There was a pause. Elizabeth heard her own heart beat. The room was getting darker. A log fell in the fire.
Then David laughed bitterly.
“That sounded very fine, but it’s just a flam. The truth is, not that I won’t run away, but that I can’t. I’ve not got the energy. I’m three parts broke, and it’s all I can do to keep going at all. I couldn’t start fresh, because I’ve got nothing to start with. If I could sleep for a week it would give me a chance, but I can’t sleep. Skeffington has taken me in hand now, and out of three drugs he has given me, two made me feel as if I were going mad, and the third had no effect at all. I’m full of bromide now. It makes me sleepy, but it doesn’t make me sleep. You don’t know what it’s like. My brain is drunk with sleep—marshy with it, water-logged—but there’s always one point of consciousness left high and dry—tortured.”
“Can’t you sleep at all?”
“I suppose I do, or I should be mad in real earnest. Do I look mad, Elizabeth?”
She looked at him. His face was very white, except for a flushed patch high up on either cheek. His eyes were bloodshot and strained, but there was no madness in them.
“Is that what you are afraid of?”
“Yes, my God, yes,” said David Blake, speaking only just above his breath.
“I don’t think you need be afraid. I don’t, really, David. You look very tired. You look as if you wanted sleep more than anything else in the world.”
She spoke very gently. “Will you let me send you to sleep? I think I can.”
“Does one ask a man who is dying of thirst if one may give him a drink?”
“Then I may?”
“If you can—but—” He broke off as Markham came in to clear away the tea. Elizabeth began to talk of trivialities. For a minute or two Markham came and went, but when she had taken away the tray, and the door was shut, there was silence again.
Elizabeth had turned her chair a little. She sat looking into the fire. She was not making pictures among the embers, as she sometimes did. Her eyes had a brooding look. Her honey-coloured hair looked like pale gold against the brown panelling behind her. She sat very still. David found it pleasant to watch her, pleasant to be here.
His whole head was stiff and numb with lack of sleep. Every muscle seemed stretched and every nerve taut. There was a dull, continuous pain at the back of his head. Thought seemed muffled, his faculties clogged. Two thirds of his brain was submerged, but in the remaining third consciousness flared like a flickering will-o’-the-wisp above a marsh.
David lay back in his chair. This was a peaceful place, a peaceful room. He had not meant to stay so long, but he had no desire to move. Slowly, slowly the tide of sleep mounted in him. Not, as often lately, with a sudden flooding wave which retreated again as suddenly, and left his brain reeling, but steadily, quietly, like the still rising of some peaceful, moon-drawn sea. He seemed to see that lifting tide. It was as deep and still as those still waters of which another David wrote. It rose and rose—the will-o’-the-wisp of consciousness ceased its tormented flickering, and he slept.
Elizabeth never turned her head. She heard his breathing deepen, until it was very slow and steady. There was no other sound except when an ember dropped. The light failed. Soon there was no light but the glow of the fire.
I thought I saw the Grey Wolf’s eyesLook through the bars of night;They drank the silver of the moon,And the stars’ pale chrysolite.From star by star they took their toll,And through the drained and darkened nightThey sought my darkened soul.
I thought I saw the Grey Wolf’s eyes
Look through the bars of night;
They drank the silver of the moon,
And the stars’ pale chrysolite.
From star by star they took their toll,
And through the drained and darkened night
They sought my darkened soul.
David slept for a couple of hours, and that night he slept more than he had done for weeks. Next night, however, there returned the old strain, the old yearning for oblivion, the old inability to compass it. In the week that followed David passed through a number of strange, mental phases. After that first sound sleep had relieved the tension of his brain, he told himself that he owed it to the delayed action of the bromide Skeffington had given him. But as the strain returned, though reason held him to this opinion still, out of the deep undercurrents of consciousness there rose before him a vision of Elizabeth, with the gift of sleep in her hand. He passed into a state of conflict, and out of this conflict there grew up a pride that would owe nothing to a woman, a resistance that called itself reason and independence. And then, as the desire for sleep dominated everything, conflict merged into a desire that Elizabeth should heal him, should make him sleep. And all through the week he did not think of Mary at all. The craving for her had been swallowed up by that other craving. Mary had raised this fever, but it had now reached a point at which he had become unconscious of her. It was Elizabeth who filled his thoughts. Not Elizabeth the woman, but Elizabeth the bearer of that gift of sleep. But this, too, was a phase, and had its reaction.
