CHAPTER IXMARY IS SHOCKED

Edward’s voice was filling the room. It was quite a pleasant voice, and if it never varied into expression, at least it never went out of tune, and every word was distinct.

“Ah, well, I know the sadnessThat tears and rends your heart,How that from all life’s gladnessYou stand far, far apart—”

“Ah, well, I know the sadness

That tears and rends your heart,

How that from all life’s gladness

You stand far, far apart—”

sang Edward, in tones of the most complete unconcern.

It was Mary who supplied all the sentiment that could be wished for. She dwelt on the chords with an almost superfluous degree of feeling, and her eyes were quite moist.

At any other time this combination of Edward and Lord Henry Somerset would have entertained Elizabeth not a little, but just now there was no room in her thoughts for any one but David. The light that was upon her gave her vision. She looked upon David with eyes that had grown very clear, and as she looked she understood. That he had changed, deteriorated, she had seen at the first glance. Now she discerned in him the cause of such an alteration—something wrenched and twisted. The scene in her little brown room rose vividly before her. When David had allowed Mary to sway him, he had parted with something, which he could not now recall. He had broken violently through his own code, and the broken thing was failing him at every turn. Mary’s eyes, Mary’s voice, Mary’s touch—these things had waked in him something beyond the old passion. The emotional strain of that scene had carried him beyond his self-control. A feverish craving was upon him, and his whole nature burned in the flame of it.

Edward had passed to another song.

“One more kiss from my darling one,” he sang in a slightly perfunctory manner. His voice was getting tired, and he seemed a little absent-minded for a lover who was about to plunge into Eternity. The manner in which he requested death to come speedily was a trifle unconvincing. As he began the next verse David made a sudden movement. A log of wood upon the fire had fallen sharply, and there was a quick upward rush of flame. David looked round, facing the glow, and as he did so his eyes met Elizabeth’s. Just for one infinitesimal moment something seemed to pass from her to him. It was one of those strange moments which are not moments of time at all, and are therefore not subject to time’s laws. Elizabeth Chantrey’s eyes were full of peace. Full, too, of a passionate gentleness. It was a gentleness which for an instant touched the sore places in David’s soul with healing, and for that one instant David had a glimpse of something very strong, very tender, that was his, and yet incomprehensibly withheld from his understanding. It was one of those instantaneous flashes of thought—one of those gleams of recognition which break upon the dulness of material sense. Before and after—darkness, the void, the unstarred night, a chaos of things forgotten. But for one dazzled instant, the lightning stab of Truth, unrealised.

Elizabeth did not look away, or change colour. The peace was upon her still. She smiled a little, and as the moment passed, and the dark closed in again upon David’s mind, she saw a spark of rather savage humour come into his eyes.

“Then come Eternity——”

“No, that’s enough, Mary, I’m absolutely hoarse,” remarked Edward, all in the same breath, and with very much the same expression.

Mary got up, and began to shut the piano. The light shone on her white, uncovered neck.

Through fire and frost and snowI see you go,I see your feet that bleed,My heart bleeds too.I, who would give my very soul for you,What can I do?I cannot help your need.

Through fire and frost and snow

I see you go,

I see your feet that bleed,

My heart bleeds too.

I, who would give my very soul for you,

What can I do?

I cannot help your need.

That first evening was one of many others, all on very much the same pattern. David Blake would come in, after tea, or after dinner, sit for an hour in almost total silence, and then go away again. Every time that he came, Elizabeth’s heart sank a little lower. This change, this obscuring of the man she loved, was an unreality, but how some unrealities have power to hurt us.

December brought extra work to the Market Harford doctors. There was an epidemic of measles amongst the children, combined with one of influenza amongst their elders. David Blake stood the extra strain but ill. He was slipping steadily down the hill. His day’s work followed only too often upon a broken or sleepless night, and to get through what had to be done, or to secure some measure of sleep, he had recourse more and more frequently to stimulant. If no patient of his ever saw him the worse for drink, he was none the less constantly under its influence. If it did not intoxicate him, he came to rely upon its stimulus, and to distrust his unaided strength. He could no longer count upon his nerve, and the fear of all that nerve failure may involve haunted him continually and drove him down.

