The Fire Within (13 page)

The sun was cold, the dark dead Moon

  Hung low behind dull leaden bars,

And you came barefoot down the sky

  Between the grey unlighted Stars.

You laid your hand upon my soul,

  My soul that cried to you for rest,

And all the light of the lost Sun

  Was in the comfort of your breast.

There was no veil upon your heart,

  There was no veil upon your eyes;

I did not know the Stars were dim,

  Nor long for that dead Moon to rise.

THEY dined with Edward and Mary next day. The centipedes were still
immured, and Edward made tentative overtures to David on the subject of
broaching the case after dinner.

“Edward is the soul of hospitality,” David said afterwards. “He
keeps his best to the end. First a positively good dinner, then some
comparatively enjoyable music, and, last of all, the superlatively
enthralling centipedes.”

At the time, he complied with a very good grace. He even contrived a
respectable degree of enthusiasm when the subject came up.

It was Mary who insisted on the comparatively agreeable music.

“No—I will not have you two going off by yourselves the moment you
've swallowed your dinner. It 's not good for people. Edward
will certainly have indigestion—yes, Edward, you know you will. Come
and have coffee with us in a proper and decent fashion, and we 'll have
some music, and then you shall do anything you like, and I 'll talk to
Elizabeth.”

Edward sang only one song, and then said that he was hoarse, which
was not true. But Elizabeth was glad when the door closed upon him and
David, for the song Edward had sung was the one thing on earth which
she felt least able to hear. He sang, O Moon of my Delight,
transposed by Mary to suit his voice, and he sang it with his usual
tuneful correctness.

Elizabeth looked up only once, and that was just at the end. David
was looking at her with a frown of perplexity. But as Edward remarked
that he was hoarse, David passed his hand across his eyes for a moment,
as if to brush something away, and rose with alacrity to leave the
room.

When they were gone Mary drew a chair close to her sister and sat
down. She was rather silent for a time, and Elizabeth was beginning to
find it hard to keep her own thoughts at bay, when Mary said in a new,
gentle voice:

“Liz, I 'm so happy.”

“Are you, Molly?” She spoke rather absently, and Mary became softly
offended.

“Don't you want to know why, Liz? I don't believe you care a bit. I
don't believe you 'd mind if I were ever so miserable, now that you 've
got David, and are happy yourself!”

Elizabeth came back to her surroundings.

“Oh, Molly, what a goose you are, and what a monster you make me
out. What is it, Mollykins, tell me?”

“I 've a great mind not to. I don't believe you really care. I would
n't tell you a word, only I can't help it. Oh, Liz, I 'm going to have
a baby, and I thought I never should. I was making myself wretched
about it.”

She caught Elizabeth's hand and squeezed it.

“Oh, Liz, be glad for me. I 'm so glad and happy, and I want some
one to be glad too. You don't know how I 've wanted it. No one knows. I
've simply hated all the people in the Morning Post who had
babies. I 've not even read the first column for weeks, and when Sybil
Delamere sent me an invitation to her baby's christening—she was
married the same day I was, you know—I just tore it up and burnt
it. And now it 's really coming to me, and you 're to be glad for me,
Liz.”

“Molly, darling, I am glad—so glad.”

“Really?”

Mary looked up into her sister's face, searchingly.

“You 're thinking of me, really of me—not about David, as
you were just now? Oh, yes, I knew.”

Elizabeth laughed.

“Really, Molly, may n't I think of my own husband?”

“Not when I 'm telling you about a thing like this,” said Mary.
“Liz, you are the first person I have told, the very first.”

Elizabeth did not allow her thoughts to wander again. As they
talked, the rain beat heavily against the windows, and they heard the
rush of it in the gutters below.

“What a pity,” Mary cried. “How quickly it has come up, and last
night was so lovely. Did you see the moon? And to-night it is full.”

“Yes, to-night it is full,” said Elizabeth.

Edward and Mary came down to see their guests off. Edward shut the
door behind them.

“What a night!” he exclaimed. But Mary came close and whispered:

“I 've told her.”

“Have you?”

Edward's tone was just the least shade perfunctory. He slid home the
bolt of the door and turning, caught Mary in his arms and hugged her.

“O Mary, darling!“

Mary glowed, responsive.

“O Mary, darling, it really is a new spider,” he cried.

David and Elizabeth walked home in a steady downpour. Mary had lent
her overshoes, and she had tucked up her dress under a mackintosh of
Edward's. There was much merriment over their departure with a large
umbrella between them, but as they walked home, they both grew silent.
Elizabeth said good-night in the hall, and ran up to her room. To-night
he would not come. Oh, to-night she felt quite sure that he would not
come. It was dark. She heard the rain falling into the river, and she
could just see how the trees bent in the rush of it. And yet she sat
for an hour, by her window, in the dark, waiting breathlessly for that
which would not happen.

