“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.
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, but 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 did n'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 did n't exactly cheer him up,” he said. “He is n't as set on living as all that comes to.”
Edward appeared to be rather struck by this statement.
“Is n'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.