“Look here, Blake, you want a change. Why don’t you go away?” said Tom Skeffington. It was a late January evening, and he had dropped in for a smoke and a chat. “The press of work is over now, and I could very well manage the lot for a fortnight or three weeks. Will you go?”

“No, I won’t,” said David shortly.

Young Skeffington paused. It was not much after six in the evening, and David’s face was flushed, his hand unsteady.

“Look here, Blake,” he said, and then stopped, because David was staring at him out of eyes that had suddenly grown suspicious.

“Well?” said David, still staring.

“Well, I should go away if I were you—go to Switzerland, do some winter sports. Get a thorough change. Come back yourself again.”

There was ever so slight an emphasis on the last few words, and David flashed into sudden anger.

“Mind your own business, and be damned to you, Skeffington,” he cried.

Tom Skeffington shrugged his shoulders.

“Oh, certainly,” he said, and made haste to be gone.

Blake in this mood was quite impracticable. He had no mind for a scene.

David sat on, with a tumbler at his elbow. So they wanted him out of the way. That was the third person who had told him he needed a change—the third in one week. Edward was one, and old Dr. Bull, and now Skeffington. Yes, of course, Skeffington would like him out of the way, so as to get all the practice into his own hands. Edward too. Was it this morning, or yesterday morning, that Edward had asked him when he was going to take a holiday? Now he came to think of it, it was yesterday morning. And he supposed that Edward wanted him out of the way too. Perhaps he went too often to Edward’s house. David began to get angry. Edward was an ungrateful hound. “Damned ungrateful,” said David’s muddled brain. The idea of going to see Mary began to present itself to him. If Edward did not like it, Edward could lump it. He had been told to come whenever he liked. Very well, he liked now. Why shouldn’t he?

He got up and went out into the cold. Then, when he was half-way up the High Street he remembered that Edward had gone away for a couple of days. It occurred to him as a very agreeable circumstance. Mary would be alone, and they would have a pleasant, friendly time together. Mary would sit in the rosy light and play to him, not to Edward, and sing in that small sweet voice of hers—not to Edward, but to him.

It was a cold, crisp night, and the frosty air heightened the effect of the stimulant which he had taken. He had left his own house flushed, irritable, and warm, but he arrived at the Mottisfonts’ as unmistakably drunk as a man may be who is still upon his legs.

He brushed past Markham in the hall before she had time to do more than notice that his manner was rather odd, and she called after him that Mrs. Mottisfont was in the drawing-room.

David went up the stairs walking quite steadily, but his brain, under the influence of one idea, appeared to work in a manner entirely divorced from any volition of his.

Mary was sitting before the fire, in the rosy glow of his imagining. She wore a dim purple gown, with a border of soft dark fur. A book lay upon her lap, but she was not reading. Her head, with its dark curls, rested against the rose-patterned chintz of the chair. Her skin was as white as a white rose leaf. Her lips as softly red as real red roses. A little amethyst heart hung low upon her bosom and caught the light. There was a bunch of violets at her waist. The room was sweet with them.

Mary looked up half startled as David Blake came in. He shut the door behind him, with a push, and she was startled outright when she saw his face. He looked at her with glazed eyes, and smiled a meaningless and foolish smile.

“Edward is out,” said Mary, “he is away.” And then she wished that she had said anything else. She looked at the bell, and wondered where Elizabeth was. Elizabeth had said something about going out—one of her sick people.

“Yes—out,” said David, still smiling. “That’s why I’ve come. He’s out—Edward’s out—gone away. You’ll play to me—not to Edward—to-night. You’ll sit in this nice pink light and—play to me, won’t you—Mary dear?” The words slipped into one another, tripped, jostled, and came with a run.

David advanced across the room, moving with caution, and putting each foot down slowly and carefully. His irritability had vanished. He felt instead a pleasant sense of warmth and satisfaction. He let himself sink into a chair and gazed at Mary.

“Le’s sit down—and have nice long talk,” he said in an odd, thick voice; “we haven’t had—nice long talk—for months. Le’s talk now.”

Mary began to tremble. Except in the streets, she had never seen a man drunk before, and even in the streets, passing by on the other side of the road, under safe protection, and with head averted, she had felt sick and terrified. What she felt now she hardly knew. She looked at the bell. She would have to pass quite close to David before she could reach it. Elizabeth—she might ring and ask if Elizabeth had come in. Yes, she might do that. She made a step forward, but as she reached to touch the bell, David leaned sideways, with a sudden heavy jerk, and caught her by the wrist.

