The Fire Within (11 page)

Love must to school to learn his alphabet,

His wings are shorn, his eyes are dim and wet.

He pores on books that once he knew by heart—

Poor, foolish Love, to wander and forget.

ELIZABETH sat quite motionless for half an hour. Then she stirred,
bent her head for a moment, whilst she listened to David's regular
breathing, and then rose to her feet. She passed through the open door
into her own room, and undressed in the dark. Then she lay down and
slept.

Three times during the night she woke and listened. But David still
slept. When she woke up for the third time, the room was full of the
greyness of the dawn. She got up and closed the door between the two
rooms.

Then she lay waking. It had been a strange wedding night.

The day dawned cloudy, but broke at noon into a cloudless warmth
that was more like June than April.

“Take me down the river,” said Elizabeth, and they rowed down for
half a mile, and turned the boat into a water-lane where budding
willows swept down on either side, and brushed the stream.

David was very well content to lie in the sun. The strain was gone
from him, leaving behind it a weariness beyond words. Every limb, every
muscle, every nerve was relaxed. There was a great peace upon him. The
air tasted sweet. The light was a pleasant thing. The sky was blue, and
so was Elizabeth's dress, and Elizabeth was a very reposeful person.
She did not fidget and she did not chatter. When she spoke it was of
pleasant things.

David recalled a day, ten years ago, when he had sat with her in
this very place. He could see himself, full of enthusiasm, full of
youth. He could remember how he had talked, and how Elizabeth had
listened. She was just the same now. It was he who had changed. Ten
years ago seemed to him a very pleasant time, a very pleasant memory.
Pictures rose before him—stray words—stray recollections running into
a long, soft blur.

They came home in the dusk.

“Are you going to see Ronnie again?” said Elizabeth, as they landed.

“Yes; he could n't be doing better, but I 'll look in, and to-morrow
Skeffington will go with me so as to get him broken in to the change.
We ought to get away all right now.”

David waked next day to find the sun shining in at his uncurtained
window. From where he lay he could see the young blue of the sky, and
all the room seemed full of the sun's gold. David lay in a lazy
contentment watching the motes that danced in a long shining beam.
There was a new stir of life in his veins. He stretched out his limbs
and was glad of their strength. The sweetness and the glory and the
promise of the spring slid into his blood and fired it.

“Mary,” he said, still between sleeping and waking—and with the
name, memory woke. Suddenly his brain was very clear. He looked
straight ahead and saw the door that led into the other room—the room
that had been his mother's. Elizabeth was in that room. He had married
Elizabeth—she was his wife. He lay quite still and stared at the door.
Elizabeth Chantrey was Elizabeth Blake. She was his wife—and Mary—

A sudden spasm of laughter caught David by the throat. Mary was what
she had promised to be—his sister; Mary was his sister. The spasm of
laughter passed, and with it the stir in David's blood. He was quite
cool now. He lay staring at that closed door, and faced the situation.

It was a damnable situation, he decided. He felt as a man might feel
who wakes from the delirium of weeks, to find that in his madness he
has done some intolerable, some irrevocable thing. A man who does not
sleep is a man who is not wholly sane. David looked back and followed
the events of the last few months with a critical detachment.

He saw the strain growing and growing until, in the end, on the
brink of the abyss, he had snatched at the relief which Elizabeth
offered, as a man who dies of thirst will snatch at water. Well—he had
taken Elizabeth's draught of water, his thirst was quenched, he was his
own man again. No, never his own man any more. Never free any
more—Elizabeth's debtor—Elizabeth's husband.

David set his face like a flint—he would pay his debt.

He went out as soon as he had breakfasted and walked for a couple of
hours. It was a little after noon when he came into the drawing-room
where Elizabeth was.

The floor was covered with a great many yards of green stuff which
she was cutting into curtain lengths. As David came in, she looked up
and smiled.

“Oh, please,” she said, “if you would n't mind, I shall cut
them so much better if you hold one end.”

David knelt down and held the stuff, whilst Elizabeth cut it. She
came quite close to him at the end, smiled again, and took away the two
pieces which he still clutched helplessly.

“That 's beautiful,” she said, and sat down and began to sew.

David watched her in silence. If she found his gaze embarrassing,
she showed no sign.

“We can start to-morrow,” he said at last. He gave a list of trains,
stopping-places, and hotels, paused at the end of it, walked to the
window, and then, turning, said with an effort:

“This has been a bad beginning for you, my dear—you 've been very
good to me. You deserve a better bargain, but I 'll do my best.”

Elizabeth did not speak at once. David thought that she was not
going to speak at all, but after what seemed like a long time she said:

“David!” and then stopped.

