The Fire Within (8 page)

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.

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
role 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 is n'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' sayd 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 skeptical
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 processing 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, are n'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 does n'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 was n'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, does n't it? I 've never flirted with David—I
really have n't—you know that, Liz?”

“No,” said Elizabeth slowly. “You have n'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 did n'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 were n'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 have n'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 is n'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.