E. F. Benson

“ Hugh,—Hugh! There was her infinite, and the more she knew him the more immeasurable became that which he was to her. She had not known that such happiness was possible as the happiness that had been and was hers, which sprang from his love, and the more she devoured it, the more she wrapped herself in it, the greater grew the warmth and the abundance of it. And this transfigurement of the world, this illumination of life, was no thing of squibs and fireworks, dazzling and cracking one moment, and leaving a darkness peopled with images of the blaze the next ”

“ 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. ”

“ Just beyond was the door of the nursery, wide open, like its windows, for Lady Rye was of the open-window school, and Hugh, with a backward glance as if he were rather guilty, went into it. A night-light was burning, and dimly he saw a little night-shirted figure sitting straight as a grenadier up in bed, in performance of her vow. She hailed him with a little coo of delight.
“Oh, Hughie, have you come to sing?” she said. “How long you have been! And I am so sleepy!”
“Sitonim, you little brute,” said Hugh, “you really are too naughty! Why can’t you go to sleep properly like Chopimalive?” ”

“ Much as she loved the swift play of mind on mind, much as she loved the mere quietude of Thames and green forest, or the idle, nonsensical, vivid intercourse with friends, or with friends the grave note that was often struck, there was nothing more attune to her than this sight of the eager crowded streets, alive with strangers, each an enigma to her and not less an enigma to himself. Hugh had once said to her that he always got up early even in this London of late hours for fear of missing something, and that sentiment appeared to her wholly admirable. ”

“ The summer had been very hot, and where now the ineffable whiteness of the snow was spread, making the eye to dance and the heart to be glad, there stretched long weary spaces of faded green. And the worst of it was that it reminded them both in some distorted homesick manner of the down above Chalkpits. But the down above Chalkpits was to them, even as Hugh had said, the first act of the love-duet, where Edith had told him who was Andrew Robb, whereas the gray-yellow stretches of mountainside here were, so to speak, the walls and windows of a sickroom. ”

“ Hugh had called her out into the true sunshine. Often and often during this last year she had gone indoors, so to speak, to look after the theatre of her mind and construct and plan fresh adventure for her puppets, but she had not been able to attend to them with that conscious enthusiasm which alone, as she well knew, is able to make the creations of the brain alive both to their creator and the world; if she propped one up she let another fall down, and left it lying, and if she made one speak she let another yawn. ”

“ The flowers of the lime-trees, so much the colour of the foliage that the bees, small wonder, must find their way to them by scent alone, were over, and though the year was still at its height, it was impossible not to remember that after this came autumn, whereas after the other came summer. It was the same with people too; some had their summer still in front of them, to others——
A wave of pity, intense and very tender, swept over Peggy. Youth was so short, and to women, if not to men, in youth was all the honey of life. ”

“ All around her the life of Nature eternally renewed from{139} year to year rioted and flourished, fed by the imperishable river and these summer suns. All the murmurs of the forest were in her ears, birds called to each other, bees were busy drinking from honey-laden chalices of the meadow flowers, and the melodious rush and plunge of the weir just above seemed the very sound of the outpouring of life. But somehow there was a great change in the face of things since the last time she had been here with Hugh and Edith. ”

“ Edith looked round the table as she finished her coffee. Everyone was pleased, happy. The tragic mask which in life even as in Greek bas-reliefs is strung side by side with the mask of comedy, seemed to have slipped from its place; the kind, warm world showed only its smiling, shining side. She had come out of a very dark and lonely valley—in spite of Hugh it had been lonely—and though she knew well there lay many miles of valley in front of her still, yet the ground was mounting. ”

“ Peggy went to the window she had shut when they came in and flung it open again.
“Ah, if only one was renewed like the night and the river,” she said, “it would be different. But one is not; age comes so quickly when youth is over. And our tragedy is that we feel young still! Have pity on Hugh, dear. Even more have pity on yourself; spare yourself the endless, ceaseless struggle that you will make for yourself in the years to come if you marry him. Oh, Edith, I do want you to be happy so much, and a month ago you were so happy—you looked forward to such happy years.” ”

