THE LOST NAME
You are as old as Egypt, and as young as yesterday,
Oh, turn again and look again, for when you look I know
The dusk of death is but a dream, that dreaming, dies away
And leaves you with the lips I loved, three thousand years ago.
The mists of that forgotten dream, they fill your brooding eyes,
With veil on strange revealing veil that wavers, and is gone,
And still between the veiling mists, the dim, dead centuries rise,
And still behind the farthest veil, your burning soul burns on.
You are as old as Egypt, and as young as very Youth,
Before your still, immortal eyes the ages come and go,
The dusk of death is but a dream that dims the face of Truth—
Oh, turn again, and look again, for when you look, I know.
When Elizabeth came to herself, the room was full of mist. Through the
mist, she saw David’s face, and quite suddenly in these few minutes it
had grown years older.
He spoke. He seemed a long way off.
“Drink this.”
“What is it?” said Elizabeth faintly.
“Water.”
Elizabeth raised herself a little and drank. The faintness passed. She
became aware that the collar of her dress was unfastened, and she sat up
and began to fasten it.
David got up, too.
“I am all right.”
There was no mist before Elizabeth’s eyes now. They saw clearly, quite,
quite clearly. She looked at David, and David’s face was grey—old and
grey. So it had come. Now in this hour of physical weakness. The thing
she dreaded.
To her own surprise, she felt no dread now. Only a great weariness. What
could she say? What was she to say? All seemed useless—not worth while.
But then there was David’s face, his grey, old face. She must do her
best—not for her own sake, but for David’s.
She wondered a little that it should hurt him so much. It was not as
though he loved her, or had ever loved her. Only of course this was a
thing to cut a man, down to the very quick of his pride and his
self-respect. It was that—of course it was that.
Whilst she was thinking, David spoke. He was standing by the table
fingering the piece of string that lay there.
“Elizabeth, do you know why you fainted?” he said.
“Yes,” said Elizabeth, and said no more.
A sort of shudder passed over David Blake.
“Then it’s true,” he said in a voice that was hardly a voice at all.
There was a sound, and there were words. But it was not like a man
speaking. It was like a long, quick breath of pain.
“Yes,” said Elizabeth. “It is true, David.”
There was a very great pity in her eyes.
“Oh, my God!” said David, and he sat down by the table and put his head
in his hands. “Oh, my God!” he said again.
Elizabeth got up. She was trembling just a little, but she felt no
faintness now. She put one hand on the mantelpiece, and so stood,
waiting.
There was a very long silence, one of those profound silences which seem
to break in upon a room and fill it. They overlie and blot out all the
little sounds of every-day life and usage. Outside, people came and
went, the traffic in the High Street came and went, but neither to
David, nor to Elizabeth, did there come the smallest sound. They were
enclosed in a silence that seemed to stretch unbroken, from one Eternity
to another. It became an unbearable torment. To his dying day, when any
one spoke of hell, David glimpsed a place of eternal silence, where
anguish burned for ever with a still unwavering flame.
He moved at last, slowly, like a man who has been in a trance. His head
lifted. He got up, resting his weight upon his hands. Then he
straightened himself. All his movements were like those of a man who is
lifting an intolerably heavy load.
“Why did you marry me?” he asked in a tired voice, and then his tone
hardened. “Who is the man? Who is he? Will he marry you if I divorce
you?”
An unbearable pang of pity went through Elizabeth, and she turned her
head sharply. David stopped looking at her.
She to be ashamed—oh, God!—Elizabeth ashamed—he could not look at her.
He walked quickly to the window. Then turned back again because
Elizabeth was speaking.
“David,” she said, in a low voice, “David, what sort of woman am I?”
A groan burst from David.
“You are a good woman. That’s just the damnable part of it. There are
some women, when they do a thing like this, one only says they’ve done
after their kind—they’re gone where they belong. When a good woman does
it, it’s Hell—just Hell. And you’re a good woman.”
Elizabeth was looking down. She could not bear his face.
“And would you say I was a truthful woman?” she said. “If I were to tell
you the truth, would you believe me, David?”
“Yes,” said David at once. “Yes, I’d believe you. If you told me
anything at all you’d tell me the truth. Why shouldn’t I believe you?”
“Because the truth is very unbelievable,” said Elizabeth.
David lifted his head and looked at her.
“Oh, you’ll not lie,” he said.
“Thank you,” said Elizabeth. After a moment’s pause, she went on.
“Will you sit down, David? I don’t think I can speak if you walk up and
down like that. It’s not very easy to speak.”
He sat down in a big chair, that stood with its back to the window.
“David,” she said, “when we were in Switzerland, you asked me how I had
put you to sleep. You asked me if I had hypnotised you. I said, No. I
want to know if you believed me?”
“I don’t know what I believed,” said David wearily. The question
appeared to him to be entirely irrelevant and unimportant.
“When you hypnotise a person, you are producing an illusion,” said
Elizabeth. “The effect of what I did was to destroy one. But whatever I
did, when you asked me to stop doing it, I stopped. You do believe
that?”
