The Fire Within (2 page)

“Poor old Edward, it 's not much in his line,” said David with half
a laugh.

“Eh? What about Pellico's dog then?”

“Pellico's dog, sir?”

“What an innocent young man you are, David—never heard of Pellico's
dog before, did you? Pellico's dog that got on Edward's nerves same as
I get on his nerves, and you never knew that Edward dosed the poor
brute with some of his bug-curing stuff, eh? To be sure you did n't
think I knew, nor did Edward. I don't tell everything I know, and how I
know it is my affair and none of yours, Master David Blake, but you see
Edward 's not so unhandy with a little job in the poisoning line.”

David's face darkened. The incident of Pellico's dog had occurred
when he and Edward were schoolboys of fifteen. He remembered it very
well, but he did not very much care being reminded of it. Every day of
his life he passed the narrow turning, down which, in defiance of
parental prohibitions, he and Edward used to race each other to school.
Old Pellico's dirty, evil-smelling shop still jutted out of the farther
end, and the grimy door-step upon which his dog used to lie in wait for
their ankles was still as grimy as ever. Sometimes it was a trouser-leg
that suffered. Sometimes an ankle was nipped, and if Pellico's dog
occasionally got a kick in return, it was not more than his due. David
remembered his own surprise when it first dawned upon him that Edward
minded—yes, actually minded these encounters. He recalled the occasion
when Edward, his face of a suspicious pallor, had denied angrily that
he was afraid of any beastly dog, and then his sudden wincing
confession that he did mind—that he minded horribly—not because he
was afraid of being bitten—Edward explained this point very
carefully—but because the dog made such a beastly row, and because
Edward dreamed of him at night, only in his dreams, Pellico's dog was
rather larger than Pellico himself, and the lane was a cul-de-sac with
a wall at the end of it, against which he crouched in his dream whilst
the dog came nearer and nearer.

“What rot,” was David's comment, “but if I felt like that, I jolly
well know I 'd knock the brute on the head.”

“Would you?” said Edward, and that was all that had passed. Only,
when a week later Pellico's dog was poisoned, David was filled with
righteous indignation. He stormed at Edward.

“You did it—you know you did it. You did it with some of that
beastly bug-killing stuff that you keep knocking about.”

Edward was pale, but there was an odd gleam of triumph in the eyes
that met David's.

“Well, you said you 'd do for him—you said it yourself. So then I
just did it.”

David stared at him with all a schoolboy's crude condemnation of
something that was “not the game.”

“I 'd have knocked him on the head under old Pellico's nose—but
poison—poison's beastly.”

He did not reason about it. It was just instinct. You knocked on the
head a brute that annoyed you, but you did n't use poison. And Edward
had used poison. That was the beginning of David's great intimacy with
Elizabeth Chantrey. He did not quarrel with Edward, but they drifted
out of an inseparable friendship into a relationship of the cool,
go-as-you-please order. The thing rankled a little after all these
years. David sat there frowning and remembering. Old Mr. Mottisfont
laughed.

“Aha, you see I know most things,” he said, “Edward 'll poison me
yet. You see, he 's in a fix. He hankers after this house same as I
always hankered after it. It 's about the only taste we have in common.
He 's got his own house on a seven years' lease, and here 's Nick
Anderson going to be married, and willing to take it off his hands. And
what 's Edward to do? It 's a terrible anxiety for him not knowing if I
'm going to die or not. If he does n't accept Nick's offer and I die,
he 'll have two houses on his hands. If he accepts it and I don't die,
he 'll not have a house at all. It 's a sad dilemma for Edward. That 's
why he would enjoy seeing about my funeral so much. He 'd do it all
very handsomely. Edward likes things handsome. And Mary, who does n't
care a jot for me, will wear a black dress that don't suit her, and
feel like a Christian martyr. And Elizabeth won't wear black at all,
though she cares a good many jots, and though she 'd look a deal better
in it than Mary—eh, David?”

