; so often had he wished that the frost might hold in order that he could have a day’s skating with Hugh, and just put him in the way of it! But Hugh liked his brother-in-law the betterfor it. He had “humbugged” (a beautiful word) about his skating. That was human. Ambrose had humbugged too about the originality of his idea that the question of expense only stood between Dick and the higher rink. Hugh did not feel any marked sympathy with humbug, but he was much in sympathy with anything that proved that Ambrose was human too.
“The back cross-roll now,” continued Dick, still addressing his son. “You must cross your feet well!”
He began to illustrate it.
“Ah, my toe caught then,” he said. “But you see the idea. Foot well behind, well across. H’m! I must have a bit taken off the toes. There, that’s better, isn’t it, Hugh! That would do for the Olympians, wouldn’t it? I think that is the hardest part of the test!”
Hugh had not yet asked his brother-in-law to lunch with them. He simply could not interrupt yet. He did not know Dick could be so gorgeous. And he led him on.
“Yes, that’s ripping,” he said. “Why didn’t you come and be judged with us this morning? Oh, I forgot; you don’t want to join the English rink. Yes, awfully good, that was.”
Dick walked straight into the trap.
“Then there is the three, isn’t there, on each foot?” he asked. “My left foot bothers me rather. Will you just look?”
He executed this in a slightly diffuse manner. “Would that pass, do you think?” he asked.
The trap closed behind him.
“I think it wants a little more practice,” said Hugh. “When are you going to come up?”
“I thought about Tuesday next,” said Dick, completely off his guard.
“Oh, I should think it would be all right by then. By the way, do come and lunch with Edith and me. Ambrose too, of course. It’s a sort of festal occasion, you see, as Peggy and I have both passed.”
“And Daisy,” said Ambrose. He hated people to not think of other people.
“Oh, everyone knew that Daisy would pass,” said Hugh. “The thank-offering is for Aunt Peggy and me. Let’s go. I think Peggy has asked the whole population to lunch, and I know I have. There probably won’t be enough to eat.”
Dick suddenly started forward on the left foot.
“Just look a moment, Hugh,” he said.
He made a beautiful turn, and a severe, unbending edge after it.
“I shall go up for the test on Monday,” he said with noble courage. “Ah, by the way, ‘I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance.’ How would that do for the motto of a skating club? I shall certainly form a skating club when I get back to Mannington. You and I will be there to coach the beginners, I hope.”
“I think ‘The frequent fall’ would be a better motto,” said Hugh.
The “festal occasion” was extraordinarily festive. The whole population, as Hugh had said, appeared to have been invited, and the whole population came. And the spring, the origin of the enjoyment of everyone, was the huge enjoyment of Peggy and Hugh. And the spring of their enjoyment sat at the head of the table. She was better, better, much better, incredibly better. It was no wonder that mirth abounded. For mirth is more infectious than any disease, and Hugh and Peggy scattered it. And they had passed their test and the sun shone, and it was hotter now than ithad ever been, and a great frost was coming to-night which made the day so beautiful. And Edith was better, incredibly better. It always came back to that. It was from that that the mirth sprang.
And Edith? There she sat, pleasant, fine, less boisterous than her husband or her sister, but happy beyond all words. She saw now the difference that had come to Hugh. For days and days he had been uniformly cheerful, uniformly boyish, with pleasure in the snow, with pleasure in the contrivances for limb-breaking, but never had he been like this. When he was silent (which was rare) he sparkled, when he spoke he shone. She knew well what had caused that; not the skating, not anything else, but she. How well he had acted, too, through these weeks. Again and again, as when she wrote to Peggy, she had believed he was enjoying himself, not making the best of his exile here, but actively taking real pleasure in it all. But to-day there was a huge difference. He was glad because he was glad, not because he wished to appear glad. Peggy, too, making a sea-sick passenger out of an orange! To-day it amused her; yesterday, had she done it, it would have been to amuse other people. What a difference there!
