They had gone out on the balcony again, for she would not stop long in his room, and then she told him. The gray still world was round them, a gray still sky overhead; everything spoke of that moment of stagnation, when life, languid with winter, halts, unable yet to make the first effort of regeneration. But in her the effort of regeneration was made; as she told him she knew content, she knew that all that had happened, and all that might happen, all her own shortcomings and lapses of courage, were nothing, were unable to live or exist on the plane where Love dwelt, where she and Hugh dwelt. And she had thought (though now she had only an incredulous smile for the thought) that there had even been a barrier between him and her.
“There is more I have to say to you, dear,” she said, “but I have nothing to be ashamed of in this, for, indeed, it was not my fault. Hughie, there were things the doctor told me this morning which I asked him not to tell you. But I will tell you. Just this. My heart is weak; he does not recommend me to stop much longer here. The air is too stimulating.”
Hugh looked imploringly at her.
“But is it worse?” he said. “You told me it was rather weak. And yet the winter seemed to suit you so well.”
It was no use concealing things.
Then, deliberately, and of purpose, she turned round on her sofa and looked straight in front of her, away from him. By an unerring instinct she knew that he must be left alone with that a little while, till it became familiar to him. But as she looked out over the gray-brown fields below and across to the black pines of the hillside opposite there was nothing sad in her face. It was more than patient—it was content even, for nothing could stand against the alchemy of love which turned all to gold. Already it had turned her own meannesses and smallness to gold, to itself: this was far easier.
Then she felt Hugh’s head rest on hers, and she looked at him and smiled at him. And though his smile was tremulous and quivered, it was there.
“Yes?” he said.
“Well, Hughie, it is a difficulty,” she said. “These stupid lungs of mine want dry and exhilarating air, or they will strike, and this absurd heart of mine wants slack and languid air, where it doesn’t feel compelled to work so hard. And one doesn’t quite know where such air is to be found as will suit them both.”
Again she waited till this sank in: purposely she told all the worst first. What followed was rather better.
“Now, there is this chance,” she said, “that before winter comes again, when the air here is most stimulating, my lungs may be so much better that I can safely go to some much lower place—go to England even—and lead a very out-door life, and so give my heart a chance. But stopping here depends on how it behaves. If it goes from—from bad to worse, I shall have to go. On the other hand, perhaps it won’t, and perhaps my lungs will begin to get better again, so that I can go without hurting them. But that’s the situation. I am rather like a flying-fish that is supposed to die in the water and can’t live on the land. Isn’t it a nuisance? But it isn’t my fault, my darling. I asked him that. And he said I had been a model patient. There! Respect me, please!”
Oh, but Edith, the real Edith had come back to him! He had not known how dreadful the absence of this serenity, this big outlook, had been till it came back now, bigger, serener than ever. It was scarcely possible to be sad in the presence of that sunlit calm. His heart bowed down not in grief and regret, but in adoration. Bitter tears, no doubt, would come, and sorrow to heartrending, but not just now.
Edith paused a moment. In the autumn she had strung herself up to the highest optimism; she had been determined to get well, and looked in no other direction.She still wanted to, she still would leave undone no effort that could conduce to that; but the situation had changed. She had to regard another possibility; Hugh had to regard it, too. But the bitterness of it was already past, if they looked there together.
“But, supposing my heart does get worse, Hughie,” she said, “and in the interval my lungs don’t get better, what shall we do? I asked Dr. Harris what he recommended, and we talked quite openly about it. You see, it is one thing to be cured; it is quite another just to prolong life. He said something about a long sea voyage, but I asked if that was cure or prolongation. It was prolongation. Now, I hate the sea, and I hate ships, and I am sea-sick, and I can’t bear being cooped up. Do you think it is worth while? Personally I don’t, but if you do say so, and we will voyage madly round the earth for as long as you wish. If it meant cure I should insist on doing it for my sake; make no mistake about that. But if one is not going to get better, is it worth it? It is so dreadfully uncomfortable. Would you sit in a dentist’s chair for a minute if you knew that you were going to die as soon as you got up? I wouldn’t. And I wouldn’t wish you to. I think it is cowardly to cling to life under outrageous conditions.”
Hugh hid his face in his hands a moment. The glory of the great calm still encompassed him.
“No,” he said at length, “I don’t think—ah, my heart, what do I think about it? Indeed, how can I settle? Do you see what you are asking me? Settle yourself, and I welcome it because you wish it.”
Edith gave a great sigh of relief.
“Ah, then, if I have to leave Davos,” she said, “let me go home, down to Mannington, and lie there and wait with all those things round us which have becomepart of us. May we? You said I might settle, Hugh. So we will.”
Edith knew there was more to say, that, in fact, which she had charged Peggy to tell Hugh in case she did not. And now—though the opportunity was there, though they were actually talking of this aspect of her illness—she did not. Now that the barrier, fictitious but seeming-solid, had been withdrawn, Hugh was so much her own again, none other’s. And she could not see him in any other setting, possessing and possessed by any other. Hers he was, hers by the inalienable right of love. Once and once again she tried to speak of that. But she could not. And since she could not she asked leave for this subject to withdraw.
“I have nothing else to say about it, dear Hughie,” she said, “because there is very little ever to say about anything that really matters—like—like that. I just wanted to know whether you would let me go home quietly, and live a little less long perhaps, and not want me to drag wearily about the world, living a life that is no life. It is so feeble, the mere continuance of life, if life means nothing except its mere continuance. What should we do on board a dreadful, swaying, heaving ship? And, ah, there is one thing more. Don’t give up your engagement in London next year, at any rate not at present. Supposing, by then, I want you very badly, and they think I shall not have you for long, I think then I should be selfish, and wish you to stop down there with me. I know I ask you nothing you do not want to give. But let us wait, let us see.”
