The spire of Davos Church, so steep in pitch that even in mid-winter no
snowflake could cling to it even for the moment’s space in which it
could lie there and give consolidation to the next flake, was to-day no
grayer than its surroundings. For weeks past the annual thaw had set in,
and now the village itself and a couple of hundred feet of hillside
above it were quite clear of snow. But spring was not behaving, so Hugh
thought, as he sat on a pine-bole above the valley, in a Tennysonian
manner. When the “last long streak of snow” fades, the “maze of quick”
ought to bourgeon. What the “maze of quick” in terms of flower and leaf
was he did not accurately know. But he was safe in saying that nothing
of any description was bourgeoning. Nothing looked like bourgeoning,
unless to bourgeon was to look flat and stale and dead.
Three months had gone since the glorious day when Peggy, Daisy, and he
had passed the test for the English rink, and it was now mid-April. He
had been down every morning to get a little skating, until a week ago,
when the short grass below the last little patch of ice had begun to
show through the surface he intended to skate on. But when that
happened, it was no longer any use to pretend to Edith that he was going
to skate, and should be on the rink the whole morning. For a time that
excuse of enjoyable occupation had served, and often he had sat there,
since the ice was unskateable, being decaying slush merely, in order to
spend a few hours away from the house, in order to make her believe
that he was still occupied. But when the ice finally vanished he had to
make other reasons for his absence.
There was heart-break here; he longed only to be with her; she, on the
other hand, longed only that he should be amusing himself, taking up the
long hours of the increasing day in congenial pursuits. She, in
pursuance of _régime_, had to stop at Davos, take slow walks, and still
lie out on the balcony, looking no longer at the exhilarating fields of
snow, but at the brown, drowsy landscape of spring. She had often
entreated him to go back to England for a few weeks to see his friends,
to hear music, to take a little jaunt, a little holiday, as she called
it, and as often he had clung to the fact that he really cared more
about skating than anything else. That had done well enough till about a
week ago; then she had observed that the rink was no more than a brown
pasturage for abstemiously-minded cattle.
Other things--the big things--troubled him also. Doctors’ reports
continued to be fairly satisfactory, and they told him that it was quite
unreasonable to expect that the immensely rapid improvement which Edith
had recorded in the winter could possibly keep up at that rate. That
could not be. They did not say that she had gone back (that was
satisfactory), but during the last three or four weeks she had not,
frankly, gone forward. But that was quite normal--consumptives behaved
like that. Also, he must remember that the spring, even for those in
good health, was always a trying season of the year; those who were not
in good health felt it much more acutely. There had been a great deal of
south wind, too, lately--moist, relaxing, tiring. It was reasonable to
hope and to expect that when the weather improved she would continue to
improve also.
It was not bad news, nor anything like it, and Hugh realised as he sat
on the red bole of the fallen pine, watching the blue smoke of his
cigarette hang in the relaxed air, even as below him the smoke from the
chimneys of the village stood in layers and lines above the houses,
unable to disperse, that the fault had been his in expecting too rapid
an improvement. But, indeed, he had secret cause for disquiet; though
the disease, so he was professionally assured, had made no further
inroads physically, it was becoming daily more trying to Edith. For two
months or more in the past winter she had been extraordinarily serene
and happy, content even, Hugh would have said. But for these last
weeks--every fibre and nerve of him told him so--she had been engaged in
a mental conflict fiercer than any physical struggle could be, more
wearing, more incessant. She had hardly ever spoken of it to him; once
or twice she had said, “Oh, Hughie, it is so hard to behave decently,”
but her very reticence showed him how mortal the struggle was. Had it
been less fierce she could have spoken of it. She was bitterly
disappointed at this cessation in her own improvement; she had come to
believe that she was going to have a miraculously rapid cure. And now
the pendulum had swung the other way; instead of looking forward eagerly
into the future it was all she could do to bear the present.
Hugh could guess how dreadful, too, was the disappointment, the despair
she felt at being unable to rise above the discomfort and fatigue of the
hours. She had hoped, so gallantly, that her mind, her soul, could
remain a thing apart from the body, superior to it, looking down on it,
as from a mountain-top one looks incuriously on the wreaths and snakes
of fog below that cannot cloud the upper sunshine. She had expected the
impossible; all that gallant womanhood could do she had done; as she
said to Peggy, she would always do her best, and Hugh knew how excellent
the best had been. But she, poor soul, mourned over it, upbraiding
herself in that it was not perfect.
Again, it was found that Davos did not at all suit her baby, and a
couple of months ago the boy had been sent back to England, to be in
Peggy’s care. He had been ailing, too; it was nothing serious, but Edith
was not in a state to be saddled with extra weight.
Oh, it was hard, and it was not the lightest part of the burden that had
to be borne that fell on Hugh, though he did not know that. Often,
again, as in the first weeks, his presence seemed merely to irritate
Edith; he could see, with swelling throat that nearly choked him, how
great the effort was to her sometimes to be courteous even to him. Hugh
was no Christian Scientist, but in general terms he believed that
disease was a work of the devil, and the devil (stupid fellow or not)
hit upon some extraordinarily ingenious devices. He had, in fact, hit
upon this one, that just because Edith so loved her husband, she found
that it was he, of all the world, who tried her most. And all the time
her real self was longing, even while her tongue, perhaps, was being
acidly courteous, simply to weep out her heart on his breast, saying,
“Hughie, Hughie, you understand, don’t you?” and find the perfection,
the crown of her life there.
And he _did_ understand; there lay the helpless pathos of it. A
non-existent barrier separated them.
All the time, too, it was Hugh’s business to be cheerful, to be natural,
and foolish, and boyish. That, again, was not easy, when, whatever he
did or said, appeared “to be wrong.” And there was no respite; “the
cheerful and contented spirit,” as Mr. Micawber said, “had to be kept
up.”
And then, oases in the wilderness, sometimes a golden day fluttered
down. Edith would be better, and, more than once, contrite, humbled to
the dust, as she viewed the last week from some less tortured
standpoint, she could only mutely plead his forgiveness. And there was
nothing to forgive--nothing, at least, except the little insects, and
Hugh had no more intention of forgiving them than of forgiving the devil
for all the trouble he has made in this world, which would have been so
pleasant if he had only died before we were born.
In these rifts in the clouds--one had come yesterday--there was no need
for her to say, “I am horrible, but I am doing my best,” and no need for
him to say, “I am stupid, but I am doing mine,” because they both
utterly understood. Then, as on this morning, clouds would again, for
some reason or other, drive over the face of the sun, and then when
there was need for Edith to say just that word, she could not, could
not! And, while silence starved her, Hugh had to whistle, or ask some
absurd riddle to show he was quite cheerful and happy, thank you.
Hugh kept his depression and misgivings for such times as when he was
alone; as soon as he set out from the house on a _soi-disant_ skating
errand, or, as to-day, to smell the pine-woods, since the skating excuse
had broken down, he always found some companion of this nature waiting
for him, like a faithful dog, outside the front door, eager for a walk.
To-day the dog had kept very close to him, and now, as he sat on the
fallen pine, it jumped up beside him, and thrust itself on his notice.
It had always got some fresh fawning trick, and to-day it had a new one,
a beauty. It was this.
Edith had begun to write the last act of her play, and Hugh’s faithful
companion (this was its trick) made him remember with vital vividness
the few words that had been said after he had read, now three months
ago, the first two acts. Peggy, reasonable, cheerful Peggy, in the
evening of that glorious day, had hoped that Andrew Robb would never
finish it, for he was born of misery. And only two days ago Hugh had
asked his wife whether Andrew Robb was writing still, whether he had
come back to her. It appeared he had.
So the miserable spirit was in the house, holding her pen, uttering her
thoughts. Was all beauty, then, all fine work born of misery? Was the
“heavenly mind,” which, so rightly, he had attributed to Andrew Robb,
active most when the soul was in travail, in trouble?
The sun was very warm to-day and the air windless. Hugh had had a nearly
sleepless night; vague trouble had oppressed him through all the dark
hours, vague while he looked it in the face, but real enough when
drowsiness began to touch him on the shoulder or to tweak his blanket,
so that, as often as he dozed, he was called back again. And now, in the
same vague trouble, that which had tweaked and plucked at him during the
night stood somewhere close by him. It would not do at all, and he sat
up, banishing the drowsiness that his sleepless night had brought on
him.
He had thrown away the end of his cigarette, and it had fallen into a
clump of bilberries, and from the clump arose a little blue coil of
smoke, twining lazily about the still air. Below lay the quiet Alpine
village, brown and gray, with its lazy layer of smoke above it. Then
close behind him came a flutter and scurry of wings, and a bird perched
itself in a tree near him and gave three monotone whistles. Then it
stopped; its love, its mate, did not answer. It could not go on alone.
Some breath of wind in the upper air stirred, and the pine tops spoke of
the sea to each other. All these things were drowsy, incomplete. They
tried to be alive; the cigarette end tried to burn the bilberries; the
pine-trees sighed for a real wind; the bird tried to sing, but did not
find the stimulus. It was the hour, in fact, to him and all the world,
when it is better, if possible, to go to sleep again till real morning
comes. He had a sleepless night behind him, so, probably, he slept.
