Fire Within

by Patricia Wentworth

  “I shouldn’t read them,” said Elizabeth.

  “I don’t! Nothing would induce me to. But I can’t stop my relations from quoting reams of them, verbatim. By the by, do you mind dining at seven to-night? I want to go to church. I don’t want you or Louis to come. Heavens, Lizabeth, you’ve no idea what a relief it is not to have to be polite, and say you want people when you don’t.”

  When Agneta had gone out Elizabeth talked to Louis for a little, and then read. Presently she stopped reading and leaned back with closed eyes, thinking first of Agneta, then of herself and David. Louis’s voice broke in upon her thoughts.

  “Lizabeth, what is it?”

  She was startled.

  “Oh, I was just thinking.”

  He frowned.

  “What is the good?” he said. “I told you I could see. You’re troubled, horribly troubled about something. And it’s not Agneta. What is it?”

  Elizabeth was rather pale.

  “Oh, Louis,” she said, “please don’t. I’d rather you didn’t. And it’s not what you think. It’s not really a trouble. I’m puzzled. I don’t know what to do. There’s something I have to think out. And it’s not clear—I can’t quite see—”

  Louis regarded her seriously.

  “If any man lack wisdom,” he said. “That’s a pretty good thing in the pike-staff line. Good Lord, fancy me preaching to you. It’s amusing, isn’t it?”

  He laughed a little.

  Elizabeth nodded.

  “You can go on,” she said.

  He considered.

  “I don’t know that I’ve got anything more to say except that—things that puzzle one—there’s always the touchstone of reality. And things one doesn’t want to do because they’re difficult, or because they hurt, or because they take us away from something we’ve set our heart on—well—if they’re right, they’re right, and there’s an end of it. And the right thing, well, it’s the best thing all round. And when we get where we can see it properly, it’s—well, it’s trumps all right.”

  Elizabeth nodded again. “Thank you, Louis,” she said. “I’ve been shirking. I think I’ve known it all along. Only when one shirks, it’s part of it to wrap oneself up in a sort of mist, and call everything by a wrong name. I’ve got to change my labels …”

  Her voice died away, and they sat silent until Agneta’s key was heard in the latch. She came in looking rested.

  “Nice church?” said Elizabeth.

  “Yes,” said Agneta, “very nice. I feel better.”

  During the week that followed, Elizabeth had very little time to spare for her own concerns, and Agneta clung to her and clung to hope, and day by day the hope grew fainter. It was the half-hours when they waited for the telephone bell to ring that brought the grey threads into Agneta’s hair. Twice daily Louis rang up, and each time, after the same agonizing suspense, came the same message, “No news yet.” Towards the end of the week, there was a wire to say that a rumour had reached the coast that Mr. Strange was alive and on his way down the river.

  It was then that Agneta broke down. Whilst all had despaired, she had held desperately to hope, but when Louis followed his message home, he found Agneta with her head in Elizabeth’s lap, weeping slow, hopeless tears.

  Then, forty-eight hours later, Douglas Strange himself cabled in code to say that he had abandoned part of his journey owing to a native rising, and was returning at once to England.

  “And now, Lizabeth,” said Agneta, “now your visit begins, please. This hasn’t been a visit, it has been purgatory. I’m sure we’ve both expiated all the sins we’ve ever committed or are likely to commit. Louis, take the receiver off that brute of a telephone. I shall never, never hear a telephone bell again without wanting to scream. Lizabeth, let’s go to a music hall.”

  Next day Agneta said suddenly:

  “Lizabeth, what is it?”

  “What is what?”

  Agneta’s little dark face became serious.

  “Lizabeth, I’ve been a beast. I’ve only been thinking about myself. Now it’s your turn. What’s the matter?”

  Elizabeth was silent.

  “Mayn’t I ask? Do you mind?”

  Elizabeth shook her head.

  “Which is the ‘no’ for?”

  “Both,” said Elizabeth.

  “I mustn’t ask then. You’d rather not talk about it? Really?”