Towards the end of the week he finished his afternoon round by going to see an old Irishwoman, who had been in the hospital for an operation, and had since been dismissed as incurable. She was a plucky old soul, and a cheerful, but to-day David found her in a downcast mood.
“Sure, it’s not the pain I’d be minding if I could get my sleep,” she said. “Couldn’t ye be after putting the least taste of something in my medicine, then, Doctor, dear?”
David had his finger on her pulse. He patted her hand kindly as he laid it down.
“Come, now, Mrs. Halloran,” he said, “when I gave you that last bottle of medicine you said it made you sleep beautifully.”
“Just for a bit it did,” said Judy Halloran. “Sure, it was only for a bit, and now it’s the devil’s own nights I’m having. Couldn’t you be making it the least taste stronger, then?”
She looked at David rather piteously.
“Well, we must see,” he said. “You finish that bottle, and then I’ll see what I can do for you.”
Mrs. Halloran closed her eyes for a minute. Then she opened them rather suddenly, shot a quick look at David, and said with an eager note in her voice:
“They do be saying that Miss Chantrey can make anny one sleep. There was a friend of mine was after telling me about it. It was her daughter that had the sleep gone from her, and after Miss Chantrey came to see her, it was the fine nights she was having, and it’s the strong woman she is now, entirely.”
David got up rather abruptly.
“Come, now, Mrs. Halloran,” he said, “you know as well as I do that that’s all nonsense. But I daresay a visit from Miss Chantrey would cheer you up quite a lot. Would you like to see her? Shall I ask her to come in one day?”
“She’d be kindly welcome,” said Judy Halloran.
David went home with the old conflict raging again. Skeffington had been urging him to see a specialist. He had always refused. But now, quite suddenly, he wired for an appointment.
He came down from town on a dark, rainy afternoon, feeling that he had built up a barrier between himself and superstition.
An hour later he was at the Mottisfonts’ door, asking Markham if Mary was at home. Mary had gone out to tea, said Markham, and then volunteered, “Miss Elizabeth is in, sir.”
David told himself that he had not intended to ask for Elizabeth. Why should he ask for Elizabeth? He could, however, hardly explain to Markham that it was not Elizabeth he wished to see, so he came in, and was somehow very glad to come.
Elizabeth had been reading aloud to herself. As he stood at the door he could hear the rise and fall of her voice. It was an old trick of hers. Ten years ago he had often stood on the threshold and listened, until rebuked by Elizabeth for eavesdropping.
He came in, and she said just in the old voice:
“You were listening, David.”
But it was the David of to-day who responded wearily, “I beg your pardon, Elizabeth. Did you mind?”
“No, of course not. Sit down, David. What have you been doing with yourself?”
Instead of sitting down he walked to the window and looked out. The sky was one even grey, and, though the rain had ceased, heavy drops were falling from the roof and denting the earth in Elizabeth’s window boxes, which were full of daffodils in bud. After a moment he turned and said impatiently, “How dark this room is!”
Elizabeth divined in him a reaction, a fear of what she had done, and might do. She knew very well why he had stayed away. Without replying she put out her hand and touched a switch on the wall. A tall lamp with a yellow shade sprang into view, and the whole room became filled with a soft, warm light.
David left the window, but still he did not sit. For a while he walked up and down restlessly, but at length came to a standstill between Elizabeth and the fire. He was so close to her that she had only to put out her hand and it would have touched his. He stood looking, now at the miniatures on the wall, now at the fire which burned with a steady red glow. He was half turned from Elizabeth, but she could see his face. It was strained and thin. The flesh had fallen away, leaving the great bones prominent.
It was Elizabeth who broke the silence, and she said what she had not meant to say.