But he did not know that he slept; he only knew that drowsiness again
gained on him, and he heard a step coming up the needle-strewn path
below the pines, which seemed to wake him again into complete activity
of consciousness. Then he saw, but strained his eyes at it, for he could
not see distinctly, whose was the step. He did not know whether the
figure was male or female; the face was bent down toward the earth as it
approached him up the steep path, and he could not see it. Then, when it
came close, it raised its head, and at that moment Hugh knew it more
utterly than he knew himself, for it was Edith’s face. Yet, in the same
moment, it was not her face, it was the face of a stranger, kind, wise,
but inexorable. Then, though the mouth remained still, the eyes--Edith’s
eyes--smiled at him, and then the lips said, “_Du meine Seele, du mein
Herz_.” Then everything, figure and pine tree, Davos and sky, cigarette
whorl of smoke, and smoke of the village “clicked.” And Hugh saw that
they were all there except the figure that he had--dreamed.
He had understood about Edith before, about her irritation at him. He
had seen it now. It became a little more real, a final turn of the screw
had come to drive home what he knew. Of course, he had been asleep. But
what did that matter? Truth and falsehood are in dreams, just as truth
and falsehood are in waking hours. The truth may come through either;
falsehood may come through either.
But the dream anyhow had banished the terrible companion that just now
had sat on the pine-tree close to him, which for days and days had been
that which made solitude lonely. It was Doubt; that at last was the name
of the dog. He had never _seen_ it, he had only imagined its presence.
He had been afraid--the indefensible emotion, as Edith had once said to
him. That and anger; there was no excuse for them.
But now he had seen or dreamed something that said he was her soul and
her heart. Wonderful though it was, perhaps, indeed, because it was
wonderful, it seemed incontestably true.
The path was steep, he ran and slipped down it, to be back at the hour
for lunch.
“Yes, if you ask me,” said Hugh, half an hour later, “I won’t deceive
you. I have been sitting in a pine-wood, and I never want to do anything
nicer.”
It was a bad morning with Edith. She, too, had slept ill; she had heard
from the doctor that she was not getting on. She had heard, too,
something that she had not told Hugh, something that she had made the
doctor promise not to tell him. And illness, weakness, fatigue combined
together. Instead of saying, “Oh, how nice, do let us go there this
afternoon,” she said--
“What a pity you did not take your lunch with you. Then you need not
have come back here.”
Hugh contrasted the difference. If only she had said “we” instead of
“you!” The non-existent wall rose swift and high between them. And he
had to play his _rôle_ of cheerful _insouciance_.
“In which case,” he said, “I should not be lunching now with you. I like
lunching with you, do you know?”
He caught her eye for a moment, and the soul behind it yearned toward
him. But the devil, the insects, were potent.
“Won’t you like to go there again this afternoon?” she said. “Since the
ice has gone there is really nowhere else for you to go. Do send Ferris
up with the tea-basket. You can have tea there.”
Yet--how she tried, but how miserable she was! She knew, too, after her
interview with the doctor this morning, why she found it all so
difficult. But she did not want Hugh to know just yet. She would bear it
alone for a little, though it was just this bearing it alone that was so
hard. But she did so want him to have a few days more without this extra
burden.
“Yes, do let us have tea there,” he said. “I should love to show you the
place. Do come; it will be splendid if you will come.”
She shook her head.
“I don’t really feel up to it to-day,” she said.
“Oh, I am sorry!” said Hugh. “Poor darling.”
Edith gave a little impatient click with her tongue.
“Oh! how often have I told you that I can bear anything but pity,” she
said.
* * * * *
They had finished lunch, and she got up as she spoke and stepped out on
to the balcony where she usually lay. On her way she passed close by the
back of Hugh’s chair, and longed--how she longed--to take that dear head
in her arms, and just say, “Oh, don’t you understand, don’t you
understand?” But she could not; just at this moment she could not raise
her head above the bitter salt wave of misery that smothered and choked
her.
Hugh sat a few moments longer at the table, finishing his cigarette.
Perhaps it was that the reaction from that little dream he had had on
the hillside that morning, which gave him such comfort, such
consolation, had come; perhaps his instinct told him that there was some
fresh disaster which he did not yet know; perhaps this was only the last
straw, the little infinitesimal thing that made all the rest unbearable.
Anyhow, as Edith went out, he felt his heart sink where it had never
sunk before, into an abyss of misery down which he could not bear to
look. He knew--that was the worst part of it almost--how horribly ill,
how wretched, how weak Edith must be feeling to speak to him like that.
Well, he had to be cheerful, and he got up, calling to her.
