Fire Within Page 2

  “I’d have knocked him on the head under old Pellico’s nose—but poison—poison’s beastly.”

  He did not reason about it. It was just instinct. You knocked on the head a brute that annoyed you, but you didn’t use poison. And Edward had used poison. That was the beginning of David’s great intimacy with Elizabeth Chantrey. He did not quarrel with Edward, but they drifted out of an inseparable friendship into a relationship of the cool, go-as-you-please order. The thing rankled a little after all these years. David sat there frowning and remembering. Old Mr. Mottisfont laughed.

  “Aha, you see I know most things,” he said, “Edward’ll poison me yet. You see, he’s in a fix. He hankers after this house same as I always hankered after it. It’s about the only taste we have in common. He’s got his own house on a seven years’ lease, and here’s Nick Anderson going to be married, and willing to take it off his hands. And what’s Edward to do? It’s a terrible anxiety for him not knowing if I’m going to die or not. If he doesn’t accept Nick’s offer and I die, he’ll have two houses on his hands. If he accepts it and I don’t die, he’ll not have a house at all. It’s a sad dilemma for Edward. That’s why he would enjoy seeing about my funeral so much. He’d do it all very handsomely. Edward likes things handsome. And Mary, who doesn’t care a jot for me, will wear a black dress that don’t suit her, and feel like a Christian martyr. And Elizabeth won’t wear black at all, though she cares a good many jots, and though she’d look a deal better in it than Mary—eh, David?”

  But David Blake was exclaiming at the lateness of the hour, and saying good-night, all in a breath.

  CHAPTER II

  DAVID BLAKE

  Grey, grey mist

  Over the old grey town,

  A mist of years, a mist of tears,

  Where ghosts go up and down;

  And the ghosts they whisper thus, and thus,

  Of the days when the world went with us.

  A MINUTE or two later Elizabeth Chantrey came into the room. She was a very tall woman, with a beautiful figure. All her movements were strong, sure, and graceful. She carried a lighted lamp in her left hand. Mr. Mottisfont abominated electric light and refused obstinately to have it in the house. When Elizabeth had closed the door and set down the lamp, she crossed over to the window and fastened a heavy oak shutter across it. Then she sat down by the bed.

  “Well,” she said in her pleasant voice.

  “H’m,” said old Mr. Mottisfont, “well or ill’s all a matter of opinion, same as religion, or the cut of a dress.” He shut his mouth with a snap, and lay staring at the ceiling. Presently his eyes wandered back to Elizabeth. She was sitting quite still, with her hands folded. Very few busy women ever sit still at all, but Elizabeth Chantrey, who was a very busy woman, was also a woman of a most reposeful presence. She could be unoccupied without appearing idle, just as she could be silent without appearing either stupid or constrained. Old Edward Mottisfont looked at her for about five minutes. Then he said suddenly:

  “What’ll you do when I’m dead, Elizabeth?”

  Elizabeth made no protest, as her sister Mary would have done. She had not been Edward Mottisfont’s ward since she was fourteen for nothing. She understood him very well, and she was perhaps the one creature whom he really loved. She leaned her chin in her hand and said:

  “I don’t know, Mr. Mottisfont.”

  Mr. Mottisfont never took his eyes off her face.

  “Edward’ll want to move in here as soon as possible. What’ll you do?”

  “I don’t know,” repeated Elizabeth, frowning a little.

  “Well, if you don’t know, perhaps you’ll listen to reason, and do as I ask you.”

  “If I can,” said Elizabeth Chantrey.

  He nodded.

  “Stay here a year,” he said, “a year isn’t much to ask—eh?”

  “Here?”

  “Yes—in this house. I’ve spoken about it to Edward. Odd creature, Edward, but, I believe, truthful. Said he was quite agreeable. Even went so far as to say he was fond of you, and that Mary would be pleased. Said you’d too much tact to obtrude yourself, and that of course you’d keep your own rooms. No, I don’t suppose you’ll find it particularly pleasant, but I believe you’ll find it worth while. Give it a year.”