She paused again, stroking his hair gently. The hair in question was very straight and wiry; there had been no end of trouble, she remembered now, in making it passable as Lohengrin’s. But he had looked soridiculous in a crimped, flaxen wig. After all, though, it had done well enough.
“Now, Hughie, have you anything to say?” she asked. “If not, do let us leave this side of the future until such time comes as makes it necessary for us to look at it closer. We hope it won’t come, don’t we? but it is no longer any use to pretend it may not. So I shall count up to ten slowly, and if you don’t say anything till I have finished, you must hold your peace until—until things are much more serious.”
And, looking at him, she counted. At “six” she paused, for she could not get on. But it was not long before “seven” was said, and the other three numbers followed.
By the immutable laws that seem to govern fiction, they ought to have had a series of pathetic, heart-breaking, but soul-inspiring scenes during the next week. But they—this impossible hero and heroine—had nothing of the kind. Instead of the culminating poetry of sunset and evening star, they had the prose (but it was good prose) of midday. What had happened, what they knew might happen, did not make them in the least melodramatic, but instead it expunged the possibility of melodrama. For the melodramatist is self-conscious—he sees himself as he wishes to appear. Neither Hugh nor Edith wished to appear at all. They did not wish to take any part. But, like plain, simple people, they stood there hand in hand to take what God was sending them, simply and plainly.
They were happy too. It is not implied that they would not have wished things to be utterly different from what they were, but they faced the things that were. And it would have been much more strange if they had not been happy, for they had refused to admitlife (the mere continuance of it) or death into the chamber of love. But all the little flower-like joys of the world, the small pleasures of sense, the common things of the day, were admitted there. It was still good to be hungry and have dinner, to be sleepy and go to bed, to smell the odour of the pines, to hear the whisper of the sea, to mark the timid uprising of the first crocuses of spring. All these little things found easy access to the hall of love, while death, mere death, chattered impotently on the threshold, and was told they were not at home.
Best of all, the wearing, transitional days between winter and spring passed, and the romance and perennial wonder of that renewal of Nature began to unfold itself before their enchanted eyes. The spirit of life which had lain dormant, hibernating through the winter like the soft, furry, bright-eyed creatures of the woods, began to stir and wake. A million crocuses were the opening of its eyes, and the smile on its mouth was the flush of green that came up in points of tender grass through the gray rubbish of the withered autumn. Birds knew that life was waking again, and preened themselves, thinking of the mating-time and the nests in the safe-swaying trees, and by night, in shadow of the woods, the shy beasts began to prowl again. The stir and whisper of spring broke the long silence of winter, and in the very sky itself, after the frozen brilliance of the frost, the white fleecy clouds seemed to rustle as they sailed across the blue, even as their shadows whispered as they passed over the earth. Spring entered into the hearts and brains of men, and schemes and new hopes awoke; they went more briskly about their business, and, as golden day succeeded golden day, Edith again made progress and fought more vigorously with herfoe, and again did more than stay its advance, making it retreat.
Hugh’s birthday came on the last day of the month, and for the past fortnight during which she had been progressing favourably, she had racked her brain to think of a suitable present for him. She had also racked her brain to find reasons which would make him go to England for a few weeks, and see his friends, and refresh himself generally. She had tried many such without bringing conviction to him; she had told him that selfishly and for her own sake she longed for him to go to Mannington and see how it looked. Nobody else but he could bring her a real report of it, for he only, besides herself, knew what Mannington meant. Peggy sometimes wrote of it, but Peggy said it looked charming, and that the river was full, and that the beeches were beginning to come out. That was all futile; it did not mean anything. Then, again, one day Hugh had toothache, and she implored him just to run over to London and get his teeth looked at. Instead, with a rueful face indeed, he went down to the village and had the offending tooth pulled out by a cabinet-maker with a strong wrist.
But eventually she hit on a plan, combining his birthday present with a lure to lead him home, and wrote to Messrs. Thomas Cook, from whom, the day before his birthday, she received a small packet, in a neat green cloth cover, and she went through the contents. Yes, that was all right. First class Davos to Sargans, to Zurich, to Bâle, to Paris, to Calais or Boulogne (how thoughtful of Mr. Cook!), to Dover or Folkestone, to London. Also London to Mannington. And returns available for thirty days from date of issue. Only thirty? She had meant to say forty-five. He must start without any delay.
She slipped the packet into an envelope, sealed it, and wrote a little birthday inscription outside, directing that it was to be given him when he was called in the morning with his other letters. This was artful, for she herself did not appear till lunch; he would have had several hours to think about it in, with the hard, convincing sight of the tickets themselves before him. But the evening before she could not help alluding to the fact that she had a present for him.
“I couldn’t think of one for ever so long,” she said. “But I thought at last of the one thing you really wanted.”
“Oh, I want to guess; may I guess?”
“Yes, as long as you like, and I shall say ‘no’ whether you guess right or wrong.”
“Shall I like it?” asked Hugh.
Edith considered.
“Yes; very much indeed,” she said. “It will also be extremely good for you.”
“Anything to do with England?” asked Hugh with horrible acuteness. Edith had said before that a trip to England would do him good; also that he would like it.
“No, nothing whatever,” said she, with an unconcern that put him off the scent. And with that really solid lie to her credit in the book of doom, she retreated from the subject, masking her retreat by continued appeals to him to go away even if only for a week or two, until from her persistence on the subject it was no longer possible to suspect that her present had anything to do with England.
