This was coming very near the seat of Edith’s disquietude.
“Then what is the trouble of the lonely soul?” she said. “It is imperfect sympathy, isn’t it?”
There was a certain change in her voice, when she asked this, that Peggy noticed. It was no longer the voice of an enquirer into abstract problems external to itself, it had the ring of a personal question, a personal anxiety about it. But she did not regret it; she had meant to make her confession to Peggy, and she had as good as told her now.
“Yes, Peggy,” she went on, “I’ve been having a little attack of lonely soul this afternoon, and perhaps you can prescribe for me.”
Peggy laughed.
“You darling,” she said, “you and your imperfect sympathies. You are so selfish, aren’t you, so self-centred! Tell me all about it now. How did it come on?”
Edith hesitated a moment, wondering whether it was wiser to speak of it even to Peggy or not. Yet there was no such excellent dispeller of phantoms as her sister and—and she was convinced it was a phantom. To be silent about it, too, would imply that she was not sure whether it was real or not. And she wanted to be sure either one way or the other. She sat up on her sofa.
“It came on,” she said, “by the sight of Hugh and the children playing together. It made me feel old and lonely. And I wondered whether he did not feel young and lonely. Ah, don’t interrupt, Peggy, let me get through with it! I think, honestly, I think that it was the thought of his being lonely with me that hurt most, so perhaps it wasn’t imperfect sympathy that was the trouble. Truth may have been the trouble. Now, you know, Peggy, you warned me, you dissuaded me. You told me I was too old to marry him. And now, to-day, do you think you were right? If you do, you will find me”—Edith paused a moment—“you will find me more ready to listen to you, now that it is too late.”
Tragic as the words were, Edith could scarcely help smiling, for opposite her Peggy was sitting with her mouth wide open, in order to begin to speak the moment her sister left off.
“Pooh!” she said very loud. “I ought to have told you before, by the way, but I couldn’t bring myself to. Here to-day then I confess. As far as I can see, and as far as the trained eye of the pessimist can see, there is no cloud on all your shining heavens. Whether you or Hugh has been the happiest, I can’t say, but I know of nobody in the world more happy than you both. Hugh has matured, too, grown older, yet without losing his youth, in the most wonderful way. You did that. You took him in your dear hands and made a man of him. It didn’t occur to me that it could be done. And you have given him a son. As for your attack of lonely soul starting with seeing him play the fool with the children, good gracious, what were you thinking about that you let it start? Do you want him not to? I should like a definite answer.”