  Elizabeth started ever so slightly. One may endure for years, and make no sign, to wince at last in one unguarded moment. So he knew—had always known. Again Elizabeth made no protest.

  “A year,” she said in a low voice, “a year—I’ve given fifteen years. Isn’t fifteen years enough?”

  Something fierce came into old Edward Mottisfont’s eyes. His whole face hardened. “He’s a damn fool,” he said.

  Elizabeth laughed.

  “Of course he must be,” and she laughed again.

  The old man nodded.

  “Grit,” he said to himself, “grit. That’s the way—laugh, Elizabeth, laugh—and let him go hang for a damn fool. He ain’t worth it—no man living’s worth it. But give him a year all the same.”

  If old Mr. Mottisfont had not been irritated with David Blake for being as he put it, a damn fool, he would not have made the references he had done to his nephew Edward’s wife. They touched David upon the raw, and old Mr. Mottisfont was very well aware of it. As David went out of the room and closed the door, a strange mood came upon him. All the many memories of this house, familiar to him from early boyhood, all the many memories of this town of his birth and upbringing, rose about him. It was a strange mood, but yet not a sad one, though just beyond it lay the black shadow which is the curse of the Celt. David Blake came of an old Irish stock, although he had never seen Ireland. He had the vein of poetry—the vein of sadness, which are born at a birth with Irish humour and Irish wit.

  As he went down the staircase, the famous staircase with its carved newels, the light of a moving lamp came up from below, and at the turn of the stair he stood aside to let Elizabeth Chantrey pass. She wore a grey dress, and the lamp-light shone upon her hair and made it look like very pale gold. It was thick hair—very fine and thick, and she wore it in a great plait like a crown. In the daytime it was not golden at all, but just the colour of the pale thick honey with which wax is mingled. Long ago a Chantrey had married a wife from Norway with Elizabeth’s hair and Elizabeth’s dark grey eyes.

  “Good-night, David,” said Elizabeth Chantrey. She would have passed on, but to her surprise David made no movement. He was looking at her.

  “This is where I first saw you, Elizabeth,” he said in a remembering voice. “You had on a grey dress, like that one, but Mary was in blue, because Mr. Mottisfont wouldn’t let her wear mourning. Do you remember how shocked poor Miss Agatha was?—’and their mother only dead a month!’ I can hear her now.” Mary—yes, he remembered little Mary Chantrey in her blue dress. He could see her now—nine years old—in a blue dress—with dark curling hair and round brown eyes, holding tightly to Elizabeth’s skirts, and much too shy to speak to the big strange boy who was Edward’s friend.

  Elizabeth watched him. She knew very well that he was not thinking of her, although he had remembered the grey dress. And yet—for five years—it was she and not Mary to whom David came with every mood. During those five years, the years between fourteen and nineteen, it was always Elizabeth and David, David and Elizabeth. Then when David was twenty, and in his first year at hospital, Dr. Blake died suddenly, and for four years David came no more to Market Harford. Mrs. Blake went to live with a sister in the north, and David’s vacations were spent with his mother. For a time he wrote often—then less often—finally only at Christmas. And the years passed, Elizabeth’s girlhood passed, Mary grew up. And when David Blake had been nearly three years qualified, and young Dr. Ellerton was drowned out boating, David bought from Mrs. Ellerton a share in the practice that had been his father’s, and brought his mother back to Market Harford. Mrs. Blake lived only for a year, but before she died she had seen David fall headlong in love, not with her dear Elizabeth, bu
t with Mary—pretty little Mary—who was turning the heads of all the young men, sending Jimmy Larkin with a temporarily broken heart to India, Jack Webster with a much more seriously injured one to the West Coast of Africa, and enjoying herself mightily the while. Elizabeth had memories as well as David. They came at least as near sadness as his. She thought she had remembered quite enough for one evening, and she set her foot on the stair above the landing.

  “Poor Miss Agatha!” she said. “What a worry we were to her, and how she disliked our coming here. I can remember her grumbling to Mr. Mottisfont, and saying, ‘Children make such a work in the house,’ and Mr. Mottisfont—”

  Elizabeth laughed.

