The Fire Within (4 page)

She had suffered when David left Market Harford. She had suffered
when he ceased to write. She had suffered when he returned only to fall
headlong in love with Mary. And what she had suffered then had been a
personal pang, a thing to be struggled with, dominated, and overcome.
Now she must look on whilst David suffered too. Must watch whilst his
nerves tautened, his strength failed, his self-control gave way. And
she could not shut her eyes or look away. She could not raise her
thought above this level of pain. The black cloud overshadowed them and
hid the light of heaven.

“Because I ask you, David—David, because I ask you.”

Mary's voice trembled and fell to a quivering whisper.

Suddenly David pushed her away. He turned and made a stumbling step
towards the fireplace. His hands gripped the narrow mantelshelf. His
eyes stared at the wall. And from the wall Mary's eyes looked back at
him from the miniature of Mary's mother. There was a long minute's
silence. Then David swung round. His face was flushed, his eyes looked
black.

“If I do it can you hold your tongues?” he said in a rough, harsh
voice.

Mary drew a deep soft breath of relief. She had won. Her hands
dropped to her side, her whole figure relaxed, her face became soft and
young again.

“O David, God bless you!” she cried.

David frowned. His brows made a dark line across his face. Every
feature was heavy and forbidding.

“Can you hold your tongues?” he repeated. “Do you understand—do you
fully understand that if a word of this is ever to get out it 's just
sheer ruin to the lot of us? Do you grasp that?”

Elizabeth Chantrey got up. She crossed the room, and stood at
David's side, nearly as tall as he.

“Don't do it, David,” she said, with a sudden passion in her voice.

Mary turned on her in a flash.

“Liz,” she cried; but David stood between.

“It 's none of your business, Elizabeth. You keep out of it.” The
tone was kinder than the words.

Elizabeth was silent. She drew away, and did not speak again.

“I 'll do it on one condition,” said David Blake. “You 'd better go
and tell Edward at once. I don't want to see him. I don't suppose he 's
been talking to any one—it 's not exactly likely—but if he has the
matter 's out of my hands. I 'll not touch it. If he has n't and you
'll all hold your tongues, I 'll do it.”

He turned to the door and Mary cried: “Won't you write it now? Won't
you sign it before you go?”

David laughed grimly.

“Do you think I go about with my pockets full of death
certificates?” he said. Then he was gone, and the door shut to behind
him.

Elizabeth moved, and spoke.

“I will tell Markham that you are ready to go home,” she said.

As long as idle dogs will bark, and idle asses bray,

As long as hens will cackle over every egg they lay,

  So long will folks be chattering,

  And idle tongues be clattering,

For the less there is to talk about, the more there is to say.

THE obituary notices of old Mr. Mottisfont which appeared in due
course in the two local papers were of a glowingly appreciative nature,
and at least as accurate as such notices usually are. David could not
help thinking how much the old gentleman would have relished the fine
phrases and the flowing periods. Sixty years of hard work were
compressed into two and a half columns of palpitating journalese. David
preferred the old man's own version, which had fewer adjectives and a
great deal more backbone.

“My father left me nothing but debts—and William. The ironworks
were in a bad way, and we were on the edge of a bankruptcy. I was
twenty-one, and William was fifteen, and every one shook their heads. I
can see 'em now. Well, I gave some folk the rough side of my tongue,
and some the smooth. I had to have money, and no one would lend. I got
a little credit, but I could n't get the cash. Then I hunted up my
father's cousin, Edward Moberly. Rolling he was, and as close as wax.
Bored to death too, for all his money. I talked to him, and he took to
me. I talked to him for three days, and he lent me what I wanted, on my
note of hand, and I paid it all back in five years, and the interest
up-to-date right along. It took some doing but I got it done. Then the
thing got a go on it, and we climbed right up. And folks stopped
shaking their heads. I began to make my mark. I began to be a
'respected fellow-citizen.' Oh, Lord, David, if you 'd known William
you 'd respect me too! Talk about the debts—as a handicap, they were
n't worth mentioning in the same breath with William. I could talk
people into believing I was solvent, but I could n't talk 'em into
believing that William had any business capacity. And I could n't pay
off William, same as I paid off the debts.”

