CHAPTER XXIVTHE LOST NAME

“Liz, aren’t you glad? Aren’t you pleased? Doesn’t it make you happy? Oh, Liz, if I thought you were one of thosedreadfulwomen 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 waspleased. 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 youreallyhaven’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’timaginewhat 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.

“Peopledon’tlike 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 particularlywantedto 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 meon 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’sright. 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’tdeserveit. 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 mylove.”

“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.

You are as old as Egypt, and as young as yesterday,Oh, turn again and look again, for when you look I knowThe dusk of death is but a dream, that dreaming, dies awayAnd leaves you with the lips I loved, three thousand years ago.

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.

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.

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

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