ELIZABETH WAITS
And they that have seen and heard,
Have wrested a gift from Fate
That no man taketh away.
For they hold in their hands the key,
To all that is this-side Death,
And they count it as dust by the way,
As small dust, driven before the breath
Of Winds that blow to the day.
“Do you remember my telling you about my dream?” said David, next day.
He spoke quite suddenly, looking up from a letter that he was writing.
“Yes, I remember,” said Elizabeth. She even smiled a little.
“Well, it was so odd—I really don’t know what made me think of it just
now, but it happened to come into my head—do you know that I dreamt it
every night for about a fortnight? That was in May. I have never done
such a thing before. Then it stopped again quite suddenly, and I haven’t
dreamt it since. I wonder whether speaking of it to you—” he broke off.
“I wonder,” said Elizabeth.
“You see it came again and again. And the strange part was that I used
to wake in the morning feeling as if there was a lot more of it. A lot
more than there used to be. Things I couldn’t remember—I don’t know why
I tell you this.”
“It interests me,” said Elizabeth.
“You know how one forgets a dream, and then, quite suddenly, you just
don’t remember it. It’s the queerest thing—something gets the
impression, but the brain doesn’t record it. It’s most amazingly
provoking. Just now, while I was writing to Fossett, bits of something
came over me like a flash. And now it’s gone again. Do you ever dream?”
“Sometimes,” said Elizabeth.
This was her time to tell him. But Elizabeth did not tell him. It seemed
to her that she had been told, quite definitely, to wait, and she was
dimly aware of the reason. The time was not yet.
David finished his letter. Then he said:
“Don’t you want to go away this summer?”
“No,” said Elizabeth, a little surprised. “I don’t think I do. Why?”
“Most people seem to go away. Mary would like you to go with her,
wouldn’t she?”
“Yes, but I’ve told her I don’t want to go. She won’t be alone, you
know, now that Edward finds that he can get away.”
David laughed.
“Poor old Edward,” he said. “A month ago the business couldn’t get on
without him. He was conscience-ridden, and snatched exiguous half-hours
for Mary and his beetles. And now it appears, that after all, the
business can get on without him. I don’t know quite how Macpherson
brought that fact home to Edward. He must have put it very straight, and
I’m afraid that Edward’s feelings were a good deal hurt. Personally, I
should say that the less Edward interferes with Macpherson the more
radiantly will bank-managers smile upon Edward. Edward is a well-meaning
person. Mr. Mottisfont would have called him damn well-meaning. And you
cannot damn any man deeper than that in business. No, Edward can afford
to take a holiday better than most people. He will probably start a
marine collection and be perfectly happy. Why don’t you join them for a
bit?”
“I don’t think I want to,” said Elizabeth. “I’m going up to London for
Agneta’s wedding next week. I don’t want to go anywhere else. Do you
want to get rid of me?”
To her surprise, David coloured.
“I?” he said. For a moment an odd expression passed across his face.
Then he laughed.
“I might have wanted to flirt with Miss Dobell.”
* * * * * * * *
Agneta Mainwaring was married at the end of July.
“It’s going to be the most awful show,” she wrote to Elizabeth. “Douglas
and I spend all our time trying to persuade each other that it isn’t
going to be awful, but we know it is. All our relations and all our
friends, and all their children and all their best clothes, and an
amount of fuss, worry, and botheration calculated to drive any one
crazy. If I hadn’t an enormous amount of self-control I should bolt,
either with or without Douglas. Probably without him. Then he’d have a
really thrilling time tracking me down. It’s an awful temptation, and if
you don’t want me to give way to it, you’d better come up at least three
days beforehand, and clamp on to me. Do come, Lizabeth. I really want
you.”
Elizabeth went up to London the day before the wedding, and Agneta
detached herself sufficiently from her own dream to say:
“You’re not Issachar any longer. What has happened?”
“I don’t quite know,” said Elizabeth. “I don’t think the burden’s gone,
but I think that some one else is carrying it for me. I don’t seem to
feel it any more.”
Agneta smiled a queer little smile of understanding. Then she laughed.
“Good Heavens, Lizabeth, if any one heard us talking, how perfectly mad
they would think us.”
Elizabeth found August a very peaceful month. A large number of her
friends and acquaintances were away. There were no calls to be paid and
no notes to be written. She and David were more together than they had
been since the time in Switzerland, and she was happy with a strange
brooding happiness, which was not yet complete, but which awaited
completion. She thought a great deal about the child—the child of the
Dream. She came to think of it as an indication that behind the Dream
was the Real.
Mary came back on the 15th of September. She was looking very well, and
was once more in a state of extreme contentment with Edward and things
in general. When she had poured forth a complete catalogue of all that
they had done, she paused for breath, and looked suddenly and sharply at
Elizabeth.
“Liz,” she said. “Why, Liz.”
To Elizabeth’s annoyance, she felt herself colouring.
