Fire Within

by Patricia Wentworth

  “Yes, I remember,” said Elizabeth. She even smiled a little.

  “Well, it was so odd—I really don’t know what made me think of it just now, but it happened to come into my head—do you know that I dreamt it every night for about a fortnight? That was in May. I have never done such a thing before. Then it stopped again quite suddenly, and I haven’t dreamt it since. I wonder whether speaking of it to you—” he broke off.

  “I wonder,” said Elizabeth.

  “You see it came again and again. And the strange part was that I used to wake in the morning feeling as if there was a lot more of it. A lot more than there used to be. Things I couldn’t remember—I don’t know why I tell you this.”

  “It interests me,” said Elizabeth.

  “You know how one forgets a dream, and then, quite suddenly, you just don’t remember it. It’s the queerest thing—something gets the impression, but the brain doesn’t record it. It’s most amazingly provoking. Just now, while I was writing to Fossett, bits of something came over me like a flash. And now it’s gone again. Do you ever dream?”

  “Sometimes,” said Elizabeth.

  This was her time to tell him. But Elizabeth did not tell him. It seemed to her that she had been told, quite definitely, to wait, and she was dimly aware of the reason. The time was not yet.

  David finished his letter. Then he said:

  “Don’t you want to go away this summer?”

  “No,” said Elizabeth, a little surprised. “I don’t think I do. Why?”

  “Most people seem to go away. Mary would like you to go with her, wouldn’t she?”

  “Yes, but I’ve told her I don’t want to go. She won’t be alone, you know, now that Edward finds that he can get away.”

  David laughed.

  “Poor old Edward,” he said. “A month ago this business couldn’t get on without him. He was conscience-ridden, and snatched exiguous half-hours for Mary and his beetles. And now it appears, that after all, the business can get on without him. I don’t know quite how Macpherson brought that fact home to Edward. He must have put it very straight, and I’m afraid that Edward’s feelings were a good deal hurt. Personally, I should say that the less Edward interferes with Macpherson the more radiantly will bank-managers smile upon Edward. Edward is a well-meaning person. Mr. Mottisfont would have called him damn well-meaning. And you cannot damn any man deeper than that in business. No, Edward can afford to take a holiday better than most people. He will probably start a marine collection and be perfectly happy. Why don’t you join them for a bit?”

  “I don’t think I want to,” said Elizabeth. “I’m going up to London for Agneta’s wedding next week. I don’t want to go anywhere else. Do you want to get rid of me?”

  To her surprise, David coloured.

  “I?” he said. For a moment an odd expression passed across his face. Then he laughed.

  “I might have wanted to flirt with Miss Dobell.”

  Agneta Mainwaring was married at the end of July.

  “It’s going to be the most awful show,” she wrote to Elizabeth. “Douglas and I spend all our time trying to persuade each other that it isn’t going to be awful, but we know it is. All our relations and all our friends, and all their children and all their best clothes, and an amount of fuss, worry, and botheration calculated to drive any one crazy. If I hadn’t an enormous amount of self-control I should bolt, either with or without Douglas. Probably without him. Then he’d have a really thrilling time tracking me down. It’s an awful temptation, and if you don’t want me to give way to it, you’d better come up at least three days beforehand, and clamp on to me. Do come, Lizabeth. I really want you.”

  Elizabeth went up to London the day before the wedding, and Agneta detached herself sufficiently from her own dream to say:

  “You’re not Issachar any longer. What has happened?”

  “I don’t quite know,” said Elizabeth. “I don’t think the burden’s gone, but I think that some one else is carrying it for me. I don’t seem to feel it any more.”

  Agneta smiled a queer little smile of understanding. Then she laughed.

  “Good Heavens, Lizabeth, if any one heard us talking, how perfectly mad they would think us.”

  Elizabeth found August a very peaceful month. A large number of her friends and acquaintances were away. There were no calls to be paid and no notes to be written. She and David were more together than they had been since the time in Switzerland, and she was happy with a strange brooding happiness, which was not yet complete, but which awaited completion. She thought a great deal about the child—the child of the Dream. She came to think of it as an indication that behind the Dream was the Real.

