The Fire Within

CHAPTER XIX. THE FULL MOON

THEY dined with Edward and Mary next day. The centipedes were still immured, and Edward made tentative overtures to David on the subject of broaching the case after dinner.

“Edward is the soul of hospitality,” David said afterwards. “He keeps his best to the end. First a positively good dinner, then some comparatively enjoyable music, and, last of all, the superlatively enthralling centipedes.”

At the time, he complied with a very good grace. He even contrived a respectable degree of enthusiasm when the subject came up.

It was Mary who insisted on the comparatively agreeable music.

“No-I will not have you two going off by yourselves the moment you 've swallowed your dinner. It 's not good for people. Edward will certainly have indigestion-yes, Edward, you know you will. Come and have coffee with us in a proper and decent fashion, and we 'll have some music, and then you shall do anything you like, and I 'll talk to Elizabeth.”

Edward sang only one song, and then said that he was hoarse, which was not true. But Elizabeth was glad when the door closed upon him and David, for the song Edward had sung was the one thing on earth which she felt least able to hear. He sang, O Moon of my Delight, transposed by Mary to suit his voice, and he sang it with his usual tuneful correctness.

Elizabeth looked up only once, and that was just at the end. David was looking at her with a frown of perplexity. But as Edward remarked that he was hoarse, David passed his hand across his eyes for a moment, as if to brush something away, and rose with alacrity to leave the room.

When they were gone Mary drew a chair close to her sister and sat down. She was rather silent for a time, and Elizabeth was beginning to find it hard to keep her own thoughts at bay, when Mary said in a new, gentle voice:

“Liz, I 'm so happy.”

“Are you, Molly?” She spoke rather absently, and Mary became softly offended.

“Don't you want to know why, Liz? I don't believe you care a bit. I don't believe you 'd mind if I were ever so miserable, now that you 've got David, and are happy yourself!”

Elizabeth came back to her surroundings.

“Oh, Molly, what a goose you are, and what a monster you make me out. What is it, Mollykins, tell me?”

“I 've a great mind not to. I don't believe you really care. I would n't tell you a word, only I can't help it. Oh, Liz, I 'm going to have a baby, and I thought I never should. I was making myself wretched about it.”

She caught Elizabeth 's hand and squeezed it.

“Oh, Liz, be glad for me. I 'm so glad and happy, and I want some one to be glad too. You don't know how I 've wanted it. No one knows. I 've simply hated all the people in the Morning Post who had babies. I 've not even read the first column for weeks, and when Sybil Delamere sent me an invitation to her baby's christening-she was married the same day I was, you know-I just tore it up and burnt it. And now it 's really coming to me, and you 're to be glad for me, Liz.”

“Molly, darling, I am glad-so glad.”

“Really?”

Mary looked up into her sister's face, searchingly.

“You 're thinking of me, really of me-not about David, as you were just now? Oh, yes, I knew.”

Elizabeth laughed.

“Really, Molly, may n't I think of my own husband?”

“Not when I 'm telling you about a thing like this,” said Mary. “Liz, you are the first person I have told, the very first.”

Elizabeth did not allow her thoughts to wander again. As they talked, the rain beat heavily against the windows, and they heard the rush of it in the gutters below.

“What a pity,” Mary cried. “How quickly it has come up, and last night was so lovely. Did you see the moon? And to-night it is full.”

“Yes, to-night it is full,” said Elizabeth.

Edward and Mary came down to see their guests off. Edward shut the door behind them.

“What a night!” he exclaimed. But Mary came close and whispered:

“I 've told her.”

“Have you?”

Edward's tone was just the least shade perfunctory. He slid home the bolt of the door and turning, caught Mary in his arms and hugged her.

“O Mary, darling!“

Mary glowed, responsive.

“O Mary, darling, it really is a new spider,” he cried.

David and Elizabeth walked home in a steady downpour. Mary had lent her overshoes, and she had tucked up her dress under a mackintosh of Edward's. There was much merriment over their departure with a large umbrella between them, but as they walked home, they both grew silent. Elizabeth said good-night in the hall, and ran up to her room. To-night he would not come. Oh, to-night she felt quite sure that he would not come. It was dark. She heard the rain falling into the river, and she could just see how the trees bent in the rush of it. And yet she sat for an hour, by her window, in the dark, waiting breathlessly for that which would not happen.

The time went slowly by. The rain fell, and it was cold. Elizabeth lay down in the great square bed, and presently she slept, lulled by the steady dropping of the rain. She slept, and in her sleep she dreamed that she was sinking fathoms deep in a stormy, angry sea. Far overhead, she could hear the clash of the waves, and the long, long sullen roar of the swelling storm. And she went down and down into a black darkness that was deeper than any night-down, till she lost the roar of the storm above, down until all sound was gone, and she was alone in a black silence that would never lift or break again. Her soul was cold and blind, and most unendurably alone. Then something touched her, something that was warm. There came upon her that strange sense of home-coming, which comes to us in dreams, when love comes back to us across the sundering years, and all the pains of life, the pains of death, vanish and are gone, and we are come home-home to the place where we would be.

In her dream Elizabeth was come home. It was so long, so long, that she had wandered-so many years, so many lands-such weary feet and such a weary way. Now she was come home.

She stirred and opened her eyes. The rain had ceased. The room was dark, but the moon shone, for a single shaft struck between the curtains and lay above the bed like a silver feather dropped from some great passing wing.

Elizabeth was awake. She saw these things. She was come home. David's arms were about her in the darkness.