“Hugh, Mr. Simpkins, who is going to judge us to-morrow, wants you to sing at the Belvedere, and, of course, you will. Tuesday night: yes, we are not doing anything. And you will judge us at half-past twelve? that will suit beautifully, and I can practise first. Half-past twelve, Hugh. Bring a flask of brandy.”
So now on this momentous morning, and in spite of the ordeal that would have to be gone through at twelve-thirty, Peggy drew in and gave out the long breaths of content. There was no doubt that Edith was much better; a week ago even she was still in the lying-down regime; to-day she was going to walk to the rink, observe their antics, lunch with them there, and be driven home. She, Peggy, had interviewed the doctor herself this morning. It was all as good as it could be. It was better even than the doctor had hoped. Her weight had gone up, her general health had improved, vigour and health were marching on the high-road toward her. And the one thing that they had to be careful about, did not at this moment trouble Peggy. Edith’s heart was not strong. No, there was nothing organically wrong, but it was possible that some lower place than Davos might be as good for her lungs, and not so trying, so stimulating to the heart. But he did not for a moment suggest her leaving Davos. A place that had already done her so much good was not to be lightly abandoned.
Peggy breathed her long sighs, and fell to talking of skating again, when Hugh had recovered from his rather complicated fall.
“Oh, it does matter so much,” she said, “and Edith feels it matters so much. She wants us dreadfully to pass our test. Oh, Hugh! how very big quite little things are. It will really make her happier if we can do these things. And it will make us happier too. Do—do be serious. I am going to do outside edge back, quite slowly and smoothly. It is the only way.”
Hugh was content to sit still a little longer, and watch Peggy skating in the only way. Her whole face and figure altered so radically when she was skating, as to be almost unrecognisable. She naturally stood erect and upright, but on skates, in pursuance of “form,” she became stiffer than the Life Guards; she was cast in iron and heroic mould. Her face, too, pleasant and humorous in the affairs of everyday life, became a thing portentous, grim, determined, inexorable. She had been told to look up, to hold her head back when she was skating, and in pursuance of this she fixed a savage and unrelenting eye on the unoffending Belvedere Hotel, as if she was going to command its instant demolition. Then when a crisis approached, when the turn had to be made, her aspect changed again, the relentless expression was relaxed, pity and terror usurped her face. And, the crisis being successfully surmounted, a look of fathomless, idiotic joy beamed from her. Then that faded like some regretful sunset, and grim determination, the inexorableness of Rhadamanthus, again reigned.
He watched Peggy a little, while she receded into the crowd that was growing thick on the rink, cutting, or rather not being able to recognise, her friends, while employed in these majestic backward manœuvres, and casting glances of deep withering reproach on any who came near her sacred person, and with the recession of Peggy other matters receded, too, till he was left alone with the only matter that really had value in his eyes. And this morning for the first time, he felt safe in letting himself go, in abandoning himself to the ecstasy that the removal of anxiety brought him. Again and again, after these first three dreadful weeks were passed, the doctor had given him excellent reports; she was going on as well as possible, but not till to-day had Hugh felt himself be comforted. He had always been prepared, at the back of his mind, for bad news, for the information that she was not making progress, and none knew but he what a dreadful uphill task had been his, in performing the promise he had made to Edith on the night at Munich when she told him, and in being gay, being foolish, and natural. Sometimes it had seemed to him that she must guess how hideously hollow his apparent high spirits were, but a letter she wrote to Peggy, shortly before the latter came out, which Peggy had told him of, was his reward. In it Edith had expressed the removal of her own great anxiety that Hugh would find nothing to do, and feel that the place was intolerable. But, so she wrote, it was not so. Hugh had gone quite mad about winter-sports, and spent ecstatic days in trying to break his limbs over some apparatus for sliding, whether over skis or toboggans or skates it seemed to make no difference. The point clearly was to cripple yourself in some way. He was keeping up his singing, too, with really commendable diligence, and a decent Steinway had at length arrived. He was wonderfully cheerful, too; he did her no end of good. Peggy had stopped there and not told him what the letter went on about—Edith’s bitter pathetic reproaches against herself for the unfathomable depression that she so often suffered under, and which made her often so cross and irritable to Hugh. “But I think my darling knows it isn’t me,” she had finished. But that was not for Hugh to hear.
But to-day for the first time in all these weeks, he felt he could be cheerful, uproarious even, out of his own self, because his spirit wished to laugh and sing. “Immense, almost incredible improvement,” had been the report, and to endorse that, she was allowed to walk down to the rink, a matter of nearly a mile. Many months, as he well knew, given that all went well, must lie between her and complete recovery, and it was to-day for the first time that Hugh had let himself even look forward to that, to contemplate it at all. Even now he could not look at it long, and he had to look at it, so to speak, with half-closed eyes, for it dazzled him. But it was within the field of his vision, remote perhaps, but shining.
But how different it made everything else look! Everything was enlightened; even Ambrose, who approached him at this moment on skates about four sizes too large and black goggles perched on his inquiring nose, was welcome.
“I came down to see you and Aunt Peggy and Daisy skate for the English club,” said this incomparable youth; “and I do so hope you will all get in. It will make me so happy, Uncle Hugh. And I am happy already because papa told me that Aunt Edith was ever so much better. Aren’t you pleased, too?”
“Yes, old boy,” said Hugh; “and why don’t you practise and get in the English club, too? Daisy is sure to pass, and she’s younger than you, isn’t she?”