  Mary came back on the 15th of September. She was looking very well, and was once more in a state of extreme contentment with Edward and things in general. When she had poured forth a complete catalogue of all that they had done, she paused for breath, and looked suddenly and sharply at Elizabeth.

  “Liz,” she said. “Why, Liz.”

  To Elizabeth’s annoyance, she felt herself colouring.

  “Liz, and you never told me. Tell me at once. Is it true? Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  “Oh, Molly, what an Inquisitor you would have made!”

  “Then it is true. And I suppose you told Agneta weeks ago?”

  “I haven’t told any one,” said Elizabeth.

  “Not Agneta? And I suppose if I hadn’t guessed you wouldn’t have told me for ages and ages and ages. Why didn’t you tell me, Liz?”

  “Why, I thought I’d wait till you came back, Molly.”

  Mary caught her sister’s hand.

  “Liz, aren’t you glad? Aren’t you pleased? Doesn’t it make you happy? Oh, Liz, if I thought you were one of those dreadful women who don’t want to have a baby, I—I don’t know what I should do. I wanted to tell everybody. But then I was pleased. I don’t believe you’re a bit pleased. Are you?”

  “I don’t know that pleased is exactly the word,” said Elizabeth. She looked at Mary and laughed a little.

  “Oh, Molly, do stop being Mrs. Grundy.”

  Mary lifted her chin.

  “Just because I was interested,” she said. “I suppose you’d rather I didn’t care.”

  Then she relaxed a little.

  “Liz, I’m frightfully excited. Do be pleased and excited too. Why are you so stiff and odd? Isn’t David pleased?”

  She had looked away, but she turned quickly at the last words, and fixed her eyes on Elizabeth’s face. And for a moment Elizabeth had been off her guard.

  Mary exclaimed.

  “Isn’t he pleased? Doesn’t he know? Liz, you don’t mean to tell me—”

  “I don’t think you give me much time to tell you anything, Molly,” said Elizabeth.

  “He doesn’t know? Liz, what’s happened to you? Why are you so extraordinary? It’s the sort of thing you read about in an early Victorian novel. Do you mean to say that you really haven’t told David? That he doesn’t know?”

  Elizabeth’s colour rose.

  “Molly, my dear, do you think it is your business?” she said.

  “Yes, I do,” said Mary. “I suppose you won’t pretend you’re not my own sister. And I think you must be quite mad, Liz. I do, indeed, You ought to tell David at once—at once. I can’t imagine what Edward would have said if he had not known at once. You ought to go straight home and tell him now. Married people ought to be one. They ought never to have secrets.”

  Mary poured the whole thing out to Edward the same evening.

  “I really don’t know what has happened to Elizabeth,” she said. “She is quite changed. I can’t understand her at all. I think it is quite wicked of her. If she doesn’t tell David soon, some one else ought to tell him.”

  Edward moved uneasily in his chair.

  “People don’t like being interfered with,” he said.

  “Well, I’m sure nobody could call me an interfering person,” said Mary. “It isn’t in
terfering to be fond of people. If I weren’t fond of Liz, I shouldn’t care how strangely she behaved. I do think it’s very strange of her—and I don’t care what you say, Edward. I think David ought to be told. How would you have liked it if I’d hidden things from you?”

  Edward rumpled up his hair.

  “People don’t like being interfered with,” he said again.

  At this Mary burst into tears, and continued to weep until Edward had called himself a brute sufficiently often to justify her contradicting him.

  Elizabeth continued to wait. She was not quite as untroubled as she had been. The scene with Mary had brought the whole world of other people’s thoughts and judgments much nearer. It was a troubling world. One full of shadows and perplexities. It pressed upon her a little and vexed her peace.