  “Mr. Mottisfont said, ‘Don’t be such a damn old maid, Agatha. For the Lord’s sake, what’s the good of a woman that can’t mind children?’”

  David laughed too. He remembered Miss Agatha’s fussy indignation.

  “Good-night, David,” said Elizabeth, and she passed on up the wide, shallow stair.

  The light went with her. From below there came only a glimmer, for the lamp in the hall was still turned low. David went slowly on. As he was about to open the front door, Edward Mottisfont came out of the dining-room on the left.

  “One minute, David,” he said, and took him by the arm. “Look here—I think I ought to know. Is my uncle likely to live on indefinitely? Did you mean what you said upstairs?”

  It was the second time that David Blake had been asked if he meant those words. He answered a trifle irritably.

  “Why should I say what I don’t mean? He may live three years or he may die to-morrow. Why on earth should I say it if I didn’t think it?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Edward. “You might have been saying it just to cheer the old man up.”

  There was a certain serious simplicity about Edward Mottisfont. It was this quality in him which his uncle stigmatized as priggishness. Your true prig is always self-conscious, but Edward was not at all self-conscious. From his own point of view he saw things quite clearly. It was other people’s points of view which had a confusing effect upon him. David laughed.

  “It didn’t exactly cheer him up,” he said. “He isn’t as set on living as all that comes to.”

  Edward appeared to be rather struck by this statement.

  “Isn’t he?” he said.

  He opened the door as he spoke, but suddenly closed it again. His tone altered. It became eager and boyish.

  “David, I say—you know Jimmy Larkin was transferred to Assam some months ago? Well, I wrote and asked him to remember me if he came across anything like specimens. Of course his forest work gives him simply priceless opportunities. He wrote back and said he would see what he could do, and last mail he sent me—”

  “What—a package of live scorpions?”

  “No—not specimens—oh, if he could only have sent the specimen—but it was the next best thing—a drawing—you remember how awfully well Jimmy drew—a coloured drawing of a perfectly new slug.”

  Edward’s tone became absolutely ecstatic. He began to rumple up his fair hair, as he always did when he was excited. “I can’t find it in any of the books,” he said, “and they’d never even heard of it at the Natural History Museum. Five yellow bands on a black ground—what do you think of that?

  “I should say it was Jimmy, larking,” murmured David, getting the door open and departing hastily, but Edward was a great deal too busy wondering whether the slug ought in justice to be called after Jimmy, or whether he might name it after himself, to notice this ribaldry.

  David Blake came out into a clear September night. The sky was cloudless and the air was still. Presently there would be a moon. David walked down the brightly-lighted High Street, with its familiar shops. Here and there were a few new names, but for the most part he had known them all from childhood. Half-way down the hill he passed the tall grey house which had once had his father’s plate upon the door—the house where David was born. Old Mr. Bull lived there now, his father’s partner once, retired these eighteen months in favour of his nephew, Tom Skeffington. All Market Harford wondered what Dr. Bull could possibly want with a house so much too large for him. He used only half the rooms, and the house had a sadly neglected air, but there were days, and this was one of them, when David, passing, could have sworn that the house had not changed hands at all and that the blind of his mother’s room was lifted a little as he went by. She used to wave to him from that window as he came from school. She wore the diamond ring which David kept locked up in his dispatch-box. Sometimes it caught the light and flashed. David could have sworn that he saw it flash to-night. But the house was all dark and silent. The old days were gone. David walked on.

  At the bottom of the High Street, just before you come to the bridge, he turned up to the right, where a paved path with four stone posts across the entrance came into the High Street at right angles. The path ran along above the river, with a low stone wall to the left, and a row of grey stone houses to the right. Between the wall and the river there were trees, which made a pleasant shade in the summer. Now they were losing their leaves. David opened the door of the seventh house with his latch-key, and went in. That night he dreamed his dream. It was a long time now since he had dreamed it, but it was an old dream—one that recurred from time to time—one that had come to him at intervals for as long as he could remember. And it was always the same—through all the years it never varied—it was always just the same.