“David, are you better? Are you sleeping?”
“No,” he said shortly.
“And you won’t let me help?”
“I didn’t say so.”
“Did you think I didn’t know?” Elizabeth’s voice was very sad.
They had fallen suddenly upon an intimate note. It was a note that he had never touched with Mary. That they should be talking like this filled him with a dazed surprise. He as well as she was taking it for granted that she had given him sleep, and could give him sleep again.
He gave himself a sudden shake.
“I’m going away,” he said in a harder voice.
There was a pause.
“I’m glad,” said Elizabeth, and then there was silence again.
This time it was David who spoke, and he spoke in the hot, insistent tones of a man who argues a losing case.
“One can’t go on not sleeping. That is what I said to old Wyatt Byng to-day.”
“Sir Wyatt Byng?” said Elizabeth quickly.
“Yes—I saw him. Skeffington would have me see him, but what’s the use? He swears I shall sleep, if I take the stuff he’s given me—the latest French fad—but I don’t sleep. I seem to have lost the way—and one can’t go on.”
He paused, and then said frowning:
“It’s so odd——”
“Odd?”
“Yes—so odd—sleep. Such an odd thing. It was so easy once. Now it’s so difficult that it can’t be done. Why? No one knows. No one knows what sleep is——”
His voice trailed away. He was strung like a wire that is ready to snap, and on the borders of consciousness, just out of sight, something waited; he turned his head sharply, as if the thing he dreaded might be there—behind him—in the shadow.
Instead, he saw Elizabeth in a golden light like a halo. It swam before his tired eyes, a glow with a rainbow edge. Out of the heart of it she looked at him with serious, tender eyes.
Beyond, in the gloom, there lurked such a horror as made him catch his breath, and here at his side—in this room, peace, safety, and sleep—sleep, the one thing in heaven or earth desired and desirable.
A sort of shudder passed over him, and he repeated his own last words in a low, altered voice.
“Onecan’tgo on. Something must give way. Sometimes I feel as if it might give now—at any moment. Then there’s madness—when one can’t sleep. Am I going mad, Elizabeth?”
Elizabeth caught his hand and held it. He was so near that the impulse carried her away. Her clasp was strong, warm, and vital.
“No, my dear, no,” she said.
Then with a catch in her voice:
“Oh, David—let me help you.”
He shook his head in a slow, considering manner.
“No—there would be only one way—and that’s not fair.”
“What isn’t fair, David?”
“You—to marry—me,” he said, still in that slow, considering way. “You know, Elizabeth, I can’t think very well. My head is all to pieces. But it’s not fair, and I can’t take your help—” He broke off frowning.
“David, it has nothing to do with that sort of thing,” said Elizabeth very seriously. “It’s only what I would do for any one.”
She was shaken to the depths, but she kept her voice low and steady.
“Yes—it has—one can’t take like that——”
“Because I’m a woman? Just because I’m a woman?”
Elizabeth looked up quickly and spoke quickly, because she knew that if she stopped to think she would not speak at all.
“And if we were married?”
“Then it would be different,” said David Blake.
His voice was not like his usual voice. It sounded like the voice of a man who was puzzled, who was trying to recall something of which he has seen glimpses. Was it something from the past, or something from the future?
Elizabeth got up and stood as he was standing—one hand on the oak shelf above the fireplace the other clenched at her side.
“David, are you asking me to marry you?” she said.
He raised his head, half startled. The silence that followed her question seemed to fill the room and shake it. His will shook too, drawn this way and that by forces that were above and beyond them both.
Elizabeth did not look at him. She did not know what he would answer, and all their lives hung on that answer of his. She held her breath, and it seemed to her that she was holding her will too. She was suddenly, overpoweringly conscious of her own strength, her own vital force and power. If she let this force go out to David now—in his weakness! It was the greatest temptation that she had ever known, and, after one shuddering moment, she turned from it in horror. She kept her will, her strength, her vital powers in a strong grip. No influence of hers must touch or sway him now. Her heart stopped beating. Her very life seemed to be suspended. Then she heard David say:
“Would you marry me, Elizabeth?” His tone was a wondering one. It broke the tension. She turned her head a little and said:
“Yes—if you needed me.”