“What’s that for?” he asked.

Suspicion roused in him again, and he frowned as he spoke. His face was very red, and his eyes looked black. Mary had cried out, when he caught her wrist. Now, as he continued to hold it, she stared at him in helpless silence. Then quite suddenly she burst into hysterical tears.

“Let me go—oh, let me go! Go away, you’re not fit to be here! You’re drunk. Let me go at once! How dare you?”

David continued to hold her wrist, not of any set purpose, but stupidly. He seemed to have forgotten to let it go. The heat and pressure of his hand, his slow vacant stare, terrified Mary out of all self-control. She tried to pull her hand away, and as David’s clasp tightened, and she felt her own helplessness, she screamed aloud, and almost as she did so the door opened sharply and Elizabeth Chantrey came into the room. She wore a long green coat, and dark furs, and her colour was bright and clear with exercise. For one startled second she stood just inside the room, with her hand upon the door. Then, as she made a step forward, David relaxed his grasp, and Mary, wrenching her hand away, ran sobbing to meet her sister.

“Oh, Liz! Oh, Liz!” she cried.

Elizabeth was cold to the very heart. David’s face—the heavy, animal look upon it—and Mary’s frightened pallor, the terror in her eyes. What had happened?

She caught Mary by the arm.

“What is it?”

“He held me—he wouldn’t let me go. He caught my wrist when I was going to ring the bell, and held it. Make him go away, Liz.”

Elizabeth drew a long breath of relief. She scarcely knew what she had feared, but she felt suddenly as if an intolerable weight had been lifted from her mind. The removal of this weight set her free to think and act.

“Molly, hush! Do you hear me, hush! Pull yourself together! Do you know I heard you scream half-way up the stairs? Do you want the servants to hear too?”

She spoke in low, rapid tones, and Mary caught her breath like a child.

“But he’s tipsy, Liz. Oh, Liz, make him go away,” she whispered.

David had got upon his feet. He was looking at the two women with a puzzled frown.

“What’s the matter?” he said slowly, and Mary turned on him with a sudden spurt of temper.

“I wonder you’re not ashamed,” she said in rather a trembling voice. “I do wonder you’re not—and will you please go away at once, or do you want the servants to come in, and every one to know how disgracefully you have behaved?”

“Molly, hush!” said Elizabeth again.

Her own colour died away, leaving her very pale. Her eyes were fixed on David with a look between pity and appeal. She left Mary and went to him.

“David,” she said, putting her hand on his arm, “won’t you go home now? It’s getting late. It’s nearly dinner time, and I’m afraid we can’t ask you to stay to-night.”

Something in her manner sobered David a little. Mary had screamed—why? What had he said to her—or done? She was angry. Why? Why did Elizabeth look at him like that? His mind was very much confused. Amid the confusion an idea presented itself to him. They thought that he was drunk. Well, he would show them, he would show them that he was not drunk. He stood for a moment endeavouring to bring the confusion of his brain into something like order. Then without a word he walked past Mary, and out of the room, walking quite steadily because a sober man walks steadily and he had to show them that he was sober.

Mary stood by the door listening. “Liz,” she whispered, “he hasn’t gone down-stairs.” Her terror returned. “Oh, what is he doing? He has gone down the passage to Edward’s room. Oh, do you think he’s safe? Liz, ring the bell—do ring the bell.”

Elizabeth shook her head. She came forward and put her hand on Mary’s shoulder.

“No, Molly, it’s all right,” she said. She, too, listened, but Mary broke in on the silence with half a sob.

“You don’t know how he frightened me. You don’t know how dreadful he was—like a great stupid animal. Oh, I don’t know how he dared to come to me like that. And my wrist aches still, it does, indeed. Oh! Liz, he’s coming back.”

They heard his steps coming along the passage, heavy, deliberate steps. Mary moved quickly away from the door, but Elizabeth stood still, and David Blake touched her dress as he came back into the room and shut the door behind him. His hair was wet from a liberal application of cold water. His face was less flushed and his eyes had lost the vacant look. He was obviously making a very great effort, and as obviously Mary had no intention of responding to it. She stood and looked at him, and ceased to be afraid. This was not the stranger who had frightened her. This was David Blake again, the man whom she could play upon, and control. The fright in her eyes gave place to a dancing spark of anger.