Before Edith went to bed, and after the picquet was finished, she and Hugh always had a little good-night talk. During those weeks of estrangement—for theyseemed now no less than that—which had come to so abrupt an end a few weeks ago, it was the absence or, if attempted, the complete failure of the good-night talks that both had missed almost more than anything. Edith now alluded to those days with great frankness as my “devil-days,” which exactly expressed what she meant. To-night she announced that the good-night talk would be a few words only, for she was gloriously sleepy without being tired, an ideal state of things. The few words, however, were carefully directed toward the morrow. If things went on as she hoped they conceivably might, there would be no good-night talk to-morrow.
“Oh, I’ve had such a good day, Hughie,” she said, “and that makes three weeks of good days now; they have lasted longer than the devil-days, do you know? But the devil-days seemed longer. Think, April is all but over, and, ‘Oh, to be in England.’ Next April perhaps. But think; the daffodil weather, and all the daffodils in the copse looking like the sparkle of the sun on green water. Oh, why are you so selfish in stopping here when you might go back and look at them, and tell me about them. Poor Peggy! She once said that she liked double daffodils best. I prayed for her especially that night.”
Hugh laughed.
“But I like you best,” he said.
“That is why you ought to go back, since I wish it,” she said.
“And leave you alone?” he asked. “Not very likely.”
“No, I’m afraid it isn’t. I think, do you know, that I have a soured nature. I don’t want to have anybody else here. I want to have the pleasure of getting betteragain in the way I am doing, all to myself. Even if Peggy was here, even Peggy, I should have to share it with her. There’s a depth of depravity! And I don’t want to share it with you. I wish you would go away, and let me give you a surprise when you came back. That’s what I really want. I want you to walk up the path, after an absence, and say, ‘Hullo, who is this blooming young person? Why, it’s my wife!’ Hugh, it would be such awful fun! And now I am going to bed. The subject is closed. If you won’t go, you won’t. Good-night, my darling. Yes, the hand only, please, at a respectful distance.”
Edith was delighted with her diplomacy, and thought how clever she was as she went to bed. It was clear to her at once that the fact that she had said the subject was definitely dismissed had an effect on Hugh. Hitherto he had always dismissed it, feeling certain that she would re-open it. It had evidently made an impression on him to know that she would not. And to-morrow he would receive her present. Oh, it was a good chance!
He received his letters next morning as usual. His man dumped them down on his bed, and said it was half-past eight. And, as usual, Hugh said, “Oh, rot!” and felt for them. There happened to be only one, rather fat, and in his lazy morning manner he looked at the address before opening it. There it was, “For my dear Hugh on his birthday, with her best wishes. To be taken immediately.”
He tore open the envelope, which she had sealed with ingenious completeness, still not guessing. And then he saw the neat little green cover.
The servant was pouring out his bath.
“Oh, just leave it,” said Hugh, “and ask Mrs. Grainger’s maid to ask if I can see her a moment.”
This was ungrammatical, but intelligible. Edith’s plan had had only one defect, and that on the safe side. She had thought that he would think it over. But he only thought, and that instantaneously, of the good-night talk. And here was her present.
He put on a big fur coat that did duty as a dressinggown and went to her room.
Her breakfast was already come, and she was sitting up in bed, bright-eyed, refreshed with sleep.
“Oh, Hughie, how nice of you to come to see me early on your birthday!” she said.
“You wicked woman!” said Hugh.
“Why, for instance?”
“Because you hit below the belt. Because you appealed to sentiment last night. Because you knocked me down with that, and kick me this morning. It isn’t fair.”
Edith looked at him; her face was really troubled.
“Ah! tear them up, Hughie,” she said; “throw them away.”
He sat down on the end of her bed.
“I can’t,” he said. “You gave me them. I will go to-day. Oh, gladly too, lovingly; but it was rather a shock. I want to go now, as I see you want it, and have made it your birthday present to me. Thanks, thanks most awfully!”
CANON ALINGTON was sitting opposite his wife, telling her and Mrs. Owen about the outside edge. Ambrose and Perpetua had been reading their books while their elders dined, but at the mention of outside edge they both looked up, keeping their thin little forefingers in the place. Ambrose knew about the outside edge too, and from Davos he had repeatedly written to Perpetua about it.
“Form, form,” said Dick; “anyone can do these things, but the difficulty is to do them rightly. I myself have much to learn yet.”
The sentiment was humble and true, but the tone was bitter. Canon Alington had not got over the recollection of a morning at Davos when he attempted to gain admittance to the English Skating Club. Since that fatal day there had been severe frosts in Wiltshire, and he had started the Mannington Skating Club, and had been an assiduous instructor. Aspirants who wished to skate in a particular roped-off piece of ice had to pass a test. Ambrose had passed it; but there was no need for himself to pass it, since he was the judge who decided whether others could do so. He was rather a strict judge; he insisted on “form.”
Ambrose chipped in—
“Oh, Mrs. Owen,” he said, “papa skated better than anybody at Davos! I used to watch him rather than skate myself. And wasn’t it a shame——”
Canon Alington interrupted his son. It was better that the disclosure should come from himself.
“But the Olympians would have none of me,” he said. “Hugh passed, Lady Rye passed, even Daisy passed. But Ambrose and I were the poor relations. Ha, ha! I don’t think that it damages us. We skate still. Davos is rather a cliquey place. Given a return of good old English winters, I can see Mannington rivalling any Swiss resort. Once back and forward, and forward inside, eh, Ambrose?”
Mrs. Owen wrung her hands. It was in the manner of a peal of bells that she did this. She pulled all the fingers in turn.
“I shall never, never forget seeing you skate, Canon Alington,” she said. “So swift, so commanding! And does Mr. Hugh skate well, too?”
“The makings of a skater,” said the Canon. “He wants perhaps a little more coaching. Freedom—perhaps a little freedom is lacking.”
“I thought he didn’t skate nearly so well as papa,” said Ambrose shrilly. “I thought nobody skated so well as papa.”
