Hugh, as has been indicated before, was a confirmed Cockney, and
previous to his marriage was accustomed to spend some nine months out of
the year in the beloved town. Since then, however, up to the time when
they came up from Mannington in April for the final rehearsals before
the opera, he had been as confirmed a country-lover as he had been
before a lover of his town, and for him as well as for his wife the
environment of their life at Mannington, with its down and garden, its
little local interests, and the triumphant march of intellectuality led
by Mrs. Owen and his brother-in-law, with Ambrose going before and
Perpetua following after, seemed as ideal a setting as the human heart
could desire or devise. Their intention, therefore, had been to go back
there as soon as the Wagner season was over, and spend the rest of the
summer as sensible people should, breathing the air of green and liquid
things instead of the thick soup of dust and petrol vapour which in June
and July supplies the place of normal air for those whom pleasure or
business keeps in town. But Hugh, as Edith saw, was revelling in it
all--in the bustle and fuss and hurry and festival of the season--and
when his last engagement was fulfilled she determined to say nothing to
him about their original plan of going down to Mannington immediately,
but leave it for him to propose.
Indeed, his success--this storming of London, for it was no less than
that--was extraordinarily sweet to him, and it would have been unnatural
had it not been so. He was the lion, the desired guest of the year, and
only the very serious or the cynical, or the aged, can even affect
indifference to such a welcome as was his. London, in fact, did its very
best to spoil him, but without the slightest success, and so far from
making him pompous or conceited, it did not even make him
self-conscious. He was frankly, almost riotously delighted that everyone
was so eager to see him; he found their friendliness enchanting, and he
danced and dined, and was a centre wherever he went, without losing one
jot of his simplicity. Yet that to him, artist as he was to his
finger-tips, was less than the exquisite pleasure that the appreciation
of those who knew gave him. If it was pleasant to be the lion, it was
even pleasanter to be the nightingale. And if he was delighted at it
all, not less delighted was his wife. She was absurdly proud of him;
“bursting with pride,” as Peggy told her one day when Hugh had motored
them down to Cookham for the afternoon, ending up a brilliantly
successful drive by going full into one of the wooden gate-posts and
reducing it to match-wood.
“Yes, bursting, bursting, Edith!” she had said. “And I believe you would
turn up your nose at Raphael in your present state of mind.”
Edith considered this.
“Yes, I think I should,” she said.
“I’m bound to say you don’t show it in public, anyhow,” said Peggy. “And
really, do you know, Hugh is a very remarkable person. Why, I could tell
you of half a dozen women who openly and rapturously adore him, and he
just laughs, and sits with them in dark corners two and three at a time,
and asks silly riddles. Now, is that natural, or is it very, very
clever? And you are remarkable, too, dear. You just smile at him in the
midst of his harem, and ask if he is coming away now, or shall you send
the carriage back.”
“Peggy, you’re rather coarse,” said Edith.
“No, I’m not, but London is. Oh, dear! did you see Julia Sinclair just
swooning at him at dinner last night? I thought I should have died. She
looked just like a bird of Paradise with a pain inside.”
Edith could not help exchanging notes.
“Mrs. Barrington is even funnier,” she said. “She takes the line of
being a mother to Hugh, and tells me he doesn’t wrap up enough. And that
darling of mine thinks they are all so kind and friendly.”
“So they are,” said Peggy.
Edith got grave again.
“And he is just exactly the old simple Hugh all the time. Oh, Peggy! I
almost want the years to run on quickly in order to show you how wrong
you were. Yet in the same breath I want it to be to-day always, not
to-morrow, not next week, not next month even.”
This set Peggy off on to the obvious train of thought which this
suggested.
“When are you going down to Mannington?” she said.
“I don’t know; I haven’t the slightest idea. But I can’t suggest it to
Hugh, when he is having such a splendid time.”
Tea arrived at this moment, a fact of which Peggy was rather glad, for
it gave her manual occupation so that she could think over in a natural
silence what she wanted to say.
“But you are quite well?” she asked.
“Gorgeously well! But I----”
“Ah, you’re tired!” put in Peggy quickly.
“Yes, frightfully tired. But--oh! Peggy, it is only my happiness that
makes me tired.”
“Happiness doesn’t make one tired,” said Peggy decisively. “That won’t
do!”
She fidgeted with the tea-cups a moment.