“I thought I asked you to go away,” she said, and David winced at the coldness of her voice.

“Will you please go?”

“Mary——”

“If you want to apologise you can do so later—when you arefit,” said Mary, her brows arched over very scornful eyes.

David was still making a great effort at self-control. He had turned quite white, and his eyes had rather a dazed look.

“Mary, don’t,” he said, and there was so much pain in his voice that Elizabeth made a half step towards him, and then stopped, because it was not any comfort of hers that he desired.

Mary’s temper was up, and she was not to be checked. She meant to have her say, and if it hurt David, why, so much the better. He had given her a most dreadful fright, and he deserved to be hurt. It would be very good for him. Anger reinforced by a high moral motive is indeed a potent weapon. Mary wielded it unmercifully.

“Don’t—don’t,” she said. “Oh, of course not. You behave disgracefully—you take advantage of Edward’s being away—you come here drunk—and I’m not to say a word——”

Her eyes sparkled, and her head was high. She gave a little angry laugh, and turned towards the bell.

“Will you go, please, or must I ring for Markham?”

At her movement, and the sound of her laughter, David’s self-control gave way, suddenly and completely. The blood rushed violently to his head. He took a long step towards her, and she stopped where she was in sheer terror.

“You laugh,” he said, in a low tone of concentrated passion—“you laugh——”

Then his voice leaped into fury. “I’ve sold my soul for you, and you laugh. I’m in hell for you, and you laugh. I’m drunk, and you laugh. My God, for that at least you shall never laugh at me again. By God, you shan’t——”

He stood over her for a moment, looking down on her with terrible eyes. Then he turned and went stumbling to the door, and so out, and, in the dead silence that followed, they heard the heavy front door swing to behind him.

Mary was clinging to a chair.

“Oh, Liz,” she whispered faintly, but Elizabeth turned and went out of the room without a single word.

That which the frost can freeze,That which is burned of the fire,Cast it down, it is nothing worthIn the ways of the Heart’s Desire.

That which the frost can freeze,

That which is burned of the fire,

Cast it down, it is nothing worth

In the ways of the Heart’s Desire.

Foot or hand that offends,Eye that shrinks from the goal,Cast them forth, they are nothing worth,And fare with the naked soul.

Foot or hand that offends,

Eye that shrinks from the goal,

Cast them forth, they are nothing worth,

And fare with the naked soul.

Mary did not tell Edward about the scene with David Blake.

“You know, Liz, he behaved shamefully, but I don’t want there to be a quarrel with Edward, and it would be sure to make a quarrel. And then people would talk, and there’s no knowing what they would say. I think it would be perfectly dreadful to be talked about. I’m sure I can’t think how Katie Ellerton can stand it. Really, every one is talking about her.”

In her heart of hearts Mary was a little flattered at David’s last outburst. She would not for the world have admitted that this was the case, but it certainly contributed to her resolution not to tell Edward.

“I suppose some people would never forgive him,” she said to Elizabeth, “but I don’t think that’s right, do you? I don’t think it’s at all Christian. I don’t think one ought to be hard. He might do something desperate. I saw him go into Katie Ellerton’s only this morning. I think I’ll write him a little note, not referring to anything of course, and ask him if he won’t come in to supper on Sundays. Then he’ll see that I mean to forgive him, and there won’t be any more fuss.”

Sunday appeared to be quite a suitable day upon which to resume the rôle of guardian angel. Mary felt a pleasant glow of virtue as she wrote her little note and sent it off to David.

David Blake did not accept either the invitation or the olive branch. His anger against Mary was still stronger than his craving for her presence. He wrote a polite excuse and sat all that evening with his eyes fixed upon a book, which he made no pretence of reading. He had more devils than one to contend with just now. David had a strong will, and he was putting the whole strength of it into fighting the other craving, the craving for drink. In his sudden heat of passion he had taken an oath that he meant to keep. He had been drunk, and Mary had laughed at him. Neither Mary nor any one else should have that cause for mocking laughter again, and he sat nightly with a decanter at his elbow.

“And,” as Mrs. Havergill remarked, “never touching a mortal drop,” because if he was to down the devil at all he meant to down him in a set battle, and not to spend his days in ignominious flight.

