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.”