“Peggy, I don’t want to die, and I don’t intend to die if I can help. I want and mean to get well, and I shall do all I can to get well. But when one is told that one has consumption, one has to realise that it may mean that one is not going to get well. So about dying. You must take care of Hugh, won’t you? And you must make him marry again. I tell you that because—oh, my dear, the flesh is so strong—though I mean to tell him that myself if I find I am getting worse instead of better, I can’t be certain that I shall be able to. All that is at all decent in me will urge me to tell him, but there is a lot in me that isn’t, and I find, and shall find, it difficult to think of him as another woman’s husband. And perhaps my tongue will quite refuse to ask him to promise that he will marry again. So I ask you to tell him in case I don’t.
“That is the most important thing if I die. And, oh, Peggy, if I am to die, pray that it may come quick, and pray that I shall not be afraid. I hope I shall not, but one can’t tell. And pray that my darling will be with me when it comes, that his face will be the last I see here. Just as I know—oh, how I know it—that when he joins me, mine will be the first that he sees on the other side.
“Then this afternoon I wondered also how matters could be arranged, what about Dennis? And as I couldn’t possibly know, it was no use thinking about that.”
“Peggy, next to Hugh and baby, you are the person I am most sorry to leave. Don’t miss me too much although I should be frantic if I thought you wouldn’t. And remember that if I die, I now, in my sober senses, bless and praise God for the exquisite happiness I have had. I should have loved to have had other children, to have seen them grow up; I can’t help being sorry, if that is not to be. That is why I don’t want to die. But, oh, what a splendid time I have had. I thank God for it. Remember that.”
Edith had been speaking again with her hands over her eyes just as she had spoken to the doctor this morning, but here she took them away, and grasped one of her sister’s hands in both hers.
“And one thing more about dying, and I have done,” she said. “You mustn’t let it hurt you to hear me talk of it, Peggy. It is just this. You know how you dissuaded me from marrying Hugh, saying the years which made me old would leave him young. Well, perhaps you were right, and perhaps this is the solution of it. If so, I am quite content. I would infinitely rather die than have that wintry tragedy. I just want to assure you of that, and that is all about dying.”
Edith sat silent a moment, and Peggy could not speak, for it was all she could do not to break into open weeping. Had Edith been less gallant, less courageous of soul, she could have consoled and strengthened her. But she stood in no need of that; and the tears that stood in Peggy’s eyes were more of love and admiration than of pity.
Then Edith rose.
“Now all that is gone,” she said. “We put it all behind us; it is not to be. I am going to live, and, oh, my dear, do you know what that old angel, Sir Thomas, told me? He said that if I got well as I intend to do—I should be younger and better than I am now. There is the other solution. I would dearly like to renew my youth a little, to have the health and vigour of the past year over again for a few years more. That is worth living for. Some day I shall write a list of things worth living for. There are heaps of them. Sunshine and snow, and Hugh, and music and you, and ‘Gambits’ and baby. Those are only the first few that occur to me, but there are about twenty million others and I am going to live for them all. They are ‘Things in General,’ in fact, which we spoke of the other day, and are all delightful. As you said, one has to make them part of you. And I am going to do exactly what I am told, and leave nothing undone that can help to make me well, and do nothing that can stand in the way of that. Ah, I forgot Munich! But please don’t argue about Munich. I intend to go there. Also, Peggy, I am going to tell Hugh a lie about it. I shall tell him that Sir Thomas said it couldn’t possibly hurt me, in fact, that he recommended me to go. Otherwise, you see, Hugh will think it very wrong of me not to have told him first, so that he might refuse to go. I daresay it is wrong, and it is also selfish, because I am doing it simply for my pleasure. But I don’t care. I will start being good next Tuesday week, and not before. Oh, and one more arrangement! I wish you would take care of baby and his nurse until we get settled at Davos.”
“Why, of course!” said Peggy.