AFTER THE DREAM
In Him we live, He is our Source, our Spring,
And we, His fashioning,
We have no sight except by His foreseeing,
In Him we live and move and have our being,
He spake the Word, and lo! Creation stood,
And God said, It is good.
David came no more. The dream was done. During the summer days there
rang continually in Elizabeth’s ears the words of a song—one of
Christina’s wonderful songs that sing themselves with no other music at
all.
The hope I dreamed of was a dream,
Was but a dream, and now I wake
Exceeding comfortless, and worn, and old,
For a dream’s sake.
“Exceeding comfortless.” Yes, there were hours when that was true. She
had taken her heart and broken it for Truth’s sake, and the broken thing
cried aloud of its hurt. Only by much striving could she still it and
find peace.
The glamour of the June days was gone too. July was a wet and stormy
month, and Elizabeth was thankful for the rain and the cold, at which
all the world was grumbling.
Mary came in one July day with a face that matched the weather.
“Why, Molly,” said Elizabeth, kissing her, “what’s the matter, child?”
Mary might have asked the same question, but she was a great deal too
much taken up with her own affairs.
“Edward and I have quarrelled,” she said with a sob in the words, and
sitting down, she burst into uncontrollable tears.
“But what is it all about?” asked Elizabeth, with her arm around her
sister. “Molly, do hush. It is so bad for you. What has Edward done?”
“Men are brutes,” declared Mary.
“Now, I’m sure Edward isn’t,” returned Elizabeth, with real conviction.
Mary sat up.
“He is,” she declared. “No, Liz, just listen. It was all over baby’s
name.”
“What, already?”
“Well, of course, one plans things. If one doesn’t, well, there was
Dorothy Jackson—don’t you remember? She was very ill, and the baby had
to be christened in a hurry, because they didn’t think it was going to
live. And nobody thought the name mattered, so the clergyman just gave
it the first name that came into his head, and the baby didn’t die after
all, and when Dorothy found she’d got to go through life with a daughter
called Harriet, she very nearly died all over again. So, you see, one
has to think of things. So I had thought of a whole lot of names, and
last night I said to Edward, ‘What shall we call it?’ and he looked
awfully pleased and said, ‘What do you think?’ And I said, ‘What would
you like best?’ And he said, ‘I’d like it to be called after you, Mary,
darling. I got Jack Webster’s answer to-day, and he says I may call it
anything I like.’ Well, of _course_, I didn’t see what it had to do with
Jack Webster, but I thought Edward must have asked him to be godfather.
I was rather put out. I didn’t think it quite _nice_, beforehand, you
know.”
The bright colour of indignation had come into Mary’s cheeks, and she
spoke with great energy.
“Of _course_, I just thought that, and then Edward said, ‘So it shall be
called after you—Arachne Mariana.’ I thought what _hideous_ names, but
all I said was, ‘Oh, darling, but I want a boy’; and do you know, Liz,
Edward had been talking about a spider all the time—the spider that Jack
Webster sent him. I don’t believe he cares nearly as much for the baby,
I really don’t, and I wish I was _dead_.”
Mary sobbed afresh, and it took Elizabeth a good deal of her time to
pacify her.
Mrs. Havergill brought in tea, it being Sarah’s afternoon out. When she
was taking away the tea-things, after Mary had gone, she observed:
“Mrs. Mottisfont, she do look pale, ma’am.”
“Mrs. Mottisfont is going to have a baby,” said Elizabeth, smiling.
Mrs. Havergill appeared to dismiss Mary’s baby with a slight wave of the
hand.
“I ’ad a cousin as ’ad twenty-three,” she observed in tones of lofty
detachment.
“Not all at once?” said Elizabeth faintly.
Mrs. Havergill took no notice of this remark.
“Yes, twenty-three, pore soul. And when she wasn’t ’aving of them, she
was burying of them. Ten she buried, and thirteen she reared, and many’s
the time I’ve ’eard ’er say, she didn’t know which was the most
trouble.”
She went out with the tray, and later, when Sarah had returned, she
repeated Mrs. Blake’s information in tones of sarcasm.
“‘There’s to be a baby at the Mottisfonts’,’ she says, as if I didn’t
know that. And I says, ‘Yes, ma’am,’ and that’s all as passed.”
Mrs. Havergill had a way of forgetting her own not inconsiderable
contributions to a conversation.
“‘Yes, ma’am,’ I says, expecting every moment as she’d up and say, ’and
one ’ere, too, Mrs. Havergill,’ but no, not a blessed word, and me sure
of it for weeks. But there—they’re all the same with the first, every
one’s to be blind and deaf. All the same, Sarah, my girl, if she don’t
want it talked about, she don’t, so just you mind and don’t talk, not if
she don’t say nothing till the christening’s ordered.”
When Elizabeth knew that she was going to have a child, her first
thought was, “Now, I must tell David,” and her next, “How can I tell
him, how can I possibly tell him?” She lay on her bed in the darkness
and faced the situation. If she told David, and he did not believe
her—that was possible, but not probable. If she told him, and he
believed her as to the facts—but believed also that this strange
development was due in some way to some influence of hers—conscious or
unconscious hypnotism—the thought broke off half-way. If he believed
this—and it was likely that he would believe it—Elizabeth covered her
eyes with her hand. Even the darkness was no shield. How should she meet
David’s eyes in the light, if he were to believe this? What would he
think of her? What must he think of her? She began to weep slow tears of
shame and agony. What was she to do? To wait until some accident branded
her in David’s eyes, or to go to him with a most unbelievable tale? She
tried to find words that she could say, and she could find none. Her
flesh shrank, and she knew that she could not do it. There were no
words. The tears ran slowly, very slowly, between her fingers. Elizabeth
was cold. The room was full of the empty dark. All the world was dark
and empty too. She lay quite still for a very long time. Then there came
upon her a curious gradual sense of companionship. It grew continually.
At the last, she took her hands from before her face and opened her
eyes. And there was a light in the room. It shed no glow on anything—it
was just a light by itself. A steady, golden light. It was not
moonlight, for there was no moon. Elizabeth lay and looked at it. It was
very radiant and very soft. She ceased to weep and she ceased to be
troubled. She knew with a certainty that never faltered again, that she
and David were one. Whether he would become conscious of their oneness
during the space of this short mortal dream, she did not know, but it
had ceased to matter. The thing that had tormented her was her own
doubt. Now that was stilled for ever—Love walked again among the
realities, pure and unashamed. The things of Time—the mistakes, the
illusions, the shadows of Time—moved in a little misty dream, that could
not touch her. Elizabeth turned on her side. She was warm and she was
comforted.
She slept.