“Liz, and you never told me. Tell me at once. Is it true? Why didn’t you
tell me before?”
“Oh, Molly, what an Inquisitor you would have made!”
“Then it _is_ true. And I suppose you told Agneta weeks ago?”
“I haven’t told any one,” said Elizabeth.
“Not Agneta? And I suppose if I hadn’t guessed you wouldn’t have told me
for ages and ages and ages. Why didn’t you tell me, Liz?”
“Why, I thought I’d wait till you came back, Molly.”
Mary caught her sister’s hand.
“Liz, aren’t you glad? Aren’t you pleased? Doesn’t it make you happy?
Oh, Liz, if I thought you were one of those _dreadful_ women who don’t
want to have a baby, I—I don’t know what I should do. I wanted to tell
everybody. But then I was _pleased_. I don’t believe you’re a bit
pleased. Are you?”
“I don’t know that pleased is exactly the word,” said Elizabeth. She
looked at Mary and laughed a little.
“Oh, Molly, do stop being Mrs. Grundy.”
Mary lifted her chin.
“Just because I was interested,” she said. “I suppose you’d rather I
didn’t care.”
Then she relaxed a little.
“Liz, I’m frightfully excited. Do be pleased and excited too. Why are
you so stiff and odd? Isn’t David pleased?”
She had looked away, but she turned quickly at the last words, and fixed
her eyes on Elizabeth’s face. And for a moment Elizabeth had been off
her guard.
Mary exclaimed.
“Isn’t he pleased? Doesn’t he know? Liz, you don’t mean to tell me——”
“I don’t think you give me much time to tell you anything, Molly,” said
Elizabeth.
“He doesn’t know? Liz, what’s happened to you? Why are you so
extraordinary? It’s the sort of thing you read about in an early
Victorian novel. Do you mean to say that you _really_ haven’t told
David? That he doesn’t know?”
Elizabeth’s colour rose.
“Molly, my dear, do you think it is your business?” she said.
“Yes, I do,” said Mary. “I suppose you won’t pretend you’re not my own
sister. And I think you must be quite mad, Liz. I do, indeed. You ought
to tell David at once—at once. I can’t _imagine_ what Edward would have
said if he had not known at once. You ought to go straight home and tell
him now. Married people ought to be one. They ought never to have
secrets.”
Mary poured the whole thing out to Edward the same evening.
“I really don’t know what has happened to Elizabeth,” she said. “She is
quite changed. I can’t understand her at all. I think it is quite wicked
of her. If she doesn’t tell David soon, some one else ought to tell
him.”
Edward moved uneasily in his chair.
“People don’t like being interfered with,” he said.
“Well, I’m sure nobody could call me an interfering person,” said Mary.
“It isn’t interfering to be fond of people. If I weren’t fond of Liz, I
shouldn’t care how strangely she behaved. I do think it’s very strange
of her—and I don’t care what you say, Edward. I think David ought to be
told. How would you have liked it if I’d hidden things from you?”
Edward rumpled up his hair.
“People _don’t_ like being interfered with,” he said again.
At this Mary burst into tears, and continued to weep until Edward had
called himself a brute sufficiently often to justify her contradicting
him.
Elizabeth continued to wait. She was not quite as untroubled as she had
been. The scene with Mary had brought the whole world of other people’s
thoughts and judgments much nearer. It was a troubling world. One full
of shadows and perplexities. It pressed upon her a little and vexed her
peace.
The days slid by. They had been pleasant days for David, too. For some
time past he had been aware of a change in himself—a ferment. His old
passion for Mary was dust. He looked back upon it now, and saw it as a
delirium of the senses, a thing of change and fever. It was gone. He
rejoiced in his freedom and began to look forward to the time when he
and Elizabeth would enter upon a married life founded upon friendship,
companionship, and good fellowship. He had no desire to fall in love
with Elizabeth, to go back to the old storms of passion and unrest. He
cared a good deal for Elizabeth. When she was his wife he would care for
her more deeply, but still on the same lines. He hoped that they would
have children. He was very fond of children. And then, after he had
planned it all out in his own mind, he became aware of the change, the
ferment. What he felt did not come into the plan at all. He disliked it
and he distrusted it, but none the less the change went on, the ferment
grew. It was as if he had planned to walk on a clear, wide upland, under
a still, untroubled air. In his own mind he had a vision of such a
place. It was a place where a man might walk and be master of himself,
and then suddenly—the driving of a mighty wind, and he could not tell
from whence it came, or whither it went. The wind bloweth where it
listeth. In those September days the wind blew very strongly, and as it
blew, David came slowly to the knowledge that he loved Elizabeth. It was
a love that seemed to rise in him from some great depth. He could not
have told when it began. As the days passed, he wondered sometimes
whether it had not been there always, deep amongst the deepest springs
of thought and will. There was no fever in it. It was a thing so strong
and sane and wholesome that, after the first wonder, it seemed to him to
be a part of himself, a part which, missing, he had lost balance and
mental poise.