The door underneath the motto “They sat down to eat and drink” opened, and Hugh, supposed to be at Davos, came in.
“I apologise,” he said, “but I found they hadn’t received my telegram at Chalkpits, and there was nothing to eat. I wanted something. How are you, Agnes? Do give me some cold beef.”
He made his salutations.
“And Mrs. Grainger—Edith?” asked his brother-in-law. (He had always alluded to her like this since the dreadful days of the Nelson letters. “Mrs. Grainger” marked the moral difference that there was between them, “Edith” showed that blood—though there wasn’t any—was thicker than water.)
Hugh, however, was not trained to these niceties.
“Oh, didn’t you know,” he said, “though, after all, how should you? She’s at Davos still; getting on awfully well again. I came away for a jaunt.”
Ambrose never went wrong according to the true standard.
“Oh, Uncle Hugh,” he said, “did you leave Aunt Edith there alone?”
Even the light on his spectacles looked incredulous. Hugh became flippant.
“Yes, she wants you to go out to keep her company,” he said, “as I ran away.”
Canon Alington, as he was so often told, had infinite tact. He saw at once that something dreadful must have happened; everyone, indeed, except perhaps Perpetua, saw that, and he changed the subject with great address. That was the advantage of being a man of the world, for there was no situation in it which he did not feel himself equal to grappling with, and, if necessary, throwing. The subject had to be changed; easily, naturally, he changed it.
“You ought to have come back two months ago, Hugh,” he said, “and have instructed us in the Davos style. I but borrowed a reflected light from you. We had three weeks’ skating after I returned, and I think we may say that the standard and form in these parts is improved.”
Mrs. Owen was thrilled; to her acute and active mind the whole situation was apparent. Hugh had appeared suddenly in Mannington without his wife, without having let even his sister know he was coming. And he said she was better, was going on excellently! Something disagreeable, she rejoiced to think, must have happened. It might only be a temporary affair, a quarrelof no importance, but in that case Hugh would hardly have come back suddenly like this without a word to anybody. Agnes, too, was looking awkward and distressed. And how full of bitterness was Hugh’s remark to Ambrose that Edith wanted him to go out and keep her company! Evidently also Canon Alington had come to the same conclusion, for there was no mistaking the point of the masterly way in which he changed the conversation. What tact! If everyone behaved so beautifully there would never be any scandal at all. She felt that the imperfections of the world had their consoling points.
Dinner was already far advanced, but a plate of something had been brought for Hugh, and he was eating it with what seemed like appetite. But Mrs. Owen knew better; it was a pretence of appetite probably. She had heard of that before. Besides, people who were going to be hung at 8A.M.often ate excellent breakfasts. Hugh, so to speak, had been hung forty-eight hours ago, so this was less remarkable a feat.
But for the life of her she could not guess for certain, to her own satisfaction, what had happened. Months ago, when Canon Alington had returned, he had announced the incredibly swift recovery of his sister-in-law (meaning Agnes’s sister-in-law), and had expressed a grave but cheerful doubt whether she had ever suffered from consumption at all. “She will be well by May,” he had said. It was May now.
Oh, yes, there was something below these cards, and her poisonous provincial mind promised itself a treat of some kind. Already she was saying to herself that she never had liked “those Graingers.”
But there was a limitation clause here. She might still be devoted to “those Graingers” if this estrangement, whatever it was, was not disgraceful, especially if she was confided in, if she knew first. She determined to do her very best to know first. That made a lot of difference. Perhaps Hugh would confide in her if she showed how understanding, how sympathetic, how womanly (in the best sense of that word) she was.
“Dear Mr. Hugh,” she said, “but how we have missed you and your dear wife! Mannington has not been Mannington without you. She will soon rejoin you here, I trust?”
“Oh, no,” said Hugh; “she will be at Davos, at least I hope so, all the summer.”
To the mind of the real scandal-monger no remark is innocent. The trained vision can find concealment and equivocation everywhere. “At least I hope so”—what did that mean? It looked as if he did not know his wife’s movements, did not care, perhaps. Hugh’s innocence appeared probable to the poisonous mind, and the case began to look grave against Edith. Mrs. Owen began to recollect also that she had never liked “that Mrs. Grainger,” who had always held herself so much aloof. No wonder. But to her broad-minded view the innocent should never suffer with the guilty. Hugh should not lose his friends, as far as she was concerned.
“You are here for some time, Hugh?” asked his sister.
“I hardly know,” said he; “it depends on other people, and on circumstances. I shall ask people to come down here, and if they won’t (“If they won’t!” echoed Mrs. Owen to herself) I shall go away. I can’t live at Chalkpits all alone. All the same I could be very busy. I should fish and ride. I have to practise too, as I have a long engagement at Covent Garden in thesummer. Edith begged me not to give it up. Of course I may have to.”
Mrs. Owen’s suspicions grew darker. She was sure Edith had done something dreadful. How gallant Hugh was about it! She was sure she could have behaved just like that, if the opportunity had come in her way. But it never had. She thought that Hugh was almost certain to confide in her.
After dinner the usual curriculum was to be expected. Ambrose and Perpetua, since Mrs. Owen was here, were to sit up to hear her sing one song, after which they would go to bed, when, since there were four present, the others would play bridge for the usual stakes, which were beans. All four players were given a little bag of dried beans, two hundred in number. At the end of each rubber Canon Alington always said, “Now for reckoning day,” and you paid your opponent (dividing the points by ten) the beans he had won, or he paid you the beans he had lost. At the end of the play you counted up your beans and announced the total. There were congratulations to the fortunate winners, condolence for the losers. The beans were then recounted and put away in the bags out of which they had been taken. Bridge was far too good a game, such was the pronouncement of Canon Alington, to make it necessary to play for stakes. To-night he added—
“You might as well skate for stakes, eh, Hugh?”