“Need—need—I think I should sleep—and if I don’t sleep I shall go mad. But, perhaps I shall go mad anyhow. You must not marry me if I am going mad.”
“You won’t go mad.”
“You think not? There is something that shakes all the time. It never stops. It goes on always. I think that is why I don’t sleep. But when I am with you it seems to stop. I don’t know why, but it does seem to stop, just whilst I am with you.”
“It will stop altogether when you get your sleep back.”
“Oh, yes.”
The half-dreamy note went out of his voice, and the note of intimate self-revealing. Elizabeth noticed the change at once.
“When do you go away, and where do you go?” she asked.
“Switzerland, I think. I could get away by the 3rd of April.”
David was trying to think, but his head was very tired. He must go away. He must have a change. They all said that. But it was no use for him to go away if he did not sleep. He must have sleep. But if Elizabeth were with him he would sleep. Elizabeth must come with him. If they were married at once she could come with him, and then he would sleep. But it was so soon. He spoke his thought aloud.
“You wouldn’t marry me first, I suppose? You wouldn’t come with me?”
“Why not?” said Elizabeth quietly. The quietness hid the greatest effort of her life. “If you want me, I will come. I only want to help you, and if I can help you best that way——”
David let himself sink into a chair, and began to talk a little of plans, wearily and with an effort. He had to force his brain to make it work at all. All these details, these plans, these conventions seemed to him irrelevant and burdensome.
He got up to go as the clock struck seven.
Elizabeth put out her hand to him as she had always done.
“And you will let me help you?”
“No, not yet—not till afterwards,” he said.
“It makes no difference, David, you know. It is just what I would do for any one who wanted it——”
He shook his head. There was a reaction upon him, a withdrawal.
“Not yet—not till afterwards. I’ll give old Byng’s stuff a chance,” he said obstinately, and then went out with just a bare good-night.
I thought I saw the Grey Wolf’s eyes.The sun was gone away,Most unendurably gone down,With all delights of day.I cried aloud for light, and allThe light was dead and done away,And no one answered to my call.
I thought I saw the Grey Wolf’s eyes.
The sun was gone away,
Most unendurably gone down,
With all delights of day.
I cried aloud for light, and all
The light was dead and done away,
And no one answered to my call.
Edward was, perhaps, the person best pleased at the news of Elizabeth’s engagement. He had been, as Mary phrased it, “very much put out.” Put out, in fact, to the point of wondering whether he could possibly nerve himself to tell David that he came too often to the house. He had an affection for David, and he was under an obligation to him, but there were limits—during the last fortnight he had very frequently explained to Mary that there were limits. Whether he would ever have got as far as explaining this to David remains amongst the lesser mysteries of life. Mary did not take the explanation in what Edward considered at all a proper spirit. She bridled, looked very pretty, talked about good influences, and was much offended when Edward lost his temper. He lost it to the extent of consigning good influences to a place with which they are not usually connected, though the way to it is said to be paved with good intentions. Mary had a temper, too. It took her out of the room with a bang of the door, but she subsequently cried herself sick because Edward had sworn at her.
There was a reconciliation, but Edward was not as penitent as Mary thought he should have been. David became a sore point with both of them, and Edward, at least, was unfeignedly pleased at what he considered a happy solution of the difficulty. He was fond of Elizabeth, but it would certainly be more agreeable to have the whole house at his own disposal. He had always thought that Elizabeth’s little brown room would be the very place for his collections. He fell to estimating the probable cost of lining the whole wall-space with cabinets.
Mary was not quite as pleased as Edward.
“You know, Liz,” she said, “I am verygladthat David should marry. I think he wants a home. But I don’t think you ought to marry him until he’sbetter. He looks dreadful. And a fortnight’s engagement—I can’tthinkwhat people will say—one ought to consider that.”
“Oh, Molly, you are too young for the part of Mrs. Grundy,” said Elizabeth, laughing.
