Hugh had taken the telegram with him, and on his journey he read it and
re-read it. In London, at Victoria station, it could be construed one
way, at Dover it could be construed another way. Waiting at Laon, the
probability inclined toward the Victoria interpretation, but with the
wheels going swiftly round again he thought the Dover interpretation
might be right. But when, in the dim, frosty hour before dawn he awoke,
after a short sleep, just as the train came into Basle, he knew that the
two interpretations were one. What it came to was this--Edith had an
attack of syncope, failure of the heart. She had rallied; as soon as she
could be moved she must be moved down to some lower and less stimulating
air. This attack had taken place on the morning she would have written
to him. When she recovered she sent the telegram saying she had not
written because she was so busy. Then a second attack had come on. The
second telegram was sent by the doctor.
The wheels of the train made a continuous throbbing, punctuated beat,
and as they sped on between the flower-strewn pastures he was conscious
of little else but this pulsation. Just occasionally some vivid flash of
consciousness came over him, so that for a moment the sword of suspense
pierced him or the hot hand of sorrow lay heavy on his head, or, again,
for a moment only, he was conscious of the exquisite beauty of the
blossoming spring, but for the most part his mind was inert and dull,
feeling no more than the droning of the wheels. He merely had to sit
still and be taken to Davos. He would feel again when he got there; just
now he was no more than a parcel. Sometimes for a space the wheels
seemed like some voice he knew--Peggy’s, for instance, saying, in
staccato, some ridiculous sentence. For ten minutes at a time she would
say, “Tel-e-gram--on--the--hall--table--tel-e-gram--on--the--hall--table.” Or
Daisy, in her childish treble would repeat, “I--did--the
land-ing--net--I--did--the--land-ing net,” sentences he had heard just
before the reading of the telegram. Or, again, sometimes, still to the
beat of the labouring train, some very distant voice sang. But the
wheels never tuned themselves to Edith’s voice.
All the time, too, below the numbness and the apathy there was something
of the horror of his own smallness, and of the sense, as under some
anæsthetic, of infinite distance. All the kindly and lovely things of
the world were withdrawn.
Landquart already! He could scarcely believe that he had been more than
an hour or two in the train since Basle. The journey had not seemed
interminably long; it had seemed, on the contrary, incredibly short. He
had to change here and get into the light mountain railway which would
take him up, up home. Where she was, was home.
The languor of spring hung heavy in these valleys, but before long, as
they mounted, the cooler, more vivid air began to stream down from the
austere heights. And then it was that the magnet of home began to pull,
the apathy dropped from him, he felt and realised on what journey he had
come. Patiently and slowly the train climbed up the pass to Wolf-gang,
and with its own momentum dropped down into the valley of Davos. There
lay the lake, still reflecting without tremor the pines of the hillside;
there lay the quiet sunshine, brooding serene and luminous, in this dawn
and youth of the year, and there, above the village, stood the roof and
wooden walls and deep balconies of his home.
It was but ten minutes’ walk there from the upper station, and he left
his servant to look after the luggage and walked up the little path
between the fields that he knew so well. And in that serene peace he
came back to himself, even as his hurrying feet were taking him back to
her. He did not know what he expected, except that she was waiting for
him to come. And then, while he was yet a couple of hundred yards from
the house, he saw the figure of a man coming down toward him. In a
moment he saw it was the doctor.
“I meant to meet the train, my dear boy,” he said, “but I couldn’t leave
her. Yes, she is better, a little better. She knows you are coming.”
He looked at Hugh a moment with quiet, pitiful eyes.
“She has been getting a little stronger all day,” he said, “and when I
left her she was asleep. That is her best chance.”
Hugh nodded, just to show he understood.
“She may live,” said the doctor. “I mean she may get over this attack. I
think she will certainly live till she sees you. I think that that
desire is stronger than death. Sometimes it happens so.”
“Will--will she know me?” asked Hugh. “Thank you, I forgot, for coming
to meet me. It was very kind of you.”
But he held his head high. What wine were those words to him.
“She will certainly know you,” said the other. “She is quite herself.
Come in quietly.”
They entered the hushed house by the back door, so that they should not
have to pass by her room, and came on to the balcony outside the
drawing-room. There was tea laid there; two cups, two plates.
“Your wife ordered it,” said the doctor. “She said to me this morning,
‘Please have tea ready for Hugh when he comes.’ Yes, sit there quietly.
I will come back soon.”
Hugh had bowed himself forward, with his face buried in his hands. The
freezing of grief and anxiety, its apathy and numbness, passed from him
at that little thing, that tiny, intimate touch, and the frost of sorrow
was melted. And as the tears rained and the sobs choked him, he kissed
the little cakes that were there. It was she--she, who dwelt in these
little sugared things.
Then that passed too, and all the reality of their life together
strengthened and exalted him. Edith had thought of this, and he poured
out tea and drank it, and it was as if she sat by him, as if this was
one of those dear, ordinary days, when he had come in and found her, as
he had so often found her, waiting to begin. He had often said to her,
“Do begin tea if I am late,” but she as often said, “Oh, I like my tea
better when you are there.” The triviality of the memory, the triviality
of such incidents was brought to the level of to-day; he did naturally
what he had done so often. The little things which were associated with
her lost their littleness. She, like a golden thread, ran through little
and big things alike.
