Sheaves

by E. F. Benson

Her windows were wide open, but the sun had slanted westward, so that the balcony outside was in shade, though ever so little way beyond the white glare fell on the road with its avenue of dusty trees. Though September was near to its end, and during the first three days of their stay here there had been cold and frosty nights, it seemed as if the sun had repented of his winter-heralding withdrawal, and had come back to give them a few hours more of summer days. And at this moment it struck Edith, yet with no touch of sadness, how like to this beneficent return of June-like heat was her own case. In London, ten days ago, the forerunning foot of winter had struck her, yet now in her life, no less than in the ordering of the season of the year, summer with shout and banners renewed for a moment its miracle. Outside it was hot and windless and dry, and as she moved to her window she drew in a long breath of the eternal, unfading air. There even the sensitive leaves of the white poplars were still; there was but little traffic in the street, the awnings below her room and above her balcony neither stirred nor flapped in the blazing tranquillity. Calm, omnipotent summer reigned. And to-night Hugh was to sing in “Tristan.”

It was not in Munich, so she felt, it was not on the Cornish coast, it was not by the banks of the Scheldt or the Pegnitz, nor even in the giant-built towers of Walhalla, that she had lived during this week that would come to a close to-night. She and Hugh had lived far away from any human place, yet in a place that, lovers and music-lovers, each had felt to be his own, and more familiar and dear than any other home. Heart and treasure lay there, and even Walhalla was leagues, immeasurable leagues, below it. Trouble and anxiety and fear were strangers to it, or at the most (and that only for one of them) lay as some thunderstorm in an Alpine valley lies far below the feet and the eyes of those who have climbed above it into the clear, passionate altitudes that are domed in sky and floored by ice. All week long they had mounted, mounted through the fine austere air; and life, all they knew of life, had been put in a crucible and distilled for their drinking. All that was to be, whatever that was, had for these days been expunged from memory and from anticipation; it had been all to sit on this rose-coloured peak, hand-entwined, without seeing the troubled cloud below, without hearing the thunder and the voices that cried out of it. She had determined not to think of the descent, not to conjecture about the dangers and misty passages of the journey till the time for descent had come. It would come to-night, but before it came there would come the divinest hour of all, the rosiest flames of sunset, when she would sit in the hushed house and hear....

The week had been her treat to Hugh, and the compact had been that he should ask no questions. Possibly it was child-like, possibly it was a barbaric notion of hospitality; but it had given her enormous pleasure to throw money about for him, to take the most expensive suite of rooms, to have masses of fresh flowers in day after day, to have a really smart carriage always waiting, to have meals in a private dining-room. Somehow, on the material plane, infinitesimal though it all was, she wanted to express that which so filled and flooded her; she would have liked to furnish this room afresh, to have railings of gold for the balconies and frescoes for the walls, and then at the end of the week to burn and destroy it all. She had, in fact, gone as far as was consistent with sanity, but not being insane had not gone farther.

Tired! Oh! how tired she had been again and again, and how indomitably she had spurned fatigue! The glory, the jest of it, too! Again and again Hugh had said that he really must, if she didn’t mind, lie down and rest, if he was to keep awake during the opera. She had beaten him at his own game, at youth, and time and again he had confessed as much. He had even confided to her his projected errand to Sir Thomas on their last day in London, in order to satisfy himself that she was “up to Munich.” Now it was he who had wondered if he was. But all the time she had clung to her supposed cold; she had insisted that she had a really bad one, and that she would not permit Hugh the least risk of catching it. And at such moments a cloud came over her sun, there was an echo of heart-breaking things from the valley below, and hunger on these heights.

Yes; fear had been there; she knew that her ears had heard that echo and her heart had felt that hunger, though for a stray moment or two only. As quick as hands could move her fingers had stopped her ears, and nimbly had put before her heart the feast that was spread for it now. And it was only of the perfection of the present hour that she wrote to Peggy; no hint of the coming winter was there, though measured by the actual lapse of minutes it was but an hour or two before summer would cease. But before summer ceased she would see Tristan once more, her Tristan.

By the time her letter to Peggy was finished it was time for her to dress for the opera. Hugh had already gone down to the house, and she had a little soup and a cutlet only, for, as usual, they were going to have supper together after the opera. To-night, however, since Hugh was going to sing, he had eaten nothing for some hours before, and their supper was to be of substantial nature. She had planned it all; she had ordered the dishes that she liked as well as he. They were going to have some cold soup, a dish of blue trout, a partridge, and a savoury. All this was bathed in the setting rays of this last day of summer sun; it would illumine, too, their coffee, and the cigarette which Hugh would smoke with it. And during that cigarette, so she determined, summer was to cease. It was then she would tell him.

For a moment, as she dressed for the opera, she wondered how he would take it. It was worse for him than her; her whole attitude toward life and her instinct told her that with the same certainty with which she knew that it was easier, vastly easier for her to know that she had consumption than it would have been to learn that Hugh had. That was what love meant; just that one simple fact that to the woman who loves, her husband is more truly herself than she. That was no news to her; she had known it ever since she had known Hugh. And it could not have been true of her if it had not been true of him also. Oh, poor Hugh, poor Hugh!

Then with complete erasure she banished the thoughts of what that hour round about midnight this evening would bring. She was still in love with life, with the huge exultant happiness that is the birthright of clean and normal souls who love another. Such happiness, the highest and the best of all earthly bliss, is no niggardly distillation of human life; to produce it a hundred or a myriad souls have not to be boiled down in torment of fire or refined through starvation of joy so that, basil-like, it may put forth its flowers from roots that have been enriched with the life-blood and tears of the many, nor is it rare or recondite and only to be perceived by the Æolian harps of the world. Instead it is a common, common bliss; none seek it or strain after it, but there are but few who do not find it. Her sweet simple soul loved Hugh; Hugh, as simple as herself, loved her. And if shadows of the dark valley were near, that would be the all-sufficing lamp which would dissipate them.

Then crowning this crown, which was hers, was a further gem-like circlet. To him the supreme gift of song had been given, to her the supremacy of appreciation.... And it was time to go downstairs and drive to the opera to hear “Tristan.”

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