  “Yes, really, Neta, dear.”

  “Right you are.”

  Agneta was silent for a few minutes. They were sitting together in the firelight, and she watched the play of light and shade upon Elizabeth’s face. It was beautiful, but troubled.

  “Lizabeth, you used not to be beautiful, but you are beautiful now,” she said suddenly.

  “Am I?”

  “Yes, I always loved your face, but it wasn’t really beautiful. Now I think it is.”

  “Anything else?” Elizabeth laughed a little.

  “Yes, the patient look has gone. You used to look so patient that it hurt. As if you were carrying a heavy load and just knew you had got to carry it without making any fuss.”

  “Issachar, in fact—”

  “No, not then, but I’m not so sure now. I think there are two burdens now.”

  Elizabeth laid her hand on Agneta’s lips.

  “Agneta, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Stop thought-reading this very minute. I never gave you leave.”

  “Sorry.” Agneta kissed the hand against her lips and laid it back in Elizabeth’s lap. “Oh, Lizabeth, why didn’t you marry Louis?” she said, and Elizabeth saw that her eyes were full of tears. The firelight danced on a brilliant, falling drop.

  “Because I love David,” said Elizabeth. “And love is worth while, Agneta. It is very well worth while. You knew it was when you thought that Douglas was dead. Would you have gone back to a year ago?”

  “Ah, Lizabeth, don’t,” said Agneta.

  She leaned her head against Elizabeth’s knee and was still.

  All that week, Elizabeth slept little and thought much. And her thought was prayer. She did not kneel when she prayed, and she had her own idea of what prayer should be. Not petition. The Kingdom of Heaven is about us. We have but to open our eyes and take what is our own. Therefore not petition. What Elizabeth called prayer was far more like taking something out of the darkness, to look at it in the light. And before the light, all things evil, all things that were not good and not of God, vanished and were not. If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. In this manner, David’s sleeplessness had been changed to rest and healing, and in this same manner, Elizabeth now knew that she must test the strange dream-state in which David loved her. And in her heart of hearts she did not think that it would stand the test. She believed that, subjected to this form of prayer, the dream would vanish and she be left alone.

  She faced the probability, and facing it, she prayed for light, for wisdom, for the Reality that annihilates the shadows of man’s thought. When she used words at all, they were the words of St. Patrick’s prayer:

  I bind to myself to-day,

  The Power of God to protect me,

  The Might of God to uphold me,

  The Wisdom of God to guide me,

  The Light of God to shine upon me,

  The Love of God to encompass me.

  During these days Agneta looked at her anxiously, but she asked no questions at all, and Elizabeth loved her for it.

  Elizabeth went home on the 15th of June. After hard struggle, she had come into a place of clear vision. If the dream stood the test, if in spite of all her strivings towards Truth, David still came to her, she would take the dream to be an earnest of some future waking. If the dream ceased, if David came no more, then she must cast her bread of love upon the waters of the Infinite, God only knowing, if after many days, she should be fed.

  David was very much pleased to have her back. He told her so with a laugh—confessed that he had missed her.

  When Elizabeth we
nt to her room that night, she sat down on the window-seat and watched. It had rained, but the night was clear again. She looked from the window, and the midsummer beauty slid into her soul. The rain had washed the sky to an unearthly translucent purity, but out of the west streamed a radiance of turquoise light. It filled the night, and as it mounted towards the zenith, the throbbing colour passed by imperceptible degrees into a sapphire haze. The horizon was a ghostly line of far, pure emerald. This transfiguring glow had all the sunset’s fire, only there was neither red nor gold in it. The ether itself flamed, and the colour of that flame was blue. It was the light of vision, the very light of a Midsummer’s Dream. The cloud that had shed the rain brooded apart with wings of folded gloom. Two or three drifting feathers of dark grey vapour barred the burning blue. Perishably fine, they dissolved against the glow, and one amazing star showed translucent at the vapour’s edge, now veiled, now blazing out as the mist wavered and withdrew from so much brightness. A night for love, a night for lovers’ dreams.