There was a good deal of colour in her cheeks. David saw that she,
too, was making an effort

“Well,” he said, and his voice was more natural.

“David,” said Elizabeth, “what did you mean by 'doing your best'?”

David met her eyes. He had always liked Elizabeth's eyes. They were
so very clear.

“I meant that I 'd do my best to make you a good husband,” he said
quite simply.

Elizabeth's colour rose higher still. She continued to look at
David, because she would have considered it cowardly to look away.

“A good husband to my good wife,” she said. “But, David, I don't
think you want a wife just now.”

David came across the room and sat down by the table at which
Elizabeth was working.

“Then why did you marry me, Elizabeth?” he asked.

Elizabeth did not turn her head at once.

“I think what we both want just now,” she said, “is friendship.” Her
voice was low, but she kept it steady. “The sort of friendship that is
one side of marriage. It is not really possible for a man and a woman
to be friends in that sort of way unless they are married. I think you
want a friend—I know I do. I think you have been very lonely—one is
lonely, and it is worse for a man. He can't get the home-feeling, and
he misses it. You did not marry me because you needed a wife. I don't
think you do. When you want a wife, I will be your wife, but just
now—”

She broke off. She did not look at David, but David looked at her.
He saw how tightly her hands were clasped, he saw the colour flushing
in her cheeks. She had great self-control, but that she was deeply
moved was very evident.

All at once, he became conscious of great fatigue. He had walked far
and in considerable distress of mind. He had put a very strong
constraint upon himself. He rested his head on his hand and tried to
think. Elizabeth did not speak again. After a time he raised his head.
Elizabeth was watching him—her eyes were very soft. A sense of relief
came upon David. Just to drift—just to let things go on in the old
way, on the old lines. Not for always—just for a time—until he had
put Mary out of his thought. Their marriage was not an ordinary one. It
was for Elizabeth to make what terms she would. And it was a
relief—yes, no doubt it was a relief.

“If I say, Yes,” he said, “it is only for a time. It is not a very
possible situation, you know, Elizabeth—not possible at all in most
cases. But just now, just for the present, I admit your right to
choose.”

Elizabeth's hands relaxed.

“Thank you, David,” she said.

See, God is everywhere,

Where, then, is care?

There is no night in Him,

Then how can we grow dim?

There is no room for pain or fear

Since God is Love, and Love is here.

The full cup lowered down into the sea,

Is full continually,

How can it lose one drop when all around

The endless floods abound?

So we in Him no part of Life can lose,

For all is ours to use.

DAVID found himself enjoying his holiday a good deal. Blue skies and
shining air, clear cold of the snows and radiant warmth of the spring
sun, sweet sleep by night and pleasant companionship by day—all these
were his portion. His own content surprised him. He had been so long in
the dark places that he could scarcely believe that the shadow was
gone, and the day clear again. He had been prepared to struggle
manfully against the feeling for Mary which had haunted and tormented
him for so long. To his surprise, he found that this feeling fell into
line with the other symptoms of his illness. He shrank from thinking of
it, as he shrank from thinking of his craving for drink, his sleepless
nights, and his dread of madness. It was all a part of the same bad
dream—a shadow among shadows, in a world of gloom from which he had
escaped.

Elizabeth was a very good companion. It was too early to climb, but
they took long walks, shared picnic meals, and talked or were silent
just as the spirit moved them. It was the old boy and girl
companionship come back, and it was a very restful thing. One day, when
they had been married about a fortnight, David said suddenly:

“How did you do it, Elizabeth?”

They were sitting on a grassy slope, looking over a wide valley
where blue mists lay. A little wind was blowing, and the upper air was
clear. The grass on which they sat was short. It was full of
innumerable small white and purple anemones. Elizabeth was sitting on
the grass, watching the flowers, and touching first one and then
another with the tips of her fingers.

“All these little white ones have a violet stain at the back of each
petal,” was the last thing that she had said, but when David spoke she
looked up, a little startled.

He was lying full length on a narrow ledge just above her, with his
cap over his eyes to shield them from the sun, which was very bright.

“How did you do it, Elizabeth?” said David Blake.

Elizabeth hesitated. She could not see his face.

“What do you mean?”

“How did you do it? Was it hypnotism?”

“Oh, no—” There was real horror in her voice.

“It must have been.”

She was silent for a moment. Then she said:

“Do you remember how interested we used to be in hypnotism, David?”

“Yes, that 's partly what made me think of it.”

“We read everything we could lay hands on—all the books on psychic
phenomena—Charcot's experiments—everything. And do you remember the
conclusion we came to?”

“What was it?”