“I shall go out then, dear, but I think I’ll come back for tea. It’s
rather a steep climb for the tea-basket carrier.”
She did not answer, and he went out of the room. But in the hall he
stopped. He was too sick at heart to walk; he was too sick at heart to
do anything. Nothing seemed worth while; the thought of the hillside, of
the clean pine odour, were hateful to him, the earth and the sky were
all hateful. Yet--what else was there to do? He must go, after all;
Edith must think he was tramping cheerfully through the woods. He had
left his hat in his bedroom, and went there for it. But he could do no
more. The breaking point came, and he broke. He threw himself down on
his bed face downward and sobbed.
Edith heard him leave the room, and as the door shut she felt as if her
own heart had been shut out from her, leaving just this tortured,
miserable bundle of nerves and tissues which was her body. For her,
too, this afternoon, it seemed that the unbearable had been reached, and
the blackness of it consisted in the fact that it was her own fault. Why
had she not taken that dear head in her arms a minute ago when she had
the chance? Why had she not sent her pride, her stupid pride that
revolted from pity--Hugh’s pity--to the devil, from whom it undoubtedly
came? Why, too, was it allowed that Hugh, of all the people in the
world, should have the power to make her like this?
She descended into lower depths; she told herself that she knew he was
being hopelessly bored here, bored when he was with her, who was
suffering so. Of course he refused to go to England, he could not well
do otherwise, but surely he wanted to go. Or perhaps he did not much
care; he was the sort of person who was happy and whistling everywhere.
He had been extraordinarily cheerful all these months--his cheerfulness
had seemed so effortless, too, that now, in this blackest hour she had
ever known, she told herself it was effortless. He did not really care,
she saw that now.
For one moment Edith turned off the flow of these meditations and asked
herself if she was going mad or had gone mad. She decided, however, that
she was only being clear-sighted and making discoveries. Yet somewhere,
deep down in her, in spite of the darkness of this wave of misery that
was going over her head and the deep waters that were drowning her,
there burned a little flame by which she saw--at least an infinitesimal
fraction of her saw--that she was thinking wild, wicked nonsense. But
all the rest of her, her tired, tortured brain told her that she was
thinking sense. And then that little flame went out too, and for the
moment she believed it all.
And that was the true authentic hell, more real than any that theologian
had invented. For she was quite alone; there was nobody here except
herself.
The balcony where she had been lying ran round two sides of the house,
and both drawing-room and dining room on this side, and Hugh’s bedroom
on the other, opened on to it. She got up, alone in hell, and walked
quietly up and down it once or twice. Then, to make her quarter-deck a
little longer, she turned the corner and went by Hugh’s room. The window
was wide open, and she saw him lying there face downward on his bed.
For the moment it was as if the devil and all his spirits tried to get
in between her and him, and she stood on the threshold, unable, it
seemed to herself, to take a step forward. He had not heard her; he had
heard nothing for the last few minutes, poor soul, and she looked on his
shaking shoulders with that wall of evil in between. And then, thank
God, she marched straight through it, and she was not alone any more,
there was no hell any more.
Then the scalding tears rose to her eyes, tears from which all self was
banished; they were utterly for him, whom she loved so, whom in thought
she had wronged so. Soon, no doubt, there would be shame and humiliation
in them, but not yet.
She just said--
“Oh, Hughie, Hughie!” and fell on her knees by the bedside.
And like two children who have lost each other in some dismal, dark
forest, when night is coming on, they found each other again. There was
no need of any words at first. Edith did not ask him why he was crying,
for she knew, and he did not ask why she had come to him, for he knew
that he needed her. That was why she came.
Then soon, still kneeling there, she confessed to him all the blackness
of her thoughts, and heard him tell her that it was not she. That was
true, too. Hugh, anyhow, utterly believed it, and that was absolutely
all that mattered.
* * * * *
But there was more still to tell, and though this morning Edith had
planned not to tell Hugh yet, now she knew it to be impossible not to
tell him. For had she known it then (she knew it now), it was not only
her care and solicitude for him that bade her be silent, but also her
pride, or what came nearest that, the same thing that ever and again
through these weeks had made a gateless barrier between them, the same
thing that had made her say that she could bear anything but pity. It
was consistent with all that was fine and high about her that she should
be intolerant of the pity of the world, of the pity of her friends even,
of Peggy even, that she should hold her head up even when the worst
hours were on her, and should be polite and considerate of her nurse, of
her servants, of all who did not matter. But there was one pity which
could not hurt--Hugh’s--and it was his right to know all she knew. She
had better tell him now; there must never any more be concealment
between them.
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 become part 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 so
ridiculous 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 admit life (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 her foe, 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 they seemed 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 better again 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!”