“Oughtn’t you to go down into the country and just rest and live?” she
asked.
“No; I am told to go down at the end of the month, and then--not exert
myself. I shall do exactly as I am told to do, and you needn’t be
afraid.”
“Then what tires you?” asked Peggy again.
Edith took up her tea-cup, and while she thought over what she would say
made a natural pause just as Peggy had done, with the manual occupation
of putting in sugar and milk. All the time she knew perfectly well what
tired her, and that was the inward necessity, for it was no less than
that, of living up to the level of youth which Hugh enjoyed without
question or effort, simply because he was young. Her resolution after
the dawn of nightmare, the hopeless dawn, had been exactly that. She
had, by this inward necessity, to play at youth. She could do it, and
did it admirably. But what was natural and instinctive to the young was
obtained by her with effort. She did it wonderfully well; nobody guessed
that it was an effort to her, and but admired the vitality to which
years brought no diminution. But she knew, though nobody else knew, that
the effort was there. And though Peggy’s question had struck to the root
of the matter, there was nothing further from Edith’s mind than to tell
her.
“But it is my happiness that tires me,” she said. “It is this living in
a flame.”
But Peggy was not satisfied.
“Then were you tired all the time at Mannington?” she asked.
Edith laughed.
“Oh, Peggy, what a good inquisitor you would have made!” she said. “No,
I wasn’t, and I shan’t be when I get down there again. But you know we
have been living at rather high-pressure up here as well, and I will
allow that that may have had something to do with it. It is rather
exciting to see your husband go up like a rocket in the way Hugh has
done.”
Peggy did not want to insist on this too much, or call Edith’s attention
to the fact that she was concerning herself about her sister’s fatigue,
for she meant secretly to speak to Hugh about it; a thing which Edith
would certainly have forbidden her to do if she guessed that such a plan
was in her mind. So she slid quietly off the topic, seeming to yield.
“After all, I think that it is a sort of disgrace not to get rather
tired every day,” she said. “One hasn’t done as much as one should in a
day if one is not more than ready to go to sleep at the end of it. But
it’s a bad plan to have a deposit of tiredness on board, to which one
adds every day.”
It required no great exertion of diplomacy on Peggy’s part to secure a
quiet stroll with Hugh after tea, and hardly more to introduce the
subject of their move to Mannington.
“You will be leaving London at once, I suppose,” she said. “I remember
you meant to go down as soon as your engagement was over.”
“Why, I believe we did!” said Hugh; “but I suppose we both forgot. I
don’t think the thought of Mannington ever occurred to either of us.
London is such fun, isn’t it? And, do you know, we are such swells.
People are asked to meet us! And if Edith got proud she made it a rule
to go to the opera and hear me sing, and if I got proud I went to
‘Gambits.’ Wasn’t it a good plan?”
“But she can’t go and hear you now,” remarked Peggy.
“No but I can go to ‘Gambits.’ Peggy, I believe that play will be
crammed night after night until the Day of Judgment. And even then the
audience won’t know, and Gabriel will have to come on to the stage and
say: ‘I beg your pardon, ladies and gentlemen, but the last trump
sounded ten minutes ago.’ I wish I had written ‘Lohengrin.’”
“Yes--you weren’t born soon enough. But if you are going to stop on in
London, you will come to my big dance, won’t you, the week after next?”
“Rather! That is to say, unless I am having a rest-cure. Do you know,
Edith is much the most indefatigable person I ever saw. She never seems
to be tired at all.”
Peggy did not reply at once. A whole new situation burst on her at that
guileless remark. She herself knew, from Edith’s own lips an hour ago,
that she was “frightfully” tired, but yet Hugh, who knew her best and
loved her most, asserted the opposite. Edith told Peggy how tired she
was; she not only did not tell Hugh, but she produced on him the
impression of being indefatigable. And with that the purport of Edith’s
nightmare in the gray dawn suggested itself to her mind. Why should she
not tell Hugh she was tired? Or why should she not appear so to him?...
Was Edith “keeping it up”? But she answered before the pause was
noticeable.
“I know; she is very strong,” she said. “But, Hugh, don’t you think
people are sometimes tired without knowing it? Gallant people, I mean,
like Edith, who would never give in?”
Hugh’s face completely changed. The glow and boyishness of it died out,
leaving the face of a thinking man. Also he chucked away a cigarette he
had only just lit into the long herbaceous border.
