And then in the evening, by the dinner-train probably, arriving here after the children had gone to bed, would come the woman she loved most in all the world, to whom she would have given so much of her own happiness if out of that gift there could be made even a little for her, to make up to her for those years during which with all the materials and potentialities for happiness in herself, and with all the birthright of it, Edith had found only bitterness and terror. For somehow, in spite of all Edith’s huge delight at the success of her play, in spite of the eagerness with which she had flung herself into her garden-making at Mannington, her absorption in that and in this new work of her brain which occupied her so greatly, Peggy could not believe that the inward happiness of the heart could spring from this soil if the soil was a woman’s heart. With a man it was different; husbandhood was not to a man of the same essentiality as was wifehood to a woman, and a thousand times more, surely, fatherhood was nothing compared to motherhood. She longed to see Edith married again, she longed to see her with a child in her arms before the envious years took these priceless possibilities from her.
Peggy had punted herself up to the little tree-sheltered corner where she had designed to spend her morning, first cutting and then reading this very interesting work on the internal affairs of Russia, but having tied up, she sat for some little while lost in these thoughts. All around her the life of Nature eternally renewed from year to year rioted and flourished, fed by the imperishable river and these summer suns. All the murmurs of the forest were in her ears, birds called to each other, bees were busy drinking from honey-laden chalices of the meadow flowers, and the melodious rush and plunge of the weir just above seemed the very sound of the outpouring of life. But somehow there was a great change in the face of things since the last time she had been here with Hugh and Edith. June was not over then, and the river banks were sprayed with the pink of the briarrose or their springy leaping tendrils. Blue mists of forget-me-not lay on the margin of the stream, lit as it were by the bold yellow suns of the marsh-marigold, and waved upon by the purple of the loose-strife. The flowers of the lime-trees, so much the colour of the foliage that the bees, small wonder, must find their way to them by scent alone, were over, and though the year was still at its height, it was impossible not to remember that after this came autumn, whereas after the other came summer. It was the same with people too; some had their summer still in front of them, to others——
A wave of pity, intense and very tender, swept over Peggy. Youth was so short, and to women, if not to men, in youth was all the honey of life. It was capable to some extent, no doubt, of being stored, of being enjoyed afterward, when children and children’s children, maybe, grew up round one, but could anything be like the first mornings of spring when one gathered it oneself from the dewy flowers? And some poor dears had never known the sweetness of those May-dews, and to some their sweetness had but been bitterness. That bitterness, too, like the honey, was garnered and eaten afterward and though, even as the garnered honey was not so sweet as the May-dew, so the garnered bitterness was not so sharp in the gall of its wormwood, yet how could it be right that this should be a woman’s harvesting? No doubt, as Peggy fully believed, there would be a readjustment, a compensation in the house of many mansions, but that, she added to herself without any touch of irreverence, is not the same thing.
Then she gave a great sigh, took up her book and an immense ivory paper-cutter, and began to travel in the realms of gold, as Canon Alington would have said. Then for a moment she paused, and, book in one hand and paper-cutter in the other, she held them up in front of her as if in supplication.
“Dear God, make everybody very happy always!” she said aloud.
Russia seemed to Peggy a very terrible but rather vague place, since she certainly did not devote to it an undivided attention, and the quality of her information about it took a decided turn for the worse when, before very long, this ivory paper-cutter, which she had mistakenly laid down on the side of the punt while she was turning over a few severed leaves (the book was one of those tiresome ones which require to be cut now at the side, now at the top, now apparently in every possible direction), slipped with a loud splash into the bosom of Father Thames, and was lost in him. Thereafter her knowledge of Russian affairs grew more scrappy and disjointed, for after a short attempt to supply the place of the paper-cutter with a hairpin, she had to glean her information by peeping between leaves, while others remained sealed to her. Soon, in fact, she abandoned the attempt altogether.
Summer, summer everywhere! Summer on these green Thames-side woods and in the water in which she dabbled her hand, warm almost with its long leisurely travel through so many noons of July since it left the spring of its uprising, where the winter rains had stored it. And very notably was it summer in her own heart, for growth and life she felt were at their fullest there. She was happy in her friends, happy in the multitudinous activities of her busy life, and, above all, happy in her home, her husband, and her children. Nor was her happiness of the stolid brooding order, for just as heat in summer weather always roused her body to greater exertion, so this summer of her heart made her reach out to all the world in a benevolence that longed for the happiness of others. And then, fearing for one brief and terrible moment that she was becoming like Ambrose, of whom Hugh had sent her a perfectly fair or even flattering description, she untied her punt and pushed out into the stream again.
The afternoon was all that it should be, and a story she told the children earned the remarkable distinction of being considered by Jim as of a merit equal to some of Hugh’s, and though Daisy snorted scornfully at such a notion, Peggy felt humbly gratified that in the opinion of one of her children she was getting on. Daisy, however, afraid that the snorting was not quite kind to her mother, explained the position.
“Darling mummy,” she said, “I love you more than anybody, and you make tea ever so much better than Hughie does—oh, he makes it so badly and generally spills—but if I was to tell you you sang better than Hughie, it would be silly, wouldn’t it?”
Jim slapped the water with the flat of his paddle.