But David Blake was exclaiming at the lateness of the hour, and
saying good-night, all in a breath.

Grey, grey mist

  Over the old grey town,

A mist of years, a mist of tears,

  Where ghosts go up and down;

And the ghosts they whisper thus, and thus,

Of the days when the world went with us.

A MINUTE or two later Elizabeth Chantrey came into the room. She was
a very tall woman, with a beautiful figure. All her movements were
strong, sure, and graceful. She carried a lighted lamp in her left
hand. Mr. Mottisfont abominated electric light and refused obstinately
to have it in the house. When Elizabeth had closed the door and set
down the lamp, she crossed over to the window and fastened a heavy oak
shutter across it. Then she sat down by the bed.

“Well,” she said in her pleasant voice.

“H'm,” said old Mr. Mottisfont, “well or ill's all a matter of
opinion, same as religion, or the cut of a dress.” He shut his mouth
with a snap, and lay staring at the ceiling. Presently his eyes
wandered back to Elizabeth. She was sitting quite still, with her hands
folded. Very few busy women ever sit still at all, but Elizabeth
Chantrey, who was a very busy woman, was also a woman of a most
reposeful presence. She could be unoccupied without appearing idle,
just as she could be silent without appearing either stupid or
constrained. Old Edward Mottisfont looked at her for about five
minutes. Then he said suddenly:

“What 'll you do when I 'm dead, Elizabeth?”

Elizabeth made no protest, as her sister Mary would have done. She
had not been Edward Mottisfont's ward since she was fourteen for
nothing. She understood him very well, and she was perhaps the one
creature whom he really loved. She leaned her chin in her hand and
said:

“I don't know, Mr. Mottisfont.”

Mr. Mottisfont never took his eyes off her face.

“Edward 'll want to move in here as soon as possible. What 'll you
do?”

“I don't know,” repeated Elizabeth, frowning a little.

“Well, if you don't know, perhaps you 'll listen to reason, and do
as I ask you.”

“If I can,” said Elizabeth Chantrey.

He nodded.

“Stay here a year,” he said, “a year is n't much to ask—eh?”

“Here?”

“Yes—in this house. I 've spoken about it to Edward. Odd creature,
Edward, but, I believe, truthful. Said he was quite agreeable. Even
went so far as to say he was fond of you, and that Mary would be
pleased. Said you 'd too much tact to obtrude yourself, and that of
course you 'd keep your own rooms. No, I don't suppose you 'll find it
particularly pleasant, but I believe you 'll find it worth while. Give
it a year.”

Elizabeth started ever so slightly. One may endure for years, and
make no sign, to wince at last in one unguarded moment. So he knew—had
always known. Again Elizabeth made no protest.

“A year,” she said in a low voice, “a year—I 've given fifteen
years. Is n't fifteen years enough?”

Something fierce came into old Edward Mottisfont's eyes. His whole
face hardened. “He 's a damn fool,” he said.

Elizabeth laughed.

“Of course he must be,” and she laughed again.

The old man nodded.

“Grit,” he said to himself, “grit. That 's the way—laugh,
Elizabeth, laugh—and let him go hang for a damn fool. He ain't worth
it—no man living's worth it. But give him a year all the same.”

If old Mr. Mottisfont had not been irritated with David Blake for
being as he put it, a damn fool, he would not have made the references
he had done to his nephew Edward's wife. They touched David upon the
raw, and old Mr. Mottisfont was very well aware of it. As David went
out of the room and closed the door, a strange mood came upon him. All
the many memories of this house, familiar to him from early boyhood,
all the many memories of this town of his birth and upbringing, rose
about him. It was a strange mood, but yet not a sad one, though just
beyond it lay the black shadow which is the curse of the Celt. David
Blake came of an old Irish stock, although he had never seen Ireland.
He had the vein of poetry—the vein of sadness, which are born at a
birth with Irish humour and Irish wit.