“Go on!” he said. “Go on!”
Peggy thought “God forgive me for being such a liar.” Then she went on:
“It is only a guess of mine,” she said. “But I thought to-day that she
looked most awfully tired. And I really suspect that she is. You see,
Hugh, the excitement of it all has prevented you feeling it. One never
feels tired if one is excited, and you are naturally still excited at
the splendid success you have had. But the excitement was over for Edith
when you had the success. Remember I only say she looked very tired
to-day. Nothing more.”
Hugh was silent a moment.
“Oh, Lord, what a selfish devil I am!” he said. “It never occurred to
me. She has always been so keen about everything. But if you are right,
why didn’t she tell me she was tired?”
Peggy looked him straight in the face.
“Just because you were not,” she said.
Hugh stopped, frowning.
“She has been stopping up here, and tiring herself out for me?” he said.
“Why, it makes me hideous.”
“It’s only my conjecture,” said Peggy lying with extraordinary
naturalness.
“I wonder if you are right. What a beast I am never to have thought of
it! I have often thought she looked tired, but she always behaved so
untiredly. I’m awfully obliged to you for having told me. Thanks,
awfully, Peggy!”
Then he remembered another thing he had intended to say to her.
“I have felt unfriendly to you,” he said, “for your advice to her about
our marriage. I should like to say that I know you only desired our
happiness.”
“Yes, dear Hugh--you may be quite sure of that,” said she gently.
They began walking toward the house again.
“Of course, we’ll go down to Mannington to-night,” he continued. “I’ll
have my motor round at once. I can telegraph to London, and the servants
can catch the last train down. Oh! I forgot--you have to get back to
town. Would it do if I just drove you to the station, and you took a
train?”
Peggy sat down on a garden bench and began to laugh.
“I never heard such a bad plan,” she said.
“Plans, plans?” broke in Hugh. “What’s the use of plans? We want to get
Edith down into the country.”
“But that’s just where plans come in,” said Peggy. “Why, if you do that,
she will say that I have been suggesting it to you (which is perfectly
true), and she will trouble me to mind my own business, and refuse to
leave London at all.”
“What are we to do then?” asked Hugh.
“That’s just what we’ve got to make a plan about. It’s obvious that
since she won’t leave London while she thinks you want to stop, you must
seem not to want to stop.”
“Yes, I see--I see!” said Hugh. “Shall I tell her now?”
“Certainly not. She would instantly connect me with it. Do it about next
Wednesday, and by degrees. Oh, good gracious! a woman could do it so
easily, and you will probably make a hash of so simple a thing.”
“I have lots of tact,” said Hugh confidently.
“Yes, but it’s visible tact, which is as bad as none. The only tact
worth having is the tact that you can’t see--the invisible tact.”
* * * * *
The weather in London this year was, contrary to the habit of June,
extraordinarily hot, and Hugh made use of it a day or two later, with
tact that for a mere man showed signs of invisibility. He and Edith
returning home from a concert had been put down in the Park, to walk up
the shaded alley by the ladies’ mile, and be waited for at the end by
their carriage. The rhododendrons were in full flower, making up for
fifty weeks sombreness of foliage by the incredible brilliance of their
brief blossoming, and the trees were pyramids of pink and red blossoms.
The herbaceous bed, too, at the corner of the Serpentine was a flaming
mass of colour, and Hugh saw his opportunity.
“Oh! it’s all very well to say that it is a beautiful bed,” he said in
answer to Edith’s commendation, “but it’s all out of place. All gardens
and flowers are out of place in London; and if I was the Commissioner
for gardening, or whoever does it, I should have made numbers of tin
flowers, brilliantly painted, so that you could wash and dust them.”
“Then you would show execrable taste,” said his wife. “Why, it is just
the fact that you can turn out of Piccadilly and in a moment be in this
beautiful garden that makes London so perfect.”
“I don’t think it’s perfect at all,” said he. “Why, when I looked at
that bed the other day, I positively felt home-sick. I don’t now because
you are here, but alone it made me feel home-sick. One ought never to
come into the Park, if one is living in town.”
Edith transferred her eyes from the bed to his face.
“Now we’re going to play the truth game, two questions each,” she said;
“and I’ll begin.”
“Oh, we always toss!” said Hugh, really invisibly tactful.
“Well, we are not going to. Question one: Would you like to go down to
Mannington?”