  He dreamed that he was standing upon the seashore. It was a wide, low shore, with a long, long stretch of sand that shone like silver under a silver moon. It shone because it was wet, still quite wet from the touch of the tide. The tide was very low. David stood on the shore, and saw the moon go down into the sea. As it went down it changed slowly. It became golden, and the sand turned golden too. A wind began to blow in from the sea. A wind from the west—a wind that was strong, and yet very gentle. At the edge of the sea there stood a woman, with long, floating hair and a long floating dress. She stood between David and the golden moon, and the wind blew out her dress and her long floating hair. But David never saw her face. Always he longed to see her face, but he never saw it. He stood upon the shore and could not move to go to her. When he was a boy he used to walk in his sleep in the nights when he had this dream. Once he was awakened by the touch of cold stones under his bare feet. And there he stood, just as he had come from bed, on the wet door-step, with the front door open behind him. After that he locked his door. Now he walked in his sleep no longer, and it was more than a year since he had dreamed the dream at all, but to-night it came to him again.

  CHAPTER III

  DEAD MEN’S SHOES

  There’s many a weary game to be played

  With never a penny to choose,

  But the weariest game in all the world

  Is waiting for dead men’s shoes.

  IT was about a week later that Edward Mottisfont rang David Blake up on the telephone and begged him in agitated accents, to come to Mr. Mottisfont without delay.

  “It’s another attack—a very bad one,” said Edward in the hall. His voice shook a little, and he seemed very nervous. David thought it was certainly a bad attack. He also thought it a strange one. The old man was in great pain, and very ill. Elizabeth Chantrey was in the room, but after a glance at his patient, David sent her away. As she went she made a movement to take up an empty cup which stood on the small table beside the bed, and old Mr. Edward Mottisfont fairly snapped at her.

  “Leave it, will you—I’ve stopped Edward taking it twice. Leave it, I say!”

  Elizabeth went out without a word, and Mr. Mottisfont caught David’s wrist in a shaky grip.

  “D’ you know why I wouldn’t let her take that cup? D’ you know why?”

  “No, sir—”

  Old Mr. Mottisfont’s voice dropped to a thread. He was panting a little.

  “I was all right till I drank that damned tea, David,” he said, “and Edward brought it to me—
Edward—”

  “Come, sir—come—” said David gently. He was really fond of this queer old man, and he was distressed for him.

  “David, you won’t let him give me things—you’ll look to it. Look in the cup. I wouldn’t let ’em take the cup—there’s dregs. Look at ’em, David.”

  David took up the cup and walked to the window. About a tablespoonful of cold tea remained. David tilted the cup, then became suddenly attentive. That small remainder of cold tea with the little skim of cream upon it had suddenly become of absorbing interest. David tilted the cup still more. The tea made a little pool on one side of it, and all across the bottom of the cup a thick white sediment drained slowly down into the pool. It was such a sediment as is left by very chalky water. But all the water of Market Harford is as soft as rain-water. It is not only chalk that makes a sediment like that. Arsenic makes one, too. David put down the cup quickly. He opened the door and went out into the passage. From the far end Elizabeth Chantrey came to meet him, and he gave her a hastily scribbled note for the chemist, and asked her for one or two things that were in the house. When he came back into Mr. Mottisfont’s room he went straight to the wash-stand, took up a small glass bottle labeled ipecacuanha wine and spent two or three minutes in washing it thoroughly. Then he poured into it very carefully the contents of the cup. He did all this in total silence, and in a very quiet and business-like manner.

  Old Mr. Edward Mottisfont lay on his right side and watched him. His face was twisted with pain, and there was a dampness upon his brow, but his eyes followed every motion that David made and noted every look upon his face. They were intent—alive—observant. Whilst David stood by the wash-stand, with his back towards the bed, old Mr. Edward Mottisfont’s lips twisted themselves into an odd smile. A gleam of sardonic humour danced for a moment in the watching eyes. When David put down the bottle and came over to the bed, the gleam was gone, and there was only pain—great pain—in the old, restless face. There was a knock at the door, and Elizabeth Chantrey came in.