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Title: The star dreamer: A romance
Author: Castle, Agnes, Castle, Egerton
Language: English
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THE STAR DREAMER
BY THE SAME AUTHORS
_By Egerton Castle_
YOUNG APRIL
THE LIGHT OF SCARTHEY
MARSHFIELD THE OBSERVER
CONSEQUENCES
ENGLISH BOOK-PLATES—Ancient and Modern (_Illustrated_)
SCHOOLS AND MASTERS OF FENCE. A History of the Art of the
Sword from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century.
(_Illustrated_)
THE JERNINGHAM LETTERS. (_With Portraits_)
LE ROMAN DU PRINCE OTHON. A rendering in French of R. L.
Stevenson’s PRINCE OTTO.
_By Agnes and Egerton Castle_
THE PRIDE OF JENNICO
THE BATH COMEDY
THE HOUSE OF ROMANCE
THE SECRET ORCHARD
THE STAR DREAMER
INCOMPARABLE BELLAIRS. (_In the Press_)
[Illustration:
THE HERB-GARDEN
_An ancient gateway, looking as though it were closed forever ... and,
through the bars, the wild, imprisoned garden...._
]
THE STAR DREAMER
_A ROMANCE_
BY
AGNES AND EGERTON CASTLE
_Authors of_
“THE PRIDE OF JENNICO,” “YOUNG APRIL,” “THE SECRET ORCHARD,” “THE HOUSE
OF ROMANCE,” “THE BATH COMEDY,” ETC.
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT, 1903,
BY EGERTON CASTLE.
_All rights reserved._
PUBLISHED IN JANUARY, 1903.
Press of
Braunworth & Co.
Bookbinders and Printers
Brooklyn, N. Y.
TO
LADY STANLEY
(DOROTHY TENNANT)
HERSELF SO GRACIOUS AN IMPERSONATION OF GIFTED AND GENEROUS WOMANHOOD,
THIS STORY OF A WOMAN’S INFLUENCE IS DEDICATED, IN ESTEEM, SYMPATHY, AND
FRIENDSHIP, BY THE AUTHORS
CONTENTS
THE ARGUMENT, vii
INTRODUCTORY, ix
BOOK I.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. FAIR, YOUNG CAPABLE HANDS, 3
II. A MASS OF SELFISHNESS, 13
III. RUSTLING LEAVES OF MEMORY, 18
IV. BACK AT A NEW DOOR OF LIFE, 24
V. QUENCHLESS STARS ELOQUENT, 34
VI. EYES, BLUE AS HIS STAR, 40
VII. NEW ROADS UNFOLDING, 50
VIII. WARM HEART, SUPERFLUOUS WISDOM, 56
IX. HEALING HERBS, WARNING TEXTS, 66
X. COMPACT AND ACCEPTANCE, 73
XI. LAYING THE GHOSTS, 83
XII. A KINDLY EPICURE, 92
BOOK II.
I. MIDSUMMER SUNRISE, 105
II. _EUPHROSINE_, STAR-OF-COMFORT, 109
III. A QUEEN OF CURDS AND CREAM, 120
IV. OPEN-EYED CONSPIRACY, 127
V. EVIL PROMPTER, JEALOUSY, 138
VI. THE PERFECT ROSE, DROOPING, 150
VII. NODS AND WREATHÉD SMILES, 157
VIII. A GREY GOWN AND RED ROSES, 164
IX. A RIDER INTO BATH, 174
BOOK III.
I. THE LITTLE MASTER OF BINDON, 181
II. TOTTERING LIFE AND FORTUNE, 188
III. STRAWS ON THE WIND, 195
IV. A SHOCK AND A REVELATION, 200
V. SILENT NIGHT THE REFUGE, 207
VI. THE LUST OF RENUNCIATION, 215
VII. SHADOWS OF THE HEART OF YOUTH, 224
VIII. THE HERB EUPHROSINE, 232
IX. AN OMINOUS JINGLE, 239
X. A VAGUE DESPERATE SCHEME, 245
XI. A PARLOUR OF PERFUME, 252
XII. TO SLEEP—PERCHANCE TO DREAM! 262
XIII. THOU CANST NOT SAY I DID IT, 274
XIV. JEALOUS WATCHERS OF THE NIGHT, 285
XV. A SIMPLER’S EUTHANASIA, 294
XVI. THE TIME IS OUT OF JOINT, 297
XVII. TREACHERIES OF SILENCE, 311
XVIII. GONE LIKE A DREAM, 319
XIX. GREY DEPARTURE, 331
BOOK IV.
I. AH ME, THE MIGHT-HAVE-BEEN! 341
II. A MESSENGER OF GLAD TIDINGS, 350
III. NOT WORDS, BUT HANDS MEETING, 359
IV. A DREAM OF WOODS AND OF LOVE, 367
THE ARGUMENT
I have clung
To nothing, lov’d a nothing, nothing seen
Or felt but a great dream! O I have been
Presumptuous against love, against the sky,
Against all elements, against the tie
Of mortals each to each....
... Against his proper glory
Has my soul conspired; so my story
Will I to children utter, and repent.
There never lived a mortal man, who bent
His appetite beyond his natural sphere
But starv’d and died....
Here will I kneel, for thou redeemest hast
My life from too thin breathing: gone and past
Are cloudy phantasms!
—KEATS.
INTRODUCTORY
CONCERNING BINDON-CHEVERAL.
_An ancient gateway, looking as though it were closed for ever; with its
carved stone pillar bramble-grown, its scrolled ironwork yielded to
silence and immobility, to crumbling rust—and through the bars the wild
imprisoned garden...._
_The haunting of the locked door, of the condemned apartment in a house
of life and prosperity, how unfailingly it appeals to the romantic
fibre! Yet, more suggestive still, in the heart of a rich and trim
estate, is the forbidden garden jealously walled, sternly abandoned,
weed-invaded, falling (and seemingly conscious of its own doom) into a
rank desolation. The hidden room is enigmatic enough, but how stirring
to the fancy this peep of condemned ground, descried through bars of
such graceful design as could only have been once conceived for the
portals of a garden of delight!—Thus stands, in the midst of the
nurtured pleasaunces of Bindon-Cheveral, the curvetting iron gate
leading to the close known on the estate as the Garden of Herbs—a place
of mystery always, as reported by tradition; and, by the legend touching
certain events in the life of one of its owners, a place of somewhat
sinister repute. Even in the eyes of the casual visitor it has all the
air of_
_Some complaining dim retreat
For fear and melancholy meet._
_And in truth_ (_being fain to pursue the quotation further_)
_I blame them not
Whose fancy in this lonely spot
Was moved._
_Ancient haunts of men have numberless tongues for those who know how to
hear them speak; therein lies the whole secret of the fascination that
they cast, even upon the uninitiated. Those, on the other hand, whose
minds are attuned to the sweetness of “unheard melodies” turn to such
places of long descent with the joy of the lover towards his bridal
chamber, for the wedding of fantasy with truth. Divers, indeed, and
many, might be the tales which the walls of Bindon-Cheveral could tell,
from what remains of its old battlements to the present mansion._
_Its front, which the passer-by upon the turnpike-road may in leafless
winter-time descry at the end of the long avenue of elms, has the
peaceful and rich stateliness of the Jacobean country seat—but there is
scarce a stone of its grey masonry, with its wide mullioned windows, its
terrace balustrades and garden stairways, that has not once been piled
to the arrogant height from which the Bindon Castle of stark Edward’s
times looked down upon the country-side. The towers and walls are gone;
but the keep still stands, sleeping now and shrouded under centuries of
ivy—a kindly massive prop to the younger house, its descendant. The
ornamental waters were once defensive moats: red they have turned with
other than the sunset glow, and secretly they have rippled to different
causes than the casting of a careless stone or the leap of the great fat
carp after a bait. Where the pleasure-grounds are now stretched in
formal Italian pride spread, centuries back, the outer bailey of the
once famous, now forgotten, stronghold._
_Stirring would be the Romance of old Bindon I could recount, as old
Bindon revealed it to me—many the tales of love, of deeds, of hatred, of
ambition. I could tell brave things of the builder of the Castle, and
how he held the keep in defiance of Longshanks’ royal displeasure; or of
the Walter, Lord of Bindon, Knight of the Garter, High Treasurer to the
last Lancaster, and of his fortunes between the Two Roses; or yet of his
grandson, beheaded after Hexham; and, under Richard Crookback, of the
transfer of the good lands of Bindon to the “Jockey of Norfolk” who
perished on Bosworth Field.—And these would be tales of clash of steel
and waving banner as well as of wily diplomacy. Great figures would
stalk across my page; it would be shot with scarlet and gold, royal
colours; and high fortunes, those of England herself, would be mingled
with the lesser doings of knight and baron._
_I could set forth the truth touching some of those inner tragedies, now
legendary, that the warlike walls once witnessed after the first Tudor
had restored the estate of Bindon to the last descendant of its rightful
owner, a Cheveral, whereby the line of Bindon-Cheveral joined on the
older branch.—There was the Agnes Cheveral of the ballad singers—“so
false and fair”—who left the tradition of poison in the wine cup as a
fate to be dreaded by the Lords of Bindon.—And there was the Sir Richard