The time went slowly by. The rain fell, and it was cold. Elizabeth
lay down in the great square bed, and presently she slept, lulled by
the steady dropping of the rain. She slept, and in her sleep she
dreamed that she was sinking fathoms deep in a stormy, angry sea. Far
overhead, she could hear the clash of the waves, and the long, long
sullen roar of the swelling storm. And she went down and down into a
black darkness that was deeper than any night—down, till she lost the
roar of the storm above, down until all sound was gone, and she was
alone in a black silence that would never lift or break again. Her soul
was cold and blind, and most unendurably alone. Then something touched
her, something that was warm. There came upon her that strange sense of
home-coming, which comes to us in dreams, when love comes back to us
across the sundering years, and all the pains of life, the pains of
death, vanish and are gone, and we are come home—home to the place
where we would be.

In her dream Elizabeth was come home. It was so long, so long, that
she had wandered—so many years, so many lands—such weary feet and
such a weary way. Now she was come home.

She stirred and opened her eyes. The rain had ceased. The room was
dark, but the moon shone, for a single shaft struck between the
curtains and lay above the bed like a silver feather dropped from some
great passing wing.

Elizabeth was awake. She saw these things. She was come home.
David's arms were about her in the darkness.

Oh, was it in the dead of night,

  Or in the dark before the day;

You came to me and kneeling, knew

  The thing that I would never say?

There was no star, nor any moon,

  There was no light from pole to pole,

And yet you saw the secret thing,

  That I had hid within my soul.

You saw the secret and the shrine,

  You bowed your head and went your way—

Oh, was it in the dead of night,

  Or in the dark that brings the day?

FOR the next fortnight Elizabeth lived in a dream from which she
scarcely woke by day. The dream life—the dream love—the dream
itself—these became her life. In the moments that came nearest the
waking she trembled, because if the dream was her life, the waking
would be death. But for the rest of the time she walked in a trance.
Earth budded, and the birds built nests. The green of woodland places
went down under a flood of bluebells. The children made cowslip balls.
All day long the sun shone out of a blue sky, and at night David came
to her. Always he came at night, and went away in the dawn. And he
remembered nothing.

Once she put her face to his in the darkness, and said:

“Oh, David, won't you remember—won't you ever remember? Am I only
the Woman of the Dream? When will you remember?”

Then David was troubled in his dream, and stirred and went from her
an hour before the time of his going.

Towards the end of the fortnight her trance wore thin. It was then
that everything she saw or read seemed to press in upon one sore spot.
If she went to the Mottisfonts', there was Mary with her talk of Edward
and the baby. Edward!—Elizabeth could have laughed; but the laughter
went too. If there were not much of Edward, at least Mary had all that
there was. And the child—did not she, too, desire children? But the
child of a dream. How could she give to David the child of a dream
already forgotten? If she walked, there were lovers in every lane,
young lovers, who loved each other by day and in the eye of the sun. If
she took up a book—once what she read was:

Come to me in my
dreams, and then

By day I shall be well again!

For then the night will more than pay

The hopeless longing of the day.

and another time, Kingsley's Dolcino to Margaret. Then came a day when she opened her Bible and read:

“If a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light
in him.”

That day she came broad awake. The daze passed from her. Her brain
was clear, and her conscience—the inner vision rose before her,
showing her an image troubled and confused. What had she done? And what
was she doing now? Day by day David looked at her with the eyes of a
friend, and night by night he came to her, the lover of a dream. Which
was the reality? Which was the real David? If the David of the dream
were real, conscious in sleep of some mysterious oneness, the sense of
which was lost in the glare of day—then she could wait, and bear, and
hope, till the realization was so strong that the sun might shine upon
it and show to David awake what the sleeping David knew.

But if the David of the dream were not the real David, then what was
she? Mistress and no wife—the mistress of a dream mood that never
touched Reality at all.

Two scalding tears in Elizabeth's eyes—two and no more. The others
burned her heart.

And the thought stayed with her.

That evening after dinner Elizabeth looked up from her embroidery.
The silence had grown to be too full of thoughts. She could not bear
it.

“What are you reading, David?” she asked.

He laughed and said:

“Sentimental poetry, ma'am. Would you have suspected me of it? I
find it very soothing.”

“Do you?”

She paused, and then said with a flutter in her throat:

“Do you ever write poetry now, David? You used to.”

“Yes, I remember boring you with it.”

He coloured a little as he spoke.

“But since then?”

“Oh, yes—”

“Show me some—”

“Not for the world.”

“Why not?”

“Poetry is such an awful give away. How any one ever dares to
publish any, I don't know. I suppose they get hardened. But one's most
private letters are n't a patch on it. One puts down all one's
grumbles, one's moonstruck fancies, the ravings of one's inanest
moments. Mine are not for circulation, thanks.”

Elizabeth did not laugh. Instead she said, quite seriously,

“David, I wish you would show me some of it.”

He looked rather surprised, but got up, and presently came back with
some papers in his hand, and threw them into her lap.

