It was just a year later, a warm, mellow afternoon of mid-October. For
the last few nights there had been an early autumn frost, though the
days were almost like a return of summer, and the beech-wood below
Philip's house at Pangbourne was just beginning to don its russet
livery. The frost, too, had made its mark on blackened dahlias, but the
chrysanthemums were still gorgeous. And on the terrace were walking two
figures, both dressed in black, one tall, who strolled beside the other,
Madge and Mrs. Home. The latter was still as like a Dresden shepherdess
as ever in the pretty china delicacy of her face, but Madge had changed
somewhat. Trouble had written its unmistakable signs on her face, but
tenderness had been at work there, too, and though her eyes were sad,
yet with the sadness was mingled something so sweet and gentle that no
one who loved her would have wished that the sadness should not be
there, if the other had come hand-in-hand with it. And it was
hand-in-hand that they had come during the last eighteen months of her
life, which had been to her of such infinitely greater import than all
the years that had gone before.
"Yes, it is even as I tell you," she was saying. "I never think of
Evelyn as blind. I think of him--well, a good deal, but he always comes
back to me, not as he was in those last weeks, but in those first few
weeks before, bright-eyed--you know how bright his eyes were--and full
of a sort of boyish joy at this jolly world. No, I scarcely feel sad
when I think of him. He was fragile; he would have broken if he had had
to bear more. And I think God knew that, and spared him by letting him
die."
She walked on a little without speaking. Mrs. Home's hand on her arm
pressed its sympathy, but she said nothing.
"I have been allowed to forget, too," Madge went on, "or to remember it
only as a nightmare from which I awoke, the way I shrank from him, and
I only wonder now whether, if he had lived, I should have got used to
it. Ah, surely it must have been in a dream only that I shrank from
him."
"Yes, dear, it was only that," said Mrs. Home. "At least, no one knew.
You behaved so that no one guessed."
"Philip knew. If it had not been for him during those months I think I
should have gone mad. And for the second time he kept me--it is hardly
an exaggeration--kept me sane when baby died."
Mrs. Home, when she had anything important and difficult to say, often
gave out little twittering, mouse-like noises before she could manage to
speak. Madge knew this, and thus, hearing them now, waited for her to
overcome her embarrassment.
"And is there no hope for Philip, dear?" she asked at length.
Madge had rather expected this was coming, but her answer gave her less
embarrassment than the question had caused his mother.
"I owe Philip everything," she said, "and though I don't suppose I can
ever love again in the way that I have loved, still--you know once I
told him quite truthfully that I would give him all that I was capable
of. You see, I did not know then what love meant. That was a niggardly
gift to offer him. And now again I can give him--oh, so gratefully--all
I am capable of. It is, I hope, not quite such a mean thing as it was. I
think----"
Madge paused a moment.
"I think sorrow has made me a little more worthy of him," she went on.
"It has made me a little more like a woman. So if he cares still----"
"Ah, my dear, you say 'still.' Why, day by day he loves you more."
Madge looked at Mrs. Home a moment in silence, and the sadness of her
eyes was melted into pure tenderness.
"You are sure?" she said.
"He will tell you better than I."
Madge gave a long sigh, then let her gaze wander down the steep path to
the river, which crossed the weir and formed a short cut through the
fields of Pangbourne. The sun, which was near to its setting, dazzled
her a little, and she put up her hand to shade her eyes.
"Ah, that is he coming up the path," she said. "He must have caught the
earlier train. Shall we go to meet him?"
"You go, dear," said Mrs. Home. "I will wait for you here."
* * * * *