who kept his childless wife a life-long prisoner in the topmost chamber
of that keep now so placidly dreaming under its creepers!_
_Or I could reel you a bustling Restoration narrative of the doing of
the Edmund Cheveral known in the family as Edmund the Spendthrift, who
had roamed England, hunted and fasting, with Charles; had stagnated with
him, had junketed and roystered in Holland. He it was who brought over
the shrewish little French wife and her great fortune, and also foreign
notions of display, to old English Bindon. He it was who pulled down the
gloomy loopholed walls, built the present House, laid out the park and
the renowned gardens; who introduced the carp into the pacific moat
after the fashion of French châteaux; and who, bitten with fanciful
scientific aspiration—a friend of Rupert and a member of the Royal
Society—laid out in a sunken and wall-sheltered part of the old
fortified ground an inner pleasaunce of exotic plants and shrubs, after
the manner of Dutch Physick-Gardens._
_Or would you have the story of the new heir—a silent, dark man—and of
his mystic Welsh wife and of the new wealth and strain of blood that
came with her into the race? Or again, no doubt for those who care to
hear the call of horn and hounds, to see the port pass over the
mahogany; who find your three-bottle man the best company and the jokes
of the stable and of the gun-room the only ones worth cracking with the
walnut, there were a pleasant rollicking chapter or two to be chronicled
anent the generation of fox-hunting, hard-living Squires who kept Bindon
prosperous, made its cellars celebrated and its hospitality a byword._
_And yet, my fancy lingers upon the spot where it was first awakened;
dwells on the story of the deserted Physick-Garden, with its closed
exquisitely-wrought gate, its mystery and its melancholy; with its
wildness wherein lies no hint of sordidness, but rather a fascinating,
elusive beauty. It is of this that I fain would write._
_Standing barred out, in this still autumn twilight, as the first stars
flash out faintly on the deepening vault; gazing upon its overgrown
paths, where the leaves of so many summers make rich mould; inhaling its
strange fragrances, the scent of the wholesome decay of nature mixed
with odd spices that come from far lands; hearing the wild birds cry as
they fly free in its imprisoned space—it seems to me as if the spirit of
my romance dwelt in these, and I could evoke it._
_A tale of well-nigh a century ago; when George III. lay dying.—It was a
strangely silent Bindon then; and the whole house seemed to lie under
much such a spell as now holds its Herb-Garden. Yet those same garden
paths, if wild, were not deserted; and the gate, though locked to the
world at large, still rolled upon its hinges for one or two who had the
key._
_In those days of slow journeys and quick adventure, had you been a
traveller on the turnpike-road between Devizes and Bath, you could not,
looking over the park wall from your high seat, but have been struck by
the brooding, solitary look that lay all upon this great House, with its
shuttered windows and upon these wide lands, so rich, yet so lonely._
_The driver of the coach would, no doubt, have pointed with his whip;
his tongue would have been ready to wag—was not Bindon one of the
wonders of his road?_
“_Aye, you might well say it looked strange! There were odd stories
about the place, and odd folk living there, if all folk said were true.
The owner, Sir David Cheveral (as good blood as any in the county, and
once as likely a young man as one could wish to see), had turned crazy
with staring at the stars and took no bit nor sup but plain bread and
water. That was what some said; and others that he was bewitched by an
old kinsman of his that lived with him—an old, old man, bearded like a
Jew, who could not die, and who practised spell-work on the village
folk. That was what others said. Anyhow, they two lived in there quite
alone; one on his tower, the other underground. And that was true. And
the flowers bloomed in the garden, and the fruit ripened on the walls;
there were horses in the stables and cattle in the byres (the like of
which could not be bettered in Wiltshire); the whole place was flowing
with milk and honey, as they say, and the only ones to use it all were
the servants! Oh, there the servants grew fat and did well, while the
master looked up to the skies and grew lean._”
_And presently, to the sound of your driver’s jovial laugh the coach
would bowl clear of the long grey walls, emerge from under the
overhanging branches; and then the well-known stretch of superb scenery
suddenly revealed at the bend of the road would perhaps so engross your
attention that your transient traveller’s interest in the eccentric,
world-forsaking master of Bindon-Cheveral would no doubt have
evaporated._
_But pray you who travel with me to-day give me longer patience. I have
to tell the story of Bindon’s awakening._
THE STAR DREAMER
BOOK I
Thy soul was like a star and dwelt apart.
WORDSWORTH (_Sonnets_).
THE STAR DREAMER
CHAPTER I
FAIR, YOUNG, CAPABLE HANDS
Alone and forgotten, absolutely free,
His happy time he spends, the works of God to see
In those wonderful herbs which here in plenty grow,
Whose sundry strange effects he only seeks to know,
And choicely sorts his simples got abroad,
And dreams of the All-Heal that is still on the road....
—DRAYTON (_Polyolbion_).
On that evening of the autumnal equinox Master Simon Rickart—the simpler
or the student as he liked to call himself, the alchemist as many held
him to be—alone, save for the company of his cat, in his laboratory at
the foot of the keep, was luxuriating as usual in his work of research.
The black cat sat by the wood fire and watched the man.
As Master Simon moved to and fro, the topaz eyes followed him. When he
spoke (which he constantly did to himself, under his voice and
disjointedly, after the wont of some solitary old people) they became
narrowed into slits of cunning intelligence. But when the observations
were personally addressed to his Catship, Belphegor blinked in
comfortable acknowledgment. “As wise as Master Simon himself,” the
country folk vowed: and indeed, wherever the fame of the alchemist had
spread through the country-side, so had that of the alchemist’s cat.
There were two fires in the laboratory. One of timber, that roared and
crackled its life away and sank into an ever increasing heap of fair
white ash. In the vault-like room this fire burned year in year out on a
hearth hewn many feet into the deep wall; and from many points of view
Belphegor found it vastly more satisfactory than the other fire, which
generally engrossed the best of his master’s attention. That was a
stealthy red glow, nurtured on a wide stove built into another wall
recess, sheltered behind a glass screen under a tall hood:—a fire
productive of the strangest smells, at times evil, but as often sweet
and aromatic: a fire also productive on occasions of coloured vapours
and dancing flamelets of suspicious nature. There, as the cat knew,
happened now and again unexpected ebullitions, disastrous alike to the
nerves and to the fur. In his kitten days, Belphegor, led ostensibly by
overpowering affection but really by the constitutional curiosity of his
genus, had been wont to accompany his chosen master behind the screen.
He knew better now. And there was a bald spot near the end of his tail,
where no amount of licking on his part, no cunning unguent of Master
Simon’s himself could to this day induce a hair to grow again.
The old man had closed the door of the stove; rearranged, crown-like, a
set of glass vessels of engaging shapes: alembics and matrasses, filled
with decoctions of green and amber, gorgeous colours shot with the red
reflection of the fire; tucked a baby-small porcelain crucible in its
fireclay cradle and banked the glowing cinders around it. The touch of
the wrinkled hands was neat, almost caressing. After a last look around,
he emerged, blowing a breath of content:
“Everything in good trim, so far, for to-night’s work, my cat.”
And Belphegor blinked both eyes.