Above, the beneficent sun, and all round, for they lunched in but a little island of a shelter, the clean, powdery snow, frozen and hard just on the surface, but a millimetre below, not wet or slushy, as is the manner of the more temperate stuff, but like sawdust, dry from the cold. There was the heat of summer, too, in the sun’s rays, the blaze of the tropics, the blueness of South Italy, yet all round was the untainted purity of frost. The blood and the brain had here their ideal environment; it was hot and frosty—Shakespeare’s paradoxwas literally fulfilled. Everyone was swift and pleased and animated; fog of the brain or the temper was a thing as far and as forgotten as its atmospheric counterpart. Anything that clogged or confused the senses was non-existent, incredible. One could mix with the elements, and breathe, and be!
Edith looked round the table as she finished her coffee. Everyone was pleased, happy. The tragic mask which in life even as in Greek bas-reliefs is strung side by side with the mask of comedy, seemed to have slipped from its place; the kind, warm world showed only its smiling, shining side. She had come out of a very dark and lonely valley—in spite of Hugh it had been lonely—and though she knew well there lay many miles of valley in front of her still, yet the ground was mounting. And at the place in her journey at which she had arrived to-day there was, so to speak, a cleft in the wall of rock that had shut her in for all these weeks, and a huge beam of dusty sunlight came in, warming and gladdening her.
She went back alone to her house when lunch was over, in the sledge that had come for her, forbidding either Hugh or Peggy to accompany her, and even refusing, with thanks, Ambrose’s offer to come up with her, for she wanted to be alone; just as when Sir Thomas had first told her her sentence, she had to be alone to think that over, to scrutinise the face of the future till it became familiar, part of her. And so quietly, so honestly, had she done that, that the news that had reached her to-day—much better, incredibly better—had got to be made familiar too.
She lay down on the sofa in the balcony, where up till now more than half of her life at Davos had been passed. She was a little tired, a little excited, by this first longouting, and for some while she lay very quiet, closing the eyes of her mind, as it were, resting it. All round her were the innumerable contrivances of invalid life—an electric bell on the arm of her chair, so that she could summon her nurse without moving, an adjustable shutter on each side of the balcony, so that the wind or the sun could be screened from her; a small cross-over table which could be balanced on the arm of her couch so that she could write, an elbowed bookstand which could be pushed away or brought in front of her. And slowly, as she let her mind dwell on the great news of to-day, all these things, so familiar from long and continuous use, somehow seemed to fade and become meaningless portions of the past, even as when we see the first snowdrop, so bravely, so weakly, aspiring, piercing the cold brown earth, and promising spring, the dead leaves of last autumn suddenly become without significance to us. The death of winter that they foreboded is over, winter is forgotten. It was just so with her now; these invalid contrivances suddenly turned to the leaves which had been shed before winter. Real summer was coming now. Nearly two years ago her Indian summer had come to crown the early wreck and autumn of her life. What should this be, this revivification after the winter of weeks that had succeeded it?
Edith suddenly felt her pulse leap and quiver in her wrists and in her throat, with the wonder and the excitement of this, and, with the faculty that invalids develop, she took her mind off it, and went back to the past instead of peering further into the tremulous, luminous future. On the first day that she knew of her disease she had intended and determined to live, to put the thought of death away, to set her mind on recovery. And now when she had gone so far—incredibly better—on that road, she could look back and see how far and how often she had fallen short of her purpose. And she shook her head over her misdeeds. She had always intended well, but how often her best had been but a sorry performance. She had so often lain like a mere log under her fatigue and despondency, yet, indeed, she had only lain like a log when she felt absolutely incapable of doing otherwise. But it was no use arguing about it, or excusing herself like that; she had failed often and often. But there was one who had never failed—Hugh. She had often been odious and detestable to him, and fretful, but, indeed, she had never ceased trying to be otherwise except when, so it seemed, the power of volition had failed her. And he had always understood. In his mind it had never been she who was fretful; it was only the “insects.”
