“But I’m going to Munich almost at once,” said Edith.
“Yes, in a fortnight. Get through something first. You have no idea how much more you will enjoy it if you have rather tired yourself first. I suggest also that you read us your play as far as it has gone, after dinner to-night. And if we think it dull, why, we will tell you so, and, if you trust our judgment, you can begin it all over again. What nice plans I make for you.”
“I have read it to Hugh,” said Edith in a moment, “and--well, Hugh has got a great deal of perception, you know--his comment was that it wasn’t really by Andrew Robb at all. That seems to me to be the case. You see, Andrew Robb was a lonely old gentleman, who was forever fighting against the bitterness within himself, and trying to be reasonable and kind in spite of it all. And I expect that struggling to be kind makes one sympathise with the strugglers. I am too sleek now, too contented.”
“Ah, I am sorry!” said Peggy. “Andrew Robb was such a dear. Do you think he is really dead?”
Edith got up with a little shudder of goose-flesh.
“One can never tell,” she said. “People like him often have little private resurrections. But I hope he is dead if, in order that he should dictate me another play, I should have to go through that sort of thing again. For he lived just a little too near Hell.”
The shudder of goose-flesh repeated itself, and she drew a cloak about her shoulders. Sunset had ceased to flare in the sky, and with the withdrawal of its lights it had grown a little chilly.
“Come, Peggy,” she said, “let us walk a little. I am very grateful to you. You have stirred me up, and I expect I was getting indolent. We’ll see if I can’t raise the ghost of Andrew Robb, anyhow. I want to write again, and Hugh wants me to. He says it is absurd that he should go toiling away at his singing if I don’t toil. You see, my darling boy has a very high opinion of Andrew Robb. He wants to see more of him. But he didn’t see him in the acts of the new play that I read. But I will make an effort. It is time I did. I suppose I have got stupefied with happiness.”
They left the lawn and went up the broad gravel walk by the herbaceous bed, at the far end of which was the doorway in the box-hedge into the kitchen garden. It still flamed in this wonderful warm September, its Indian summer was still coaxing it into fresh flower, bidding it forget the frosts that were soon coming. And the sight of it and what it suggested perhaps made the dead Andrew Robb to stir in his tomb of roses and love.