Faint vapours, herb-scented, voluptuous, rose and circled to the groined
roof. The log fire on the hearth had fallen to red stillness. In the
silence, delicate sounds of bubbling and simmering, little songs in
different keys, gurgles as of fairy laughter, became audible.
“Hark to it!” said the simpler, and bent his ear with a smile of
satisfaction. He spoke in a monotonous undertone, not unlike the
muttering of the sleep-walker—“Hark to it! There is a concert for
you—new tunes to-night, Belphegor. Strange, delightful! There is not a
little plant but has its own voice, its own soul-song. Hark, how they
yield them up! Good little souls! Bad little souls, some of them, he,
he! Enough in that retort yonder to make helpless idiots, or dead flesh
of a hundred lusty men. Dead flesh of eleven such fine cats as yourself
and one kitten, he, he! Yet—for properly directed, friend Belphegor,
vice may become virtue—enough here to keep the fever from the homestead
for three generations....”
The old man moved noiselessly in his slippers across the stone floor,
flung a couple of fresh logs on the sinking hearth, then stretched out
his frail hands to the blaze and laughed gently. The flame light played
fantastically on his shrunken figure:—a being, it would seem, so
ætherealised that it scarcely looked as if blood could still be
circulating beneath that skin, like yellow ivory, tensely stretched over
the vast, denuded forehead and the bold, high-featured face. Mind alone,
one would have thought, must animate that emaciated body; mind alone
light up those steel-blue eyes with such keenness that, by contrast with
the age-stricken countenance, they shone with almost unearthly vitality.
The cat stretched himself, yawned; then advanced, humping his back and
bristling, to rub himself against his master’s legs. The fire roared
again in the chimney, a score of greedy tongues licking up the last
drops of sap that oozed forth, hissing, from the beech logs.
“Aha,” said Master Simon, bending down somewhat painfully to give a
scratch to the animal’s neck, “that’s the fire-song you prefer. I fear,
I fear, Belphegor, you will never rise beyond the grossest everyday
materialism!”
Purring Belphegor endorsed the opinion by curling up luxuriously on his
head and stretching out his hind paws to the flame. The little scene was
an allegory of peace and comfort. The old man, straightening himself,
remained awhile musing:
“Well, it is good music—a song of the people. All of the stout woods of
Bindon, of the deep English earth, of the salt English airs. No subtle
virtue in it: a roaring good tune, a homely smell and a heap of ash
behind—but all clean, my cat, clean!”
He gathered the folds of his dressing-gown around him; a garment that
had once been wondrous fine and set in fashion (in the days of his
elegant youth) by no less a person than his present Majesty, King George
IV., but now so stained, so singed and scorched and generally faded,
that its original hues were but things of memory.
“And now we shall have a quiet hour before supper. What a good thing, my
cat, that neither you nor I are attractive to company! The original man
was created to be alone. But the fool could not appreciate his bliss,
and so he was given a companion—a woman, Belphegor, a woman!—and
Paradise was lost.”
Again Master Simon chuckled. It was a sound of ineffable content,
weirdly escaping through the nostrils above compressed lips. He took up
a lighted candle, stepped carefully over the cat and, selecting between
his fingers a key from a bunch at his girdle, approached a wooden press
that cut off an angle of the room.
This was built of heavily carved black oak, secured with sturdy iron
hinges; had high double doors and small peeping keyholes, suggestive of
much cunning. It was a press to receive and keep secrets. And yet, when
the panels were thrown open, nothing of more formidable nature was
displayed than rows upon rows of inner drawers and shelves, the latter
covered some with philosophical instruments, others displaying piles of
neatly ticketed boxes, ranks of phials, and sealed tubes of various
liquids or crystals that flashed in the light with prismatic
scintillation.
Holding the candle above his head the old man selected:
“The box of Moorish powder from Tangiers—the bottle of Java Water—the
paste of _Cannabis Arabiensis_—the _Hippomane Mancenilla_ gum of
Yucatan.”
He placed the materials on a glass tray and carried them over to the
working table.
“Excellent Captain Trevor! The simple fellow has never done thanking me
for curing him of his West Coast fever with a course of _Herba
Betonica_; he, he! the common, ignored, humble Wood Betony. Thanking
me—he, he! Never did a pinch of powder bring better interest...! Oh, my
cat, I’m a mass of selfishness! And here I have at last the Java Water
and the Yucatan gum!”
The cat roused himself, walked sedately but circuitously across the
room, leaped up and took his position with feet and tail well tucked in
on the bare space left, by right of custom, where the warmth of the lamp
should comfort his back.
On Master Simon’s table lay a row of small covered watch-glasses, thin
as films, each containing a small heap of some greenish crystalline
powder. A pair of chemical scales held out slender arms within the walls
of its glass case. The neat array looked inviting.
With a noise as of rustling parchment the simpler rubbed his hands; he
was in high good humour. The tall clock at the end of the room wheezed
out the ghost of nine beats, and the strangled sounds seemed but to
point the depth of the environing silence. For the thick walls kept out
all the voices of nature, and at all times enwrapt the underground room
with a solemn stillness that gave prominence to its whispers of secret
doings.
“Nine o’clock!” muttered the self-communer. “Another hour’s peace before
even Barnaby break in upon us with his supper tray. Hey, but this is a
good hour! This is luxury. I feel positively abandoned! Not a soul in
this whole wing of Bindon, save you and me—unless we reckon our good
star-dreamer above—good youth with his head in the clouds. Heigh ho, men
are mostly fools, and all women! Therefore wisely did I choose my only
familiar—thou prince of reliable confidants.”
The man stretched out his hand and caressed the beast’s round head.
Belphegor tilted his chin to lead the scratching finger to its favourite
spot.
“Hey, but man must speak—it is part of his incomplete nature—were it
only to put order in his ideas, to marshall them without tripping hurry.
And you neither argue nor contradict, nor give a fool’s acquiescence.
You listen and are silent. Wise cat! Now, men are mostly fools ... and
all women!”
Master Simon lifted the phial of Java Water, a fluid of opalescent pink,
between his eye and the light. He removed the stopper and sniffed at it.
Then compared the fragrance with that of the Moorish powders, and became
absorbed in thought. At one moment he seemed, absently, on the point of
comparing the tastes in the same manner, but paused.
“No, sir, not to-night,” he murmured. “We must keep our brain clear, our
hand steady. But it will be an experiment of quite unusual
interest—quite unusual.... I am convinced the essential components are
the same.—Belphegor! Keep your nozzle off that gallipot! Do you not
dream enough as it is?”
He pushed the turn-back cuffs still further from his attenuated wrists,
and with infinite precaution addressed himself to the manipulation of
his watch-glasses, silver pincers and scales: the final stage of
weighing and apportioning the result of an analytical experiment of
already long standing was at hand.
His great white eyebrows contracted. Now, bending close, he held his
breath to watch the swing of the delicate balance; now with fevered
fingers he jotted notes and figures. At times a snapping hand, a
clacking tongue, proclaimed dissatisfaction; but presently, widening his
eyes and moistening his lips, he started upon a fresh clue with renewed
gusto.
The clock had ticked and jerked its way through the better part of the
hour when the weird muttering became once more audible:
“Curious, curious! Yet it works to my theory. Now if these last figures
agree it will be proof. Pshaw, the scales are tired. How they fidget!
Belphegor, my friend, down with you, the smallest vibration would ruin
my week’s work. Down! Now let us see. As seventy-three is to a hundred
and twenty-five ... as seventy-three is to a hundred and twenty-five....
A plague on it!” exclaimed Master Simon pettishly, without looking up.
“There’s that Barnaby, of course in the nick of wrong time!”
The door at the dim end of the room had been opened softly. A puff of
wood smoke had been blown down the chimney. A tiny draught skimmed
across the table; the steady lamplight flickered and cast dancing
shadows; and Master Simon’s tense fingers trembled with irritation.
“All to begin again. Curse you, Barnaby! You’re deaf, I can curse you,
thank Providence!”
Without turning round he made a hasty, forbidding gesture of one hand.
The door was shut as gently as it had been opened.
Master Simon gave a deep sigh, and still fixedly eyeing the scales,
stretched his cramped hands along the table for a moment’s rest.
“Now, now? Ha—Ho—What? Sixty-nine to eighty-two? Impossible! Tchah!