“Yes.”
“Then, dear, why didn’t you say so?”
“Is that the second question?” asked he.
Edith thought.
“I wish I’d made it three questions instead of two,” she said. “I
suppose I mayn’t now?”
“Certainly not.”
“Well, then, it isn’t a question. Question two: Did Peggy tell you that
I said I was tired?”
Hugh nearly heaved a sigh of relief, but just suppressed it. It was a
tremendous piece of luck that the question took this form.
“No, she didn’t,” he said. “Now it’s my turn: Have you been wanting to
go to Mannington?”
“Yes.”
“Then why didn’t you say so?”
“Is that a question?” asked she.
“Certainly.”
“Well, it was because I thought you were enjoying yourself so much, and
wanted to stop here.”
Hugh nodded with moral purpose at her, as people nod at children.
“Then I hope this will be a lesson to you,” he said.
Here a man with a leather bag slung round his neck and a book of tickets
came up and demanded twopence because they had sat on two green chairs.
Hugh searched his pockets in vain for any coin, and Edith was equally
destitute. So they had to get up and move on, underneath a searching
and scornful eye, which mewed Hugh to sudden and passionate
expostulation.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he said. “I haven’t got any money, and I
didn’t know they were your chairs.”
Edith laughed silently and hopelessly at this, and they continued their
walk.
“Oh! and we shall be able to sit in our own garden without paying a
penny to anybody,” he said. “Edith, how heavenly it will be looking! Do
you remember the last day there--how the sky wept and howled? Let’s go
down at once, this evening.”
“But we are dining out, aren’t we?”
“Yes, but so we are to-morrow and the next day, and for weeks. I’m
ill--you are ill; we are all ill.”
But Edith maintained that there was a certain decency to be observed,
and it was not till three days later that they left town. And if, during
those three days, Hugh so abandoned himself to the crowded festivities
of June that sometimes she almost wondered if he could be home-sick for
the country, she, on the other hand, felt so inspirited by the thought
of getting away from these same festivities, that he sometimes wondered
whether Peggy had been right, when he saw the animation of her
enjoyment. Thus they were both acting a part, and Peggy, that
arch-conspirator, observed with extraordinary complacency the result of
her machinations.
The arch-conspirator, in fact, was delighted when they left London--a
fact that she gathered only second-hand because they did not appear at a
big party she gave that evening. Indeed, from the evidence that showed
on the surface, she was more than half-inclined to think that she had
been really wrong, utterly astray in disapproving of the marriage. A
year later, anyhow, here was Edith tiring herself out and concealing
the fact with the utmost success from her husband, so that he should not
be curtailed of his London days, which he enjoyed with all the
exuberance of his youth and his success; while he, on the other hand, on
the first hint of his wife’s fatigue went away, merely with self-cursing
at his own slowness of perception, into the country. Whatever structure
might be reared, there was no doubt about the foundation: each was
devoted to the other, and each had shown an instantaneous and
instinctive necessity to sink self for the other’s sake.
Yes, perhaps she was altogether wrong; a year ago, had Peggy been
compelled to forecast the future as she saw it then, it would have been
a very different future to that which was now present, and to the
promise of the present. The two had spent six months at Mannington
alone, and the upshot was this mutual devotion. The disruption of age
which, according to the measure of years, existed between them, had
shown no sign of wider tearing. Indeed, instead, Hugh had grown so much
more manly, so much less boyish, while, if anything Edith had grown
younger. Instead of her acquiescence in the minor joys of life, the
pleasure of seed-time and flower, the pleasure in the river and the
downs, the pleasure in the microscopic intrigues of Mannington, which a
year ago had been sufficient to enable her to look forward to a quiet,
uneventful future which should still be full of the appropriate
enjoyments of middle-age, she had recaptured youth. All the tenderness
for green and living things (in which class, it must be feared, Peggy
put Canon Alington, his wife, Perpetua, and Ambrose) was still there,
but love had come, too--fresh, seething, effervescent love. And on
Hugh’s side there was no less. He, too, cursing at his blind
selfishness, had gone down in mid-season to Mannington because Edith
was tired.
“Bless him!” said Peggy, and in the same breath she explained to some
Serene Transparency that her brother-in-law was not going to sing,
unfortunately, because among other reasons he did not happen to be
present.