“ It was for singing’s sake that for five months in every year he had cheerfully undergone the incomparable tedium of Frankfort, not for the sake of knowing that on the other side of the footlights the huge hushed house, packed from stall to gallery, was holding its breath in expectation while he stood before the masters in the meadow by the Pegnitz, or, as Tristan, strained dying eyes over the untenanted blue of the Cornish sea for the ship that came not, or voyaged miraculously on the swan to where by the Scheldt the maiden Elsa called on her unknown and nameless champion. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There’s no one here but Edith and Toby and you, and I shall make no efforts, but only go out in a punt and fill my pond.”
“Fill your pond?” asked Hugh.
“Yes; you and Edith shall both help. Don’t you know the feeling, when you have been racketting about and talking and trying to arrange things for other people how one’s whole brain and mind seem to be just like an empty pond—no water in it, only some mud, in which an occasional half-stranded fish of an idea just flaps from time to time? Go and dress, Hugh, and don’t keep me talking.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ She laid her hands on his head.
“Ah, Hugh, Hugh——” she began.
“No, it is no use your protesting,” he interrupted again. “Here are you and I all alone, with this gale cutting us off from everybody else, and since you choose to talk about difference of age, I will talk about the difference of age that really matters. There you stand, I tell you—you, your mind, your soul, mein besseres Ich, and I struggle toward you, you helping me. Oh! I so long to reach you. It isn’t age that separates us, then, it is the timeless growth; it is your wisdom, your fineness I see shining above me. ”

“ It is only the stupid people, who haven’t really made the things of life their own and part of them, who can be shocked or dismayed, or knocked down. You have to fuse your pursuits, your friends into your very soul, so that they are part of you. You have to grow into the world, yet not so that it becomes you, but you become it. That is what I mean by life; it is the fusion of other things, ‘Things in General’ with yourself. Lacking that one is dead—one’s soul is alone.”
This was coming very near the seat of Edith’s disquietude. ”

“ Daisy’s trying to break it to you that she doesn’t think you tell stories as well as Hugh, and so she tells you you make tea better. She’s a girl. Now, when I think a thing I say it straight out.”
“Yes, darling, I know you do,” remarked his mother, with certain vivid passages in her mind.
“Oh, Jim, shut up!” said Daisy. “You see, mummy darling, you make tea better because you are so much older than Hugh—oh, ever so much older!—and I think he tells stories better because he’s only a boy. You can’t have everything, can you? If you’re old and go in to dinner you can’t eat the ices on the stairs.” ”

“ She went back alone to her house when lunch was over, in the sledge that had come for her, forbidding either Hugh or Peggy to accompany her, and even refusing, with thanks, Ambrose’s offer to come up with her, for she wanted to be alone; just as when Sir Thomas had first told her her sentence, she had to be alone to think that over, to scrutinise the face of the future till it became familiar, part of her. ”

“ Peggy laughed, but from the lips only. It was rather a disquieting question.
“Oh, I can’t believe that!” she said quickly. “I can’t believe that God gives misery to quicken us, and does not give happiness to do the same. He must fulfil Himself through joy surely. He must mean us to be happy, or else the world becomes a very tragic thing.”
“And supposing it is?” asked Edith.
“Ah, you are supposing the impossible!” said Peggy quickly. “The world isn’t tragic, not in the main at any rate. We’ve got to go on from strength to strength, not from misery to misery. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ How is that?” asked Hugh.
“Oh! dear me, how stupid men are! Can’t you see that Edith is looking forward to Munich with the keenest, most vivid anticipations? Well, at the risk of making you more conceited than you are already, I will tell you why. It’s because she is going to be alone with you and your enjoyment. There is nothing in the world she loves as much as seeing you have a good time. And it will spoil it all for her if you are uneasy and causelessly anxious. That’s why I urge you to see Sir Thomas.” ”

“ The whole point of ‘Things in General’ is that each thing is part of you, and you could no more pick it out of your life and go on working just the same as before than you could pick Hugh out of your life. The gospel of ‘Things in General’ is that they are all fused into you and you can never be alone, or cut off, or isolated. And it is mind, ego, what you like to call it, that fuses them. You mustn’t stick them about you like jewels, or clothes, or wigs—all you do must be part of yourself. It is of no use doing anything unless it is you.”
Edith was listening now, and attending like a child ”