Those scales have the palsy—nay, Simon Rickart, it is your impotent
hand. Old age, old age, my friend ... or stormy youth, alas!” His
muttering whisper rose to louder cadence. “Had you but known then, in
your young folly, the chains you were forging, for your aged wisdom! But
sixty to-day, and this senile trembling! Not a shake of that hand,
Simon, but is paying for the toss of the cup; not a mist in that brain
but is the smoke of wanton, bygone fires. Well vast is the pity of it!
Had you but the hand now of that dreamer up above! Had you but the
virtue of his temperate life! And the fool is staring at his feeble
twinklers ... worshipping the unattainable, while all rich Nature, here
at hand, awaits the explorer. Oh, to feel able to trace Earth mysteries
to the marrow of Man; to hold the six days’ wonder in one single action
of the mind ... and to be foiled at every turn by the trembling of a
finger!”
He leaned back in his chair, long lines of discouragement furrowing his
face.
Behind him, in the silence, barely more audible than the simmering
sounds of the fires and the lembics, there was a stir of another
presence, quiet, but living. But Master Simon, absorbed in his own world
of thought, perceived nothing.
With closed eyes, he made another effort to conquer the rebellious
weakness of the flesh and bring it into proper subjection to the
merciless vigour of the mind. At that moment the one important thing on
earth to the old student was the success of his analysis. And had the
Trump of Doom begun to sound in his ears, his single desire would still
have been to endeavour to conclude it before the final crash.
Light footfalls in the room—not caused by Belphegor’s stealthy paws,
certainly not by Barnaby’s masculine foot—a sound as of the rustle of a
woman’s garments, a sound unprecedented for years in these consecrated
precincts, failed to reach his faculties. Once more he drew his chair
forward, leant his elbows on the table, and, stooping his head so that
eyes and hands were nearly on the same level, set himself to the
exasperatingly delicate task of minute weighing. And the while he
muttered on with a droll effect of giving directions to himself:
“The right rider, half a line to the right. That should do it this time!
Too much—bring it back! Faugh, out of all gear! Too much back now. Fie,
fie, confusion upon my spinal cord—nerves, muscles, and the whole old
fumbling fabric!”
Here, two hands, with unerring swoop like that of an alighting dove,
came out of the dimness on each side of the bent figure, and with cool,
determined touch gently withdrew the old man’s hot and shaking fingers
from their futile task.
Master Simon’s ancient bones shook with a convulsive start; a look of
intense amazement passed into his straining eye, then the faintest shade
of a smile on his lips. But, characteristically, he never turned his
head or otherwise moved: the business at hand was of too high import. He
sat rigid, silently watching.
The interfering hands now became busy for a space with soft unhurried
purpose. Beautiful hands they were, white as ivory outside and
strawberry pink within, taper-fingered and almond-nailed; not too small,
and capable in the least of their movements. Compared to those other
hands that now lay, still trembling in pathetic supineness, where they
had been placed, they were as young shoots, full of vital sap, to the
barren and withered branch. A woman’s warm presence enfolded the
student. A young bosom brushed by his bloodless cheek. A light breath
fanned his temples. A scent as of lavender bushes in the sun, of bean
fields in blossom, of meadowsweet among the new-mown hay; something
indescribably fresh, an out-of-door breath as of English summer, spread
around him, curiously different from the essences of his phials and
stills. But Master Simon had no senses, no thought but for the work
those busy hands were now performing.
“The right rider, to the right, just half a line?” said a voice,
repeating his last words in a tranquil tone. “A line—those little
streaks on the arms are lines?”
Master Simon assented briefly: “Yes.”
The fingers moved.
“Enough, enough!” ordered he. “Now back gently till the needle swings
evenly.”
The pulse of the scales, hitherto leaping like that of a frightened
heart, first steadied itself into regularity and then slowed down into
stillness. The long needle pointed at last to nought. The white hands
hovered a second.
“Not another touch!” faintly screamed the old man.
He craned forward, his body again tense; gazed and muttered, wrote and
rapidly calculated.
“Yes, yes, yes! Seventy-three to a hundred and twenty-five—I was
right—Eureka! The principles of the two are the same. Right! Right!”
Now Simon Rickart, rubbing his hands, turned round delightedly.
CHAPTER II
A MASS OF SELFISHNESS
... Such eyes were in her head;
And so much grace and power, breathing down
From over her arch’d brows, with every turn
Lived thro’ her to the tips of her long hands....
—TENNYSON (_The Princess_).
“Well, Father?”
Master Simon started. His eyes shot a look of searching inquiry at the
young woman who now came round to the side of the high table, and bent
down to bring her fresh face to a level with his.
“Ellinor? Not Ellinor, not my daughter...!” he said.
“Ellinor. The only daughter you ever had. The only child, as far as I
know!”
The tranquil voice had a pleasant, matter-of-fact note. The last words
were pointed merely by a sudden deep dimple at the corner of the lips
that spoke them. But it was trouble, amounting to agitation, that here
took possession of the father. He pushed his chair back from the table,
rubbed his hands through his scant silver locks, tugged at his beard.
“You’ve come on ... on a visit, I suppose?” he said presently, with
hesitation.
“I have come to stay some time—a long time, if I may.”
“But—Marvel, but your husband?”
“Dead.”
The dimple disappeared, but the voice was quite unaltered. She had not
shifted her position.
“Dead?” echoed Master Simon. His eyes travelled wonderingly from her
black stuff gown—a widow’s gown indeed—to the head with its unwidow-like
crown of hair; to the face so youthful, so curiously serene, so
unmournful.
Her hands were lightly clasped under the pointed white chin. Here the
father’s eyes rested; and from the chaos of his disturbed mind the last
element of his surprise struggled to the surface and formulated itself
into another question:
“Where is your wedding ring?”
“I took it off.”
Ellinor Marvel straightened her figure.
“Father,” she said, “we have always seen very little of each other, but
I know you spend your life as a searcher after truth. Since we are now,
as I hope, to live together, you will be glad to take notice from the
first that I have at least one virtue: I am a truthful woman. It will
save a good deal of explanation if I tell you now that, when the coach
crossed the bridge this evening and I threw into the waters of the Avon
the gold ring I had worn for ten miserable years, I said: ‘Thank God!’”
Simon Rickart took a stumbling turn up and down the room: his daughter
stood watching him, motionless. Then he halted before her and broke into
a protest, by turns incoherent, testy, and plaintive.
“Come to stay—stay a long time! But, this is folly! We’ve no women here,
child, except the servants. David wants no women about him. I don’t want
any women about me! There’s not been a petticoat in this room since you
were last here yourself. And that, that’s ten years ago. You will be
very uncomfortable. You have no kind of an idea of what sort of
existence you are proposing to yourself. I am a mass of selfishness. I
should make your life a burden to you. Be reasonable, my dear! I am a
very old man. Pooh, pooh, I won’t allow it! You must go elsewhere. Hey,
what?”
“I cannot go elsewhere, I have no money.”
“No money! But Marvel! But the fortune I gave you? Tut, tut, what folly
is this now?”
“Gone, gone—and more! He would have died in the Fleet had we not escaped
abroad. The guineas I have now in my purse are the last I own in the
world. All my other worldly goods are in the couple of trunks now in the
passage.” She stopped, and remained awhile silent, then in a lower voice
and slowly: “Look at me, father,” she added, “can I live alone?”
He looked as he was bidden. He, the man who had not always been a
recluse, the whilom man of the world who in older years had taken study
as a hobby, the man of bygone pleasures, appraised her ripe woman’s
beauty with rapid discrimination. Then into the father’s eyes there
sprang a gleam of something like pride—pride of such a daughter—a light
of remembrance, a struggling tenderness. The next moment the worn lids
fell and the old man stood ashamed:
“I beg your pardon, my dear,” he said, gravely, and sank into his chair.
She came round and looked down at him a moment smiling.
“You never heard me walk all about the room,” she said, “I have a light
tread. And I’ll always wear stuff dresses here.” Then, more coaxingly:
“I don’t think you’ll find me much in the way, father. I’ve got good
eyes, I am remarkably intelligent”—she paused a second and, thrusting
out her hands under his brooding gaze, added with a soft laugh: “And you
know I’ve steady hands!”