“Yes—I believe that.”
“I stopped at once—definitely. You must please believe that. Presently
you will see why I say this.”
All the time she had been standing quietly by the mantelpiece. Now she
came across and kneeled down beside David’s chair. She laid her hands
one above the other upon the broad arm, and she looked, not at David at
all, but at her own hands. It was the penitent’s attitude, but David
Blake, looking at her, found nothing of the penitent’s expression. The
light shone full upon her face. There was a look upon it that startled
him. Her face was white and still. The look that riveted David’s
attention was a look of remoteness—passionless remoteness—and over all a
sort of patience.
Elizabeth looked down at her strong folded hands, and began to speak in
a quiet, gentle voice. The sapphire in her ring caught the light.
“David, just now you asked me why I married you. You never asked me that
before. I am going to tell you now. I married you because I loved you
very much. I thought I could help, and I loved you. That is why I
married you. You won’t speak, please, till I have done. It isn’t easy.”
She drew a long, steady breath and went on.
“I knew you didn’t love me, you loved Mary. It wasn’t good for you. I
knew that you would never love me. I was—content—with friendship. You
gave me friendship. Then we came home. And you stopped loving Mary. I
was very thankful—for you—not for myself.”
She stopped for a moment. David was looking at her. Her words fell on
his heart, word after word, like scalding tears. So she had loved him—it
only needed that. Why did she tell him now when it was all too
late—hideously too late?
Elizabeth went on.
“Do you remember, when we had been home a week, you dreamed your dream?
Your old dream—you told me of it, one evening—but I knew already——”
“Knew?”
“No, don’t speak. I can’t go on if you speak. I knew because when you
dreamed your dream you came to me.”
She bent lower over her hands. Her breathing quickened. She scarcely
heard David’s startled exclamation. She must say it—and it was so hard.
Her heart beat so—it was so hard to steady her voice.
“You came into my room. It was late. The window was open, and the wind
was blowing in. The moon was going down. I was standing by the window in
my night-dress—and you spoke. You said, ‘Turn round, and let me see your
face.’ Then I turned round and you came to me and touched me. You
touched me and you spoke, and then you went away. And the next night you
came again. You were in your dream, and in your dream you loved me. We
talked. I said, ‘Who am I?’ and you said, ‘You are the Woman of my
Dream,’ and you kissed me, and then you went away. But the third
night—the third night—I woke up—in the dark—and you were there.”
After that first start, David sat rigid and watched her face. He saw her
lips quiver—the patience of her face break into pain. He knew the effort
with which she spoke.
“You came every night—for a fortnight. I used to think you would
wake—but you never did. You went away before the dawn—always. You never
waked—you never remembered. In your dream you loved me—you loved me very
much. In the daytime you didn’t love me at all. I got to feel I couldn’t
bear it. I went away to Agneta, and there I thought it all out. I knew
what I had to do. I think I had really known all along. But I was
shirking. That’s why it hurt so much. If you shirk, you always get
hurt.”
Elizabeth paused for a moment. She was looking at the blue of her ring.
It shone. There was a little star in the heart of it.
“It’s very difficult to explain,” she said. “I suppose you would say I
prayed. Do you remember asking me, if you had slept because I saw you in
the Divine Consciousness? That’s the nearest I can get to explaining. I
tried to see the whole thing—us—the Dream—in the Divine Consciousness,
and you stopped dreaming. I knew you would. You never came any more.
That’s all.”
Elizabeth stopped speaking. She moved as if to rise, but David’s hand
fell suddenly upon both of hers, and rested there with a hard, heavy
pressure.
He said her name, “Elizabeth!” and then again, “Elizabeth!” His voice
had a bewildered sound.
Elizabeth lifted her eyes and looked at him. His face was working,
twitching, his eyes strained as if to see something beyond the line of
vision. He looked past Elizabeth as he had done in his dream. All at
once he spoke in a whisper.
“I remembered, it’s gone again—but I remembered.”
“The dream?”
“No, not the dream. I don’t know—it’s gone. It was a name—your name—but
it’s gone again.”
“My name?”
“Yes—it’s gone.”
“It doesn’t matter, David.”
Elizabeth had begun to tremble, and all at once he became aware of it.
“Why do you tremble?”
Elizabeth was at the end of her strength. She had done what she had to
do. If he would let her go——
“David, let me go,” she said, only just above her breath.
Instead, he put out his other hand and touched her on the breast. It was
like the Dream. But they were not in the Dream any more. They were
awake.
David leaned slowly forward, and Elizabeth could not turn away her eyes.
They looked at each other, and the thing that had happened before came
upon them again. A momentary flash—memory—revelation—truth. The moment
passed. This time it left behind it, not darkness, but light. They were
in the light, because love is of the light.
David put his arms about Elizabeth.
“Mine!” he said.
THE END
_A Selection from the Catalogue of_
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Little Thank You
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