It was nearly a year since Peggy and her sister had dined with early
punctuality one night and set off, with Hugh following in a hansom, to
be in time for the rise of a momentous curtain, and once again, at much
the same hour--though Hugh, instead of following, had long ago preceded
them--they were hurrying eastward in Peggy’s electric broughham, the one
possession, it may be remembered, that she desired other people to
consider to be hers. Inside the brougham, too, there was much similarity
between the moral atmosphere of those two occasions, for once again
Peggy was excited and voluble, and Edith, with far more cause for mental
unrest, was outwardly as calm and undisturbed as ever. Soon also, even
as had happened some ten or eleven months ago, they got into a _queue_
of interminable length. To-day, however, it extended not to the doors of
the Piccadilly Theatre, but to a large portal farther east in Bow
Street.
“Yes, the Education Bill,” said Peggy, who was clearly talking for no
other reason except that the edge of anxiety and excitement is felt less
in conversation than in silence, “how interesting and instructive it is
to observe the Government all standing in a row and industriously
digging their own graves! So unnecessary; as if the Opposition was not
quite willing, even desirous or wishful, as Canon Alington would say, to
do it for them. Why do clergymen say ‘wishful’ and ‘oftentimes’? Is it
merely in order to make their lay-brothers chatter with rage? Oh, dear,
I saw a poster, with ‘Lohengrin’ quite large on it! Edith, I don’t
think I can bear it; I don’t, really!”
Edith laughed.
“I don’t think I can, either,” she said; “but for a different reason. I
can’t bear it because it is all too divine to be true. Why, Peggy,
before another hour is over the swan will have come down the Scheldt,
and Lohengrin will have stepped from it and said good-bye to it,
and--and--well, it will be Hugh.”
“But aren’t you anxious, even?” asked Peggy. “How can you help being
that?”
“Ah, I don’t see how I could be! Why, it’s Hugh. I was anxious enough
about my own play, I confess--at least, I got past anxiety, and merely
despaired. But I can be no more anxious about Hugh’s singing than I
could about the sun’s rising in the morning. It is one of the perfectly
certain things.”
She paused a moment.
“And even if it weren’t, even if the impossible happened and he sang
badly, or broke down, do you know, Peggy, in my very particular and
secret heart, I shouldn’t be sorry. You see, I should have to comfort
him and make him happy again. Sometimes I almost want Hugh to be
unhappy, so that I could do that for him. I think I could make him happy
again whatever happened. And he has given me so much. He has given me
life, he has made me see what life can be, and if a person who is
utterly content, as I am, can long for anything, it is for that. He has
given me all--all there is in the world, I think.”
She laughed.
“I remember your telling me not to be selfish,” she said, “and you asked
me to spare Hugh. Oh, Peggy, what glorious mistakes a clever woman like
you can make!”
Peggy beamed delightedly; her passion for seeing other people happy was
being hugely satisfied at this moment.
“I just loved that telegram you and he sent me to say I wasn’t wanted,”
she said. “If there is one thing nicer than being immensely wanted, it
is not to be wanted at all for reasons like that.”
“And do you see yet how magnificently you were mistaken last year?”
asked Edith. “For if you do, I wish you would tell Hugh so. He knows, by
the way, that you tried to dissuade me from marrying him.”
Peggy’s radiance went behind a cloud.
“Ah, I don’t think you should have told him that!” she said.
“I was sorry for it too,” said Edith, “but there was no way out.”
Peggy let down the window and looked out for a moment, still frowning.
“So that is it,” she said. “I knew something had come between Hugh and
me.”
“Tell him you see you were wrong then,” said Edith again.
Peggy did not answer and her silence was not in need of interpretation.
But that she did not think she was wrong (since this was clearly the
meaning of it) failed now to reach Edith; it could not at this moment
cloud her sun.
“And even if you were right,” she said softly, “I would willingly pay
all that may be demanded for that which I have received. You warned me
of the long gray years. What do they matter to a woman who has once had
sunrise in her heart?”
Peggy drew a long breath; she felt in every fibre of herself that Edith
did not look forward, did not allow for the limitations and rules under
which life goes on. But at the moment she felt it would be like telling
a happy child that the years brought heaviness of limb and anxiety of
heart, and bidding it therefore cease from its games and prepare itself
for adult life. For Edith’s happiness, it seemed to her, had in the
mysterious ways of the human soul taken her back to childhood again with
its unreflecting, sensitive joys. These few months had wiped off the
misery and bitterness of the past, and perhaps her spring was to follow
her summer, as her autumn had preceded it. She sat up with a quick
imperative movement characteristic of her.