He stared at the pretty white things. Faintly he murmured:
“But I’m a mass of selfishness!”
“Then I’ll be the more useful to you!” she cried gaily and laid first
her cool, young cheek, then her warm, young lips upon his forehead.
The sap was not yet dead in the old branch, after all. Master Simon’s
body had not become the mere thinking machine he fain would have made
it. There was blood enough still in his old veins to answer to the call
of its own. Memories, tender, remorseful, all human, were still lurking
in forgotten corners of a brain consecrated, he fancied, wholly to
Science; memories which now awoke and clamoured. Slowly he stretched out
his hand and touched his daughter’s cheek.
“Poor child!”
Ellinor Marvel now drew back quietly. Master Simon passed a finger
across his eyes and muttered that their light was getting dim.
“The lamp wants trimming,” she said, and proceeded to do it with that
calm diligence of hers that made her activity seem almost like repose.
But she knew well enough that neither sight nor lamp was failing; and
she felt her home-coming sanctioned.
At this point something black and stealthy began to circle irregularly
round her skirts, tipping them with hardly tangible brush, while a vague
whirring as of a spinning-wheel arose in the air. She stepped back: the
thing followed her and seemed to swell larger and larger, while the
whirrs became as it were multiplied and punctuated by an occasional
catch like the click of clockwork.
“Why, look father!”
There was a gay note in her voice. Master Simon looked, and amazement
was writ upon his learned countenance.
“Belphegor likes you!” he exclaimed, pulling at his beard. “Singular,
most singular! I have never known the creature tolerate anyone’s touch
but my own or Barnaby’s.”
Hardly were the words spoken when, with a magnificent bound, Belphegor
rose from the floor and alighted upon her shoulder—at the exact place he
had selected between the white column of the throat and the spring of
the arm—and instantly folded himself in comfort, his great tail sweeping
her back to and fro, his head caressing her cheek with the touch of a
butterfly’s wing, his enigmatic eyes fixed the while upon his master.
Ellinor laughed aloud, and presently the sound of Master Simon’s nasal
chuckle came into chorus. He rubbed his hands; he was extraordinarily
pleased, though quite unaware of it himself.
Ellinor sat on the arm of his winged elbow-chair—his “Considering
Chair,” as he was wont to describe it—and looked around smiling.
“Still at the same studies, father? How sweet it smells in this room! It
looks smaller than I remember it. I once thought it was as big as a
cathedral. But I myself felt smaller then. How long ago it seems! And
what is that discovery that I came just in time for?”
Master Rickart engaged willingly enough in the track of that pleasant
thought.
“Why, my dear, simply that an old surmise of mine was right. Ha, ha, I
was right.... The active principle of _Geranium Cyanthos_ with the root
of which, as Fabricius relates—Fabricius, the great Dutch traveller and
plant-hunter—the Kaffir warlocks are said to cure dysentery.... It is
positively identical with a similar crystalline substance which I have
for many years obtained from _Hedera Warneriensis_—the species of ivy
that grows about the ruins of Bindhurst Abbey, of which mention is made
by Prynne....”
Thus he rambled on with the selfish garrulity of the old man in the grip
of his hobby; presently, however, he fell back to addressing himself
rather than his listener, and gradually subsided into reflectiveness.
And once more silence drew upon the room.
CHAPTER III
RUSTLING LEAVES OF MEMORY
... The garden-scent
Brings back some brief-winged bright sensation
Of love that came and love that went.
—DOBSON (_A Garden Idyll_).
Long drawn minutes, ticked off by the slow beat of the laboratory clock,
dropped into the abysm of the past.
Master Simon, sunk in his chair, his head bent on his breast, had fallen
into a deep muse. His eyes, fixed upon the face of his daughter—fair and
thrown into fairer relief by Belphegor’s black muzzle nestling close to
it—had gradually gathered to themselves that blank, unseeing look which
betrays a mind set upon inner things.
Ellinor sat still, her shapely hands folded on her lap. She was glad of
the rest, for this was the end of a weary journey. She was glad, also,
of the silence, which gave room to her clamourous thought.
Home again! The only home she had ever known. For those last ten years
seemed only like one hideous, interminable voyage in which she, the
unwilling traveller, had been hurried from port to port without one hour
of rest.
To this house of peace, encircled by a triple ring of silence—the great
walls, the still waters of the moat, and the vast, stately park with its
mute army of trees—she had first been brought at so early an age that
any recollections of other hearth or roof were as vague as those of a
dream-world. But vivid were the memories now crowding back of her former
life here—memories of rosy, healthy childhood.—Aunt Sophia’s kind,
foolish face and her indulgent, unwise rule. Baby Ellinor rolling again
on the velvet sward and pulling off the tulip blossoms by the head;
child Ellinor ranging and roaming in stable and farm, running wild in
the gardens.... Nearly all her joys were somehow mingled with gardens;
with the rosary in the pleasure-grounds, which she roamed every day of
the summer; with the old kitchen garden, where she devoured the
baby-peas and the green gooseberries; with the Herb-Garden—the
mysterious, the strictly forbidden, the alluring Herb-Garden, her
father’s living museum of strange plants!
Between high walls it lay: a long, narrow strip, running down to the
moat on one side and abutting to the blind masonry of the keep on the
other. Here her father—an ever more remote figure, and for some reason
unintelligible to her child’s mind, ever more detached from the common
existence of the house, took his sole taste of air and sunshine. How
often, peeping in through the locked iron gates, she had watched him,
with curiosity and awe, as he passed and re-passed amid the rank
luxuriance of the herbs and bushes, so absorbed in cogitation that his
eyes, when they fell upon the little face behind the bars, never seemed
to see it.—The Herb-Garden! Naturally, this one spot (where, it seemed,
grew the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil) had a vastly greater
attraction for the small daughter of Eve than the paradise of which she
had the freedom. Aunt Sophia had warned her that the leaf of any one of
those strange herbs might be death! Yet visit the Herbary she often did,
all parental threats and injunctions notwithstanding, by a secret
entrance through the ruins of the keep.
Strange that her thoughts should from the very hour of her return home
hark back so much to the Herb-Garden! No doubt there was suggestion in
all the sweet smells floating now around her. She thought she recognised
_Camphire_ and _Frangipanni_; but there were others too, known yet
nameless; and they brought her back to the fragrant spot, the delights
of which had so long been forgotten.
Her memories were nearly all of solitary childhood. Sir David, the young
master of Bindon, the orphan cousin to whom Simon Rickart was in those
days humourously supposed to play the part of guardian, entered but
little into them, and then only as a grave Eton boy, disdainful of her
torn frocks, of her soiled hands, her shrill joyousness. He and his
sister Maud kept fastidiously aloof.... Maud of the black ringlets and
the fine frocks, who from the first had made her little cousin realise
the gulf that must exist between the child of the poor guardian and the
daughter of the House.
But later came a change.
She was Miss Ellinor—a tall maiden, suddenly alive to the desirableness
of ordered locks and pretty gowns; and young Sir David began to assume
importance within her horizon. How these fleeting memories, evoked by
the essence of Master Simon’s distilling, were sailing in the silence of
the room round Ellinor’s head!
It was during his University years. The young master brought into his
house every vacation an extraordinary stir of eager life. There came
batches of favoured companions, varying according to the mood of the
moment:—youthful philosophers who had got so far beyond the most
advanced thought of the age as to have lost all footing; or exquisite
young dandies, with lisps and miraculously fitting kerseymere pantaloons
and ruffles of lace before which Miss Sophia opened wide mouth and eyes;
or again, serious, aristocratic striplings of earnest political views.
During these invasions Aunt Sophia suddenly developed a spirit of
prudence quite unknown to her usual practice, and Miss Ellinor, much to
her disappointment, was kept studiously in the background. Upon this
head cousin David entered suddenly into the narrow circle of her
emotions. Chafing against the unwonted restraint, Ellinor one day defied
orders, and boldly presented herself at the breakfast-table while her
cousin and two young men of dazzling beauty, all in hunting pink and
buckskins, were partaking of chops and coffee under the chaste ægis of
Miss Sophia Rickart’s ringlets.