Mrs. Havergill prognosticated woe to Sarah, with a mournful zest.

“Them sudden changes isn’t ’olesome, and I don’t hold with them, Sarah, my girl. One young man I knew, Maudsley ’is name was, he got the ’orrors, and died a-raving. And all through being cut off his drink too sudden. He broke ’is leg, and ’is mother, she said, ‘Now I’ll break ’im of the drink.’ A very strict Methody woman, were Jane Ann Maudsley. ‘Now I’ll break ’im,’ says she; and there she sits and watches ’im, and the pore feller ’ollering for whisky, just fair ’ollering. ‘Gemme a drop, Mother,’ says he. ‘Not I,’ says she. ‘It’s ’ell fire, William,’ says she. ‘I’m all on fire now, Mother,’ says he. ‘Better burn now than in ’ell, William,’ says Jane Ann; and then the ’orrors took him, and he died. A fine, proper young man as ever stepped, and very sweet on me before I took up with Havergill,” concluded Mrs. Havergill meditatively, whilst Sarah shivered, and wished, as she afterwards confessed to a friend, “that Mrs. Havergill would be more cheerful like—just once in a way, for a change, as it were.”

“For she do fair give a girl the ’ump sometimes,” concluded Sarah, after what was for her quite a long speech.

Mrs. Havergill was a very buxom and comely person of unimpeachable respectability, but her fund of doleful reminiscence had depressed more than Sarah. David had been known to complain of it between jest and earnest. On one such occasion, at a tea-party to which Mary Chantrey had inveigled him, Miss Dobell ventured a mild protest.

“But she is such a treasure. Oh, yes. Your dear mother always found her so.”

David winced a little. His mother had not been dead very long then. He regarded Miss Dobell with gravity.

“I have always wondered,” he said, “whether it was an early apprenticeship to a ghoul which has imparted such a mortuary turn to Mrs. Havergill’s conversation, or whether it is due to the fact of her having a few drops of Harvey’s Sauce in her veins.”

“Harvey’s Sauce?” inquired the bewildered Miss Dobell.

David explained in his best professional manner.

“I said Harvey’s Sauce because it is an old and cherished belief of mind that the same talented gentleman invented the sauce and composed the well-known ‘Meditations among the Tombs.’ The only point upon which I feel some uncertainty is this: Did he compose the Meditations because the sauce had disagreed with him, or did he invent the sauce as a sort of cheerful antidote to the Meditations? Now which do you suppose, Miss Dobell?”

Miss Dobell became very much fluttered.

“Oh, I’m afraid—” she began. “I really had no idea that Harvey’s Sauce was an unwholesome condiment. Yes, indeed, I fear that I cannot be of any great assistance, or in fact of any assistance at all. No, oh, no. I fear, Dr. Blake, that you must ask some one else who is better informed than myself. Oh, yes.”

Afterwards she confided to Mary Chantrey that she had never heard of the work in question. “Have you, my dear?”

“No, never,” said Mary, who was not greatly attracted by the title. Girls of two-and-twenty with a disposition to meditate among the tombs are mercifully rare.

“But,” pursued little Miss Dobell with a virtuous lift of the chin, “the title has a religious sound—yes, quite a religious sound. I hope, oh, yes, indeed, I hope that Dr. Blake has no dreadful sceptical opinions. They are so very shocking,” and Mary said, “Yes, they are, and I hope not, too.” Even in those days she was a little inclined to play at being David’s guardian angel.

Those days were two years old now. Sometimes it seemed to David that they belonged to another life.

Meanwhile he had his devil to fight. In the days that followed he fought the devil, and beat him, but without either pride or pleasure in the victory, for, deprived of stimulant, he fell again into the black pit of depression. Insomnia stood by his pillow and made the nights longer and more dreadful than the longest, gloomiest day.

Mary met him in the High Street one day, and was really shocked at his looks. She reproached herself for neglecting him, smiled upon him sweetly, and said:

“Oh, David, do come and see us. Edward will be so pleased. He got a parcel of butterflies from Java last week, and he would so much like you to see them. He was saying so only this morning.”

