Edith had now come to the river bank, and stood there in silence of soul, hardly listening to but just receiving into herself that magical song, which seemed to concentrate and kindle into one flow of melody all the music that the world held. It did not speak of, but it was the eternity of youth, the immutability of love; the everlasting beauty of the world was there, so that age and decay and death ceased to be. And that voice was the voice of all nature, and in silence she sang with it.
The moment, though it seemed infinite in import, was but short in duration; it but flickered and flashed across her, and the next minute she was conscious of the immediate world again. On her left and close to her was the tent where they were to dine, lit inside so that the canvas of it stood out a luminous square against the dusk. And even as she came to herself again—for that moment of nightingale’s song had banished the actual external world as by some anæsthetic—she saw Peggy coming out, a black blot, from the vividly-illuminated oblong of the open French window by which the drawing-room opened on to the lawn. Her husband had lingered inside to look at the evening papers, and Peggy turned and called to him.
“Darling Toby, do come,” she said. “It is so late, and I am so hungry, and we’ll begin and not wait for anybody. Hugh is sure to be late, for I heard him splashing about in the bath as I came downstairs. And Edith is always punctual, which is more than we are. Edith!” she called. “Ah, there she is; I told you so!”
Peggy hurried across the lawn as Edith came to meet her.
“And listeners—were you listening?—do hear good of themselves sometimes,” she said. “As if you could ever hear otherwise! Oh, Edith, what a divine night!”
Yet this sudden interruption was no jar to Edith; here was the human voice speaking as kindly and as sincerely as the nightingale. The world was not complete without its men and women.
“I am late,” went on Peggy; “but it was really Hugh’s fault, who is later. You don’t know him, do you? But his name is Mr. Grainger, and he was playing wild Indians with the children, and told them a fairy-story, the end of which I heard, which had no sense whatever in it, and was quite divine. Yes, we won’t think of waiting for him. It would make him feel so strange.”
Lord Rye followed his wife out, and the three of them sat down. He was a small, neat man, of extraordinary placidity, who regarded his wife rather as some philosophical citizen may regard a meteor that crosses the sky above his garden. He never ceased to admire and wonder at her, and it always seemed to him that her crossing over his own sky, so to speak, was an act of great friendliness on her part. He often looked up and wondered vaguely how fast she travelled, for the spectacle of her speed filled him with gentle mathematical pleasure at the thought of the pace she was going. He knew too that the sky-streaking meteor never failed to come home; that for all her lightning expeditions, she dropped there, to her husband and children. Naturally, also, she played about with other meteors, of whom was Hugh Grainger. He, too, lay about in hayfields and told the children fairy-stories, which they repeated to their father. In fact, there was never a couple who were so right in both liking and loving each other.
“I see that the Government majority on the fifth clause of the Education Bill—” began Toby, when he had received his soup.
“Oh, Toby, don’t!” said his wife.
“Very well,” said Lord Rye, and took up his spoon.
“Oh, you darling!” said Peggy. “Edith, isn’t he a darling? Tell him so.”
Edith looked gravely at her brother-in-law.
“You are a darling, Toby,” she said.
“I’m sure that’s very kind of you,” said Toby. “There’s a Christian Science case——”
But the meteor interrupted.
“Toby, don’t talk about things that have happened,” she said. “It’s so dull!”
“But it hasn’t happened. I was going to tell you what perhaps might be going to happen.”
“That’s better,” said Peggy. “Go on, dear.”
At that moment Hugh came around the corner of the tent.
“I had to wash,” he said, in defensive apology.
“Yes, I should think so, after the hay,” remarked Peggy. “We’ve only just finished soup, Hughie. You aren’t so very late.”
Hugh looked round, vividly, boyishly. Coming out of the thick dusk of the garden, his eyes were a little dazzled in the concentrated candle-light of the tent.
“How are you, Lord Rye?” he said, holding out his hand. But his eyes were elsewhere. “I don’t think—” he began.
“Oh, you don’t know Mrs. Allbutt, do you?” said Peggy. “Edie, this is Hugh Grainger.”
CHAPTER II
EDITH ALLBUTT went to her room that night feeling that she had passed a very pleasant but slightly astounding evening, and that she did not feel in the least sleepy or at all inclined to go to bed. And the astounding part of the evening, in the main, had been Hugh. All through dinner he and Peggy had fireworked away out of sheer good spirits and a matchless joy of living, and after dinner he had been very insistent on the necessity either of going on the river in a punt or playing ghosts in the garden. His huge high spirits were quite clearly natural to him—all the fireworking was quite obviously the direct result of that, and in no way at all a social duty. These squibs and rockets were as much part of him as his slight, slender frame, his quickness of movement and gesture, his thatch of thick, close-cropped hair, his vivid, handsome face, with its dark eyes and clear white skin. But all dinner-time that was all there was of him: he was just a boy with excellent health and an almost unlimited capacity for enjoying himself; and at the end of dinner she felt that she knew hardly more about him than she had at the beginning. She felt, however, though but dimly, and she was afraid rather ungratefully, for he had been really very entertaining, and it must have been a sour nature, which hers was not, to feel otherwise than exhilarated by the presence of so alert a vitality, that if he was always like that he would become rather fatiguing. Then at once she told herself that she was an old woman, and if she could not be young herself it should be a matter of rejoicing, not of fatigue, that other people could be. But that playing Indians with the children before dinner was a characteristic much more to her mind. That, too, he had not done, she felt, from any direct wish to amuse the children; he had done it because he enjoyed it so much himself. And though the first motive would have been the more altruistic and therefore, she must suppose, the more admirable, she liked the second one best.
Then after dinner had begun the surprises. The boats were locked up. Lord Rye had gone indoors, Peggy refused to play ghosts, and it was clearly impossible for her to play ghosts alone with Hugh. They had strolled, all three of them, up to the veranda outside the drawing-room, and Hugh had caught sight of the new Steinway grand over which Peggy had, as she explained, just ruined herself.
Then Hugh had said:
“I’ll sing to you if you like.”
And Peggy had thanked him almost reverently.
Edith remembered with extreme distinctness what she thought of this. There was something of the coxcomb about it; young men ought not to offer to sing however well they knew their hostess. It was just a little like Stephen Guest, and for that moment she wondered whether the fireworks after all partook, though ever so slightly, of the nature of “showing-off.” But Hugh went in at once, and as she and Peggy sat down in chairs on the veranda close to the open window she had said to her:
“Does he sing well?”
“Yes, fairly