Peggy had done this sort of thing--standing, that is to say, at the top
of a staircase, while names were shouted out to her--so often that the
mere mechanism of “receiving” occupied her thoughts very little, and her
real thinking self was left free to pursue the windings of its ways
unhindered.
There were many things about Hugh and Edith that seemed to her to be
matters for that pleasant smile which was so often on her face. The
year, she allowed, did not seem to have emphasised the difference of
their age, but rather to have diminished it. They were devoted to each
other, and, please God, before many weeks were over Edith would see her
husband with her first-born in his arms. Yet her shrewdness was not
quite content: it was like some wise old hound of the hearth that is
restless, sometimes pricking an uneasy ear, sometimes looking out with a
whine at the gathering dusk. But she knew the cause of her uneasiness,
and surely it was a very little thing, for it was only that Edith had
produced the effect on Hugh of being indefatigable, whereas in reality
she was very tired. She was keeping it up; she was feeling her age while
she was ceaseless and successful in her efforts to conceal it from him.
Did she, then, fear exactly what had prompted Peggy to dissuade her from
this marriage? The year that had gone had brought great happiness to
both, the year to come might bring more. But would it bring more of
this, this difficulty which must grow greater with years?
Hugh and Edith had gone down to Mannington by motor, and even to the
confirmed Cockney there appeared to be certain points about the country
in this month of buttercup and briar-rose. Until after they had passed
Goring their road led through the delectable lowlands of the Thames,
with glimpses of the silver wood-embowered river, and the sense of green
and liquidness so characteristic of Peggy’s home at Cookham. But soon
after the ascent began, and as the car climbed on its second speed the
big hill that casts Thames valley below it, a breath of livelier air
assailed them. For the thick lush growth of the valley, a more austere
greenness welcomed their home-coming. Thick meadows, golden with
buttercup, and spired with meadow-sweet, no longer enframed the flying
riband of the road. The copses and elm-pointed hedgerows were left
behind, and seen as from some eminence of balloon, and instead the empty
ball-room of the downs, where fairies dance in rings of emerald green,
and the yellowing grass of the chalk-hills bordered their way. Now and
again, with a rest for the racing engines, they would descend into the
country of the briar-rose and the dense hedgerow again, but as often
with the grate of the low-speed they climbed higher yet, till the
Wiltshire downs lay round and held them like the interlacing of the
strong, braced muscles of the earth. Hill after hill huddled into the
sunset, flocks of sheep driven westward toward the folds of eventide,
and at last they reached the top of the high ridge from which descent
began again into the valley of the upper waters of the Kennet. On each
side stretched the great empty downs over which blew, unbreathed and
untainted, the cool thin air of the heights, and Edith, with head
thrown back, let it stream into her lungs, so that it seemed to be
flowing through her. But her heart led her eyes onward, and there, three
hundred feet below them and half a dozen miles away, she could see the
happy valley of her home and her heart, where all last winter she had
lived in Indian summer. There was the loop of the river outside
Mannington, lying like a silver thread in the richer green of its
water-meadows, and there were the trees, small as the vegetation of a
child’s box of toys, which held her house. Mannington itself, nestling
in a wrinkle at the base of the hills, was invisible, but she could see
her own house, standing outside the town, and the gray protective tower
of St. Olaf’s. And at the sight the past surged and bubbled in her heart
like wine.
Just on the top of the ridge Hugh, who had been driving with the
chauffeur by him while Edith sat behind, stopped the car. She, of
course, made the usual remark:
“Oh! what has gone wrong?” she asked.
“Nothing. It’s running as sweet as barley-sugar. But we’re at the top.
We shall just toboggan all the way down. Look, there is the loop of the
river and the house.”
Hugh jumped out on to the road.
“Through pleasures and palaces though we may roam,” he remarked,
“there’s no place like Chalkpits. I’m going to come and sit behind with
you. How clean and empty it all is! Just think of the wood-dust and the
smell and the crowd of Piccadilly at this hour! Yes, Dennison, you
drive, please!”
