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.
CHAPTER XXI
ELIZABETH BLAKE
Oh, that I had wings, yea wings like a dove,
Then would I flee away and be at rest;
Lo, the dove hath wings because she is a dove,
God gave her wings and bade her build her nest.
Thy wings are stronger far, strong wings of love,
Thy home is sure in His unchanging rest.
Elizabeth went up to London by the 12.22, which is a fast train, and only stops once.
She found Agneta, worn, tired, and cross.
“Thank Heaven, you’ve come, Lizabeth,” she said. “All my relations have been to see me. They are so kind. They are so dreadfully kind, and they all talk about its being God’s Will, and tell me what a beautiful thing resignation is. If I believed in a God who arranged for people to murder each other in order to give some one else a moral lesson, I’d shoot myself. I really would. And resignation is a perfectly horrible thing. I do think I must be getting a little better than I used to be, because I wasn’t even rude to Aunt Henrietta, who told me I ought not to repine, because all was for the best. She said there were many trials in the married state, and that those who did not marry were spared the sorrow of losing a child or having an unfaithful husband. I really wasn’t rude to her, Lizabeth—I swear I wasn’t. But when I saw my cousin, Mabel Aston, coming up the street—you always can see her a mile off—I told Jane to say that I was very sorry, but I really couldn’t see any one. Mabel won’t ever forgive me, because all the other relations will tell her that I saw them. I told them every one that I was perfectly certain that Douglas was all right. And so I am. Yes, really. But, oh, Lizabeth, how I do hate the newspapers.”
“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 really 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 agonising 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 went 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 quarrelled,” 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 her 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 eyes 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.
“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 the 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 interfering 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 founded 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 safeguarded 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 know 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.
“Yes,” said Elizabeth, and said no more.
A sort of shudder passed over David Blake.
“Then it’s true,” he said in a voice that was hardly a voice at all. There was a sound, and there were words. But it was not like a man speaking. It was like a long, quick breath of pain.
“Yes,” said Elizabeth. “It is true, David.”
There was a very great pity in her eyes.
“Oh, my God!” said David, and he sat down by the table and put his head in his hands. “Oh, my God!” he said again.
Elizabeth got up. She was trembling just a little, but she felt no faintness now. She put one hand on the mantelpiece, and so stood, waiting.
There was a very long silence, one of those profound silences which seem to break in upon a room and fill it. They overlie and blot out all the little sounds of every-day life and usage. Outside, people came and went, the traffic in the High Street came and went, but neither to David, nor to Elizabeth, did there come the smallest sound. They were enclosed in a silence that seemed to stretch unbroken, from one Eternity to another. It became an unbearable torment. To his dying day, when any one spoke of hell, David glimpsed a place of eternal silence, where anguish burned for ever with a still unwavering flame.
He moved at last, slowly, like a man who has been in a trance. His head lifted. He got up, resting his weight upon his hands. Then he straightened himself. All his movements were like those of a man who is lifting an intolerably heavy load.
“Why did you marry me?” he asked in a tired voice, and then his tone hardened. “Who is the man? Who is he? Will he marry you if I divorce you?”
An unbearable pang of pity went through Elizabeth, and she turned her head sharply. David stopped looking at her.
She to be ashamed—oh, God!—Elizabeth ashamed—he could not look at her. He walked quickly to the window. Then turned back again because Elizabeth was speaking.
“David,” she said, in a low voice, “David, what sort of woman am I?”
A groan burst from David.
“You are a good woman. That’s just the damnable part of it. There are some women, when they do a thing like this, one only says they’ve done after their kind—they’re gone where they belong. When a good woman does it, it’s Hell—just Hell. And you’re a good woman.”
Elizabeth was looking down. She could not bear his face.
“And would you say I was a truthful woman?” she said. “If I were to tell you the truth, would you believe me, David?”
“Yes,” said David at once. “Yes, I’d believe you. If you told me anything at all you’d tell me the truth. Why shouldn’t I believe you?”
“Because the truth is very unbelievable,” said Elizabeth.
David lifted his head and looked at her.
“Oh, you’ll not lie,” he said.
“Thank you,” said Elizabeth. After a moment’s pause, she went on.
“Will you sit down, David? I don’t think I can speak if you walk up and down like that. It’s not very easy to speak.”
He sat down in a big chair, that stood with its back to the window.
“David,” she said, “when we were in Switzerland, you asked me how I had put you to sleep. You asked me if I had hypnotised you. I said, No. I want to know if you believed me?”
“I don’t know what I believed,” said David wearily. The question appeared to him to be entirely irrelevant and unimportant.
“When you hypnotise a person, you are producing an illusion,” said Elizabeth. “The effect of what I did was to destroy one. But whatever I did, when you asked me to stop doing it, I stopped. You do believe that?”