“Don’t let us talk of it,” she said. “Let us say it is sufficient that
you are happy now, and that Hugh is. It is stupid to think unless one
feels one has to think. It is anyhow a divine gift to receive without
question; children can do it, you can do it. This too: I longed only,
dear, as you know, for your happiness and his. You have had, both of
you, a great shining piece of it already, and why not many more shining
pieces? He has had no less than you. By the way, what nonsense you
talked about giving him nothing in return! You have given him not only
yourself but himself. You have made him. Anyone can see that.”
Then she took Edith’s hand.
“One word more,” she said. “In a few months you will give him a child.
And, oh, my dear, when you see your husband looking at your child!
Why--why, you hear the morning stars singing together!”
There was no more of intimate talk after this, and, indeed, but a moment
after they turned out of Long Acre into Bow Street, and the immediate
excitement of the evening again took possession of Peggy.
“Oh, we’re here,” she half groaned, “and it matters so much to us and so
little to the people in the street! Look at that footman’s impassive
back on the box. In a minute he will open the door, with a set wooden
face, and I shall say ‘Side entrance at twelve,’ and he will touch his
hat and go away. And, oh, Edith, what will have happened by twelve? By
the way, in case I forget, as I probably shall, you both come down to
Cookham, don’t you, to-morrow?”
Though they were in such good time the house was already half full, and
was filling now with great rapidity so that the alleys and gangways were
choked by a crowd that evidently wanted to get into its places for the
overture. Early as it was in the season, it was certainly going to be a
crowded house, for the boxes were already fuller than the stalls, a sure
criterion that both would be crammed before the night was many minutes
older. And the indescribable glitter was there, the subdued radiance of
the shimmer of silk and the harder, more brilliant gleam of thousands of
jewels all round the rows of boxes that made moving and changing points
of coloured light as if a swarm of gem-like fireflies had settled all
over the house. And as Peggy saw that, while she stood for a moment or
two in the front of her box, looking and being looked at, she felt,
despite Edith’s triumphant confidence, a sudden sinking of the heart.
All her world, all Edith’s, all Hugh’s was here; his peers had come to
judge him. He would soon step on to that vast stage and have to please
them, for they had paid to be pleased. It struck her suddenly that the
artist’s life was an awful one; whether he sang to the tiara-wearers and
the stars and garters, or whether in a music-hall he did card tricks, it
was all one. He had guaranteed to please; if he did not he was a
swindler, a fraud. But while for them only their guinea was at stake,
for him his career was at stake. True, it was no question of
bread-and-butter for him, as it might be for the Peckham conjurer, whose
failure to please might be a step along the road of starvation; but the
very fact that that stake was not there made the other, his success or
failure as an artist, appear the more stupendous. For the moment she
wished with all her heart that he had not been persuaded to appear. But
it was even at the moment a slight consolation to her to know how
completely she personally had failed to influence him. Edith was
responsible, and Edith was radiant.
The two were alone in the box in the middle of the grand tier, and Peggy
drew her chair to the front, and, in order to occupy herself for these
dreadful minutes, took her glasses and searched for friends and
acquaintances. Sometimes the sight of so many familiar faces gave her
pleasure; at another moment it seemed to her quite dreadful that
everybody should have come like this. She would sooner it had been a wet
night, or that there was some great counter-attraction. And she groaned!
“Oh, dear, I have never seen so many people whom I knew together
before!” she said. “They have all come to see Hugh; I see hundreds who
never by any chance come to the opera at all. Oh, there is Canon
Alington in the stalls with his wife! They have got a copy of
‘Lohengrin,’ words and music, and will probably follow it instead of
looking. How precisely like them! I wish I could tell Hugh that; it
would cheer him. Doesn’t it cheer you, Edith?”
“I don’t want cheering.”
“No, I forgot. I think it is scarcely human of you. Oh, the lights are
going out. Canon Alington won’t be able to read after all.”
The house hushed and darkened till sight and sound were quenched, and
only the huge red curtain was visible. Then, after dead silence, the
faintest whisper of the strings began, dreaming as it were, of that
which should come, like some beautiful consciousness asleep. The dream
grew more vivid, though still dealing only with the swan and him who
should come on the swan; it grew louder, more distinct, descending from
the remote altitudes of sound to the levels of life; then, with full
band, with shouting of brazen throats and ear-filling vibration of a
hundred throbbing strings, it poured out the tidings of the glorious
knight. And the beautiful consciousness that had but dreamed awoke to
see its dream come true. It, it itself, music, filled the theatre like
sunlight. Then it hushed again, repeating to itself that which it had
dreamed and of which the fulfilment was now coming as the curtain rose.