And Hugh privately thought that his brother-in-law had much better not. So he only said “Quite so.”
To-night, however, there was a little delay in beginning the curriculum, for Mrs. Owen at first positively refused to sing at all unless Hugh stopped his ears, for “she daren’t,” but abated these hard conditions and consented to give them some bit of Galahad’s diary ifHugh would sing afterward. So she sang the famous second adventure, while Agnes closed her eyes because she listened best so, and the Canon beat time with a paper-knife, and Ambrose and Perpetua turned over, their faces glued to the music. After which, though marching orders had been issued for them, they were allowed to stop and hear Uncle Hugh perform. But it was rather a handicap in that house to sing after Mrs. Owen.
Bridge was unusually exciting that night because of the wonderful winning power of Mrs. Owen, and had it not been that she revoked once in no trumps, probably the rest of the world would have been bankrupt, and what Canon Alington called the “gold reserve”—meaning another bag of beans—would have had to be put into circulation in order to enable the game to proceed. She made, too, quite the right remark when, on finding she was four hundred and twenty-eight to the good, she said, “How dreadful if we had been playing for money!”
Then, since the inexorable hour of half-past ten had arrived, she gathered up her music and put on her goloshes, for a little walk was so pleasant after these exciting games, and started home under Hugh’s escort, for her house lay between Chalkpits and the Vicarage. This was exactly what she wanted; she would see if womanliness would not lead to confidence.
“Such a treat to hear you sing, Mr. Hugh,” she said as they set off, “and such a pleasure to know that perhaps we may hear you in town again! You think there is still a chance?”
“Of course, it must depend on my wife,” said he.
Mrs. Owen gave a great sigh, and said nothing for a moment. Then the stars gave her an inspiration; theyhad given the same to Galahad when he said good-night.
“How peaceful starlight is!” she observed. “It makes one see how infinitesimal our own troubles are when one sees the immensity of space.”
Hugh’s reply was bitter; oh, she was sure it was bitter.
“Oh, do you think it makes much difference to a toothache if you remember that Sirius is billions and billions of miles away?” he asked.
Mrs. Owen nearly laid the touch of a fairy hand on his arm. She probably would quite have done so if it was not holding up her dress.
“Poor Mr. Hugh!” she said softly.
Hugh was rather touched; he did not like his companion, but there was something genuine in the simplicity of this.
“Thanks,” he said.
They had come to Mrs. Owen’s gate by this time, and she stopped a moment.
“If I can do anything, you will tell me, will you not?” she said. “And if people ask me why you have come back alone, what shall I say?”
“Why, that I have come back for a few weeks to see my friends,” he said.
“Yes, I see—yes. Good-night!”
Hugh walked on some hundred yards, pondering a little over this rather cryptic sentence, but thinking mainly of Davos. Then a sudden thought struck him; but the moment it really took shape he laughed at it. There were limits to the absurdity even of people who had thought Edith’s paper on the newly discovered Nelson letters unfit for the digestion of the Literific.
It was daffodil-weather next day, and he spent adelightful morning, noting down what he knew Edith would care to hear about, seeing with her eyes as far as he could and hearing with her delicate sense. Till mid-day or thereabout he prowled round the gardens, and up on to the down where she had revealed Andrew Robb, and found everywhere the intimate thrill of home. It was all part of him and her, as he had once said to her, and while it was newly fresh he went indoors again to write her word of it—
Yes, my darling, it is daffodil-weather on my first morning here, and I, too, prayed for Peggy—oh! by the way, I have just heard from her, and she and Daisy are coming down this afternoon, so I shan’t be alone for a single day—when I went into the copse above the Chalkpit. There they were, millions and millions, like splashes of sun. And the beeches had that sort of green powder on their stems which only appears in spring (do you know it?), and birds, birds; you never saw such a business. All the gentlemen were running after the ladies, and the ladies were pretending to run away, but they never ran far. Above, the down was still gray, but I searched among the old grass, the way you showed me, and the tiny fresh shoots and spears were just beginning to come up. Oh! I dined at Dick’s last night, because they hadn’t got my telegram (I don’t think I sent it, by the way), and there wasn’t anything to eat (here, you understand). Mrs. Owen was there. She sang Galahad’s “Good Night.” (Oh! I forgot—on the down I threw my hat in the air as I did when you told me you were A. R., just at the same place. That’s all; I thought you would like to know.) Yes, she sang Galahad’s “Good Night.”Galahad’s “Good Night.”Lor’! Then she revoked at Bridge, which we played at for beans. Then I walked home with her, and we talked about the stars, and how calm they were. What a fiend! They like her so much, too.What of the garden? Well, it’s you, just as the down and the daffodils are. But I don’t like the steep bank up to the broad walk from the tennis court. (Peggy brings George Alexander Hugh with her, and says he’s as long as his name now.) All over the elms the leaves are bursting, and the hawthorn hedgeis covered with little bunches of green, just like the way fire bursts out from squibs. And all morning one tune rang in my head, “Meine Seele.”Then I went down to the water-meadow. (By the way, I sang that last night, and told them it was Tschaikowsky, and Mrs. Owen said she knew it so well. What a liar!) And I stepped into an enormous bog-hole right up to my knee. Heaps of forget-me-nots, and the water as blue. I shall try to get a trout this evening; no use before about sunset. What a silly letter; full of little things.Oh! Edith, your room. I could have howled. I wish you weren’t so blooming essential to every place we have been in together. Yet it wouldn’t be you if you weren’t, and it wouldn’t be the place, either. But your room needed you most of all. I sat in your chair for ages, and in the blotting-pad between the leaves there was tucked away a half-sheet of paper with “Household Books” written very neatly at the top. Such method, and no result! Not another word. I wonder if you paid them, even.I had a splendid journey—a few moments of shrill expostulation at Basle, because they wanted me to throw away some wax matches, but my powerful mixture of French, English, German and a little operatic Italian like “Lasciate mi” reduced them. And all the time that the miles were lengthening out between us, the thread never broke, and it reaches all the way to me here, the golden thread. By now, too, you will have written me a long letter all about yourself, and it’s coming as quick as it can, the sluggard!Edith, it’s too killing for words. I am quite sure that Mrs. Owen thinks that you and I have quarrelled. My sudden presence here alone is felt to want explanation. I think I must be right about it. Idohope so. If I’m right Mrs. Owen will certainly pump me. I shall lead her on, o’er moor and fen and crag, until she topples into the torrent. Oh! that’s profane. Sorry! When she has definitely committed herself, and I think she will, I shall tell her what I think in polite language. It occurred to me last night, when I tumbled in upon them all without warning, that they thought something was odd. Then when I said “Good-night” to her at her gate, she said she would be so willing to help. This morning I have been thinking it over, and I believe she must havemeant something. Dick was slightly more parochial, too, when I went away.Oh! how I long for you. That’s all.Hugh.P. S.—Mrs. Owen! Mrs. Owen!!!