As he went down the staircase, the famous staircase with its carved
newels, the light of a moving lamp came up from below, and at the turn
of the stair he stood aside to let Elizabeth Chantrey pass. She wore a
grey dress, and the lamp-light shone upon her hair and made it look
like very pale gold. It was thick hair—very fine and thick, and she
wore it in a great plait like a crown. In the daytime it was not golden
at all, but just the colour of the pale thick honey with which wax is
mingled. Long ago a Chantrey had married a wife from Norway with
Elizabeth's hair and Elizabeth's dark grey eyes.

“Good-night, David,” said Elizabeth Chantrey. She would have passed
on, but to her surprise David made no movement. He was looking at her.

“This is where I first saw you, Elizabeth,” he said in a remembering
voice. “You had on a grey dress, like that one, but Mary was in blue,
because Mr. Mottisfont would n't let her wear mourning. Do you remember
how shocked poor Miss Agatha was?—'and their mother only dead a
month!' I can hear her now.” Mary—yes, he remembered little Mary
Chantrey in her blue dress. He could see her now—nine years old—in a
blue dress—with dark curling hair and round brown eyes, holding
tightly to Elizabeth's skirts, and much too shy to speak to the big
strange boy who was Edward's friend.

Elizabeth watched him. She knew very well that he was not thinking
of her, although he had remembered the grey dress. And yet—for five
years—it was she and not Mary to whom David came with every mood.
During those five years, the years between fourteen and nineteen, it
was always Elizabeth and David, David and Elizabeth. Then when David
was twenty, and in his first year at hospital, Dr. Blake died suddenly,
and for four years David came no more to Market Harford. Mrs. Blake
went to live with a sister in the north, and David's vacations were
spent with his mother. For a time he wrote often—then less
often—finally only at Christmas. And the years passed, Elizabeth's
girlhood passed, Mary grew up. And when David Blake had been nearly
three years qualified, and young Dr. Ellerton was drowned out boating,
David bought from Mrs. Ellerton a share in the practice that had been
his father's, and brought his mother back to Market Harford. Mrs. Blake
lived only for a year, but before she died she had seen David fall
headlong in love, not with her dear Elizabeth, but with Mary—pretty
little Mary—who was turning the heads of all the young men, sending
Jimmy Larkin with a temporarily broken heart to India, Jack Webster
with a much more seriously injured one to the West Coast of Africa, and
enjoying herself mightily the while. Elizabeth had memories as well as
David. They came at least as near sadness as his. She thought she had
remembered quite enough for one evening, and she set her foot on the
stair above the landing.

“Poor Miss Agatha!” she said. “What a worry we were to her, and how
she disliked our coming here. I can remember her grumbling to Mr.
Mottisfont, and saying, 'Children make such a work in the house,' and
Mr. Mottisfont—”

Elizabeth laughed.

“Mr. Mottisfont said, 'Don't be such a damn old maid, Agatha. For
the Lord's sake, what 's the good of a woman that can't mind
children?'“

David laughed too. He remembered Miss Agatha's fussy indignation.

“Good-night, David,” said Elizabeth, and she passed on up the wide,
shallow stair.

The light went with her. From below there came only a glimmer, for
the lamp in the hall was still turned low. David went slowly on. As he
was about to open the front door, Edward Mottisfont came out of the
dining-room on the left.

“One minute, David,” he said, and took him by the arm. “Look here—I
think I ought to know. Is my uncle likely to live on indefinitely? Did
you mean what you said upstairs?”

It was the second time that David Blake had been asked if he meant
those words. He answered a trifle irritably.

“Why should I say what I don't mean? He may live three years or he
may die to-morrow. Why on earth should I say it if I did n't think it?”

“Oh, I don't know,” said Edward. “You might have been saying it just
to cheer the old man up.”

There was a certain serious simplicity about Edward Mottisfont. It
was this quality in him which his uncle stigmatized as priggishness.
Your true prig is always self-conscious, but Edward was not at all
self-conscious. From his own point of view he saw things quite clearly.
It was other people's points of view which had a confusing effect upon
him. David laughed.