Mary coloured and said:
“It’s all very well, Liz, but people will talk.”
“Well, Molly, and if they do? What is there for them to say? It is all very simple, really. No one can help seeing how ill David is, and I think every one would understand my wanting to be with him. People are really quite human and understanding if they are taken the right way.”
“But a fortnight,” said Mary, frowning. “Why Liz, you will not be able to get your things!” And she was shocked beyond words when Elizabeth betrayed a complete indifference as to whether she had any new things at all.
The wedding was fixed for the 3rd of April, and the days passed. David made the necessary arrangements with a growing sense of detachment. The matter was out of his hands.
For a week the new drug gave him sleep, a sleep full of brilliant dreams, strange flashes of light, and bursts of unbearable colour. He woke from it with a blinding headache and a sense of strain beyond that induced by insomnia. Towards the end of the week he stopped taking the drug. The headache had become unendurable. This state was worse than the last.
On the last day of March he came to Elizabeth and told her that their marriage must be deferred.
“Ronnie Ellerton is very ill,” he said; “I can’t go away.”
“But David, youmust——”
He shook his head. The obstinacy of illness was upon him.
“I can’t—and I won’t,” he declared. Then, as if realising that he owed her some explanation, he added:
“He’s so spoilt. Why are women such fools? He’s never been made to do anything he didn’t like. He won’t take food or medicine, and I’m the only person who has the least authority over him. And she’s half crazy with anxiety, poor soul. I have promised not to go until he’s round the corner. It’s only a matter of a day or two, so we must just put it off.”
Elizabeth put her hand on his arm.
“David, we need not put off the marriage,” she said in her most ordinary tones. “You see, if we are married, we could start off as soon as the child was better.”
She had it in her mind that unless David would let her help him soon, he would be past helping.
He looked at her indifferently. “You will stay here?”
“Not unless you wish,” she answered.
“I? Oh! it is for you to say.”
There was no interest in his tone. If he thought of anything it was of Ronnie Ellerton. A complete apathy had descended upon him. Nothing was real, nothing mattered. Health—sanity—rest—these were only names. They meant nothing. Only when he turned to his work, his brain still moved with the precision of a machine, regularly, correctly.
He did not tell her either then or ever, that Katie Ellerton had broken down and spoken bitter words about his marriage.
“I’ve nothing but Ronnie—nothing but Ronnie—and you will go away with her and he will die. I know he will die if you go. Can’t she spare you just for two days—or three—to save Ronnie’s life? Promise me you won’t go till he is safe—promise—promise.”
And David had promised, taking in what she had said about the child, but only half grasping the import of her frantic appeal. Neither he nor she were real people to him just now. Only Ronnie was real—Ronnie, who was ill, and his patient.
Elizabeth went through the next two days with a heavy heart. She had to meet Mary’s questions, her objections, her disapprobations, and it was all just a little more than she could bear.
On the night before the wedding, Mary left Edward upstairs and came to sit beside Elizabeth’s fire. Elizabeth would rather have been alone, and yet she was pleased that Mary cared to come. If only she would let all vexed questions be—it seemed as if she would, for her mood was a silent one. She sat for a long time without speaking, then, with an impulsive movement, she slid out of her chair and knelt at Elizabeth’s side.
“Oh, Liz, I’ve been cross. I know I have. I know you’ve thought me cross. But it’s because I’ve been unhappy—Liz, I’m nothappyabout you——”
Elizabeth put her hand on Mary’s shoulder for a moment.
“Don’t be unhappy, Molly,” she said, in rather an unsteady voice.
“But I am, Liz, I am—I can’t help it—I have talked, and worried you, and have been cross, but all the time I’ve been most dreadfully unhappy. Oh, Liz, don’t do it—don’t!”
“Molly, dear——”
“No, I know it’s no use—you won’t listen—” and Mary drew away and dabbed her eyes with a fragmentary apology for a pocket-handkerchief.
“Molly, please——”
Mary nodded.