“I don't think you 've forgotten. I can remember you stamping up and
down my little room and saying, 'It's a damnable thing,
Elizabeth, a perfectly damnable thing. There 's no end,
absolutely none to the extent to which it undermines everything—I
believe it is a much more real devil than any that the theologies
produce.' That 's what you said nine years ago, David, and I agreed
with you. We used quite a lot of strong language between us, and I
don't feel called upon to retract any of it. Hypnotism is a
damnable thing.”

David pushed the cap back from his eyes as Elizabeth spoke, and
raised himself on his elbow, so that he could see her face.

“There are degrees,” he said, “and it 's very hard to define. How
would you define it?”

“It 's not easy. 'The unlawful influence of one mind over another'?”

“That 's begging the question. At what point does it become
unlawful?—that 's the crux.”

“I suppose at the point when force of will overbears
sense—reason—conscience. You may persuade a man to lend you money,
but you may n't pick his pocket or hypnotise him.”

David laughed.

“How practical!”

Then very suddenly:

“So it was n't hypnotism. Are you sure?”

“Yes, quite sure.”

“But can you be sure? There 's such a thing as the unconscious
exercise of will power.”

Elizabeth shook her head.

“There is nothing in the least unconscious in what I do. I know very
well what I am about, and I know enough about hypnotism to know that it
is not that. I don't use my will at all.”

“What do you do? How is it done?” His tone was interested.

“I think,” said Elizabeth slowly, “that it is done by realizing, by getting into touch with Reality. Things like sleeplessness, pain,
and strain are n't right—they are n't normal. They are like bad
dreams. If one wakes—if one sees the reality—the dream is gone.”

She spoke as if she were struggling to find words for some idea
which filled her mind, but was hard to put into a communicable shape.

“It is life on the Fourth Dimension,” she said at last.

“Yes,” said David, “go on.” There was a slightly quizzical look in
his eyes, but he was interested. “What do you mean by the Fourth
Dimension?”

“We used to talk of that too, and lately I have thought about it a
lot.”

“Yes?”

“It is so hard to put into words. Fourth Dimensional things won't
get into Third Dimensional words. One has to try and try, and then a
little scrap of the meaning comes through. That is why there are so
many creeds, so many sects. They are all an attempt to express—and one
can't really express the thing. I can't say it, I can only feel it. It
is limitless, and words are limited. There are no bounds or barriers.
Take Thought, for instance—that is Fourth Dimensional—and Love.
Religion is a purely Fourth Dimensional thing, and we all guess and
translate as best we may. In all religions that have life, apprehension
rises above the creed and reaches out to the Real—the untranslatable.”

“Yes, that 's true; but go on—define the Fourth Dimension.”

“I can see it, you know. It 's another plane. It is the plane which
permeates and inter-penetrates all other planes—universal, eternal,
unchanging. It 's like the Fire of God—searching all things. It is the
plane of Reality. Nothing is real which is not universal and unchanging
and eternal. If one can realize that plane, one is amongst the
realities, and all that is unreal goes out. 'There is no life but the
Life of God, no consciousness but the Divine Consciousness.' I think
that is the best definition of all: 'the Divine Consciousness.'“

He did not know that she was quoting, and he did not answer her or
speak at all for some time. But at last he said:

“So I slept, because you saw me in the Divine Consciousness; is that
it?”

“Something like that.”

“You did n't will that I should sleep?”

“Oh, no.”

“Are you doing it still?”

“Yes.”

“Every night?”

“Yes,” said Elizabeth again.

David sat up. The mists in the valley beneath were golden, for the
sun had dropped. As he looked, the gold turned grey, and the shadow of
darkness to come rose out of the valley's depths, though the hill-slope
on which they sat was warm and sunny yet. David turned and saw that
Elizabeth was watching him.

“I want you to stop whatever it is you do,” he said abruptly.

“Very well.”

“I 'm not as ungrateful as that sounds—” He broke off, and
Elizabeth said quickly:

“Oh, no.”

“You don't think it?”

“Why should I? You are well again. You don't need my help any more.”

A shadow like the shadow of evening came over her as she spoke, but
her smile betrayed nothing.

They walked back to the hotel in silence.

David had wondered if he would sleep. He slept all night, the sweet
sound sleep of health and a mind unburdened.

It was Elizabeth who did not sleep. She had walked with him through
the valley of the shadow and he had come out of it a whole man again.
Was she to cling to the shadow, because in the shadow David had clung
to her? It came to that. She drove the thought home, and did not shirk
the pain of it. They were come out into the light, and in the light he
had no need of her. But this was not full daylight in which they
walked—it was only the first chill grey of the dawn, and there is
always a need of Love. Love needs must give, and giving, blesses and is
blessed, for Love is of the realities—a thing immutable and
all-pervading. No man can shut out Love.