How well Ellinor could recall the startling effect of her entrance. She
had walked in with that boldness which girlish timidity can assume under
the spur of a strong will. Miss Sophia had gaped. Three pairs of eyes
were fixed upon the intruder. David’s serious gaze, always so enigmatic
to her. Then the Master of Lochore’s red-brown orbs.—They were something
of the colour of his auburn hair. She had come under their range before,
and had hated them and him upon a sudden instinct, all the more perhaps
for the singular attachment which David was known to have found for
him.—The third espial upon her was one of soft, yet piercing blackness:
she was pulled-up in her would-be nonchalant advance as by an invisible
barrier. David, long and lean in his red and white, had risen and come
across to her with great deliberation. He had taken her hand.
“Cousin Ellinor,” he had said, in a voice of most gentle courtesy, “you
have been misinformed: Aunt Sophia did not request your presence.”
He had bowed, led her out across the threshold, bowed again, and closed
the door. There had been a shout from within, expostulation and
laughter. And she, without, had stamped her sandalled foot and waited to
hear no more. With tears of bitter mortification streaming down her
cheeks she had rushed to her beloved old haunt in the Herb-Garden,
carrying with her an odious vision of her cousin’s face as it bent over
her; of his grave eyes, so strangely light in contrast with the dark
cheek; of the satirical twist of his lips and the mock ceremony of his
manner.
But she had taken with her also another vision; and that was then so
consoling that, as she marched to and fro among the fragrant bushes that
were growing yellow and crisp under autumn skies, she was fain to let
her mind dwell lingeringly upon it. It was the black broad stare of
surprised admiration in young Marvel’s eyes.
Many a time, in the subsequent days, did the walls of the forbidden
gardens enfold her in their secrecy—but not alone. He of the black eyes
had heard of the secret entrance and was by her side many a time—Aye,
and many a time, in the years that followed, had Ellinor told herself,
in the bitterness of her heart, how far better it would have been for
her then to have sucked the poison of the most evil plant that had clung
appealingly round her as she brushed by, listening to young Marvel’s
wooing.
Those were days of courtship: an epidemic of sentiment seemed to have
spread through Bindon. Handsome, ease-loving, bachelor parson
Tutterville developed a sudden energy in the courtship which had
stagnated for years between him and Aunt Sophia, on whose round cheeks
long-forgotten roses bloomed again.
And David too! From one day to the other Sir David Cheveral had
received, it seemed, fair and square in his virgin heart, virgin for all
the brilliant and fast life he seemed to lead, the most piercing dart in
Love’s whole quiver. He was one of those with whom such wounds are ill
to heal. Poor David!
In the prevailing atmosphere he of the black eyes had got his own way
easily enough. Marriage bells were the music of the hour. Parson
Tutterville led the way to the altar with Miss Sophia’s ringlets
drooping upon his arm. Ellinor promptly followed, with lids that were
not easily drooped cast down under the blaze of the drowning black
stare. Ellinor the child, confident little moth throwing her soul
against the first alluring flame, to its torture and undoing!
Well, all that was past! She had revived. She was back at the door of
life, stronger and wiser. But David? David was also alone. After scaling
to the pinnacle of the most exalted, devouring passion, he had had to go
down into the valley again, alone, carrying the sting in his heart.
Alone, always, she had heard. Poor David!
“No!—Happy David,” said Ellinor aloud.
CHAPTER IV
BACK AT A NEW DOOR OF LIFE
Joy’s recollection is no longer joy
While sorrow’s memory is sorrow still!
—BYRON (_Doge of Venice_).
“Eh?” said the old man.
He fixed his gaze once more upon his daughter, and stared at her for a
moment as if her comely presence were but some freakish play of his own
senses.
“Father?”
The knotted wrinkles became softened into an unwilling smile.
“I spoke aloud, didn’t I?” said she. “It must be an inherited trick! I
was thinking of David. He never thought more of marriage?”
“Marriage!”
“Will he never marry, father?”
“David, marry! Oh, pooh! David, wise man, has consecrated his youth to
his pursuit. Pity, though, he did not choose a more satisfactory one!”
Mrs. Marvel lifted Belphegor from her shoulders to the floor and drew
her chair closer.
“You mean his star-gazing? He sits in his tower all night, peering at
the skies, ‘and dreams all day, like an owl.’ That’s what Willum said
when I questioned him just now. Do you also call his a foolish pursuit?”
“He’s a visionary, a dreamer,” answered the other testily. “A splendid
mind, the vigour of a young brain ... and to waste it on the stars, on
distant worlds with which no telescope can ever bring him into any
useful contact, from which no nights of study, were he to live as long
as Methuselah, will ever enable him to gain one single grain heavy
enough to weigh down that scale there, that scale which as you saw, will
not even bear a breath unmoved! And all this world, child, all this
world!” In his enthusiasm the old man had risen and now was pacing the
room. “This teeming, inexhaustible world of ours, full of marvellous,
most subtle secrets yet submissive to our investigation, from the mass
that blocks out our horizon to the tiniest atom that, even beneath this
glass,”—he was now by his work-table and his fingers caressed the
microscope—“is scarce visible to the eye, all obedient to the same laws
and amenable to our ken! With all these treasures at his hand, awaiting
him, he throws away his life on the unattainable, on the stars, on
moonshine!”
The faded dressing-gown flapped about the speaker’s lean legs as he
walked; his white hair swung lightly over his bent shoulders.
Ellinor looked after him with eyes of amusement.
“The short of it,” said she, “is that he prefers his telescope to your
microscope.”
“Fancy to fact, girl! Dreams to reality! Speculation to uses! Ah, what
should we not have done, we two, had he been willing to work down here
instead of up there!”
With a growl Master Simon returned to his sweet-smelling furnace and
began mechanically to feed the fires with charcoal. She heard him
mutter, as if to himself:
“Work with me? Why, I hardly ever even see him! David’s a ghost, rather
than a man—a ghost that rises with the evening shades and disappears at
dawn; that never speaks unless you charge him!”
Ellinor remained silent a while, pondering. Presently she said, in the
voice of one who sees in what to others seems incomprehensible a very
simple proposition:
“He lives, it would appear, uplifted in thoughts beyond the sordid
things of earth. He knows no disillusion, for the unattainable star will
never crumble to ashes in his hand. He will never see of what ugly clay
the distant and glorious planet may, after all, be made! I say: happy
David ... not to have married his first love.”
“Tush! Don’t you believe that David ever thinks of love.”
He made an impatient motion with the bellows and cast over his shoulder
a look of severity, of surprise that a person who had shown herself
capable of managing the rider on his scale should endeavour to engage
him in the discussion of such trivialities in this appallingly short
life.
Their glances met. It was his own spirit that looked back to him,
brightly defiant, out of eyes as brilliant and as searching as his own,
and as blue.
“These things, these unconsidered trifles of hearts and hopes and
sorrows, they’re quite beneath notice, are they not, father? You know no
more of the woman that drove poor David to the top of his tower—the
David I remember was not a recluse—than you did of the dashing, handsome
youth to whom you handed over your only child ... that she might live
happy ever after!”
The widow laughed. But it was with a twist of her ripe, red mouth and a
harsh sound like the note of an indignant bird.
The old man, remained arrested for a space, stooping over the stove with
the bellows poised in his hand, as if the meaning of her words were
slowly filtering to his brain. Then, letting his implement fall with a
little clatter, he shuffled back towards his daughter and stood again
gazing at her, his lips moving noiselessly, his eye dim and troubled.
Master Simon’s mind, trained to such alertness in dealing with a certain
set of ideas, groped like that of a child in the endeavour to lay hold
of the new living problem.
At length he put out a trembling finger and timidly laid it for a second
on her hand. She looked up at him with an altered expression, infinitely
soft and womanly.
“I am afraid,” said he quickly, as if ashamed of the breakdown of his
own philosophy, “I am afraid you have suffered, my girl.”
“I never complained while it lasted,” she answered. “I shall not
complain now that it is over.”
He gathered the skirts of his gown more closely about him and regarded
her from under his shaggy eyebrows with an expression of deadly
earnestness in singular contrast with his appearance.
“You spent long nights in tears, child, longing for the sound of his
step?”
“How do you know?” she answered, flashing at him.
“Your mother did,” he sighed.