Yes, my darling, it is daffodil-weather on my first morning here, and I, too, prayed for Peggy—oh! by the way, I have just heard from her, and she and Daisy are coming down this afternoon, so I shan’t be alone for a single day—when I went into the copse above the Chalkpit. There they were, millions and millions, like splashes of sun. And the beeches had that sort of green powder on their stems which only appears in spring (do you know it?), and birds, birds; you never saw such a business. All the gentlemen were running after the ladies, and the ladies were pretending to run away, but they never ran far. Above, the down was still gray, but I searched among the old grass, the way you showed me, and the tiny fresh shoots and spears were just beginning to come up. Oh! I dined at Dick’s last night, because they hadn’t got my telegram (I don’t think I sent it, by the way), and there wasn’t anything to eat (here, you understand). Mrs. Owen was there. She sang Galahad’s “Good Night.” (Oh! I forgot—on the down I threw my hat in the air as I did when you told me you were A. R., just at the same place. That’s all; I thought you would like to know.) Yes, she sang Galahad’s “Good Night.”Galahad’s “Good Night.”Lor’! Then she revoked at Bridge, which we played at for beans. Then I walked home with her, and we talked about the stars, and how calm they were. What a fiend! They like her so much, too.
What of the garden? Well, it’s you, just as the down and the daffodils are. But I don’t like the steep bank up to the broad walk from the tennis court. (Peggy brings George Alexander Hugh with her, and says he’s as long as his name now.) All over the elms the leaves are bursting, and the hawthorn hedgeis covered with little bunches of green, just like the way fire bursts out from squibs. And all morning one tune rang in my head, “Meine Seele.”
Then I went down to the water-meadow. (By the way, I sang that last night, and told them it was Tschaikowsky, and Mrs. Owen said she knew it so well. What a liar!) And I stepped into an enormous bog-hole right up to my knee. Heaps of forget-me-nots, and the water as blue. I shall try to get a trout this evening; no use before about sunset. What a silly letter; full of little things.
Oh! Edith, your room. I could have howled. I wish you weren’t so blooming essential to every place we have been in together. Yet it wouldn’t be you if you weren’t, and it wouldn’t be the place, either. But your room needed you most of all. I sat in your chair for ages, and in the blotting-pad between the leaves there was tucked away a half-sheet of paper with “Household Books” written very neatly at the top. Such method, and no result! Not another word. I wonder if you paid them, even.
I had a splendid journey—a few moments of shrill expostulation at Basle, because they wanted me to throw away some wax matches, but my powerful mixture of French, English, German and a little operatic Italian like “Lasciate mi” reduced them. And all the time that the miles were lengthening out between us, the thread never broke, and it reaches all the way to me here, the golden thread. By now, too, you will have written me a long letter all about yourself, and it’s coming as quick as it can, the sluggard!
Edith, it’s too killing for words. I am quite sure that Mrs. Owen thinks that you and I have quarrelled. My sudden presence here alone is felt to want explanation. I think I must be right about it. Idohope so. If I’m right Mrs. Owen will certainly pump me. I shall lead her on, o’er moor and fen and crag, until she topples into the torrent. Oh! that’s profane. Sorry! When she has definitely committed herself, and I think she will, I shall tell her what I think in polite language. It occurred to me last night, when I tumbled in upon them all without warning, that they thought something was odd. Then when I said “Good-night” to her at her gate, she said she would be so willing to help. This morning I have been thinking it over, and I believe she must havemeant something. Dick was slightly more parochial, too, when I went away.
Oh! how I long for you. That’s all.
Hugh.
P. S.—Mrs. Owen! Mrs. Owen!!!
Hugh addressed his letter and rang the bell, saying, it must go at once, as is the habit of people who wish their letters to arrive at their destinations irrespective of the time at which posts start. Had he known what was going on within a few hundred yards of him he would probably have delayed it.
Mrs. Owen had awoke that morning with a strong consciousness of some duty to be done. For the moment she could not determine in what direction that duty lay. As far as she knew, there was no kindness left unperformed, no remission of her sunbeam efforts. (In the earlier days of their married life Mr. Owen had habitually called her “Sunbeam.” He now called her S. B.) Then she remembered. She got up at once.