David made a suitable response. His anger was gone. Mary was Mary. If she were unkind, she was still Mary. If she were trivial, foolish, cruel, what did it matter? Her voice made his blood leap, her eyes were like wine, her hand played on his pulses, and he asked nothing more than to feel that soft touch, and answer to it, with every high-strung nerve. He despised her a little, and himself a good deal, and when a man’s passion for a woman is mingled with contempt, it goes but ill with his soul.

That evening saw him again in his old place. He came and went as of old, and, as of old, his fever burned, and burning, fretted away both health and self-respect. He slept less and less, and if sleep came at all, it was so thin, so haunted by ill dreams, that waking was a positive relief. At least when he waked he was still sane, but in those dreams there lurked an impending horror that might at any moment burst the gloom, and stare him mad. It was madness that he feared in the days which linked that endless procession of long, unendurable nights. It was about this time that he began to be haunted by a strange vision, which, like the impending terror, lay just beyond the bounds of consciousness. As on the one side madness lurked, so on the other there were hints, stray gleams, as it were, from some place of peace. And the strange thing about it was, that at these moments a conviction would seize him that this place was his by right. His the deep waters of comfort, and his the wide, unbroken fields of peace, his—but lost.

Yet during all this time David went about his work, and if his patients thought him looking ill, they had no reason to complain either of inefficiency or neglect. His work was in itself a stimulant to him, a stimulant which braced his nerves and cleared his brain during the time that he was under its influence, and then resulted, like all stimulants, in a reaction of fatigue and nervous strain.

In the first days of March, Elizabeth Chantrey had a visit from old Dr. Bull. He sat and had tea with her in her little brown room, and talked about the mild spring weather and the show of buds upon the apple tree in his small square of garden. He also told her that Mrs. Codrington had three broods of chickens out, a fact of which Elizabeth had already been informed by Mrs. Codrington herself. When Dr. Bull had finished dealing with the early chickens, he asked for another cup of tea, took a good pull at it, wiped his square beard with a very brilliant pocket-handkerchief in which the prevailing colours were sky-blue and orange, and remarked abruptly:

“Why don’t you get David Blake to go away, hey?—hey?”

Elizabeth frowned a little. This was getting to close quarters.

“I?” she said, with a note of gentle surprise in her voice.

Dr. Bull was quite ready for her. “You is the second person plural—or used to be when I went to school. You, and Mary, and Edward, you’re his friends, aren’t you?—and two of you are women, so he’ll have to be polite, hey? Can’t bite your heads off the way he bit off mine, when I suggested that a holiday ’ud do him good. And he wants a holiday, hey?”

Elizabeth nodded.

“He ought to go away,” she said.

“He’ll break down if he doesn’t,” said Dr. Bull. He finished his cup of tea, and held it out. “Yes, another, please. You make him go, and he’ll come back a new man. What’s the good of being a woman if you can’t manage a man for his good?”

Elizabeth thought the matter over for an hour, and then she spoke to Edward.

“He won’t go,” said Edward, with a good deal of irritation. “I asked him some little time ago whether he wasn’t going to take a holiday. Now what is there in that to put any one’s back up? And yet, I do assure you, he looked at me as if I had insulted him. Really, Elizabeth, I can’t make out what has happened to David. He never used to be like this. And he comes here too often, a great deal too often. I shall have to tell him so, and then there’ll be a row, and I simply hate rows. But really, a man in his state, always under one’s feet—it gets on one’s nerves.”

“Edward is getting dreadfully put out,” said Mary the same evening. She had come down to Elizabeth’s room to borrow a book, and lingered for a moment or two, standing by the fire and holding one foot to the blaze. It was a night of sudden frost after the mild spring day.

“How cold it has turned,” said Mary. “Yes, I really don’t know what to do. If Edward goes on being tiresome and jealous”—she bridled a little as she spoke—“if he goes on—well, David will just have to stay away, and I’m afraid he will feel it. I am afraid it may be bad for him. You know I have always hoped that I was being of some use to David—I have always wanted to have an influence—a good influence does make such a difference, doesn’t it? I’ve never flirted with David—I really haven’t—you know that, Liz?”

“No,” said Elizabeth slowly. “You haven’t flirted with him, Molly, my dear, but I think you are in rather a difficult position for being a good influence. You see, David is in love with you, and I think it would be better for him if he didn’t see you quite so often.”

Mary’s colour rose.