“Yes, Liz, I know. I won’t—I didn’t mean to——”
There was a little silence. Then with a sudden choking sob, Mary turned and said:
“I can’tbearit. Oh, Liz, you ought to be loved so much. You ought to marry some one who loves you—really——. And I don’t think David does. Liz, does he love you—does he?”
The sound of her own words frightened her a little, but Elizabeth answered very gently and sadly:
“No, Molly, but he needs me.”
Mary was silenced. Here was something beyond her. She put her arms round Elizabeth and held her very tightly for a moment. Then she released her with a sob, and ran crying from the room.
Then far, oh, very far away,The Wind began to rise,The Sun, the Moon, the Stars were gone,I saw the Grey Wolf’s eyes.The Wind rose up and rising, shone,I saw it shine, I saw it rise,And suddenly the dark was gone.
Then far, oh, very far away,
The Wind began to rise,
The Sun, the Moon, the Stars were gone,
I saw the Grey Wolf’s eyes.
The Wind rose up and rising, shone,
I saw it shine, I saw it rise,
And suddenly the dark was gone.
David Blake was married to Elizabeth Chantrey at half-past two of an April day. Edward and Mary Mottisfont were the only witnesses, with the exception of the verger, who considered himself a most important person on these occasions, when he invariably appeared to be more priestly than the rector and more indispensable than the bridegroom.
It requires no practice to be a bridegroom but years, if not generations, go to the making of the perfect verger. This verger was the son and the grandson of vergers. He was the perfect verger. He stood during the service and disapproved of David’s grey pallor, his shaking hand, and his unsteady voice. His black gown imparted a funerary air to the proceedings.
“Drinking, that’s what he’d been,” he told his wife, and his wife said, “Oh, William,” as one who makes response to an officiating priest.
But he wronged David, who was not drunk—only starved for lack of sleep, and strung to the breaking point. His voice stumbled over the words in which he took Elizabeth to be his wedded wife and trailed away to a whisper at the conclusion.
A gusty wind beat against the long grey windows, and between the gusts the heavy rain thudded on the roof above.
Mary shivered in the vestry as she kissed Elizabeth and wished her joy. Then she turned to David and kissed him too. He was her brother now, and there would be no more nonsense. Edward frowned, David stiffened, and Elizabeth, standing near him, was aware that all his muscles had become rigid.
Elizabeth and David went out by the vestry door, and stood a moment on the step. The rain had ceased quite suddenly in the April fashion. The sky was very black overhead and the air was full of a wet wind, but far down to the right the water meadows lay bathed in a clear sweet sunshine, and the west was as blue as a turquoise. Between the blue of the sky and the bright emerald of the grass, the horizon showed faintly golden, and a broken patch of rainbow light glowed against the nearest dark cloud.
David and Elizabeth walked to their home in silence. Mrs. Havergill awaited them with an air of mournful importance. She had prepared coffee and a cake with much almond icing and the word “Welcome” inscribed upon it in silver comfits. Elizabeth ate a piece of cake from a sense of duty, and David drank cup after cup of black coffee, and then sat in a sort of stupor of fatigue until roused by the sound of the telephone bell.
After a minute or two he came back into the room.
“Ronnie is worse,” he said shortly. There was a change in him. He had pulled himself together. His voice was stronger.
“He’s worse. I must go at once. Don’t wait dinner, and don’t sit up. I may have to stay all night.”
When he had gone, Elizabeth went upstairs to unpack. Mrs. Havergill followed her.
“You ’avn’t been in this room since Mrs. Blake was took.”
“It’s a very nice room,” said Elizabeth.
“All this furniture,” said Mrs. Havergill, “come out of the ’ouse in the ’Igh Street. That old mahogany press, Mrs. Blake set a lot of store by, and the bed, too. Ah! pore thing, I suppose she little thought as ’ow she’d come to die in it.”
The bed was a fine old four-poster, with a carved foot-rail. Elizabeth went past it to the windows, of which there were three, set casement fashion, at the end of the room, with a wide low window-seat running beneath them.