David's recollections plunged him suddenly into a gulf of black
depression. Such a plucky old man, and now he was dead—out of the
way—and he, David, had lent a hand to cover the matter over, and
shield the murderer. David took the black fit to bed with him at night,
and rose in the morning with the gloom upon him still. It became a
shadow which went with him in all his ways and clung about his every
thought. And with the gloom there came upon him a horrible, haunting
recurrence of his old passion for Mary. The wound made by her rejection
of him had been slowly skinning over, but in the scene which they had
shared, and the stress of the emotions raised by it, this wound had
broken out afresh, and now it was no more a deep clean cut, but a
festering thing that bid fair to poison all the springs of life. At
Mary's bidding he had violated a trust, and his own sense of honour.
There were times when he hated Mary. There were times when he craved
for her. And always his contempt for himself deepened, and with it the
gloom—the black gloom.

“The doctor gets through a sight of whisky these days,” remarked
Mrs. Havergill, David's housekeeper. “And a more abstemious gentleman,
I 'm sure I never did live with. Weeks a bottle of whisky 'ud last,
unless he 'd friends in. And now—gone like a flash, as you might say.
Only, just you mind there 's not a word of this goes out of the 'ouse,
Sarah, my girl. D' ye hear?”

Sarah, a whey-faced girl whose arms and legs were set on at
uncertain angles, only nodded. She adored David with the unreasoning
affection of a dog, and had he taken to washing in whisky instead of
merely drinking it, she would have regarded his doing so as quite a
right and proper thing.

When the local papers had finished Mr. Mottisfont's obituary notices
and had lavished all their remaining stock of adjectives upon the
funeral arrangements, they proceeded to interest themselves in the
terms of his will. For once, old Mr. Mottisfont had done very much what
was expected of him. Local charities benefited and old servants were
remembered. Elizabeth Chantrey was left twenty-five thousand pounds,
and everything else went to Edward. “To David Blake I leave my sincere
respect, he having declined to receive a legacy.”

David could almost see the old man grin as he wrote the words, could
almost hear him chuckle, “Very well, my highfalutin young man—into the
pillory with you.”

The situation held a touch of sardonic humour beyond old Mr.
Mottisfont's contriving, and the iron of it rusted into David's soul.
Market Harford discussed the terms of the will with great interest.
They began to speculate as to what Elizabeth Chantrey would do. When it
transpired that she was going to remain on in the old house and be
joined there by Edward and Mary, there was quite a little buzz of talk.

“I assure you he make it a condition—a secret condition,”
said old Mrs. Codrington in her deep booming voice. “I have it from
Mary herself. He made it a condition.”

It was quite impossible to disbelieve a statement made with so much
authority. Mrs. Codrington's voice always stood her in good stead. It
had a solidity which served to prop up any shaky fact. Miss Dobell, to
whom she was speaking, sniffed, and felt a little out of it. She had
been Agatha Mottisfont's great friend, and as such she felt that she
herself should have been the fountainhead of information. As soon as
Mrs. Codrington had departed Miss Hester Dobell put on her outdoor
things and went to call upon Mary Mossitfont.

As it was a damp afternoon, she pinned up her skirts all round, and
she was still unpinning them upon Mary's doorstep, when the door
opened.

“Miss Chantrey is with her sister? Oh, indeed! That is very nice,
very nice indeed. And Mrs. Mottisfont is seeing visitors, you say? Yes?
Then I will just walk in—just walk in.”

Miss Dobell came into the drawing-room with a little fluttered run.
Her faded blue eyes were moist, but not so moist as to prevent her
perceiving that Mary wore a black dress which did not become her, and
that Elizabeth had on an old grey coat and skirt, with dark furs, and a
close felt hat which almost hid her hair. She greeted Mary very
affectionately and Elizabeth a shade less affectionately.

“I hope you are well, Mary, my dear? Yes? That is good. These sad
times are very trying. And you, Elizabeth? I am pleased to find that
you are able to be out. I feared you were indisposed. Every one was
saying, 'Miss Chantrey must be indisposed, as she was not at the
funeral.' And I feared it was the case.”

“No, thank you, I am quite well,” said Elizabeth.