“There. There 's one there that 's rather odd. It 's rotten poetry,
but it gave me the oddest feelings when I wrote it. See if it does the
same to you,” and he laughed. There were three poems in Elizabeth's
lap. The first was a vigorous bit of work—a ballad with a good ballad
swing to it. Elizabeth read it and applauded.

“This is much better than your old things,” she said, and he was
manifestly pleased.

The next was a set of clever verses on a political topic of passing
interest. Elizabeth laughed over it and laid it aside. Her thoughts
were pleasantly diverted. Anything was welcome that brought her nearer
to the David of the day.

She took up the third poem. It was called:

EGYPT

Egypt sands are burning hot,

  Burning hot and dry,

How they scorched us as we worked,

  Toiling, you and I,

When we built the Pyramid in Egypt.

Heaven like hammered brass above,

  Earth like brass below,

How the sweat of torment ran,

  All those years ago,

When we built the Pyramid in Egypt.

When the dreadful day was done,

  Night was like your eyes,

Sweet and cool and comforting—

  We were very wise,

When we built the Pyramid in Egypt.

We were very wise, my dear,

  Children, lovers, gods.

Where 's the wisdom that we knew,

  With our world at odds,

When we built the Pyramid in Egypt?

Now your hand is strange to mine,

  Now you heed me not,

Life and death and love and pain,

  You have quite forgot,

You have quite forgotten me and Egypt.

I would bear it all again,

  Just to take your hand,

Bend my body to the whip,

  Tread the burning sand,

Build another Pyramid in Egypt.

Toiling, toiling, all the day;

  Loving you by night,

I 'd go back three thousand years

  If I only might,—

Back to toil and pain and you and Egypt.

When she looked up at the end, David spoke at once.

“Well,” he said, “what does it say to you?”

“I don't quite know.”

“It set up one of those curious thought-waves. One seems to remember
something out of an extraordinarily distant past. Have you ever felt
it? I believe most people have. There are all sorts of theories to
account for it. The two sides of the brain working unequally, and
several others. But the impression is common enough, and the theories
have been made to fit it. Of course the one that fits most happily is
the hopelessly unscientific one of reincarnation. Well, my thought-wave
took me back to Egypt and—”

He hesitated.

“Tell me.”

Elizabeth's voice was eager.

“Oh, nothing.”

“Yes, tell me.”

He laughed at her earnestness.

“Well, then—I saw the woman's eyes.”

“Yes.”

“They were grey. That 's all. And I thought it odd.”

He broke off, and Elizabeth asked no more. She knew very well why he
had thought it odd that the woman's eyes should be grey. The poems were
dated, and Egypt bore the date of a year ago. He was in love
with Mary then, and Mary's eyes were dark—dark hazel eyes.

That night she woke from a dream of Mary, and heard David whispering
a name in his sleep, but she could not catch the name. The old shamed
dread and horror came upon her, strong and unbroken. She slipped from
bed, and stood by the window, panting for breath. And out of the
darkness David called to her:

“Love, where are you gone to?”

If he would say her name—if he would only say her name. She had no
words to answer him, but she heard him rise and come to her.

“Why did you go away?” he said, touching her. And as she had done
once before, Elizabeth cried out.

“Who am I, David?—tell me! Am I Mary?”

He repeated the name slowly, and each repetition was a wound.

“Mary,” he said, wonderingly, “there is no Mary in the Dream. There
are only you and I—and you are Love—”

“And if I went out of the Dream?” said Elizabeth, leaning against
his breast. The comfort of his touch stole back into her heart. Her
breathing steadied.

“Then I would come and find you,” said David Blake.

It was the next day that Agneta's letter came. Elizabeth opened it
at breakfast and exclaimed.

“What is it?”

She lifted a face of distress.

“David, should you mind if I were to go away for a little? Agneta
wants me.”

“Agneta?”

“Yes, Agneta Mainwaring. You remember, I used to go and stay with
the Mainwarings in Devonshire.”

“Yes, I remember. What 's the matter with her?”

“She is engaged to Douglas Strange, the explorer, and there
are—rumours that his whole party has been massacred. He was working
across Africa. She wants me to come to her. I think I must. You don't
mind, do you?”

“No, of course not. When do you want to go?”

“I should like to go to-day. I could send her a wire,” said
Elizabeth. “I hope it 's only a rumour, and not true, but I must go.”

David nodded.

“Don't take it too much to heart, that 's all,” he said.

He said good-bye to her before he went out, told her to take care of
herself, asked her to write, and inquired if she wanted any money.

When he had gone, Elizabeth told herself that this was the end of
the Dream. She could drift no more with the tide of that moon-watched
sea. She must think things out and come to some decision. Hitherto, if
she thought by day, the night with its glamour threw over her thoughts
a rainbow mist that hid and confused them. Now Agneta needed her, there
would be work for her to do. And she would not see David again until
she could look her conscience in the face.