The tale of slander, lying and baseless, was said, and Elsa called on
the champion of whom she, too, had dreamed. Once she called, and there
was no answer to her cry that died into stillness; again she called, and
still salvation was withheld; but when she called the third time, a
sudden stir of excitement began to move in the crowd that had waited,
sorry but incredulous, and the most dramatic moment in all dramatic art
grew imminent. One man pointed, and another, following his finger,
whispered “A swan!” and head after head turned wondering eyes up the
winding Scheldt. Another spoke of a knight who stood between its folded
wings, and the buzz of the excited multitude grew higher and higher,
rising on the wings of melody, blown onward, as it were, by the rushing
current of the strings and the winds of the sonorous trumpets. Far away
he was seen on the winding river, then nearer, and then close at hand,
and the wonder died into silence, for the miracle was beyond speech. And
Hugh was there!
Slowly and with very even motion the swan came to the near shore of the
river. On it stood one in gleam of silver armour and pale cloak of blue,
young and slim and tall--the stainless knight, the son of Parsifal.
Till that moment Edith had watched, and had felt in every nerve of her
being the growing excitement of the crowded stage, the hurrying suspense
and amazement of the music, and the thought of Elsa, of Lohengrin, of
the play with all the perfection of this great dramatic climax had
occupied her not to the exclusion--for that could not be--but to the
subordination of all that it otherwise meant to her. But for one moment,
as Lohengrin stepped ashore, it was Lohengrin no longer, but Hugh, her
lover and her beloved, and wifehood and motherhood so stirred within her
that she could look no more, and dropped her head on her hands for the
wonder of all that was hers. Peggy, with quick impulsive sympathy, just
laid a hand on her knee for a second, and then Edith looked up again,
just smiled at her sister, and turned her eyes to the stage.
There was dead silence as the whisper of the muted violins grew mute.
The crowd in the house was not less tense and motionless than the crowd
on the stage. Hugh raised his arm, holding it out in gesture of farewell
to his swan, standing sideways so that his face was in profile. On his
head was the silver helmet with its golden wings, and from beneath it
for once there drooped no long yellow effeminate locks that curled on to
the knight’s shoulders, but his own dark close-cropped hair, short on
the neck and crisp on his forehead. Body and legs and arms were clad in
the close-fitting silver mail, and from his shoulders hung the cloak of
pale blue. Never before had Lohengrin appeared thus; youth, not
rouge-painted age, was his; it was no heavy-chested pendulous body,
short-legged and middle-aged, that stood there. It was simply a young
man, rather tall, long of thigh and slender of calf, rather
brown-handed, and with a face of morning, who raised his arm in natural
gracious gesture, as if alone with his feathered steed. Smooth, too, was
his chin, with no overlaying of paint, but with the firm flesh of
boyhood; it was with youth that his eyes were so bright and with
brisk-beating blood that his lips were red.
Then he sang, and it seemed as if song was natural to him, even as
speech is to others, and his voice came quite soft but sure and
straight, as if a silver spear had shot from between his lips to every
corner of the house.
“Nun Sie bedankt, mein lieber Schwan.”
London, fat London, just moved in its stalls and boxes and hushed again.
For it was as if a fairy-tale had come true; it was surely the real
Lohengrin who spoke in song, it must be Lohengrin himself!
Still in profile, he followed his swan with his eyes as it glided away
at his bidding, and then he turned full-face to the house, and for one
moment he looked straight across to where Edith sat. He--Hugh--had
promised to look once at her if it was “all right,” as he had said. It
appeared to be “all right.”
It is not only grief of which the brain can be so full that it can send
to the memory cells no clear account of what it feels, knowing only that
it is stunned by the violence of emotion and rendered unable to do its
work, but joy can have the same effect. Thus the rest of the evening
passed for Edith vaguely in point of detail. A few days ago only, on
that last morning of gale at Mannington, she had thought that all that
life could hold of happiness was gathered together as if under some
ray-collecting lens into one point of light; but now new light had been
added, a further completion was piled on what was already complete. And
all through the acts that followed her mind moved as if in a dream; at
one time it seemed to her that all the world of men and women, all the
world even of angels and spirits was round her, looking at, absorbed in
this incarnation of the spirit of music and romance, while she sat very
small and quiet among them, one only among the infinite multitude, and
having nothing more to do with the silver-mailed knight than any other
of the listeners. Then again the aspect changed altogether, and she felt
as if she was quite alone in the house, and that, as in a magic mirror,
she saw some real scene of human history passing in actuality before her
eyes. And then again--and this was the best of all--the mists cleared,
and she knew Lohengrin, that supreme artist, nightingale-throated, to be
Hugh, and Hugh was hers, and all the world were strangers in comparison.