That suddenly hammering pulse had grown quieter, but still she did not look toward the future again. It was her business—indeed, she had none other immediate—to get well. All through these weeks they had encouraged her always to occupy herself in some quiet way rather than lie here without any employment, except when she was definitely resting, and in addition to the innumerable books she had read, the endless games of picquet she had played with Hugh (they played nominally for sovereign points, it being understood no money was to pass, and she had lost nine thousand seven hundred pounds on balance), she had worked at the play which (with extreme content) she had despaired of ever bringing to birth. Hugh had said it was not by Andrew Robb at all, and she had agreed with him. So when her invalid life began she had destroyed what was done of it and had set to work again. Two acts had been re-written, and now, instead of indulging infurther speculation, she took them up and read them. She had not touched the play at all since Peggy, now some three weeks ago, had come out to Switzerland, and she hoped to be able to read them with that detachment from the feeling of authorship which only the lapses of time can give. But the mere reading reminded her too acutely of the circumstances under which she wrote. It reminded her too much of the sway of “the insects.” She could not manage it alone, but Hugh or Peggy, if they cared, should read it aloud after dinner. They were insecticides.
The insecticides fell in with her suggestion, and that evening Hugh read to her and Peggy. Sometimes he found it rather hard to control his voice; sometimes Peggy blew her nose. And after the last page was turned they all sat silent a little——
“But it’s Andrew Robb again,” said Hugh at length. “Genuine Andrew Robb, only he has improved. Oh, Edith, now you are so much better, do be diligent and do the other act. You have plenty of time, you know.”
But Peggy turned to Edith.
“No, I hope you’ll never finish it,” said she. “Hugh doesn’t understand. Andrew Robb was born out of misery. Oh, let’s play that silly game where you mustn’t take any knaves!”
THE spire of Davos Church, so steep in pitch that even in mid-winter no snowflake could cling to it even for the moment’s space in which it could lie there and give consolidation to the next flake, was to-day no grayer than its surroundings. For weeks past the annual thaw had set in, and now the village itself and a couple of hundred feet of hillside above it were quite clear of snow. But spring was not behaving, so Hugh thought, as he sat on a pine-bole above the valley, in a Tennysonian manner. When the “last long streak of snow” fades, the “maze of quick” ought to bourgeon. What the “maze of quick” in terms of flower and leaf was he did not accurately know. But he was safe in saying that nothing of any description was bourgeoning. Nothing looked like bourgeoning, unless to bourgeon was to look flat and stale and dead.
Three months had gone since the glorious day when Peggy, Daisy, and he had passed the test for the English rink, and it was now mid-April. He had been down every morning to get a little skating, until a week ago, when the short grass below the last little patch of ice had begun to show through the surface he intended to skate on. But when that happened, it was no longer any use to pretend to Edith that he was going to skate, and should be on the rink the whole morning. For a time that excuse of enjoyable occupation had served, and often he had sat there, since the ice was unskateable, being decaying slush merely, in order to spend a few hours away from the house, in order to make herbelieve that he was still occupied. But when the ice finally vanished he had to make other reasons for his absence.
There was heart-break here; he longed only to be with her; she, on the other hand, longed only that he should be amusing himself, taking up the long hours of the increasing day in congenial pursuits. She, in pursuance ofrégime, had to stop at Davos, take slow walks, and still lie out on the balcony, looking no longer at the exhilarating fields of snow, but at the brown, drowsy landscape of spring. She had often entreated him to go back to England for a few weeks to see his friends, to hear music, to take a little jaunt, a little holiday, as she called it, and as often he had clung to the fact that he really cared more about skating than anything else. That had done well enough till about a week ago; then she had observed that the rink was no more than a brown pasturage for abstemiously-minded cattle.