There fell a heavy pause, during which Belphegor sang with the simmering
phials a quaint duet as fine as a gossamer thread.
“Until the morning dawned, when I dreaded the sound of that step,” said
the widow at last.
Master Simon frowned more deeply. New wrinkles gathered on his
countenance.
“A worthless fellow! A wastrel, a gambler, a reprobate! And you doing
your wife’s part of screening and mending, nursing and paying. Aye, aye,
I know it all. It was your mother’s fate.”
“And did my mother get cursed for her pains, and struck?”
The old man started as if the word had indeed been a blow.
“Ah, no,” he cried sharply. “Ah, no, not that, never that!”
Ellinor came close and laid her hands on his shoulders.
“Bad enough, God knows,” he repeated, shaking his head. “Heedless and
selfish—but that, never!”
She looked at him, long and tenderly. When she spoke her tones and words
were as full of deliberate comfort as her touch.
“Father,” she said, “compare yourself no more to that man. Your mind and
his—what his was—are as the poles asunder. My mother’s life and mine, as
Heaven and Hell. I did my duty to the end: whilst he lived, I lived by
his side. He is dead—let him be forgotten! Life, surely, is not all
bitterness and ashes,” she added a little wistfully. Then, with a return
of brightness: “I have come back to you. I don’t know what I should have
done if I had not had you. But here I am. This is the opening hour of my
new life!”
The clock, in its dumb way, struck the hour of ten.
“Surely, father,” said Ellinor suddenly, “one of your little pots is
rocking!”
There was a spirt of aromatic steam, in the midst of which white head
and golden head bent together over the furnace; and young eyes and old
eyes, so strangely alike, were fixed upon the boiling mysteries of the
pharmacopic experiment. An adroit question here, a steadying touch there
of those admirable hands and Master Simon, forgetting all else, began to
direct and once more to explain—explain with an eager flow of words very
different indeed from his disjointed solitary talk.
Chemistry or alchemy—how were the whimsical old student’s laboratory
pursuits to be described? Chemist he was undoubtedly, by exactness of
knowledge; but alchemist, too, by the visionary character of his
scientific enthusiasm, though he himself derided the suggestion.
“Powder of projection? Nonsense, nonsense!” he would have cried. “Not in
the scheme of our world. Much use to mankind if gold became cheaper than
lead!... Elixir of Life? Again preposterous! Given birth, death is
Nature’s law.... But pain and premature decay—ah, there opens quite
another road!—that is the physician’s province to conquer. And if one
seeks but well enough for the _panacea_, the _universal anodyne_, the
true _nepenthes_, eh, eh, who knows? Such a thing is undoubtedly to be
found. Doubtless! Have we not already partially lifted up the veil?
_Opium_ (grandest of brain soothers!) and _Jesuit’s Bark_ and the
_Ether_ of Frobœnius, and Sir Humphry’s _laughing gas_! Yet those are
but partial victors; the All-Conqueror has yet to be discovered.”
Such a discovery Master Simon (who was first of all a botanist) had
settled in his mind was to be made in the veins of some plant or other;
and, therefore, with all the ardour of the student of mature years
racing against Time, he now devoted all his energies to this special
branch of investigation. Hence, perhaps the forgotten title of “simpler”
was the most appropriate to this follower of Boerhaave and Hales. In the
absorbing delight of his hobby he was given to experiment recklessly
upon himself as well as upon others, after the method of that other
fervent student of old, Conrad Gessner; and whatever the result, noxious
or beneficent, he generally found in it confirmation of some theory.
“If the juices of certain herbs can produce melancholia, or the fury of
madness, or idiocy, why should we not find in others the soothing of
oblivion, or the stimulus to exalted thought, or the spur of genius? Why
not,” he would say, “But life’s so short, life’s so short....”
The door was opened noiselessly. Barnaby, the _famulus_, clutching the
tray, stood staring, open mouthed, in upon them.
“Hang that boy!” said Master Simon testily and, pretending not to notice
the interruption, proceeded with his disquisition on the admirable
things he meant to extract from Camphire or Henne-weed.
“Is that all they give you for supper, father?”
She had walked up to the tray which had been deposited on a corner of
the table.
“A jug of ale!” she exclaimed with disfavour. “Small-ale—and sour at
that, I’ll be bound!” She poured a few drops into the tumbler, sipped
and grimaced. “Pah! Bread—heavy and yesterday’s. Cheese! Last year’s, I
should say—and simply because the mice wouldn’t have any more of it!”
Indignation rose within her as she compared this treatment of her father
with memories of Bindon’s hospitality in bygone days. “And an apple!”
she added, with scathing precision.
“Most wholesome,” suggested the simpler, deprecating interference.
“Wholesome!” she snorted. “Upon the theory of the dangers of
over-eating, I suppose! And what a jug—what a tumbler!”
“Barnaby is rather clumsy,” apologised his master. “Apt to break a good
deal. So I, it was I, begged Mrs. Nutmeg to provide us with stout ware.”
“What old Margery!—old Margery Nutmeg still here!” A shadow fell upon
Ellinor’s face—the next moment it was gone. “Ugh! How I always hated
that woman! I had forgotten all about her. It is a way I have: I forget
the unpleasant! Well!” with a laugh, “now I understand. But I’ll warrant
her well-cushioned frame is not supported upon the diet of wholesomeness
meted out to you! Heavens! but what is this dreadful little mess in the
brown bowl?”
“Belphegor’s supper,” answered his master with rebuking gravity.
“They treat him no better than they do you, father!”
She paused, took the edge of the tablecloth between her taper finger and
thumb and thrust out a disdainful lip.
“What a cloth! Not even quite clean!”
“Mrs. Nutmeg has limited us. Barnaby has an unfortunate propensity for
upsetting things,” humbly interposed the philosopher.
“Then Barnaby, whoever he is, ought to be soundly trounced,” asserted
Mrs. Marvel.
She wheeled round on the boy, who still stared at her with round
eyes—but her father laid an averting hand upon her arm.
“Hush,” he said, inconsequently lowering his voice, “the poor lad is
deaf and dumb.”
“Deaf and dumb, your servant?”
Fresh amazement sprang to her face, succeeded by a lightening
tenderness.
“He suits me, child,” cried the old man, hurriedly. “Pray do not
attribute to me any foolish philanthropy, I’m a——”
She interrupted him with a gay note:
“A mass of selfishness, of course—Who could doubt it, who knew you an
hour? Well, I am a mass of selfishness, too. Oh, I am your own daughter,
as you’ll discover for yourself very soon! And such frugality as Master
Simon is made to practise will never suit Mistress Ellinor. Can your
appetite for these, these wholesome things, bide half an hour, father?”
Without awaiting the answer, she placed Belphegor’s portion on the
floor, handy to his convenience, then whisked up the tray, bestowed a
nod and a radiant smile upon Barnaby (that made him her slave from
henceforth) and briskly left the room. Barnaby automatically followed.
Master Simon rubbed his bald head and tugged at his beard. Belphegor was
stamping on the hearth rug with a monstrous hump and bristling tail,
preparatory to addressing himself to his supper.
“So here we are, with a female about us after all, my cat! But she seems
an exceptionally reasonable person—quite a remarkable woman.”
His eye fell on the notes of his experiment, and a crinkling smile
spread upon his countenance. “There is something about the touch of a
woman’s hand,” he murmured, and promptly became absorbed again.
“I have not been very long, have I?” said Ellinor, when in due course
she returned, followed by Barnaby with a tray.
The student lifted his hand warningly without withdrawing his eyes from
his array of figures.
“Never fear,” said she, “your table shall be sacred.”
She fetched a large round stool and motioned to Barnaby to deposit his
burden thereon. It was a tray of mightily increased dimensions, graced
with damask (a little yellow, perhaps, from the long hoarding, but fine
and pure), laden with cut crystal, with purple and gold china. The light
of a pair of silver candlesticks gleamed on the red of wine, on the
flowery whiteness of bread, on the engaging pink of wafer slices of ham
and the firm primrose roll of a proper housewife’s butter.
“Shall we not sup?” said Mistress Marvel.