“Yes—I believe that.”
“I stopped at once—definitely. You must please believe that. Presently you will see why I say this.”
All the time she had been standing quietly by the mantelpiece. Now she came across and kneeled down beside David’s chair. She laid her hands one above the other upon the broad arm, and she looked, not at David at all, but at her own hands. It was the penitent’s attitude, but David Blake, looking at her, found nothing of the penitent’s expression. The light shone full upon her face. There was a look upon it that startled him. Her face was white and still. The look that riveted David’s attention was a look of remoteness—passionless remoteness—and over all a sort of patience.
Elizabeth looked down at her strong folded hands, and began to speak in a quiet, gentle voice. The sapphire in her ring caught the light.
“David, just now you asked me why I married you. You never asked me that before. I am going to tell you now. I married you because I loved you very much. I thought I could help, and I loved you. That is why I married you. You won’t speak, please, till I have done. It isn’t easy.”
She drew a long, steady breath and went on.
“I knew you didn’t love me, you loved Mary. It wasn’t good for you. I knew that you would never love me. I was—content—with friendship. You gave me friendship. Then we came home. And you stopped loving Mary. I was very thankful—for you—not for myself.”
She stopped for a moment. David was looking at her. Her words fell on his heart, word after word, like scalding tears. So she had loved him—it only needed that. Why did she tell him now when it was all too late—hideously too late?
Elizabeth went on.
“Do you remember, when we had been home a week, you dreamed your dream? Your old dream—you told me of it, one evening—but I knew already——”
“Knew?”
“No, don’t speak. I can’t go on if you speak. I knew because when you dreamed your dream you came to me.”
She bent lower over her hands. Her breathing quickened. She scarcely heard David’s startled exclamation. She must say it—and it was so hard. Her heart beat so—it was so hard to steady her voice.
“You came into my room. It was late. The window was open, and the wind was blowing in. The moon was going down. I was standing by the window in my night-dress—and you spoke. You said, ‘Turn round, and let me see your face.’ Then I turned round and you came to me and touched me. You touched me and you spoke, and then you went away. And the next night you came again. You were in your dream, and in your dream you loved me. We talked. I said, ‘Who am I?’ and you said, ‘You are the Woman of my Dream,’ and you kissed me, and then you went away. But the third night—the third night—I woke up—in the dark—and you were there.”
After that first start, David sat rigid and watched her face. He saw her lips quiver—the patience of her face break into pain. He knew the effort with which she spoke.
“You came every night—for a fortnight. I used to think you would wake—but you never did. You went away before the dawn—always. You never waked—you never remembered. In your dream you loved me—you loved me very much. In the daytime you didn’t love me at all. I got to feel I couldn’t bear it. I went away to Agneta, and there I thought it all out. I knew what I had to do. I think I had really known all along. But I was shirking. That’s why it hurt so much. If you shirk, you always get hurt.”
Elizabeth paused for a moment. She was looking at the blue of her ring. It shone. There was a little star in the heart of it.
“It’s very difficult to explain,” she said. “I suppose you would say I prayed. Do you remember asking me, if you had slept because I saw you in the Divine Consciousness? That’s the nearest I can get to explaining. I tried to see the whole thing—us—the Dream—in the Divine Consciousness, and you stopped dreaming. I knew you would. You never came any more. That’s all.”
Elizabeth stopped speaking. She moved as if to rise, but David’s hand fell suddenly upon both of hers, and rested there with a hard, heavy pressure.
He said her name, “Elizabeth!” and then again, “Elizabeth!” His voice had a bewildered sound.
Elizabeth lifted her eyes and looked at him. His face was working, twitching, his eyes strained as if to see something beyond the line of vision. He looked past Elizabeth as he had done in his dream. All at once he spoke in a whisper.
“I remembered, it’s gone again—but I remembered.”
“The dream?”
“No, not the dream. I don’t know—it’s gone. It was a name—your name—but it’s gone again.”
“My name?”
“Yes—it’s gone.”
“It doesn’t matter, David.”
Elizabeth had begun to tremble, and all at once he became aware of it.
“Why do you tremble?”
Elizabeth was at the end of her strength. She had done what she had to do. If he would let her go——
“David, let me go,” she said, only just above her breath.
Instead, he put out his other hand and touched her on the breast. It was like the Dream. But they were not in the Dream any more. They were awake.
David leaned slowly forward, and Elizabeth could not turn away her eyes. They looked at each other, and the thing that had happened before came upon them again. A momentary flash—memory—revelation—truth. The moment passed. This time it left behind it, not darkness, but light. They were in the light, because love is of the light.
David put his arms about Elizabeth.
“Mine!” he said.
THE END
A Selection from the Catalogue of
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Complete Catalogue sent on application