Other things—the big things—troubled him also. Doctors’ reports continued to be fairly satisfactory, and they told him that it was quite unreasonable to expect that the immensely rapid improvement which Edith had recorded in the winter could possibly keep up at that rate. That could not be. They did not say that she had gone back (that was satisfactory), but during the last three or four weeks she had not, frankly, gone forward. But that was quite normal—consumptives behaved like that. Also, he must remember that the spring, even for those in good health, was always a trying season of the year; those who were not in good health felt it much more acutely. There had been a great deal of south wind, too, lately—moist, relaxing, tiring. It was reasonable to hope and to expect that when the weather improved she would continue to improve also.
It was not bad news, nor anything like it, and Hugh realised as he sat on the red bole of the fallen pine, watching the blue smoke of his cigarette hang in the relaxed air, even as below him the smoke from the chimneys of the village stood in layers and lines above the houses, unable to disperse, that the fault had been his in expecting too rapid an improvement. But, indeed, he had secret cause for disquiet; though the disease, so he was professionally assured, had made no further inroads physically, it was becoming daily more trying to Edith. For two months or more in the past winter she had been extraordinarily serene and happy, content even, Hugh would have said. But for these last weeks—every fibre and nerve of him told him so—she had been engaged in a mental conflict fiercer than any physical struggle could be, more wearing, more incessant. She had hardly ever spoken of it to him; once or twice she had said, “Oh, Hughie, it is so hard to behave decently,” but her very reticence showed him how mortal the struggle was. Had it been less fierce she could have spoken of it. She was bitterly disappointed at this cessation in her own improvement; she had come to believe that she was going to have a miraculously rapid cure. And now the pendulum had swung the other way; instead of looking forward eagerly into the future it was all she could do to bear the present.
Hugh could guess how dreadful, too, was the disappointment, the despair she felt at being unable to rise above the discomfort and fatigue of the hours. She had hoped, so gallantly, that her mind, her soul, could remain a thing apart from the body, superior to it, looking down on it, as from a mountain-top one looks incuriously on the wreaths and snakes of fog below that cannot cloud the upper sunshine. She had expectedthe impossible; all that gallant womanhood could do she had done; as she said to Peggy, she would always do her best, and Hugh knew how excellent the best had been. But she, poor soul, mourned over it, upbraiding herself in that it was not perfect.
Again, it was found that Davos did not at all suit her baby, and a couple of months ago the boy had been sent back to England, to be in Peggy’s care. He had been ailing, too; it was nothing serious, but Edith was not in a state to be saddled with extra weight.
Oh, it was hard, and it was not the lightest part of the burden that had to be borne that fell on Hugh, though he did not know that. Often, again, as in the first weeks, his presence seemed merely to irritate Edith; he could see, with swelling throat that nearly choked him, how great the effort was to her sometimes to be courteous even to him. Hugh was no Christian Scientist, but in general terms he believed that disease was a work of the devil, and the devil (stupid fellow or not) hit upon some extraordinarily ingenious devices. He had, in fact, hit upon this one, that just because Edith so loved her husband, she found that it was he, of all the world, who tried her most. And all the time her real self was longing, even while her tongue, perhaps, was being acidly courteous, simply to weep out her heart on his breast, saying, “Hughie, Hughie, you understand, don’t you?” and find the perfection, the crown of her life there.
And hedidunderstand; there lay the helpless pathos of it. A non-existent barrier separated them.
All the time, too, it was Hugh’s business to be cheerful, to be natural, and foolish, and boyish. That, again, was not easy, when, whatever he did or said, appeared “to be wrong.” And there was no respite; “the cheerfuland contented spirit,” as Mr. Micawber said, “had to be kept up.”
And then, oases in the wilderness, sometimes a golden day fluttered down. Edith would be better, and, more than once, contrite, humbled to the dust, as she viewed the last week from some less tortured standpoint, she could only mutely plead his forgiveness. And there was nothing to forgive—nothing, at least, except the little insects, and Hugh had no more intention of forgiving them than of forgiving the devil for all the trouble he has made in this world, which would have been so pleasant if he had only died before we were born.
