“What rot,” was David's comment, “but if I felt like that, I jolly well know I 'd knock the brute on the head.”
“Would you?” said Edward, and that was all that had passed. Only, when a week later Pellico's dog was poisoned, David was filled with righteous indignation. He stormed at Edward.
“You did it-you know you did it. You did it with some of that beastly bug-killing stuff that you keep knocking about.”
Edward was pale, but there was an odd gleam of triumph in the eyes that met David's.
“Well, you said you 'd do for him-you said it yourself. So then I just did it.”
David stared at him with all a schoolboy's crude condemnation of something that was “not the game.”
“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 did n'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 does n'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 does n'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 is n'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. Is n'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 would n'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.