It was wise in such cases to take the worst possible view, especially if you are going to be helpful. That saved shocks afterward, though sometimes (she did not think this) it entailed disappointments. “Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst and be helpful” was a favourite motto of hers, which also was a condensation of one of Canon Alington’s sermons. The phrase at once suggested to her the next step. She would “drop in” at St. Olaf’s with the seeds which she had promised—had she not?—to give him. And then she would be really diplomatic and also true to herself. She would sound him; she would find out whether some such dreadful idea had occurred to him as had occurred to her. If so, they would hold sweet converse together. If not, she would erase all these terrible surmises from her mind. If he had not thought of that (she did notquite know what “that” was, but it was scandalous), she would cease to think of “that” at all, and demand even when alone, no explanation of Hugh’s mysterious appearance. The phrase “to thine own self be true” gave her enterprise the light of mission-work. But Shakespeare, perhaps, did not reflect, and certainly she did not, that if you are true to people like Mrs. Owen, the result to others whom you cannot be false to, is not a very happy or distinguished performance.
The technique of her plan was brilliantly successful. She chose her hour well, the hour when (probably) Canon Alington would have finished his letters, and be doing something strenuous in the garden, and when Agnes would be still employed indoors, the “Martha-hour,” as her husband called it, though he did not mean that he was doing the better part. There he was, sure enough, hatless and coatless, for he was not the sort of man who thought it necessary to appear always in clerical garb, chopping down a tree in the paddock. Her foot was noiseless on the grass, and he did not see her till she had approached quite near. But she saw him; there was not the excellent physical vigour that usually hung about him. He was listless, sad. And the moment he saw her he put down his axe, instead of giving a few more violent strokes, which would have been characteristic of him.
“I have brought you the seeds I spoke of,” she said. “They ought to be sown now, and the plants will be quite hardy by the autumn.”
He took the packet.
“Thanks,” he said absently—“thanks.”
A dreadful silence. Mrs. Owen told herself that her errand had not been in vain. As a matter of fact, she did not know what the seeds were. Nor did he. Shewas determined, however, that he should begin. That was only right. He began.
“How did you think Hugh Grainger was looking?” he asked. “We were both most surprised at his suddenly appearing like that. Did he look to you well—happy?”
Mrs. Owen was nothing if not simple.
“No,” she said.
Canon Alington put on his coat.
“You can give me ten minutes?” he asked. “We can never forget, Agnes and I, the service you did us about those dreadful Nelson letters. And if people do one a service one turns to them again. So I consult you; I turn to you. Why has Hugh come back like this? Why has he left his wife in Davos? Mrs. Owen, is she at Davos?”
It is one of the sad things of life, as the poet Gray has remarked, that so many flowers blush unseen and waste their sweetness on the desert air. But it is much sadder to think how many flowers of humour do the same, owing to the lack of that subtle quality in the audience. Mrs. Owen saw nothing in the least humorous in the fact that she and Canon Alington (and Agnes) had, on the bare fact of Hugh’s return, built a whole tragedy. She had no conception how ludicrous she and her pompous companion were being, she only thought they were striving to be helpful. It never entered her head even that she was following this up with a sort of ghoulish gusto for scandal, nor that, if their surmises proved to be completely unwarranted, she would heave a sigh of relief, and in reality be much disappointed. Instead of realising this, she only clasped her hands together and turned her eyes upward.
“I will sacrifice all day if I can help in this dreadful business,” she said, tacitly answering Canon Alington’s question, and feeling already quite sure that Mrs. Grainger was no longer at Davos. She remembered, too, the position of Davos on the map of Europe; it was not so very far from the Italian lakes, where all sorts of dreadful things constantly occurred.
For one fleeting moment some glimmering of common sense flashed across Canon Alington.
“Do you think we are drawing conclusions from insufficient data?” he asked.
Such a thought had never entered Mrs. Owen’s head. She said so.
“Then there is but one thing to be done,” said Canon Alington, “and that is to go straight to poor Hugh and put ourselves at his disposal, to help in any way we can. Perhaps if we convince him that that is our only object he will tell us what this all means. It may be only a passing misunderstanding, in which case he ought to go back to his wife at once. It may be worse than that. But, whoever is the culprit, we are agreed on our sole purpose, to help.”
Their joint action before in the case of the Nelson letters had been crowned with such marvellous success that it was soon agreed that they should act in concert again. Canon Alington, it is true, had not quite forgotten yet a few stinging moments, when Hugh sat on the stile on the way back to church, but he had withdrawn his words and apologised that very evening, in a truly Christian spirit. His brother-in-law, therefore, considered now that those words had not been said. It was agreed, too, that Agnes, at present, at any rate, need not be mixed up in this painful business, and without further delay the two set off for Chalkpits. Theyarrived soon after Hugh had posted his letter to Edith; from his window he saw their approach, he saw the solemn purpose on their faces. This time their misguided interference (if their errand should prove to be this) excited in him only wild, hilarious merriment, and for a moment he hid his face in a sofa cushion and shook. Then he composed himself. How right Edith had been before; how infinitely better it was to be amused! He fully intended to extract the utmost possible amusement out of it. And hewouldtell Peggy this time.
They were shown in, and he received them very gravely. His hair was a little disordered from his explosion in the sofa-cushion, and Mrs. Owen thought he looked very wild.
“It is kind of you to come,” he said.
And they all sat down together as if by machinery.
“Very kind of you to come,” repeated Hugh.
The devil could not have suggested to him more fiendishly ingenious words. It was quite clear to both his visitors that he knew why they had come. It was true—he did.
Mrs. Owen writhed and undulated toward him. It had been settled that she should speak first; the womanly touch was the thing to begin with, afterward the Church would advise and console.
“Dear Mr. Hugh,” she said, “we only want to help. That is all our object. If there is anything we can do?”
Hugh bit his tongue to stop the sudden convulsion that nearly broke from him. This was done so successfully that it sounded like a sob.
“Tell us all about it, my dear fellow,” said Canon Alington. “Take your time. Or, would you rather speak to me alone, or to Mrs. Owen alone?”