In these rifts in the clouds—one had come yesterday—there was no need for her to say, “I am horrible, but I am doing my best,” and no need for him to say, “I am stupid, but I am doing mine,” because they both utterly understood. Then, as on this morning, clouds would again, for some reason or other, drive over the face of the sun, and then when there was need for Edith to say just that word, she could not, could not! And, while silence starved her, Hugh had to whistle, or ask some absurd riddle to show he was quite cheerful and happy, thank you.
Hugh kept his depression and misgivings for such times as when he was alone; as soon as he set out from the house on asoi-disantskating errand, or, as to-day, to smell the pine-woods, since the skating excuse had broken down, he always found some companion of this nature waiting for him, like a faithful dog, outside the front door, eager for a walk. To-day the dog had kept very close to him, and now, as he sat on the fallen pine, it jumped up beside him, and thrust itself on his notice. It had always got some fresh fawning trick, and to-day it had a new one, a beauty. It was this.
Edith had begun to write the last act of her play, and Hugh’s faithful companion (this was its trick) made him remember with vital vividness the few words that had been said after he had read, now three months ago, the first two acts. Peggy, reasonable, cheerful Peggy, in the evening of that glorious day, had hoped that Andrew Robb would never finish it, for he was born of misery. And only two days ago Hugh had asked his wife whether Andrew Robb was writing still, whether he had come back to her. It appeared he had.
So the miserable spirit was in the house, holding her pen, uttering her thoughts. Was all beauty, then, all fine work born of misery? Was the “heavenly mind,” which, so rightly, he had attributed to Andrew Robb, active most when the soul was in travail, in trouble?
The sun was very warm to-day and the air windless. Hugh had had a nearly sleepless night; vague trouble had oppressed him through all the dark hours, vague while he looked it in the face, but real enough when drowsiness began to touch him on the shoulder or to tweak his blanket, so that, as often as he dozed, he was called back again. And now, in the same vague trouble, that which had tweaked and plucked at him during the night stood somewhere close by him. It would not do at all, and he sat up, banishing the drowsiness that his sleepless night had brought on him.
He had thrown away the end of his cigarette, and it had fallen into a clump of bilberries, and from the clump arose a little blue coil of smoke, twining lazily about the still air. Below lay the quiet Alpine village, brown and gray, with its lazy layer of smoke above it. Then close behind him came a flutter and scurry of wings, and a bird perched itself in a tree near him and gave three monotone whistles. Then it stopped; its love,its mate, did not answer. It could not go on alone. Some breath of wind in the upper air stirred, and the pine tops spoke of the sea to each other. All these things were drowsy, incomplete. They tried to be alive; the cigarette end tried to burn the bilberries; the pine-trees sighed for a real wind; the bird tried to sing, but did not find the stimulus. It was the hour, in fact, to him and all the world, when it is better, if possible, to go to sleep again till real morning comes. He had a sleepless night behind him, so, probably, he slept.
But he did not know that he slept; he only knew that drowsiness again gained on him, and he heard a step coming up the needle-strewn path below the pines, which seemed to wake him again into complete activity of consciousness. Then he saw, but strained his eyes at it, for he could not see distinctly, whose was the step. He did not know whether the figure was male or female; the face was bent down toward the earth as it approached him up the steep path, and he could not see it. Then, when it came close, it raised its head, and at that moment Hugh knew it more utterly than he knew himself, for it was Edith’s face. Yet, in the same moment, it was not her face, it was the face of a stranger, kind, wise, but inexorable. Then, though the mouth remained still, the eyes—Edith’s eyes—smiled at him, and then the lips said, “Du meine Seele, du mein Herz.” Then everything, figure and pine tree, Davos and sky, cigarette whorl of smoke, and smoke of the village “clicked.” And Hugh saw that they were all there except the figure that he had—dreamed.
