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.”