“I can’t help his being—fond of me,” she said, with a slight air of offended virtue. “I am sure I don’t know what you mean by my not being good for him. If it weren’t for me he might be drinking himself to death at this very moment. You know how he was going on, and I am sure you can’t have forgotten how dreadful he was that night he came here. I let him see how shocked I was. I know you were angry with me, and I thought it very unreasonable of you, because I did it on purpose, and it stopped him. You may say what you like, Liz, but it stopped him. Mrs. Havergill told Markham—yes, I know you don’t think I ought to talk to Markham about David, but she began about it herself, and she is really interested, and thought I would like to know—well, she says David has never touched a drop since. Mrs. Havergill told her so. So you see, Liz, I haven’t always been as bad for David as you seem to think. I don’t know if you want him to go and marry Katie Ellerton, just out of pique. She’s running after him worse than ever—I really do wonder she isn’t ashamed, and if David’s friends cast him off, well, she’ll just snap him up, and then I should think you’d be sorry.”

Elizabeth leaned her chin in her hand, and was silent for a moment. Then she said: “Molly, dear, why should we try and prevent David from going to see Katie Ellerton? He is in love with you, and it is very bad for him. If he saw less of you for a time it would give him a chance of getting over it. David is very unhappy just now. No one can fail to see that. He wants what you can’t give him—rest, companionship, a home. If Katie cares for him, and can give him these things, let her give them. We have no business to stand in the way. Don’t you see that?”

Elizabeth spoke sweetly and persuasively. She kept her eyes on her sister’s face, and saw there, first, offence, and then interest—the birth of a new idea.

“Oh, well—if you don’t mind,” said Mary. “You are nearly as tiresome as Edward and Edward has been most dreadfully tiresome. I told him so. I said, ‘Edward, I really never knew you could be so tiresome,’ and it seemed to make himworse. I think, you know, that he is afraid that people will talk if David goes on coming here. Of course, that’s absurd, I told him it was absurd. I said, ‘Why, how on earth is any one to know that it isn’t Elizabeth he comes to see?’ And then, Edward became really violent. I didn’t know he could be, but he was. He simply plunged up and down the room, and said: ‘If he wants to see Elizabeth, then in Heaven’s name let him see Elizabeth. Let himmarryElizabeth.’ Oh, you mustn’t mind, Liz,” as Elizabeth’s head went up, “it was only because he was so cross, and you and David are such old friends. There’s nothing for you tomind.”

She paused, stole a quick glance at Elizabeth, then looked away, and said in a tentative voice, “Liz, why don’t you marry David?”

“Because he doesn’t want me to, Molly,” said Elizabeth. Her voice was very proud, and her head very high.

Mary half put out her hand, and drew it back again. She knew this mood of Elizabeth’s, and it was one that silenced even her ready tongue. She was the little sister again for a moment, and Elizabeth the mother, sister, and ideal—all in one.

“Liz, I’m sorry,” she said in quite a small, humble voice.

When she had gone, Elizabeth sat on by the fire. She did not move for a long time. When she did move, it was to put up a hand to her face, which was wet with many hot, slow tears. Pride dies hard, and hurts to the very last.

I have forgotten all the ways of sleep,The endless, windless silence of my dream,The milk-white poppy meadows and the stream,The dreaming water soft and still and deep—I have forgotten how that water flows,I have forgotten how the poppy grows,I have forgotten all the ways of sleep.

I have forgotten all the ways of sleep,

The endless, windless silence of my dream,

The milk-white poppy meadows and the stream,

The dreaming water soft and still and deep—

I have forgotten how that water flows,

I have forgotten how the poppy grows,

I have forgotten all the ways of sleep.

It was on an afternoon, a few days later, that David came into the hall of the Mottisfonts’ house.

“Lord save us, he do look bad,” was the thought in Markham’s mind as she let him in. Aloud she said that she thought Mrs. Mottisfont was just going out. As she spoke, Mary came down the stairs, bringing with her a sweet scent of violets.

Mary was very obviously going out. She wore a white cloth dress, with dark furs, and there was a large bunch of mauve and white violets at her breast. She looked a little vexed when she saw David.

“Oh,” she said, “I am just going out. I am so sorry, but I am afraid I must. Bazaars are tiresome things, but one must go to them, and I promised Mrs. Codrington that I would be there early. Elizabeth is in. She’ll give you some tea. Markham, will you please tell Miss Elizabeth?”

