Fire Within

by Patricia Wentworth

  Her eyes sparkled, and her head was high. She gave a little angry laugh, and turned towards the bell.

  “Will you go, please, or must I ring for Markham?”

  At her movement, and the sound of her laughter, David’s self-control gave way, suddenly and completely. The blood rushed violently to his head. He took a long step towards her, and she stopped where she was in sheer terror.

  “You laugh,” he said, in a low tone of concentrated passion—“you laugh—”

  Then his voice leaped into fury. “I’ve sold my soul for you, and you laugh. I’m in hell for you, and you laugh. I’m drunk, and you laugh. My God, for that at least you shall never laugh at me again. By God, you shan’t—”

  He stood over her for a moment, looking down on her with terrible eyes. Then he turned and went stumbling to the door, and so out, and, in the dead silence that followed, they heard the heavy front door swing to behind him.

  Mary was clinging to a chair.

  “Oh, Liz,” she whispered faintly, but Elizabeth turned and went out of the room without a single word.

  CHAPTER X

  EDWARD IS PUT OUT

  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 isn’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, aren’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 doesn’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 wasn’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, doesn’t it? I’ve never flirted with David—I really haven’t—you know that, Liz?”

  “No,” said Elizabeth slowly. “You haven’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 didn’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 weren’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 haven’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 isn’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.

  “Oh, well—if you don’t mind,” said Mary. “You are nearly as tiresome as Edward and Edward has been most dreadfully tiresome. I told him so. I said, ‘Edward, I really never knew you could be so tiresome,’ and it seemed to make him worse. I think, you know, that he is afraid that people will talk if David goes on coming here. Of course, that’s absurd, I told him it was absurd. I said, ‘Why, how on earth is any one to know that it isn’t Elizabeth he comes to see?’ And then, Edward became really violent. I didn’t know he could be, but he was. He simply plunged up and down the room, and said: ‘If he wants to see Elizabeth, then in Heaven’s name let him see Elizabeth. Let him marry Elizabeth.’ Oh, you mustn’t mind, Liz,” as Elizabeth’s head went up, “it was only because he was so cross, and you and David are such old friends. There’s nothing for you to mind.”

  She paused, stole a quick glance at Elizabeth, then looked away, and said in a tentative voice, “Liz, why don’t you marry David?”

  “Because he doesn’t want me to, Molly,” said Elizabeth. Her voice was very proud, and her head very high.

  Mary half put out her hand, and drew it back again. She knew this mood of Elizabeth’s, and it was one that silenced even her ready tongue. She was the little sister again for a moment, and Elizabeth the mother, sister, and ideal—all in one.

  “Liz, I’m sorry,” she said in quite a
small, humble voice.

  When she had gone, Elizabeth sat on by the fire. She did not move for a long time. When she did move, it was to put up a hand to her face, which was wet with many hot, slow tears. Pride dies hard, and hurts to the very last.

  CHAPTER XI

  FORGOTTEN WAYS

  I have forgotten all the ways of sleep,

  The endless, windless silence of my dream,

  The milk-white poppy meadows and the stream,

  The dreaming water soft and still and deep—

  I have forgotten how that water flows,

  I have forgotten how the poppy grows,

  I have forgotten all the ways of sleep.

  IT was on an afternoon, a few days later, that David came into the hall of the Mottisfonts’ house.

  “Lord save us, he do look bad,” was the thought in Markham’s mind as she let him in. Aloud she said that she thought Mrs. Mottisfont was just going out. As she spoke, Mary came down the stairs, bringing with her a sweet scent of violets.

  Mary was very obviously going out. She wore a white cloth dress, with dark furs, and there was a large bunch of mauve and white violets at her breast. She looked a little vexed when she saw David.

  “Oh,” she said, “I am just going out. I am so sorry, but I am afraid I must. Bazaars are tiresome things, but one must go to them, and I promised Mrs. Codrington that I would be there early. Elizabeth is in. She’ll give you some tea. Markham, will you please tell Miss Elizabeth?

  David came forward as she was speaking. There was a window above the front door, and as he came out of the shadow, and the light fell on his face, he saw Mary start a little. Her expression changed, and she said in a hesitating manner:

  “Of course, Elizabeth may be busy, or she may be going out—I really don’t know. Perhaps you had better come another day, David.”

  He read her clearly enough. She thought that he had been drinking, and hesitated to leave him with her sister. He had been about to say that he could not stop, but her suspicion raised a devil of obstinacy in him, and as Elizabeth came out of her room by way of the dining-room, he advanced to meet her, saying: