But Edith maintained that there was a certain decency to be observed, and it was not till three days later that they left town. And if, during those three days, Hugh so abandoned himself to the crowded festivities of June that sometimes she almost wondered if he could be home-sick for the country, she, on the other hand, felt so inspirited by the thought of getting away from these same festivities, that he sometimes wondered whether Peggy had been right, when he saw the animation of her enjoyment. Thus they were both acting a part, and Peggy, that arch-conspirator, observed with extraordinary complacency the result of her machinations.
The arch-conspirator, in fact, was delighted when they left London—a fact that she gathered only second-hand because they did not appear at a big party she gave that evening. Indeed, from the evidence that showed on the surface, she was more than half-inclined to think that she had been really wrong, utterly astray in disapproving of the marriage. A year later, anyhow, here was Edith tiring herself out and concealing the fact with the utmost success from her husband, so that he should not be curtailed of his London days, which he enjoyed with all the exuberance of his youth and his success; while he, on the other hand, on the first hint of his wife’s fatigue went away, merely with self-cursing at his own slowness of perception, into the country. Whatever structure might be reared, there was no doubt about the foundation: each was devoted to the other, and each had shown an instantaneous and instinctive necessity to sink self for the other’s sake.
Yes, perhaps she was altogether wrong; a year ago, had Peggy been compelled to forecast the future as she saw it then, it would have been a very different future to that which was now present, and to the promise of the present. The two had spent six months at Mannington alone, and the upshot was this mutual devotion. The disruption of age which, according to the measure of years, existed between them, had shown no sign of wider tearing. Indeed, instead, Hugh had grown so much more manly, so much less boyish, while, if anything Edith had grown younger. Instead of her acquiescence in the minor joys of life, the pleasure of seed-time and flower, the pleasure in the river and the downs, the pleasure in the microscopic intrigues of Mannington, which a year ago had been sufficient to enable her to look forward to a quiet, uneventful future which should still be full of the appropriate enjoyments of middle-age, she had recaptured youth. All the tenderness for green and living things (in which class, it must be feared, Peggy put Canon Alington, his wife, Perpetua, and Ambrose) was still there, but love had come, too—fresh, seething, effervescent love. And on Hugh’s side there was no less. He, too, cursing at his blind selfishness, had gone down in mid-season to Mannington because Edith was tired.
“Bless him!” said Peggy, and in the same breath she explained to some Serene Transparency that her brother-in-law was not going to sing, unfortunately, because among other reasons he did not happen to be present.
Peggy had done this sort of thing—standing, that is to say, at the top of a staircase, while names were shouted out to her—so often that the mere mechanism of “receiving” occupied her thoughts very little, and her real thinking self was left free to pursue the windings of its ways unhindered.
There were many things about Hugh and Edith that seemed to her to be matters for that pleasant smile which was so often on her face. The year, she allowed, did not seem to have emphasised the difference of their age, but rather to have diminished it. They were devoted to each other, and, please God, before many weeks were over Edith would see her husband with her first-born in his arms. Yet her shrewdness was not quite content: it was like some wise old hound of the hearth that is restless, sometimes pricking an uneasy ear, sometimes looking out with a whine at the gathering dusk. But she knew the cause of her uneasiness, and surely it was a very little thing, for it was only that Edith had produced the effect on Hugh of being indefatigable, whereas in reality she was very tired. She was keeping it up; she was feeling her age while she was ceaseless and successful in her efforts to conceal it from him. Did she, then, fear exactly what had prompted Peggy to dissuade her from this marriage? The year that had gone had brought great happiness to both, the year to come might bring more. But would it bring more of this, this difficulty which must grow greater with years?
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. For the thick lush growth of the valley, a more austere greenness welcomed their home-coming. Thick meadows, golden with buttercup, and spired with meadow-sweet, no longer enframed the flying riband of the road. The copses and elm-pointed hedgerows were left behind, and seen as from some eminence of balloon, and instead the empty ball-room of the downs, where fairies dance in rings of emerald green, and the yellowing grass of the chalk-hills bordered their way. Now and again, with a rest for the racing engines, they would descend into the country of the briar-rose and the dense hedgerow again, but as often with the grate of the low-speed they climbed higher yet, till the Wiltshire downs lay round and held them like the interlacing of the strong, braced muscles of the earth. Hill after hill huddled into the sunset, flocks of sheep driven westward toward the folds of eventide, and at last they reached the top of the high ridge from which descent began again into the valley of the upper waters of the Kennet. On each side stretched the great empty downs over which blew, unbreathed and untainted, the cool thin air of the heights, and Edith, with head thrown back, let it stream into her lungs, so that it seemed to be flowing through her. But her heart led her eyes onward, and there, three hundred feet below them and half a dozen miles away, she could see the happy valley of her home and her heart, where all last winter she had lived in Indian summer. There was the loop of the river outside Mannington, lying like a silver thread in the richer green of its water-meadows, and there were the trees, small as the vegetation of a child’s box of toys, which held her house. Mannington itself, nestling in a wrinkle at the base of the hills, was invisible, but she could see her own house, standing outside the town, and the gray protective tower of St. Olaf’s. And at the sight the past surged and bubbled in her heart like wine.
Just on the top of the ridge Hugh, who had been driving with the chauffeur by him while Edith sat behind, stopped the car. She, of course, made the usual remark:
“Oh! what has gone wrong?” she asked.
“Nothing. It’s running as sweet as barley-sugar. But we’re at the top. We shall just toboggan all the way down. Look, there is the loop of the river and the house.”