And Edith? There she sat, pleasant, fine, less boisterous than her husband or her sister, but happy beyond all words. She saw now the difference that had come to Hugh. For days and days he had been uniformly cheerful, uniformly boyish, with pleasure in the snow, with pleasure in the contrivances for limb-breaking, but never had he been like this. When he was silent (which was rare) he sparkled, when he spoke he shone. She knew well what had caused that; not the skating, not anything else, but she. How well he had acted, too, through these weeks. Again and again, as when she wrote to Peggy, she had believed he was enjoying himself, not making the best of his exile here, but actively taking real pleasure in it all. But to-day there was a huge difference. He was glad because he was glad, not because he wished to appear glad. Peggy, too, making a sea-sick passenger out of an orange! To-day it amused her; yesterday, had she done it, it would have been to amuse other people. What a difference there!
Above, the beneficent sun, and all round, for they lunched in but a little island of a shelter, the clean, powdery snow, frozen and hard just on the surface, but a millimetre below, not wet or slushy, as is the manner of the more temperate stuff, but like sawdust, dry from the cold. There was the heat of summer, too, in the sun’s rays, the blaze of the tropics, the blueness of South Italy, yet all round was the untainted purity of frost. The blood and the brain had here their ideal environment; it was hot and frosty—Shakespeare’s paradox was literally fulfilled. Everyone was swift and pleased and animated; fog of the brain or the temper was a thing as far and as forgotten as its atmospheric counterpart. Anything that clogged or confused the senses was non-existent, incredible. One could mix with the elements, and breathe, and be!
Edith looked round the table as she finished her coffee. Everyone was pleased, happy. The tragic mask which in life even as in Greek bas-reliefs is strung side by side with the mask of comedy, seemed to have slipped from its place; the kind, warm world showed only its smiling, shining side. She had come out of a very dark and lonely valley—in spite of Hugh it had been lonely—and though she knew well there lay many miles of valley in front of her still, yet the ground was mounting. And at the place in her journey at which she had arrived to-day there was, so to speak, a cleft in the wall of rock that had shut her in for all these weeks, and a huge beam of dusty sunlight came in, warming and gladdening her.
She went back alone to her house when lunch was over, in the sledge that had come for her, forbidding either Hugh or Peggy to accompany her, and even refusing, with thanks, Ambrose’s offer to come up with her, for she wanted to be alone; just as when Sir Thomas had first told her her sentence, she had to be alone to think that over, to scrutinise the face of the future till it became familiar, part of her. And so quietly, so honestly, had she done that, that the news that had reached her to-day—much better, incredibly better—had got to be made familiar too.
She lay down on the sofa in the balcony, where up till now more than half of her life at Davos had been passed. She was a little tired, a little excited, by this first long outing, and for some while she lay very quiet, closing the eyes of her mind, as it were, resting it. All round her were the innumerable contrivances of invalid life—an electric bell on the arm of her chair, so that she could summon her nurse without moving, an adjustable shutter on each side of the balcony, so that the wind or the sun could be screened from her; a small cross-over table which could be balanced on the arm of her couch so that she could write, an elbowed bookstand which could be pushed away or brought in front of her. And slowly, as she let her mind dwell on the great news of to-day, all these things, so familiar from long and continuous use, somehow seemed to fade and become meaningless portions of the past, even as when we see the first snowdrop, so bravely, so weakly, aspiring, piercing the cold brown earth, and promising spring, the dead leaves of last autumn suddenly become without significance to us. The death of winter that they foreboded is over, winter is forgotten. It was just so with her now; these invalid contrivances suddenly turned to the leaves which had been shed before winter. Real summer was coming now. Nearly two years ago her Indian summer had come to crown the early wreck and autumn of her life. What should this be, this revivification after the winter of weeks that had succeeded it?
Edith suddenly felt her pulse leap and quiver in her wrists and in her throat, with the wonder and the excitement of this, and, with the faculty that invalids develop, she took her mind off it, and went back to the past instead of peering further into the tremulous, luminous future. On the first day that she knew of her disease she had intended and determined to live, to put the thought of death away, to set her mind on recovery. And now when she had gone so far—incredibly better—on that road, she could look back and see how far and how often she had fallen short of her purpose. And she shook her head over her misdeeds. She had always intended well, but how often her best had been but a sorry performance. She had so often lain like a mere log under her fatigue and despondency, yet, indeed, she had only lain like a log when she felt absolutely incapable of doing otherwise. But it was no use arguing about it, or excusing herself like that; she had failed often and often. But there was one who had never failed—Hugh. She had often been odious and detestable to him, and fretful, but, indeed, she had never ceased trying to be otherwise except when, so it seemed, the power of volition had failed her. And he had always understood. In his mind it had never been she who was fretful; it was only the “insects.”
That suddenly hammering pulse had grown quieter, but still she did not look toward the future again. It was her business—indeed, she had none other immediate—to get well. All through these weeks they had encouraged her always to occupy herself in some quiet way rather than lie here without any employment, except when she was definitely resting, and in addition to the innumerable books she had read, the endless games of picquet she had played with Hugh (they played nominally for sovereign points, it being understood no money was to pass, and she had lost nine thousand seven hundred pounds on balance), she had worked at the play which (with extreme content) she had despaired of ever bringing to birth. Hugh had said it was not by Andrew Robb at all, and she had agreed with him. So when her invalid life began she had destroyed what was done of it and had set to work again. Two acts had been re-written, and now, instead of indulging in further speculation, she took them up and read them. She had not touched the play at all since Peggy, now some three weeks ago, had come out to Switzerland, and she hoped to be able to read them with that detachment from the feeling of authorship which only the lapses of time can give. But the mere reading reminded her too acutely of the circumstances under which she wrote. It reminded her too much of the sway of “the insects.” She could not manage it alone, but Hugh or Peggy, if they cared, should read it aloud after dinner. They were insecticides.
The insecticides fell in with her suggestion, and that evening Hugh read to her and Peggy. Sometimes he found it rather hard to control his voice; sometimes Peggy blew her nose. And after the last page was turned they all sat silent a little——
“But it’s Andrew Robb again,” said Hugh at length. “Genuine Andrew Robb, only he has improved. Oh, Edith, now you are so much better, do be diligent and do the other act. You have plenty of time, you know.”
But Peggy turned to Edith.