  The days slid by. They had been pleasant days for David, too. For some time past he had been aware of a change in himself—a ferment. His old passion for Mary was dust. He looked back upon it now, and saw it as a delirium of the senses, a thing of change and fever. It was gone. He rejoiced in his freedom and began to look forward to the time when he and Elizabeth would enter upon a married life grounded upon friendship, companionship, and good fellowship. He had no desire to fall in love with Elizabeth, to go back to the old storms of passion and unrest. He cared a good deal for Elizabeth. When she was his wife he would care for her more deeply, but still on the same lines. He hoped that they would have children. He was very fond of children. And then, after he had planned it all out in his own mind, he became aware of the change, the ferment. What he felt did not come into the plan at all. He disliked it and he distrusted it, but none the less the change went on, the ferment grew. It was as if he had planned to walk on a clear, wide upland, under a still, untroubled air. In his own mind he had a vision of such a place. It was a place where a man might walk and be master of himself, and then suddenly—the driving of a mighty wind, and he could not tell from whence it came, or whither it went. The wind bloweth where it listeth. In those September days the wind blew very strongly, and as it blew, David came slowly to the knowledge that he loved Elizabeth. It was a love that seemed to rise in him from some great depth. He could not have told when it began. As the days passed, he wondered sometimes whether it had not been there always, deep amongst the deepest springs of thought and will. There was no fever in it. It was a thing so strong and sane and wholesome that, after the first wonder, it seemed to him to be a part of himself, a part which, missing, he had lost balance and mental poise.

  He spoke to Elizabeth as usual, but he looked at her with new eyes. And he, too, waited.

  He came home one day to find the household in a commotion. It appeared that Sarah had scalded her hand, Elizabeth was out, and Mrs. Havergill was divided between the rival merits of flour, oil, and a patent preparation which she had found very useful when suffering from chilblains. She safe-guarded her infallibility by remarking, that there was some as held with one thing and some as held with another. She also observed, that “scalds were ’orrid things.”

  “Now, there was an ’ousemaid I knew, Milly Clarke her name was, she scalded her hand very much the same as you ’ave, Sarah, and first thing, it swelled up as big as my two legs and arter that it turned to blood-poisoning, and the doctors couldn’t do nothing for her, pore girl.”

  At this point Sarah broke into noisy weeping and David arrived. When he had bound up the hand, consoled the trembling Sarah, and suggested that she should have a cup of tea, he inquired where Elizabeth was. She might be at Mrs. Mottisfont’s, suggested Mrs. Havergill, as she followed him into the hall.

  “You’re not thinking of sending Sarah to the ’orspital, are you sir?”

  “No, of course not, she’ll be all right in a day or two. I’ll just walk up the hill and meet Mrs. Blake.”

  “I’m sure it’s a mercy she were out,” said Mrs. Havergill.

  “Why?” said David, turning at the door. Mrs. Havergill assumed an air of matronly importance.

  “It might ha’ given her a turn,” she said, “for the pore girl did scream something dreadful. I’m sure it give me a turn, but that’s neither here nor there. What I was thinking of was Mrs. Blake’s condition, sir.”

  Mrs. Havergill was obviously a little nettled at David’s expression.

  “Nonsense,” said David quickly.

  Mrs. Havergill went back to Sarah.

  “‘Nonsense,’ he says, and him a doctor. Why, there was me own pore mother as died with her ninth, and all along of a turn she got through seeing a child run over. And he says, ‘Nonsense.’”

  David walked up the hill in a state of mind between impatience and amusement. How women’s minds did run on babies. He supposed it was natural, but there were times when one could dispense with it.

  He found Mary at home and alone. “Elizabeth? Oh, no, she hasn’t been near me for days,” said Mary. “As it happened, I particularly wanted to see her. But she hasn’t been near me.”

  She considered that Elizabeth was neglecting her. Only that morning she had told Edward so.

  “She doesn’t come to see me on purpose,” she had said. “But I know quite well why. I don’t at all approve of the way she’s going on, and she knows it. I don’t think it’s right. I think some one ought to tell David. No, Edward, I really do. I don’t understand Elizabeth at all, and she’s simply afraid to come and see me because she knows that I shall speak my mind.”