She got rid of Mrs. Havergill without hurting her feelings. Then she knelt on the seat, and looked out. She saw the river beneath her, and a line of trees in the first green mist of their new leaves. The river was dark and bright in patches, and the wind sang above it. Elizabeth’s heart was glad of this place. It was a thing she loved—to see green trees and bright water, and to hear the wind go by above the stream.
When she had unpacked and put everything away, she stood for a moment, and then opened the door that led through into David’s room. It was getting dark in here, for the room faced the east. Elizabeth went to the window and looked out. The sky was full of clouds, and the promise of rain.
It was very late before David came home. At ten, Elizabeth sent the servants to bed. There was cold supper laid in the dining-room, and soup in a covered pan by the side of the fire. Elizabeth sat by the lamp and sewed. Every now and then she lifted her head and listened. Then she sewed again.
At twelve o’clock David put his key into the latch, and the door opened with a little click and then shut again.
David was a long time coming in. He came in slowly, and sat down upon the first chair he touched.
“He’ll do,” he said in an exhausted voice.
“I’m so glad,” said Elizabeth.
She knelt by the fire, and poured some of the soup into a cup. Then she held it out to him, and he drank, taking long draughts. After that she put food before him, and he ate in a dazed, mechanical fashion.
When he had finished, he sat staring at Elizabeth, with his elbows on the table, and his head between his hands.
“Ronnie is asleep—he’ll do.” And then with sudden passion: “My God, if I could sleep!”
“You will, David,” said Elizabeth. She put her hand on his arm, and he turned his head a little, still staring at her.
“No, I don’t sleep,” he said. “Everything else sleeps—Die Vöglein ruhen im Walde. How does it go?”
“Warte nur, balde ruhest du auch,” said Elizabeth in her tranquil voice.
“No,” said David, “I can’t get in. It was so easy once—but now I can’t get in. The silent city of sleep has long, smooth walls—I can’t find the gate; I grope along the wall all night, hour after hour. A hundred times I think I have found the door. Sometimes there is a flashing sword that bars the way, sometimes the wall closes—closes as I pass the threshold. There’s no way in. The walls are smooth—all smooth—you can’t get in.”
He spoke, not wildly, but in a low, muttering way. Elizabeth touched his hand. It was very hot.
“Come, David,” she said, “it is late.” She drew him to his feet, and he walked uncertainly, and leaned on her shoulder, as they went up the stair. Once in his room, he sank again upon a chair. He let her help him, but when she knelt, and would have unlaced his boots, he roused himself.
“No, you are not to,” he said with a sudden anger in his voice, and he took them off, and then let her help him again.
When he was in bed, Elizabeth stood by him for a moment.
“Are you comfortable?” she asked.
“If I could sleep,” he said, only just above his breath. “If I could.”
“Oh, but you will,” said Elizabeth. “Don’t be afraid, David. It’s all right.”
She set the door into her room ajar and then sat down by the window, and looked out at the night. The blind was up. The night was dark and clear. There were stars, many little glittering points. It was very still. Elizabeth fixed her eyes upon the sky, but after a minute or two she did not see it at all. Her mind was full of David and his need. This tortured, sleepless state of his had no reality. How could it compass and oppress the immortal image of God? Her thought rose into peace. Elizabeth opened her mind to the Divine light. Her will rested. She was conscious only of that radiant peace. It enwrapped her, it enwrapped David. In it they lived and moved and had their being. In it they were real and vital creatures. To lapse from consciousness of it, was to fall upon a formless, baseless dream, wherein were the shadows of evil. These shadows had no reality. Brought to the light, they faded, leaving only that peace—that radiance. Elizabeth’s eyes were opened. She saw the Wings of Peace.
And David slept.
Love must to school to learn his alphabet,His wings are shorn, his eyes are dim and wet.He pores on books that once he knew by heart—Poor, foolish Love, to wander and forget.
Love must to school to learn his alphabet,
His wings are shorn, his eyes are dim and wet.
He pores on books that once he knew by heart—
Poor, foolish Love, to wander and forget.
Elizabeth sat quite motionless for half an hour. Then she stirred, bent her head for a moment, whilst she listened to David’s regular breathing, and then rose to her feet. She passed through the open door into her own room, and undressed in the dark. Then she lay down and slept.