He had understood about Edith before, about her irritation at him. He had seen it now. It became a little more real, a final turn of the screw had come to drive home what he knew. Of course, he had beenasleep. But what did that matter? Truth and falsehood are in dreams, just as truth and falsehood are in waking hours. The truth may come through either; falsehood may come through either.
But the dream anyhow had banished the terrible companion that just now had sat on the pine-tree close to him, which for days and days had been that which made solitude lonely. It was Doubt; that at last was the name of the dog. He had neverseenit, he had only imagined its presence. He had been afraid—the indefensible emotion, as Edith had once said to him. That and anger; there was no excuse for them.
But now he had seen or dreamed something that said he was her soul and her heart. Wonderful though it was, perhaps, indeed, because it was wonderful, it seemed incontestably true.
The path was steep, he ran and slipped down it, to be back at the hour for lunch.
“Yes, if you ask me,” said Hugh, half an hour later, “I won’t deceive you. I have been sitting in a pine-wood, and I never want to do anything nicer.”
It was a bad morning with Edith. She, too, had slept ill; she had heard from the doctor that she was not getting on. She had heard, too, something that she had not told Hugh, something that she had made the doctor promise not to tell him. And illness, weakness, fatigue combined together. Instead of saying, “Oh, how nice, do let us go there this afternoon,” she said—
“What a pity you did not take your lunch with you. Then you need not have come back here.”
Hugh contrasted the difference. If only she had said “we” instead of “you!” The non-existent wall rose swift and high between them. And he had to play hisrôleof cheerfulinsouciance.
“In which case,” he said, “I should not be lunching now with you. I like lunching with you, do you know?”
He caught her eye for a moment, and the soul behind it yearned toward him. But the devil, the insects, were potent.
“Won’t you like to go there again this afternoon?” she said. “Since the ice has gone there is really nowhere else for you to go. Do send Ferris up with the tea-basket. You can have tea there.”
Yet—how she tried, but how miserable she was! She knew, too, after her interview with the doctor this morning, why she found it all so difficult. But she did not want Hugh to know just yet. She would bear it alone for a little, though it was just this bearing it alone that was so hard. But she did so want him to have a few days more without this extra burden.
“Yes, do let us have tea there,” he said. “I should love to show you the place. Do come; it will be splendid if you will come.”
She shook her head.
“I don’t really feel up to it to-day,” she said.
“Oh, I am sorry!” said Hugh. “Poor darling.”
Edith gave a little impatient click with her tongue.
“Oh! how often have I told you that I can bear anything but pity,” she said.
They had finished lunch, and she got up as she spoke and stepped out on to the balcony where she usually lay. On her way she passed close by the back of Hugh’s chair, and longed—how she longed—to take that dear head in her arms, and just say, “Oh, don’t you understand, don’t you understand?” But she could not; just at this moment she could not raise her head abovethe bitter salt wave of misery that smothered and choked her.
Hugh sat a few moments longer at the table, finishing his cigarette. Perhaps it was that the reaction from that little dream he had had on the hillside that morning, which gave him such comfort, such consolation, had come; perhaps his instinct told him that there was some fresh disaster which he did not yet know; perhaps this was only the last straw, the little infinitesimal thing that made all the rest unbearable. Anyhow, as Edith went out, he felt his heart sink where it had never sunk before, into an abyss of misery down which he could not bear to look. He knew—that was the worst part of it almost—how horribly ill, how wretched, how weak Edith must be feeling to speak to him like that.
Well, he had to be cheerful, and he got up, calling to her.
“I shall go out then, dear, but I think I’ll come back for tea. It’s rather a steep climb for the tea-basket carrier.”
She did not answer, and he went out of the room. But in the hall he stopped. He was too sick at heart to walk; he was too sick at heart to do anything. Nothing seemed worth while; the thought of the hillside, of the clean pine odour, were hateful to him, the earth and the sky were all hateful. Yet—what else was there to do? He must go, after all; Edith must think he was tramping cheerfully through the woods. He had left his hat in his bedroom, and went there for it. But he could do no more. The breaking point came, and he broke. He threw himself down on his bed face downward and sobbed.