He spoke to Elizabeth as usual, but he looked at her with new eyes. And
he, too, waited.
He came home one day to find the household in a commotion. It appeared
that Sarah had scalded her hand, Elizabeth was out, and Mrs. Havergill
was divided between the rival merits of flour, oil, and a patent
preparation which she had found very useful when suffering from
chilblains. She safeguarded her infallibility by remarking, that there
was some as held with one thing and some as held with another. She also
observed, that “scalds were ’orrid things.”
“Now, there was an ’ousemaid I knew, Milly Clarke her name was, she
scalded her hand very much the same as you ’ave, Sarah, and first thing,
it swelled up as big as my two legs and arter that it turned to
blood-poisoning, and the doctors couldn’t do nothing for her, pore
girl.”
At this point Sarah broke into noisy weeping and David arrived. When he
had bound up the hand, consoled the trembling Sarah, and suggested that
she should have a cup of tea, he inquired where Elizabeth was. She might
be at Mrs. Mottisfont’s, suggested Mrs. Havergill, as she followed him
into the hall.
“You’re not thinking of sending Sarah to the ’orspital, are you sir?”
“No, of course not, she’ll be all right in a day or two. I’ll just walk
up the hill and meet Mrs. Blake.”
“I’m sure it’s a mercy she were out,” said Mrs. Havergill.
“Why?” said David, turning at the door. Mrs. Havergill assumed an air of
matronly importance.
“It might ha’ given her a turn,” she said, “for the pore girl did scream
something dreadful. I’m sure it give me a turn, but that’s neither here
nor there. What I was thinking of was Mrs. Blake’s condition, sir.”
Mrs. Havergill was obviously a little nettled at David’s expression.
“Nonsense,” said David quickly.
Mrs. Havergill went back to Sarah.
“‘Nonsense,’ he says, and him a doctor. Why, there was me own pore
mother as died with her ninth, and all along of a turn she got through
seeing a child run over. And he says, ‘Nonsense.’”
David walked up the hill in a state of mind between impatience and
amusement. How women’s minds did run on babies. He supposed it was
natural, but there were times when one could dispense with it.
He found Mary at home and alone. “Elizabeth? Oh, no, she hasn’t been
near me for days,” said Mary. “As it happened, I particularly _wanted_
to see her. But she hasn’t been near me.”
She considered that Elizabeth was neglecting her. Only that morning she
had told Edward so.
“She doesn’t come to see me _on purpose_,” she had said. “But I know
quite well why. I don’t at all approve of the way she’s going on, and
she knows it. I don’t think it’s _right_. I think some one ought to tell
David. No, Edward, I really do. I don’t understand Elizabeth at all, and
she’s simply afraid to come and see me because she knows that I shall
speak my mind.”
Now, as she sat and talked to David, the idea that it might be her duty
to enlighten him presented itself to her mind afresh. A sudden and
brilliant idea came into her head, and she immediately proceeded to act
upon it.
“I had a special reason for wanting to see her,” she said. “I had a
lovely box of things down from town on approval, and I wanted her to see
them.”
“Things?” said David.
“Oh, clothes,” said Mary, with a wave of the hand. “You know they’ll
send you anything now. By the way, I bought a present for Liz, though
she doesn’t _deserve_ it. Will you take it down to her? I’ll get it if
you don’t mind waiting a minute.”
She was away for five minutes, and then returned with a small
brown-paper parcel in her hand.
“You can open it when you get home,” she said. “Open it and show it to
Liz, and see whether you like it. Tell her I sent it with my _love_.”
“Now there won’t be any more nonsense,” she told Edward.
Edward looked rather unhappy, but, warned by previous experience, said
nothing.
David found Elizabeth in the dining-room. She was putting a large bunch
of scarlet gladioli into a brown jug upon the mantelpiece.
“I’ve got a present for you,” said David.
“David, how nice of you. It’s not my birthday.”
“I’m afraid it’s not from me at all. I looked in to see if you were with
Mary, and she sent you this, with her love. By the way, you’d better go
and see her, I think she’s rather huffed.”
As he spoke he was undoing the parcel. Elizabeth had her back towards
him. The flowers would not stand up just as she wished them to.
“I can’t think why Molly should send me a present,” she said, and then
all at once something made her turn round.
The brown-paper wrapping lay on the table. David had taken something
white out of the parcel. He held it up and they both looked at it. It
was a baby’s robe, very fine, and delicately embroidered.
Elizabeth made a wavering step forward. The light danced on the white
robe, and not only on the robe. All the room was full of small dancing
lights. Elizabeth put her hand behind her and felt for the edge of the
mantelpiece. She could not find it. Everything was shaking. She swung
half round, and all the dancing lights flashed in her eyes as she fell
forwards.