“No; both of you,” said Hugh.
“We know nothing yet,” said Dick, “except that thereis something wrong. So just relieve our minds of the worst anxiety first. Is she still at Davos?”
Hugh sat quite still a moment, and he had no longer the slightest desire to laugh. He had imagined only that these two idiots had thought that he and Edith had had some quarrel. But slowly the meaning of that question dawned on him. He turned very red, then very white.
“Just explain your question a little more,” he said quickly. “Where else should she be? Why should she be anywhere else?”
Then, luckily for everybody, his sense of humour came to his aid. It was the most glorious thing that ever happened. And his voice trembled over the next question.
“Answer me quickly,” he said, “or I shall burst. Did your question imply that you thought she had run away, left me?”
Canon Alington got up.
“We had better be going,” he said to Mrs. Owen; “we only came to try to help.”
“Oh, wait a minute,” said Hugh. “There is plenty of time. That occurred to you then, I take it; that was your worst anxiety. I will remove that at once. That being disposed of, I suppose you thought we had quarrelled. Edith and I! Quarrelled! Oh, Dick, never try to make another joke as long as you live! You will never, never beat that. Your reputation as a humourist is secure. Don’t spoil it. Oh, Christmas!”
Then he recollected some sort of manners, and turned to Mrs. Owen.
“I am quite sure that you meant most kindly,” he said, sacrificing all vestige of truth—“but,” and he had to stop in order to control his voice, “but don’t youthink it was rather a hasty conclusion? Thanks awfully, all the same. Thanks.”
And then he could no longer check himself. There came a breaking point. He turned his face to the wall and tried to bury it in his hands. But shrieks of laughter burst forth through the chinks in his fingers. He was very sorry about it; manners had again gone to the winds, but he was perfectly powerless. If people made such wonderful jokes what were you to do?
Then, after a moment, he controlled himself, and turned to the room again. But it was empty. So he sat down and laughed properly. The window was wide open, and as the steps of his visitors crunched over the gravel maniac yells and cries besieged their ears.
They were both rather red in the face, and they walked a little way without speech. Then Canon Alington spokeex cathedrâ.
“I am deeply thankful,” he said, “that we have cleared it up”; and, with his usual tact, spoke at once of the decorations in the church for the festival of Easter. But still Hugh’s laughter came to them, and once Mrs. Owen, whose hearing was remarkably acute, thought she heard the shrill falsetto words, “Is she at Davos? Oh-h-h!”
And she had taken so much trouble to get intimate at Chalkpits. She felt it was all thrown away now. The conclusion was perfectly just, logical, irrefutable, all that conclusions ought to be. She determined that they should be “those Graingers.” What a pity, though! She felt sure that there was so much in common between them and her. Perhaps it was premature to think of them as “those Graingers” just yet. What a blessing, anyhow, that it had been Canon Alington who had been spokesman. He had really done itvery stupidly. Perhaps with care it might only result in their being “those Alingtons.” And even before she had reached home her infinitesimal mind was as busy as a bee over infinitesimal intrigues.
Edith was under contract to telegraph to Hugh at least once a day, and to write as often as she felt inclined, and for the next week, with Peggy and Daisy in the house, the days, lacking the presence that made days perfect, came as near to perfection as might be. Telegrams came with more than daily frequency, and thoroughly satisfactory contents, and letters were daily also; not long very often, but always happy, always giving good accounts, and always bursting with satisfaction at the success of the writer’s diplomacy with regard to her birthday present to him.
The days were full of mirth also, for Peggy had taken the helpfulness of Mannington in the humorous spirit, and bade Hugh look at postmarks, to make certain that Edith was still at Davos. She had insisted also on the absurdity of there being any breach between St. Olaf’s and Chalkpits, and, with the sweeping good nature and inability to harbour resentment or malice which was so characteristic of her, had insisted on Hugh’s at once asking both Mr. and Mrs. Owen and the vicar and his wife to dinner, simultaneously, and she would hold herself responsible for the success of it.
“You’ve only got to be natural with people,” she said, “and they’ll be natural too.”
“Oh, but it’s natural to Mrs. Owen to be affected, and to Dick to be a prig,” said Hugh.
“Oh, no, it isn’t. That’s only veneer. We shall play Beggar-my-neighbour. You will see.”
They came, and Peggy conquered. And Mrs. Owen,as she walked home in her goloshes, thought that perhaps it would be neither “those Graingers” nor “those Alingtons,” but “those dear Graingers and Alingtons.”
Fishing had begun, and Peggy at once saw that nothing else mattered. The fact that it was dry-fly work, and she at present hardly knew one end of a rod from the other, did not interfere at all with her determination to fish, and, as a matter of fact, she hooked a trout (who must have been mad) on the third day, which agitated her so much that she fell into the river, and had to go home. Hugh, however, went on, and Daisy stopped down with him. Peggy toiled up to the house, her wet skirt clinging to her with almost touching fidelity, and impeding her movements as only a wet skirt can. Going through the hall, and dropping showers of blessings as she passed, she saw that the mid-day post had just come in. There was a pile for her, and nothing for Hugh except a telegram. So there was no letter from Edith to him to-day, unless, indeed, it had come by the morning post. That was unusual, however, it always arrived by this second delivery. Yet there was a telegram.
Then, quite suddenly and causelessly, Peggy felt anxious, and it became necessary to send this telegram down to him by the river, so that if there was bad news he should get it at once. She felt certain that it did contain bad news, and longed for a moment to open it herself. But she could not do that, and so merely scribbled on the outside, “Send it back to me to read.” Then she went upstairs to change.
A quarter of an hour afterward she was laughing at her fears, for he had it back, opened, to be given to her, and it contained the words merely—