Before very long the doctor came out again to join him, and told him
more. For a week before this she had been very much depressed, and, to
remedy that, there was no doubt that she had unduly tired herself,
chiefly with some writing that she was doing.
“A play,” he said; “she finished it some four days ago. It is inside in
the drawing-room. She wished you to read it.
“The morning after she had finished it she had a fainting fit. Not very
serious in itself. But I insisted on her stopping in bed next day. That
day she sent you a telegram, but she could not write. A few hours
afterward she had a worse attack. I telegraphed to you then. She knows
that, by the way. She knew you were coming.”
“Does she know I am here?” asked Hugh.
“I am not sure. But about ten minutes before I met you on the path,
while I was still with her, she said suddenly, ‘Oh, he has come.’ And
then she fell asleep.”
Hugh turned round in his chair.
“What do you expect?” he said. “What is the best you expect, and what is
the worst? I want to know all.”
The doctor looked at him silently a moment.
“You mean what would I wish for one I loved in such a case, and what
would I fear?”
“Exactly that.”
“The best is that she may see you and talk to you and die. That is what
both you and she, I think, would be right to choose. The worst is that
she may get a little better, and drag on, for weeks perhaps, even go
back to England. Then there would be that long, unwilling struggle to
cling to life, a struggle that is instinctive only, and does not
represent the will or the desire.”
“Then there is no hope of real recovery?”
“No.”
Hugh got up from his chair and walked across to the window. It was
drawing near to sunset, and the snowpeaks opposite were already
beginning to flame, while down in the valley below and all across to the
heights opposite lay the transparent darkening shadow of evening. No
breeze stirred, a windless calm lay over the meadows, the pines, the
cloudless sky. Within him, too, there was calm: despair, hopelessness
might be in his heart, but there were other and bigger things--love and
the imperishable memory of beautiful days.
After a moment the doctor rose too.
“I am going now,” he said, “but I shall be back later. If I could do any
good by waiting, I would of course wait. You know all there is to be
known. If she wakes and asks for you, you may of course go to her.”
“May I go and look at her a moment as she sleeps?” asked Hugh.
“Yes, but go very quietly. Take your shoes off.”
Hugh went up the passage to where at the far end her bedroom door stood
wide open, so that she might have all the air that could be got. Yet,
though his heart was inside that room, he paused a moment at the door
fearing what he might be going to see, dreading to look on what the
cruel hand of suffering and mortal weakness had done. But next moment he
had conquered that, and went in, and his fear was so groundless that he
no longer remembered that he had feared.
She lay without pillows, so that her head was level with her body, and
her arms lay outside the sheet. And as he looked at her face it seemed
to him for a moment that all her illness, all she had gone through since
the autumn, was but a dream, so untroubled was her sleep, so calm and
natural her whole look. She did not look ill, even, and her mouth smiled
a little with parted lips. Yet the nurse was there, the apparatus of
illness was there, the faint sweet smell of ether still hung a little
in the room.
Soon he went back to the sitting-room at the far end of the house, where
he had gone first with the doctor, and there on a table was lying the
manuscript she had finished, which she wished him to read. All evening
and deep into the night he read. It was all Edith: she herself, she
shining above him.
The doctor came, but went again immediately; she was still sleeping, and
soon after the night nurse had come on duty, Hugh went to bed himself,
for she still slept. There through the calm starlit hours he lay, dozing
a little from time to time, but for the most part lying with open eyes,
looking out into the night, not restless, but very quiet. His room was
on the other side of the house, and it did not seem very long to him
before a little change came over the darkness. High on the mountains to
the west came a little flush of colour, the tops grew rosy. Down here in
the valley it was still dark, but in the heavens dawn had come, and had
touched the topmost snows.
Then, before his mind told him why he had done so, he got out of bed.
Next moment he heard a soft step outside. A tap at the door. He felt he
had been waiting for this.
He was at the door in a moment in his dressing gown.
“She has just woke,” said the nurse, “and she wants to see you. I have
rung up Dr. Harris. He ought to come at once!”
A couple of candles were burning on the table in her room, shielded from
the bed. But dawn was coming quickly, there was scarce need for them.
Her face was turned toward the door, and as he entered she smiled at
him. A little rosy light was beginning to steal in through the
uncurtained windows, and her eyes shone with it.
“Oh, Hughie,” she whispered. “I knew you had come. Thank God.”
He knelt down by the bed, taking her hand in his, kissing it, kissing
it.
“_Meine Seele_,” he said, “_meine Seele_!”
“Yes, my darling. Oh, Hughie, how beautiful it has been. How----”
Then a wonderful change began to come over her face, a dawn, a new life.
He understood.
She raised herself in bed, triumphant, radiant.
“My soul and my heart!” she said aloud, speaking quickly. “Thank God for
it all. Ah, good-bye, my Hugh. Morning, it is morning.”
Dawn had come.