Patricia Wentworth - The Fire Within

“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.

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.