Three times during the night she woke and listened. But David still slept. When she woke up for the third time, the room was full of the greyness of the dawn. She got up and closed the door between the two rooms.
Then she lay waking. It had been a strange wedding night.
The day dawned cloudy, but broke at noon into a cloudless warmth that was more like June than April.
“Take me down the river,” said Elizabeth, and they rowed down for half a mile, and turned the boat into a water-lane where budding willows swept down on either side, and brushed the stream.
David was very well content to lie in the sun. The strain was gone from him, leaving behind it a weariness beyond words. Every limb, every muscle, every nerve was relaxed. There was a great peace upon him. The air tasted sweet. The light was a pleasant thing. The sky was blue, and so was Elizabeth’s dress, and Elizabeth was a very reposeful person. She did not fidget and she did not chatter. When she spoke it was of pleasant things.
David recalled a day, ten years ago, when he had sat with her in this very place. He could see himself, full of enthusiasm, full of youth. He could remember how he had talked, and how Elizabeth had listened. She was just the same now. It was he who had changed. Ten years ago seemed to him a very pleasant time, a very pleasant memory. Pictures rose before him—stray words—stray recollections running into a long, soft blur.
They came home in the dusk.
“Are you going to see Ronnie again?” said Elizabeth, as they landed.
“Yes; he couldn’t be doing better, but I’ll look in, and to-morrow Skeffington will go with me so as to get him broken in to the change. We ought to get away all right now.”
David waked next day to find the sun shining in at his uncurtained window. From where he lay he could see the young blue of the sky, and all the room seemed full of the sun’s gold. David lay in a lazy contentment watching the motes that danced in a long shining beam. There was a new stir of life in his veins. He stretched out his limbs and was glad of their strength. The sweetness and the glory and the promise of the spring slid into his blood and fired it.
“Mary,” he said, still between sleeping and waking—and with the name, memory woke. Suddenly his brain was very clear. He looked straight ahead and saw the door that led into the other room—the room that had been his mother’s. Elizabeth was in that room. He had married Elizabeth—she was his wife. He lay quite still and stared at the door. Elizabeth Chantrey was Elizabeth Blake. She was his wife—and Mary——
A sudden spasm of laughter caught David by the throat. Mary was what she had promised to be—his sister; Mary was his sister. The spasm of laughter passed, and with it the stir in David’s blood. He was quite cool now. He lay staring at that closed door, and faced the situation.
It was a damnable situation, he decided. He felt as a man might feel who wakes from the delirium of weeks, to find that in his madness he has done some intolerable, some irrevocable thing. A man who does not sleep is a man who is not wholly sane. David looked back and followed the events of the last few months with a critical detachment.
He saw the strain growing and growing until, in the end, on the brink of the abyss, he had snatched at the relief which Elizabeth offered, as a man who dies of thirst will snatch at water. Well—he had taken Elizabeth’s draught of water, his thirst was quenched, he was his own man again. No, never his own man any more. Never free any more—Elizabeth’s debtor—Elizabeth’s husband.
David set his face like a flint—he would pay his debt.
He went out as soon as he had breakfasted and walked for a couple of hours. It was a little after noon when he came into the drawing-room where Elizabeth was.
The floor was covered with a great many yards of green stuff which she was cutting into curtain lengths. As David came in, she looked up and smiled.
“Oh,please,” she said, “if you wouldn’t mind, I shall cut them so much better if you hold one end.”
David knelt down and held the stuff, whilst Elizabeth cut it. She came quite close to him at the end, smiled again, and took away the two pieces which he still clutched helplessly.
“That’s beautiful,” she said, and sat down and began to sew.
David watched her in silence. If she found his gaze embarrassing, she showed no sign.
“We can start to-morrow,” he said at last. He gave a list of trains, stopping-places, and hotels, paused at the end of it, walked to the window, and then, turning, said with an effort:
“This has been a bad beginning for you, my dear—you’ve been very good to me. You deserve a better bargain, but I’ll do my best.”