In those moments even Peggy was but an acquaintance, a moonlit figure
compared to the one sunlit. It was only a play after all, and reality
would begin again when she, waiting at the side entrance in her carriage
for him to come, would see him step across the pavement, call “Right!”
to the coachman before he got in, and sit down by her. In the interval,
however, it was pleasant that Hugh was such a success, though she felt
no surprise at it. Fat London was clapping its gloves to ribands at the
end of the acts; it stood up again and again to welcome him. And her own
darling boy was enjoying it so enormously; she could see how, as he was
recalled again and again, it was no set respectful smile that was his;
it was a smile of pure enjoyment, that often almost broadened into a
laugh as he bowed this way and that.
Between the acts people came in shoals to her box, all talking at once
in a sort of whirl of enthusiastic congratulation; but they, too, were
dim; she felt as if she scarcely knew who they were. There was but
little for her to say. They were all very kind and friendly, but not one
of them understood in the slightest degree how utterly vague they were
to her, how little it mattered just now even to her eager and kindly
soul what anybody thought or said. She could only think of the moment
when Hugh would step into the carriage and she would be alone with him,
driving through the gleaming, crowded streets, which, too, would be so
unreal and remote. Once only did her ordinary normal perceptions usurp
their usual place, and that was when an elderly banker, who was famed
for wealth and musical parties, asked her if her husband could possibly
be induced to sing at his forthcoming concert at “Melba prices.” She
could not help laughing at that, but checked it, and said she would ask
him.
And then at last and at last it was all over, and it was still all quite
unreal except just for a moment, when, as Peggy left her in her box,
where she meant to sit for a few minutes till the staircase and gangway
were emptier, she said, “You and Hugh driving home together! Oh, Edith!”
That was real. Peggy understood.
So she waited alone while the theatre slowly emptied, and, alone,
reality began to reassert itself, and, lo, all the wonderful dream of
the evening was true! She had seen and heard the ideal Lohengrin in
flesh and blood and voice and acting, and Lohengrin was he whose wife
she was, the mother of whose child she would be. It was not a dream; she
had to remind herself of that. It was all true, happening now and here
to her; those people crowded round the doors and exits would be her
witnesses; they, too, had seen and heard. But all that was the world’s
side, “there was the wonder;” the Hugh who had driven fat London off its
head to-night was but the aspect he turned to the public, to everybody
who cared to pay and come and see him. That Hugh she loved; but what of
the other who loved her? That was her secret Hugh.
The crowd slowly melted away from round the doors of exit, and before
many minutes she went downstairs. She had told her carriage to wait at
the end of the rank of those going to the side entrance, but so quickly
in the last minute or two had the rank gone off that it was close to the
door when she came out. So she walked a yard or two and got in, having
arranged with Hugh that he should come out at this entrance. From time
to time it moved a step or two nearer the door as the carriages in front
of it drove off, and it was not long before she was drawn up opposite
the door itself, waiting for the moment when he should appear and step
in. Meantime, all the dreamlike sense of the evening was passing rapidly
away; it was but a film of mist that separated her from reality. Already
Lohengrin was Hugh to her, and all that was left of the dreamlike was
the ignorance she was in about the other actors. She did not really know
what Ortrud was like, or Telramund, still less did she know Elsa. For
she, she herself, as she saw now, had been Elsa throughout. It was to
her that Hugh, whether as Lohengrin, or in those few moments of reality
as himself, had played. It had been she, in her thought, who had gone
through the play with him, as so often she had done it at Mannington;
all she knew of Elsa was that she had not been conspicuously bad,
otherwise there would have been an interruption in the flow of her own
artistic delight. But there had been none; there was never a performance
so smooth, as her exterior sense now recognised, as that which she had
just witnessed. And then there came what she had been waiting for. A
boyish staccato voice said “Good night!” to the man at the door, there
were two quick steps across the pavement, the door of her carriage was
opened, and Hugh said “Right!” to the coachman and sat down beside her.
Then the carriage moved, and a quick arm was thrown round her shoulders,
and he kissed her.