  Yearning came upon Elizabeth like a flood. Just once more to see him look at her with love. Just once more—once more, to feel his arms, his kiss—to weep upon his breast and say farewell.

  She put her hand out waveringly until it touched the wall. She shut her eyes against the beauty of the night, and strove with the longing that rent her. Her lips framed broken words. She said them over and over again until the tumult died in her, and she was mistress of her thoughts. Immortal love could never lose by Truth.

  Now she could look again upon the night. The trees were very black. The wind stirred them. The sky was full of light made mystical. Which of the temples that man has built, has light for its walls, and cloud and fire for its pillars? In which of them has the sun his tabernacle, through which of them does the moon pass, by a path of silver adoration? What altar is served by the rushing winds and lighted by the stars? In all the temples that man has made, man bows his head and worships, but in the Temple of the Universe it is the Heavens themselves that declare the Glory of God.

  Elizabeth’s thought rose up and up. In the divine peace it rested and was stilled.

  And David did not come.

  CHAPTER XXII

  AFTER THE DREAM

  In Him we live, He is our Source, our Spring,

  And we, His fashioning.

  We have no sight except by His foreseeing,

  In Him we live and move and have our being,

  He spake the Word, and lo! Creation stood,

  And God said, It is good.

  DAVID came no more. The dream was done. During the summer days there rang continually in Elizabeth’s ears the words of a song—one of Christina’s wonderful songs that sing themselves with no other music at all.

  The hope I dreamed of was a dream

  Was but a dream, and now I wake

  Exceeding comfortless, and worn, and old,

  For a dream’s sake.

  “Exceeding comfortless.” Yes, there were hours when that was true. She had taken her heart and broken it for Truth’s sake, and the broken thing cried aloud of its hurt. Only by much striving could she still it and find peace.

  The glamour of the June days was gone too. July was a wet and stormy month, and Elizabeth was thankful for the rain and the cold, at which all the world was grumbling.

  Mary came in one July day with a face that matched the weather.

  “Why, Molly,” said Elizabeth, kissing her, “what’s the matter, child?”

  Mary might have asked the same question, but she was a great deal too much taken up with her own affairs.

  “Edward and I have quarreled,” she said with a sob in the words, and sitting down, she burst into uncontrollable tears.

  “But what is it all about?” asked Elizabeth, with her arm around her sister. “Molly, do hush. It is so bad for you. What has Edward done?”

  “Men are brutes,” declared Mary.

  “Now, I’m sure Edward isn’t,” returned Elizabeth, with real conviction.

  Mary sat up.

  “He is,” she declared. “No, Liz, just listen. It was all over baby’s name.”

  “What, already?”

  “Well, of course, one plans things. If one doesn’t, well, there was Dorothy Jackson—don’t you remember? She was very ill, and the baby had to be christened in a hurry, because they didn’t think it was going to live. And nobody thought the name mattered, so the clergyman just gave it the first name that came into his head, and the baby didn’t die after all, and when Dorothy found she’d got to go through life with a daughter called Harriet, she very nearly died all over again. So, you see, one has to think of things. So I had thought of a whole lot of names, and last night I said to Edward, ‘What shall we call it?’ and he looked awfully pleased and said, ‘What do you think?’ And I said, ‘What would you like best?’ And he said, ‘I’d like it to be called after you, Mary, darling. I got Jack Webster’s answer to-day, and he says I may call it anything I like.’ Well, of course, I didn’t see what it had to do with Jack Webster, but I thought Edward must have asked him to be godfather. I was rather put out. I didn’t think it quite nice beforehand, you know.”

  The bright colour of indignation had come into Mary’s cheeks, and she spoke with great energy.

  “Of course, I just thought that, and then Edward said, ‘So it shall be called after you—Arachne Mariana.’ I thought what hideous names, but all I said was, ‘Oh, darling, but I want a boy’; and do you know, Liz, Edward had been talking about a spider all the time—the spider that Jack Webster sent him. I don’t believe he cares nearly as much for the baby, I really don’t, and I wish I was dead.”