“It did n't exactly cheer him up,” he said. “He is n't as set on
living as all that comes to.”

Edward appeared to be rather struck by this statement.

“Is n't he?” he said.

He opened the door as he spoke, but suddenly closed it again. His
tone altered. It became eager and boyish.

“David, I say—you know Jimmy Larkin was transferred to Assam
some months ago? Well, I wrote and asked him to remember me if he came
across anything like specimens. Of course his forest work gives him
simply priceless opportunities. He wrote back and said he would see
what he could do, and last mail he sent me—”

“What—a package of live scorpions?”

“No—not specimens—oh, if he could only have sent the specimen—but
it was the next best thing—a drawing—you remember how awfully well
Jimmy drew—a coloured drawing of a perfectly new slug.”

Edward's tone became absolutely ecstatic. He began to rumple up his
fair hair, as he always did when he was excited. “I can't find it in
any of the books,” he said, “and they 'd never even heard of it at the
Natural History Museum. Five yellow bands on a black ground—what do
you think of that?

“I should say it was Jimmy, larking,” murmured David, getting the
door open and departing hastily, but Edward was a great deal too busy
wondering whether the slug ought in justice to be called after Jimmy,
or whether he might name it after himself, to notice this ribaldry.

David Blake came out into a clear September night. The sky was
cloudless and the air was still. Presently there would be a moon. David
walked down the brightly-lighted High Street, with its familiar shops.
Here and there were a few new names, but for the most part he had known
them all from childhood. Half-way down the hill he passed the tall grey
house which had once had his father's plate upon the door—the house
where David was born. Old Mr. Bull lived there now, his father's
partner once, retired these eighteen months in favour of his nephew,
Tom Skeffington. All Market Harford wondered what Dr. Bull could
possibly want with a house so much too large for him. He used only half
the rooms, and the house had a sadly neglected air, but there were
days, and this was one of them, when David, passing, could have sworn
that the house had not changed hands at all and that the blind of his
mother's room was lifted a little as he went by. She used to wave to
him from that window as he came from school. She wore the diamond ring
which David kept locked up in his dispatch-box. Sometimes it caught the
light and flashed. David could have sworn that he saw it flash
to-night. But the house was all dark and silent. The old days were
gone. David walked on.

At the bottom of the High Street, just before you come to the
bridge, he turned up to the right, where a paved path with four stone
posts across the entrance came into the High Street at right angles.
The path ran along above the river, with a low stone wall to the left,
and a row of grey stone houses to the right. Between the wall and the
river there were trees, which made a pleasant shade in the summer. Now
they were losing their leaves. David opened the door of the seventh
house with his latch-key, and went in. That night he dreamed his dream.
It was a long time now since he had dreamed it, but it was an old
dream—one that recurred from time to time—one that had come to him at
intervals for as long as he could remember. And it was always the
same—through all the years it never varied—it was always just the
same.

He dreamed that he was standing upon the seashore. It was a wide,
low shore, with a long, long stretch of sand that shone like silver
under a silver moon. It shone because it was wet, still quite wet from
the touch of the tide. The tide was very low. David stood on the shore,
and saw the moon go down into the sea. As it went down it changed
slowly. It became golden, and the sand turned golden too. A wind began
to blow in from the sea. A wind from the west—a wind that was strong,
and yet very gentle. At the edge of the sea there stood a woman, with
long, floating hair and a long floating dress. She stood between David
and the golden moon, and the wind blew out her dress and her long
floating hair. But David never saw her face. Always he longed to see
her face, but he never saw it. He stood upon the shore and could not
move to go to her. When he was a boy he used to walk in his sleep in
the nights when he had this dream. Once he was awakened by the touch of
cold stones under his bare feet. And there he stood, just as he had
come from bed, on the wet door-step, with the front door open behind
him. After that he locked his door. Now he walked in his sleep no
longer, and it was more than a year since he had dreamed the dream at
all, but to-night it came to him again.