“Well?” he said.
She sat upright, almost pushing him from her, and searched for and found
his hands.
“You kissed my hands, you know, when I was Andrew Robb,” she said. “Oh,
Hugh, don’t be ridiculous, give me your hands!”
“Ah, but what nonsense!” he said quickly.
“No, not nonsense. See, this is this dear hand and that dear hand! Oh,
not yours, Hugh, but Lohengrin’s! My homage, Lohengrin!”
Then she held both those big hands in hers.
“That is for Lohengrin,” she said. “I can’t--I can’t say what it all has
been to me, but when I kiss your hands as Lohengrin, dear, and know all
the time that it is you----”
Then she leaned forward and kissed his face.
“Hughie, Hughie!” she said.
Again she paused.
“I have no more words than that,” she said gently, “and we have all the
years to say them in. So let us be sensible. Tell me about it, Hugh, all
from the beginning. I want to know how you felt the whole time, what you
thought about while you were waiting, what you thought about when the
swan came with you, what--oh, everything!”
Hugh leaned back.
“There is very little to tell,” he said. “When I was dressing I thought
how frightfully cold silver mail was. And when I had dressed I don’t
think I thought about anything. It was all quite blank till a call-boy
or somebody tapped at the door of my dressing-room. And then I thought
desperately--I thought what an idiot I had been ever to listen to your
arguments. I thought how completely happy I should be if I was just
going down to dinner at Mannington with you, instead of being here. And
then, when I went out and saw the swan waiting, I looked upon it as a
man might look on the cart which was going to take him to Tyburn to be
hanged, with everybody looking on. What was going to happen was as
incredible as death.”
Edith’s hand still held his, and he felt that she was trembling.
“Oh, Hugh, I guessed it,” she said, “and I wanted to come to you so, and
could not! Yes, what then?”
“Then quite suddenly I caught sight of myself in a huge looking-glass,
and I thought I had never seen such beautiful clothes in my life, and
wondered who it was. And then I remembered it was I, and that I was
going to sing Lohengrin to you on a real proper stage, with a band to
play fast or slow just exactly as I wished, and a real live conductor to
follow my lips and tell the band how I felt. Why, it was the biggest fun
in the world! Anything so heavenly had never happened, except perhaps
when you told me you were Andrew Robb. And there was I in my beautiful
clothes and my beautiful new swan ready, and as we set off from the
wings I just quivered all over with pleasure, and said, ‘Here we
go--here we go!’”
This was real, and Edith leaned back in the carriage and laughed for
pleasure.
“Oh, Hughie, how like you!” she said. “And you are so satisfactory; you
are always yourself and never by any chance anybody else. Go on, you
darling! All my beautiful, sublime thoughts are gone, but it is such
fun!”
“Well, and so out we came into the very middle of the stage, and stopped
without any jerk at all. Everybody was waiting for me to begin, and as
soon as I said ‘Nun,’ oh, Edith, I knew I was absolutely in the middle
of the note, not anywhere else, not on the side of it and not slipping
about on the edge of it. I knew too when I had sung three notes that
they had gone up into the gallery and to each of the stalls and into
every box, and that there wasn’t the slightest suspicion of a tremolo,
not even an aspen-leaf quiver. And at that, when I knew that, somehow
all the sense of fun, all the ‘Here we go!’ ceased. It was hugely,
splendidly serious instead. But, anyhow, I felt all right, so I looked
up at you, as I said I would. Do you remember? Did you see?”
“Yes, I seemed to remember you had said something of the sort,” said
she.
“Oh, well, I thought you might have forgotten! No, I don’t think I did.”
He took up her hand again.
“Yes, the fun ceased, as sometimes suddenly when you and I are playing
the fool together the fun ceases, because the big thing, that which we
are to each other, pops out. It was the same then. All the fun of having
the band to play for me and London to listen ceased because, I suppose,
music popped out. And there was Elsa looking at me--by Jove, wasn’t she
perfectly splendid!--and she and I had been given this treasure, this
golden story with its golden songs, to make real, to make to live. We
not only were going to take you hundreds of years back, to pull up the
years that had gone from the deep, cool well of the past, but we were
going to show you how Wagner pulled them up and set them in jewels.”
Hugh’s voice had risen in sudden excitement, and he turned quickly now
to his wife.
“And that was not all the miracle,” he cried, “for again and again it
was not Elsa whom I sang to, but it was you. In the love duel it was
like something ghostly; if I had not been so absorbed, so intent on it,
I should have been frightened. I could have sworn that there was no Frau
Dimlich there; it was you. Did you know that? I felt as if you must have
known you were on the stage with me.”