  Mary sobbed afresh, and it took Elizabeth a good deal of the time to pacify her.

  Mrs. Havergill brought in tea, it being Sarah’s afternoon out. When she was taking away the tea-things, after Mary had gone, she observed:

  “Mrs. Mottisfont, she do look pale, ma’am.”

  “Mrs. Mottisfont is going to have a baby,” said Elizabeth, smiling.

  Mrs. Havergill appeared to dismiss Mary’s baby with a slight wave of the hand.

  “I ’ad a cousin as ’ad twenty-three,” she observed in tones of lofty detachment.

  “Not all at once?” said Elizabeth faintly.

  Mrs. Havergill took no notice of this remark.

  “Yes, twenty-three, pore soul. And when she wasn’t ’aving of them, she was burying of them. Ten she buried, and thirteen she reared, and many’s the time I’ve ’eard ’er say, she didn’t know which was the most trouble.”

  She went out with the tray, and later, when Sarah had returned, she repeated Mrs. Blake’s information in tones of sarcasm.

  “‘There’s to be a baby at the Mottisfonts’,’ she says, as if I didn’t know that. And I says, ‘Yes, ma’am,’ and that’s all as passed.”

  Mrs. Havergill had a way of forgetting her own not inconsiderable contributions to a conversation.

  “‘Yes, ma’am,’ I says, expecting every moment as she’d up and say, ‘and one ’ere, too, Mrs. Havergill,’ but no, not a blessed word, and me sure of it for weeks. But there—they’re all the same with the first, every one’s to be blind and deaf. All the same, Sarah, my girl, if she don’t want it talked about, she don’t, so just you mind and don’t talk, not if she don’t say nothing till the christening’s ordered.”

  When Elizabeth knew that she was going to have a child, her first thought was, “Now, I must tell David,” and her next, “How can I tell him, how can I possibly tell him?” She lay on her bed in the darkness and faced the situation. If she told David, and he did not believe her—that was possible, but not probable. If she told him, and he believed her as to the facts—but believed also that this strange development was due in some way to some influence of hers—conscious or unconscious hypnotism—the thought broke off half-way. If he believed this—and it was likely that he would believe it—Elizabeth covered her eyes with her hand. Even the darkness was no shield. How should she meet David’s eye
s in the light, if he were to believe this? What would he think of her? What must he think of her? She began to weep slow tears of shame and agony. What was she to do? To wait until some accident branded her in David’s eyes, or to go to him with a most unbelievable tale? She tried to find words that she could say, and she could find none. Her flesh shrank, and she knew that she could not do it. There were no words. The tears ran slowly, very slowly, between her fingers. Elizabeth was cold. The room was full of the empty dark. All the world was dark and empty too. She lay quite still for a very long time. Then there came upon her a curious gradual sense of companionship. It grew continually. At the last, she took her hands from before her face and opened her eyes. And there was a light in the room. It shed no glow on anything—it was just a light by itself. A steady, golden light. It was not moonlight, for there was no moon. Elizabeth lay and looked at it. It was very radiant and very soft. She ceased to weep and she ceased to be troubled. She knew with a certainty that never faltered again, that she and David were one. Whether he would become conscious of their oneness during the space of this short mortal dream, she did not know, but it had ceased to matter. The thing that had tormented her was her own doubt. Now that was stilled for ever—Love walked again among the realities, pure and unashamed. The things of Time—the mistakes, the illusions, the shadows of Time—moved in a little misty dream, that could not touch her. Elizabeth turned on her side. She was warm and she was comforted.

  She slept.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  ELIZABETH WAITS

  And they that have seen and heard,

  Have wrested a gift from Fate

  That no man taketh away.

  For they hold in their hands the key,

  To all that is this-side Death,

  And they count it as dust by the way,

  As small dust, driven before the breath

  Of Winds that blow to the day.

  “DO you remember my telling you about my dream?” said David, next day. He spoke quite suddenly, looking up from a letter that he was writing.