David came forward as she was speaking. There was a window above the front door, and as he came out of the shadow, and the light fell on his face, he saw Mary start a little. Her expression changed, and she said in a hesitating manner:

“Of course, Elizabeth may be busy, or she may be going out—I really don’t know. Perhaps you had better come another day, David.”

He read her clearly enough. She thought that he had been drinking, and hesitated to leave him with her sister. He had been about to say that he could not stop, but her suspicion raised a devil of obstinacy in him, and as Elizabeth came out of her room by way of the dining-room, he advanced to meet her, saying:

“Will you give me some tea, Elizabeth, or are you too busy?”

“Liz, come here,” said Mary quickly. Her colour had risen at David’s tone. She drew Elizabeth a little aside. “Liz, you’d better not,” she whispered, “he looks so queer.”

“Nonsense, Molly.”

“I wish you wouldn’t——”

“My dear Molly, are you going to begin to chaperone me?”

Mary tossed her head.

“Oh, if you don’tmind,” she said angrily, and went out, leaving Elizabeth with an odd sense of anticipation.

Elizabeth found David standing before the writing-table, and looking at himself in the little Dutch mirror which hung above it. He turned as she came in.

“Well,” he said bitterly, “has Mary renounced the Bazaar in order to stay and protect you? I’m not really as dangerous as she seems to think, though I am willing to admit that I am not exactly ornamental. Give me some tea, and I’ll not inflict myself on you for long.”

Elizabeth smiled.

“You know very well that I like having you here,” she said in her friendly voice. “Look at my flowers. Aren’t they well forward? I really think that everything is a fortnight before its time this year. No, not that chair, David. This one is much more comfortable.”

Markham was coming in with the tea as Elizabeth spoke. David sat silent. He watched the tiny flame of the spirit-lamp, the mingled flicker of firelight and daylight upon the silver, and the thin old china with its branching pattern of purple and yellow flowers. He drank as many cups of tea as Elizabeth gave him, and she talked a little in a desultory manner, until he had finished, and then sat in a silence that was not awkward, but companionable.

David made no effort to move, or speak. This was a pleasant room of Elizabeth’s. The brown panels were warm in the firelight. They made a soft darkness that had nothing gloomy about it, and the room was full of flowers. The great brown crock full of daffodils stood on the window-ledge, and on the table which filled the angle between the window and the fireplace was another, in which stood a number of the tall yellow tulips which smell like Maréchal-Niel roses. Elizabeth’s dress was brown, too. It was made of some soft stuff that made no sound when she moved. The room was very still, and very sweet, and the sweetness and the stillness were very grateful to David Blake. The thought came to him suddenly, that it was many years since he had sat like this in Elizabeth’s room, and the silence had companioned them. Years ago he had been there often enough, and they had talked, read, argued, or been still, just as the spirit of the moment dictated. They had been good comrades, then, in the old days—the happy days of youth.

He looked across at Elizabeth and said suddenly:

“You are a very restful woman, Elizabeth.”

She smiled at him without moving, and answered:

“I am glad if I rest you, David—I think you need rest.”

“You sit so still. No one else sits so still.”

Elizabeth laughed softly.

“That sounds as if I were a very inert sort of person,” she said.

David frowned a little.

“No, it’s not that. It is strength—force—stability. Only strong things keep still like that.”

This was so like the old David, that it took Elizabeth back ten years at a leap. She was silent for a moment, gathering her courage. Then she said:

“David, you do need rest, and a change. Why don’t you go away?”

She had thought he would be angry, but he was not angry. Instead, he answered her as the David of ten years ago might have done, with a misquotation.

“What is the good of a change? It’s a case of—I myself am my own Heaven and Hell”; and his voice was the voice of a very weary man.

Elizabeth’s eyes dwelt on him with a deep considering look.

“Yes, that’s true,” she said. “One has to find oneself. But it is easier to find oneself in clear country than in a fog. This place is not good for you, David. When I said you wanted a change, I didn’t mean just for a time—I meant altogether. Why don’t you go right away—leave it all behind you, and start again?”

He looked at her as if he might be angry, if he were not too tired.

“Because I won’t run away,” he said, with his voice back on the harsh note which had become habitual.

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