Hugh stepped over the low door into the body of the car, and sat down by
Edith, while the car gathered speed again. Soon they came to the top of
the long incline that led without break down to their very gates, and
the driver stopped the engines and in silence they slid down the empty,
unhedged road, like some great bird dropping through the viewless slopes
of air toward its nest. Every moment Edith’s content broadened and
deepened; here in the gentler activities of the country, in long
garden-hours, in the absence of crowds, in days spent quietly, and
nights that did not begin with dawn, she felt that there would be no
need of making those continuous efforts, which Hugh must never know to
be efforts, and which had so tired her. They had tired her body and mind
alike; the effort had been physically exhausting, but the mental force,
the willpower to make them appear spontaneous, the natural expression of
an abundant vitality had been even more tiring. And now the thought that
they and all need of them was over, unloosened from her neck completely
for the first time those fingers of nightmare which had touched her on
that morning of gray dawn, and though but lightly pressed had always
been there. Often indeed their touch had been scarcely perceptible, but
she had known all those tiring weeks of London that had followed, that
at any moment they might tighten to a strangling hold. She had fought
and wrestled with them incessantly and successfully, in so far that she
had not yielded an inch, and that Hugh had never so much as suspected
that they were there. But now, when they had stopped at the top of the
ridge, when home came in sight, and Hugh climbed in beside her, it
seemed that the possession dropped off her, and that they left it behind
on the road, a malignant little figure, silent, and still watching them
as they bowled down the smooth incline, but unable to come further,
exorcised by the sight of the home in which it had never yet shown its
face. And as a bend in the road cut them off from the sight of the ridge
where they seemed to have left it, she turned to Hugh with a sigh of
utter content.
“Oh Hughie, what a home-coming!” she said. “I like to think that the
trees are all decked out in their midsummer clothes to receive us, and
the sun has been specially polished up to welcome us. Oh! and there’s
the copse above which we climbed one morning, when I told you who Andrew
Robb was. Do you remember?”
“No,” said Hugh gravely. “And there is the terrace where I told you
something the next morning, and I can’t remember what that was, either.”
“And here’s the motor-car in which I tell you that there now sits the
silliest boy in the world!” remarked his wife.
* * * * *
It was within a week of midsummer, and after they had dined they
strolled out again into the garden to find that the reflections of
sunset still lingered in the west, in bars and lines of crimson cloud
floating like burning islands on a lake of saffron yellow. In that
solemn and intense light everything seemed to glow with a radiance of
its own: the huge, sunburned shoulder of the down above them seemed lit
from within by some living flame and smouldered in the still evening
air. An intenser green than ever the direct sunlight kindled burned in
the towers of elm, and westward the river lay in pools of crimson. Then
gradually, but in throbs and layers of darkness, the night began to flow
like some clear incoming tide over the scene, drinking up the colours,
as Edith had seen it once at Cookham, like some shy, wild beast. Stars
were lit in the remote zenith, and again over the water-meadows below
the skeins of mist spread their diaphanous expanses. And in the soft,
confidential dusk Edith spoke of the event which was coming to the
father of her child. New secrets of her woman’s sweet soul were given
him; one thing only she kept back, that which Peggy had guessed, and was
even now thinking of as the two walked gently up and down the
garden-paths between the fragrance of the night-scented beds.
“And it will be then,” she said, “that our souls will be absolutely one,
and I think it is that more than anything which a first-born child means
to its mother. At least, so it seems to me. I cannot imagine two people
being nearer to each other than we are, dear, but I know we shall be
nearer yet. Hughie, I want you to promise me one thing.”
“It is promised.”
“That you won’t be afraid, you won’t be nervous about it. That would
just blunt the edge of the joy that these few weeks of waiting hold for
me, if I thought that anxiety and suspense were to be yours just when my
joy was being fulfilled.”
“Ah! but how can I help--” began he.
“It is that you have promised to help. There is nothing to fear. I know
that in a way that I can’t explain to you--the knowledge, somehow, is
bone of my bone. I must see you with my child in your arms. That is
God’s will. And I want nobody to be here except you--not Peggy even. I
must tell Peggy, and I hope she won’t think it very selfish or unkind of
me. But I don’t want anybody else but you.”
Edith laughed.
“Perhaps we will allow her to stay at Canon Alington’s,” she added.
She stopped, and pointed at a white garden seat that glimmered in the
dusk.
“I sat down there that morning and cried,” she said. “I was frightened,
I think, at the happiness that was coming to me. Hughie, I could almost
sit down there again now and cry. But this time your arms would be round
me, and so I could not cry long. Also, I am getting used to happiness.
It was a stranger to me then, and--well, happiness is all right when you
know it, but you’ve got to know it first.”
Then she turned and faced him, and took both his hands in hers.
“My man!” she said.