Edith heard him leave the room, and as the door shut she felt as if her own heart had been shut out from her, leaving just this tortured, miserable bundle of nervesand tissues which was her body. For her, too, this afternoon, it seemed that the unbearable had been reached, and the blackness of it consisted in the fact that it was her own fault. Why had she not taken that dear head in her arms a minute ago when she had the chance? Why had she not sent her pride, her stupid pride that revolted from pity—Hugh’s pity—to the devil, from whom it undoubtedly came? Why, too, was it allowed that Hugh, of all the people in the world, should have the power to make her like this?
She descended into lower depths; she told herself that she knew he was being hopelessly bored here, bored when he was with her, who was suffering so. Of course he refused to go to England, he could not well do otherwise, but surely he wanted to go. Or perhaps he did not much care; he was the sort of person who was happy and whistling everywhere. He had been extraordinarily cheerful all these months—his cheerfulness had seemed so effortless, too, that now, in this blackest hour she had ever known, she told herself it was effortless. He did not really care, she saw that now.
For one moment Edith turned off the flow of these meditations and asked herself if she was going mad or had gone mad. She decided, however, that she was only being clear-sighted and making discoveries. Yet somewhere, deep down in her, in spite of the darkness of this wave of misery that was going over her head and the deep waters that were drowning her, there burned a little flame by which she saw—at least an infinitesimal fraction of her saw—that she was thinking wild, wicked nonsense. But all the rest of her, her tired, tortured brain told her that she was thinking sense. And then that little flame went out too, and for the moment she believed it all.
And that was the true authentic hell, more real than any that theologian had invented. For she was quite alone; there was nobody here except herself.
The balcony where she had been lying ran round two sides of the house, and both drawing-room and dining room on this side, and Hugh’s bedroom on the other, opened on to it. She got up, alone in hell, and walked quietly up and down it once or twice. Then, to make her quarter-deck a little longer, she turned the corner and went by Hugh’s room. The window was wide open, and she saw him lying there face downward on his bed.
For the moment it was as if the devil and all his spirits tried to get in between her and him, and she stood on the threshold, unable, it seemed to herself, to take a step forward. He had not heard her; he had heard nothing for the last few minutes, poor soul, and she looked on his shaking shoulders with that wall of evil in between. And then, thank God, she marched straight through it, and she was not alone any more, there was no hell any more.
Then the scalding tears rose to her eyes, tears from which all self was banished; they were utterly for him, whom she loved so, whom in thought she had wronged so. Soon, no doubt, there would be shame and humiliation in them, but not yet.
She just said—
“Oh, Hughie, Hughie!” and fell on her knees by the bedside.
And like two children who have lost each other in some dismal, dark forest, when night is coming on, they found each other again. There was no need of any words at first. Edith did not ask him why he was crying, for she knew, and he did not ask why she had cometo him, for he knew that he needed her. That was why she came.
Then soon, still kneeling there, she confessed to him all the blackness of her thoughts, and heard him tell her that it was not she. That was true, too. Hugh, anyhow, utterly believed it, and that was absolutely all that mattered.
But there was more still to tell, and though this morning Edith had planned not to tell Hugh yet, now she knew it to be impossible not to tell him. For had she known it then (she knew it now), it was not only her care and solicitude for him that bade her be silent, but also her pride, or what came nearest that, the same thing that ever and again through these weeks had made a gateless barrier between them, the same thing that had made her say that she could bear anything but pity. It was consistent with all that was fine and high about her that she should be intolerant of the pity of the world, of the pity of her friends even, of Peggy even, that she should hold her head up even when the worst hours were on her, and should be polite and considerate of her nurse, of her servants, of all who did not matter. But there was one pity which could not hurt—Hugh’s—and it was his right to know all she knew. She had better tell him now; there must never any more be concealment between them.