“Oh, Hugh, how my heart knew it!” she said.
Hugh was silent for a moment; then he gave a great sigh, and immediately
after a great crack of laughter.
“Oh, isn’t it fun?” he cried. “Here we go, Andrew Robb and I, and
everybody has to have dinner early in order to see Andrew Robb’s play
and to be in time to hear Hugh Robb sing. Here they go together,
trotting along in their beautiful carriage through fat London!”
Edith winced and started; natural to Hugh as was this sudden change and
thoroughly characteristic of him, she felt jarred. She had been so far
away at that moment from all thought of herself or these streets of
London, standing with Hugh in the innermost temple and sacred place of
their two souls, that she could not help that sudden revulsion of
feeling that came to her lips in a sharply-taken breath. It had seemed
to her so wonderful that he, too, as well as she should have looked on
Elsa as herself, and the very next moment he had swum up out of the deep
and was splashing again on the surface of things. He had been conscious,
too, that she was startled and out of tune with this boisterous mood,
and turned to her again.
“Why, what is it?” he asked. “What is the matter?”
She was not quite herself even yet.
“Oh, Hugh, you pulled me away!” she said. “I was so deep down, we were
both so deep down, and--and----”
She saw his face of innocent surprise in the light of a passing
gas-lamp, and her heart went out to him in the exuberance of his boyish
spirits just as fully as before. It was all Hugh, she told herself, all
the expression of his glorious youth which she loved so.
“I am quite ridiculous,” she said. “I don’t know what was the matter
with me. What a splendid evening it has been, and what fun it was
too--just that! And here go the Robbs, as you say, trotting along in
their beautiful carriage.”
But it was Hugh who was grave now.
“No; there is something more,” he said. “What about my pulling you away?
Oh, Edith, that is an instance, I am sure, of what I said to you the
other day! You stand there shining above me. What was there in your mind
that I didn’t understand? Tell me, explain to me.”
“But there is nothing to explain,” said she, laughing. “It is only that
you went off above my head, you dear rocket, before I expected it,
while I lingered down below, still thinking how wonderful it was that we
both felt that I had been Elsa. It was only that; I didn’t expect all
the coloured stars. Here we are at home. By the way, Hugh, you sang
quite nicely to-night. I forgot to tell you. I think that unless I get
some very pleasant invitation for next Wednesday, I shall come and hear
you sing Tristan. Yet I don’t know. It does begin so dreadfully early,
and I hate dining early.”
“I wouldn’t think of coming if I were you,” remarked he.
Hugh, of course, had not dined before the opera, and flew ravenously to
supper. Edith’s remarks had reassured him, but she was not quite sure
that they had reassured herself. She felt that something was just a
little wrong, else she could not have been so startled at his transition
into the boyish spirits that were, after all, just as characteristic of
him as was his perception with regard to Elsa.
That was he; all that intense vividness of feeling and sudden change of
mood meant “Hugh” to her. All his performance that night had been on his
top level, and no less was it top level that made him shout the fun of
it. Naturally (it would have been unnatural if it was not so) every
nerve and fibre had been screwed up, and all his perceptions, whichever
way he looked, were at concert pitch. Among them was the sheer _joie de
vivre_, the fun of it, the skyscraping spirits, the irresistible
nonsense. Yet to that she knew she had not responded; it had startled
her, and, in a way, it had given her a shock. Genuinely and
whole-heartedly he had felt how close they had come to each other by
virtue of his supreme art, and it was no transition to him to proclaim
the fun of it immediately afterwards. But it had been a shock to her.
She was not shining above him, then; it was he who shone above her. He
was moving there in a light which flooded the mountain tops, but did not
reach her in the valley.
Yet the matter did not just now trouble her--she joined him in a
hilarious supper. She had glorious things also to say to him; first
there was the request that he would sing for the Israelitish banker at
“Melba prices.” Also Miss Tremington had inquired about “the master’s
play-acting,” and had been told that the master acted very nicely,
considering it was his first time. The master was going to act again
next Wednesday, and if Miss Tremington cared to go to the upper circle,
why, her mistress would give her a seat there. But she must apply for
her seat to-morrow morning; lots of people wanted to hear the master
sing, and perhaps there might be no seats left.
“Oh, Hugh, how heavenly!” said Edith. “Think of Miss Tremington in the
upper circle looking at you as Tristan! She will say that the master
looked very pale in the last act, and why didn’t he marry the lady? ‘And
I didn’t understand about Cornwall, ma’am,’ she will say.”