Miss Dobell seated herself, smoothing down her skirt. It was of a
very bright blue, and she wore with it a little fawn-coloured jacket
adorned with a black and white braid, which was arranged upon it in
loops and spirals. She had on also a blue tie, fastened in a bow at her
throat, and an extremely oddly-shaped hat, from one side of which
depended a somewhat battered bunch of purple grapes. Beneath this
rather bacchanalian headgear her old, mild straw-coloured face had all
the effect of an anachronism.

“I am so glad to find you both. I am so glad to have the opportunity
of explaining how it was that I did not attend the funeral. It was a
great disappointment. Everything so impressive, by all accounts. Yes.
But I could not have attended without proper mourning. No. Oh, no, it
would have been impossible. Even though I was aware that poor dear Mr.
Mottisfont entertained very singular ideas upon the subject of
mourning, I know how much they grieved poor dear Agatha. They were very
singular. I suppose, my dear, Elizabeth, that it is in deference to
poor Mr. Mottisfont's wishes that you do not wear black. I said to
every one at once—oh, at once—'depend upon it poor Mr.
Mottisfont must have expressed a wish. Otherwise Miss Chantrey
would certainly wear mourning—oh, certainly. After living so long in
the house, and being like a daughter to him, it would be only proper,
only right and proper.' That is what I said, and I am sure I was right.
It was his wish, was it not?”

“He did not like to see people in black,” said Elizabeth.

“No,” said Miss Dobell in a flustered little voice. “Very strange,
is it not? But then so many of poor Mr. Mottisfont's ideas were very
strange. I cannot help remembering how they used to grieve poor dear
Agatha. And his views—so sad—so very sad. But there, we must not
speak of them now that he is dead. No. Doubtless he knows better now.
Oh, yes, we must hope so. I do not know what made me speak of it. I
should not have done so. No, not now that he is dead! It was not right,
or charitable. But I really only intended to explain how it came about
that I was not at the funeral. It was a great deprivation—a very great
deprivation, but I was there in spirit—oh, yes, in spirit.”

The purple grapes nodded a little in sympathy with Miss Dobell's
nervous agitation. She put up a little hand, clothed in a brown woolen
glove, and steadied them.

“I often think,” she said, “that I should do well to purchase one
black garment for such occasions as these. Now I should hardly have
liked to come here to-day, dressed in colours, had I not been aware of
poor dear Mr. Mottisfont's views. It is awkward. Yes, oh, yes. But you
see, my dear Mary, in my youth, being one of a very large family, we
were so continually in mourning that I really hardly ever possessed any
garment of a coloured nature. When I was only six years old I can
remember that we were in mourning for my grandfather. In those days, my
dears, little girls, wore, well, they wore—little—hem—white
trousers, quite long, you know, reaching in fact to the ankle. Under a
black frock it had quite a garish appearance. And my dear mother, who
was very particular about all family observances, used to stitch black
crape bands upon the trouser-legs. It was quite a work. Oh, yes, I
assure you. Then after my grandfather, there was my great-uncle George,
and on the other side of the family my great-aunt Eliza. And then there
were my uncles, and two aunts, and quite a number of cousins. And,
later on, my own dear brothers and sisters. So that, as you may say, we
were never out of black at all, for our means were such that it was
necessary to wear out one garment before another could be purchased.
And I became a little weary of wearing black, my dears. So when my last
dear sister died. I went into colours. Not at once, oh, no!”—Miss
Cobell became very much shocked and agitated at the sound of her own
words. “Oh, dear, no. Not, of course, until after a full and proper
period of mourning, but when that was over I went into colours, and
have never since possessed anything black. You see, as I have no more
relations, it is unnecessary that I should be provided with mourning.”

Elizabeth Chantrey left her sister's house in rather a saddened
mood. She wondered if she too would ever be left derelict. Unmarried
women were often very lonely. Life went past them down other channels.
They missed their link with the generations to come, and as the new
life sprang up it knew them not, and they had neither part nor lot in
it. When she reached home she sat for a long while very still, forcing
her consciousness into a realisation of Life as a thing unbroken, one,
eternal. The peace of it came upon her, and the sadness passed.