  Now, as she sat and talked to David, the idea that it might be her duty to enlighten him presented itself to her mind afresh. A sudden and brilliant idea came into her head, and she immediately proceeded to act upon it.

  “I had a special reason for wanting to see her,” she said. “I had a lovely box of things down from town on approval, and I wanted her to see them.”

  “Things?” said David.

  “Oh, clothes,” said Mary, with a wave of the hand. “You now they’ll send you anything now. By the way, I bought a present for Liz, though she doesn’t deserve it. Will you take it down to her? I’ll get it if you don’t mind waiting a minute.”

  She was away for five minutes, and then returned with a small brown-paper parcel in her hand.

  “You can open it when you get home,” she said. “Open it and show it to Liz, and see whether you like it. Tell her I sent it with my love.”

  “Now there won’t be any more nonsense,” she told Edward.

  Edward looked rather unhappy, but, warned by previous experience, said nothing,

  David found Elizabeth in the dining-room. She was putting a large bunch of scarlet gladioli into a brown jug upon the mantelpiece.

  “I’ve got a present for you,” said David.

  “David, how nice of you. It’s not my birthday.”

  “I’m afraid it’s not from me at all. I looked in to see if you were with Mary, and she sent you this, with her love. By the way, you’d better go and see her, I think she’s rather huffed.”

  As he spoke he was undoing the parcel. Elizabeth had her back towards him. The flowers would not stand up just as she wished them to.

  “I can’t think why Molly should send me a present,” she said, and then all at once something made her turn round.

  The brown-paper wrapping lay on the table. David had taken something white out of the parcel. He held it up and they both looked at it. It was a baby’s robe, very fine, and delicately embroidered.

  Elizabeth made a wavering step forward. The light danced on the white robe, and not only on the robe. All the room was full of small dancing lights. Elizabeth put her hand behind her and felt for the edge of the mantelpiece. She could not find it. Everything was shaking. She swung half round, and all the dancing lights flashed in her eyes as she fell forwards.

  CHAPTER XXIV

  THE LOST NAME

  You are as old as Egypt, and as young as yesterday,

  Oh, turn again and look again, for when you look I know

  The dusk of death is but a dream, that dreaming, dies away
/>   And leaves you with the lips I loved, three thousand years ago.

  The mists of that forgotten dream, they fill your brooding eyes,

  With veil on strange revealing veil that wavers, and is gone,

  And still between the veiling mists, the dim, dead centuries rise,

  And still behind the farthest veil, your burning soul burns on.

  You are as old as Egypt, and as young as very Youth,

  Before your still, immortal eyes the ages come and go,

  The dusk of death is but a dream that dims the face of Truth—

  Oh, turn again, and look again, for when you look, I know.

  WHEN Elizabeth came to herself, the room was full of mist. Through the mist, she saw David’s face, and quite suddenly in these few minutes it had grown years older.

  He spoke. He seemed a long way off.

  “Drink this.”

  “What is it?” said Elizabeth faintly.

  “Water.”

  Elizabeth raised herself a little and drank. The faintness passed. She became aware that the collar of her dress was unfastened, and she sat up and began to fasten it.

  David got up, too.

  “I am all right.”

  There was no mist before Elizabeth’s eyes now. They saw clearly, quite, quite clearly. She looked at David, and David’s face was grey—old and grey. So it had come. Now in this hour of physical weakness. The thing she dreaded.

  To her own surprise, she felt no dread now. Only a great weariness. What could she say? What was she to say? All seemed useless—not worth while. But then there was David’s face, his grey, old face. She must do her best—not for her own sake, but for David’s.

  She wondered a little that it should hurt him so much. It was not as though he loved her, or had ever loved her. Only of course this was a thing to cut a man, down to the very quick of his pride and his self-respect. It was that—of course it was that.

  Whilst she was thinking, David spoke. He was standing by the table fingering the piece of string that lay there.

  “Elizabeth, do you know why you fainted?” he said.