Hugh choked suddenly, and could only wave his hands for a moment.
“And you won’t be there to explain it to her,” he said, when he could
speak. “Yes, I suppose I have eaten and drunk enough. Oh, it’s after
one! But if you think I am going to bed without smoking--why, you are
wrong.”
“Oh, but Tristan!” she said.
“Wednesday next,” said Hugh.
She rose, feeling suddenly the flatness that succeeds every climax.
“I am so tired,” she said. “I think I shall go to bed at once.”
Hugh came close to her; the climax was not yet over for him.
“And are you satisfied at all?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“No, Hughie, I shall never be satisfied, I hope,” she said. “I shall
always expect more of you than the most. It is the most now.”
* * * * *
Edith went up to bed immediately, leaving Hugh drinking gluttonously of
cigarette-smoke after the total abstinence of the last day or two. She
felt hopelessly tired, but was afraid that her tiredness was of that
quality which would prevent her sleeping. But, tired though she was, she
felt she would not in the least mind lying awake, for the pastures on
which her mind would browse during the hours of the night were green and
fresh, and there would be for her no painful wandering along stony
roads, such as she had known in years gone by, no struggling through the
shifting sands of an interminable desert. But, contrary to her
expectation, she had no sooner put out her light than she slept, and for
three hours or so slept deep and dreamlessly. Then she woke as suddenly
as she had gone to sleep, woke into complete consciousness, and took up
again, as if it had been never interrupted, the little thread of thought
which had eluded her a few hours ago, for then it had lain asleep among
the grasses and flowers, so to speak, of her pasture, only showing in
tiny lengths among them. But now it had wriggled its way up, and lay in
a long straight line, easy to trace. It stretched far back, too, right
back to the day on which nearly a year ago Peggy had tried to dissuade
her from her marriage, and it stretched forward into the future as far
as her eye could follow.
* * * * *
Yes; she knew now why Hugh’s sudden change of mood had startled and
shocked her. It was because he was so young. It was the elastic spring
and shout of youth that had made her wince--the spring which darted from
point to point of its happiness, exulting in each. And why could not she
dart and shout with him? Because that elasticity had left her; she was
so much older than he. It was as Peggy had said.
* * * * *
She lay quite still a moment while this was presented, as if some
external agency held up a mirror to her, to her mind. It was all quite
clear, and she had no impulse whatever to question its authenticity, and
for the next moment or two, as if she had received some evil news in the
few convincing words of a telegram, she laid it down and took note of
the exterior trivial details of material things.
Outside everything was very quiet, traffic had not yet begun in their
street, though from Piccadilly, a hundred yards away, she could hear the
low murmur of the earliest vehicles. But dawn had begun to break, for
sufficient light came in through the blinds and thin curtains of the
window to enable her to see the details of the room. She could catch the
glimmer of silver on her dressing-table, the white shining of the china
on her washing-stand; she could see, too, that the door into Hugh’s
dressing-room was open, and that the blind could not have been drawn
down there, for the gray, colourless light of dawn came strongly in
through the oblong of the door-frame. And then, with the first movement
she had made, she turned her head and saw him lying by her asleep,
having got into bed without having awakened her. His face turned toward
her, was turned toward the window also, so that she could see him very
distinctly. His head lay on his hand, his tumbled hair fell low over his
forehead, and his mouth, drooping a little in sleep, yet crisp and
smooth with the firm flesh of youth, drew in and slowly breathed out the
even, regular breath. His other arm, with sleeve turned back to the
elbow, lay outside the blanket, with the forearm and hand extended a
little toward her, as if, even in sleep, his hand sought hers. And
there, without colour, in the hueless light of dawn, lay the subject of
her thought; coldly, calmly presented to her, like some legal,
unimpassioned statement of the case. It was all undeniable: he was so
young.
Suddenly she found she could lie still no longer with him sleeping
there, and very softly, so as not to disturb him, she slipped out of
bed, and once more looked at him, to see that he still slept. Yes; he
slept still, but now he smiled, as if that consciousness in man which
never wholly sleeps had told him that she, his beloved, was awake and
had sent a message to his inert body just to smile at her. And at that
thought her heart rose to her throat and beat there. He did love her,
she knew that--that and the fact that she loved him seemed the only
things in the world worth knowing, and they passed understanding. Yet
the gray line lay across the meadow for all that. She had to see where
it went--what it was made of.
She put on a wrapper and tiptoed her way across to his dressing-room,
for she could not think of that of which she had to think with Hugh in
the room, even. There, as she had expected, he had left the blind
undrawn and through the open window came in the faint, fresh breeze
that sighs round the world as dawn comes with the weariness of another
day. Dawn was coming now, the sun rising behind gray clouds that
stretched over the whole sky, so that though the street and the houses
opposite were quite clear and sharply defined, there was no colour in
them--it was all of neutral tint, and all looked old and tired. How
different from other dawns that she had seen a year ago at Mannington,
when sleepless for happiness she had watched the gold and crimson
flecking the east, had heard the earliest fluting of the birds in the
bushes, had seen the lawn below iridescent with the dew and renewal of
night, and had read into the exultation and youth of nature the
exultation and sense of youth that had at last come to her, though late!
And now she read into the grayness and listlessness of the coming day
its omen for herself. It was all so clear, too; there was no magic mist
that flushed pink in the sun; there was no dew on the pavement; it was
dry and gray and tired.
And so few hours ago Lohengrin had come in silver mail....
She moved a little in the chair, leaning forward so that she could see
her face in the looking-glass that stood on Hugh’s dressing-table, and
for a moment her heart rose again. It was by the hard, truthful light of
morning, at the hour, too, when vitality burns lowest, when those who
are dying lose hold of life, and even the strong are languid and drowsy,
that she looked at herself, dispassionately, as at the face of a
stranger, critically, as if wishing to see a haggard image look stonily
back at her, hostilely even, as if eager to see ruin there. But it was
far other that the glass and the cruel pale light showed her; no
wrinkles had yet begun their network round her eyes, there was no
hanging of slack skin about her mouth, no streak or line which warned
her that the glorious sable of her hair would lose its hue. Yet--yes, if
she turned sideways to the light, she could see tiny shadows, yet how
slight, at the outside corners of her eyes, and between her eyebrows,
yet how slight, there ran another shadow going perpendicularly upward,
or--were there two of them?
“Remove all wrinkles, render the complexion....” Where had she seen some
advertisement like that?
Then she turned away, with a little shrug of contempt at herself. It was
not her face--a wrinkle or a line--that mattered. It was her mind, her
soul, that she must keep soft and clear and elastic. Where would she
find an advertisement that would guarantee her that?
Yes, Peggy was right; each year that passed was bringing her nearer to
autumn and age, while those same years were but bringing Hugh to the
prime and full vigour of his manhood. It was cruel, hideously cruel, for
time was so unreal and insignificant a thing to those who, like her,
believed that eternity was their possession; yet this weak, puny time--a
mere crawling worm--could wreak such awful damage, could ruin, could
alienate man from woman, so that their souls sat alone and starved. God
should never have given such dreadful power into the hands of so mortal
and fugitive a thing. And He sat so much apart with His eyes looking
across all eternity.
It was the hour of loneliness of soul for her, the misery of it was
incommunicable. And she had done it herself, it was all her own fault,
and it was irrevocable.
She leaned her elbows on the window-sill and looked out; dawn was coming
fast, gray dawn, hopeless dawn. The traffic was getting louder in
Piccadilly, the earliest ’buses had begun to ply, and the milk carts to
rattle. Stray passengers, birds of night perhaps, who had slept out in
the Park, moved singly and furtively in the street below, and for the
moment she envied anyone who was not herself.
And then in a flash, sudden as lightning, triumphant as the cry of a
trumpet, all her bravery and fine courage came back to her, and she
seemed to herself to take the gray line that lay across her pastures and
snap it in two. She refused to acquiesce in age and the coming
disabilities of it; she would not suffer it to enter her soul. Courage
and strength were hers. Hugh was hers; motherhood was drawing daily
nearer. She had to meet life with a heart carried high, like a light at
a masthead--to meet it with laughter and welcome and by maintaining the
confidence of youth and its swift choice to continue to know the romance
of living. And she got up, pushing her chair quickly back, forgetful of
the sleeper next door. Then she remembered again, and went back on
tiptoe across her room to the bed.
But the noise had aroused him, and he sat up, looking at her with dazed,
sleep-laden eyes.
“Why, what’s the matter?” he said. “Is it morning? Why are you up so
early?”
Edith lay down again.
“Darling, I am so sorry I awoke you,” she said. “I had the nightmare,
and got up to convince myself it wasn’t real.”
Hugh had already closed his eyes again.
“And it wasn’t, I hope?” he said.
“No; quite unreal.”
“That’s all right, then.”