She poured into the diamond-cut glass a liquor of exquisite fragrance
and colour, and placed it in her father’s hand. And, as he raised it to
his lips almost unconsciously, a faint glow, like the spectre of the
ruby in his glass, crept upon the pallor of his cheek.
“What is this?” he exclaimed, in interested tones, holding out the
beaker to the light.
“Not small-ale!” laughed she. “Not small beer whatever it be! I have
seen,” she added musingly, whilst her father contemplated her with
astonishment, “I have seen strange things at Bindon since I arrived this
evening, and could scarce obtain admittance in the unlit courtyard, (old
watchman Willum recognised me, that was at least something). At the
front door, dark, cold, forbidding, not one servant in attendance! I had
to enter the house like a thief, by the back ways. It seems like a house
under a spell! Ah, very different from the Bindon of old! But I have
seen nothing stranger than the servants’ hall, whither Barnaby took me
in silence—a good lad, your Barnaby,” and she cast a friendly glance
over her shoulder at the still figure behind her. “I don’t know,” she
resumed, taking up the fork, “whether they treat David as they treat
you, his cousin, but they look well after themselves!”
She laughed, but a colour of anger had mounted again to her brow.
“Margery is away, it seems; so old Giles tells me. He was bringing up
the wine for supper. Are you listening, father? Wine for the servants’
supper! And lighting these candlesticks! And if they consider cheese and
ale good enough for you, do not think they misunderstand the meaning of
good cheer. So we made the raid—and here you have some of their fare.
Drink sir!”
CHAPTER V
QUENCHLESS STARS ELOQUENT
O, who shall tell what deep inspirèd things
Thou speakest me, when, tranquil as the skies,
O Night, I stand in shadow of thy wings,
And with thy robe of suns fulfil mine eyes!
—E. SWEETMAN (_The Star-Gazer_).
It is no unusual thing for a man whom human love has betrayed and left
bare; whose life some violent human passion has robbed of all savour, to
turn for consolation to the things of heaven. This is what, in course of
time, had befallen Sir David Cheveral, when his youthful dream of
happiness had fled before a bitter awakening. But the heaven to which he
had turned was not that “Realm beyond the Stars” pictured by the faith
of ages, but that actual region above and about our globe, as mysterious
a world, perhaps, and as little heeded by the bulk of mankind; that
immensity peopled by other suns and earths, ruled by a harmony so vast
and grandiose that the thought of centuries is but beginning to grasp
it; that universe of space and time, as unfathomable to our finite
groping senses and as appealing to imagination and reason both as any
realm of eternity pictured by the poets of any creed!
The worlds outside the earth, then, seemed for years to have given to
his desolate spirit, gradually and absorbingly, all that the world of
earth has in different ways to give to man.
The dome of heaven was David Cheveral’s mistress. To his phantasy, a
mistress ever variable and ever loved; whether chastely remote, ridden
by the fine silver crescent, emblem of virginity; or passionate,
low-brooding, full-mooned and crimson, pregnant with autumn promise; or
yet high and cold, in winter magnificence, sparkling with the jewels
that are beyond dreams of splendour; or yet again veiled and
indifferent; or stormy, cloud-wracked with the anger of the gods;
condescending now with exquisite intimacy, anon passing as irrevocably
as Diana from her shepherd. Who that had once loved such a mistress
could ever turn back to one of earth again? So thought the star-dreamer
of Bindon.
And this esthetic passion was at the same time his art and his
life-work. It filled not only heart, but mind. Endless was the lesson to
be learned, opening the road endlessly to others; untiring the labour to
be expended; his own the genius to divine, to grasp, to translate; and
his also every gratification, every reward! So thought the star-dreamer.
He had drifted into a life of study and contemplation as solitary men
drift into eccentricity; and if in its all absorbing tendency there
lurked madness of a sort, there was a harmonious method in it; and to
him, at least (precious boon!), it spelt peace of soul.
Every day’s work of such a study meant a fresh conquest of the mind,
noble and peaceful. Mighty conceptions unfolded themselves to an
ever-soaring intellect and thrust back more and more the pigmy doings of
this small earth into their proper insignificance. Meanwhile his sight
was rejoiced with beauty ever renewed. The music of the spheres played
its great harmonies to his fastidious ear; the rhythm of a universal
poetry, too exquisite to find expression in mere words, settled upon a
mind ever attuned to vastness, till the drab miseries of humanity seemed
well-nigh fallen away, and the petty fret of everyday life, the chafing,
the disillusion, the smart of pride, the cry of the senses, were as
forgotten things.—His soul was filled with visions.
Now on this evening, while Master Simon in his laboratory underground
was being called by unexpected claims from his own line of abstraction,
something equally startling had occurred to Sir David Cheveral in his
observatory.
He was pacing his airy platform on the top of the keep, under an
exquisite and pensive sky of most benign charity. Never had he felt
himself more uplifted to the empyrean, more detached from a sordid
world, than at the beginning of this watch. Deep beyond deep spread the
blue vasts above him. As the lover knows the soul of his beloved, so his
vision, unaided, pierced into the heart of mysteries that even through
the telescope would be veiled to the neophyte.
Upon her moonless brow this autumnal night wore a coronal of stars that
might have shamed her later glories. The Heavenly Twins and Giant Orion
beginning the southward ascent in splendid company; Aldebaran, fiery-red
eye of the Bull; the tremulous pearly sheen of the Pleiades; the grand,
upright cross of Cygnus, planted in the very stream of the Milky Way,
and, slowly sinking towards the West, the gracious circlet of the
Northern Crown—when had Night’s greater jewels shone with more
entrancing lustre upon the diaper of her endless lesser gems!
David Cheveral turned from one field of beauty to another; anon
reckoning his treasures with a jealous eye, anon letting the vast beauty
mirror itself in his soul as in a placid pool.
But rapture is ever tracked by fatigue: it seems to be an envious,
miserly law of our finite nature that every spell of exaltation must be
paid for by despondency. Melancholy is but the weariness either of mind
or of body: often of both. The airs were variable and cold, and food had
not passed his lips for many hours; yet he had no conscious hankering
for the warm hearthstones beneath him; no conscious desire for the touch
of a fellow hand or the sound of a human voice. But, by slow degrees
there crept upon him an unwonted and profound sadness.
A familiar catch-phrase of Master Simon’s:—“And life’s so short! and
life’s so short!”—had begun to haunt his thoughts, to whisper in his
ear, lulled though it was by the voice of solitude. A sense of his own
limitations before this illimitable began to oppress him. So much beauty
and but one sense with which to possess it: but weak mortal eyes and an
imperfect vision, inferior even to that of many an animal! To feel
within oneself the intellect, the power to conceive the creations of a
God, and to know that one’s ignorance was still as vast as the field of
knowledge offered ... the pity of it! With every gracious night such as
this to glean a little more of the rich harvest—and life so short that,
were one to live a cycle beyond the allotted span, the truth garnered in
the end would be but as motes glinting here and there in floods of
light!
Such revolts give way to lassitude. The useless “Why?” is inevitably
succeeded by the “_Cui bono?_”
The astronomer who was too much of a poet—the star-dreamer, as men
called him—drew a deep sigh. He had been tempted from his self-allotted
task of calculation as a lover may be tempted to dally in adoration of
his beloved. He now turned to go back to his table, but as he did so was
once more arrested in spite of himself by the fascination of the great
dome.
As it is the desire of man to possess what he finds most beautiful, so
is it the instinct of the poet, of the painter, of the musician, to
express and give again to the world the captured ideal.—The pain of
impotency clutched at the dreamer’s heart.
But of a sudden he started; his sad eyes became alert and fixed.—An
event that happens but at rarest times in the history of human
observation had taken place under his very gaze.
A new gem had been added to the splendours of the heavens!
His languid pulses beat quicker. He passed his hand across his brow; no,
it was not the overworked student’s hallucination! Did he not know every
aspect of the constellation, of the evening, of the hour? Sooner might a
woman miscount her jewels, a collector his treasures, than he misread
the face of his idol! It was no fancy. There, above the Northern Crown,
a new star—a fire of surpassing radiance had flashed out of his sky even
at the moment of his looking.
He had seen it suddenly blossoming, as if it were into his own garden,
like a magic flower from some hidden bud. An unknown light had pulsed
into existence where darkness hitherto had reigned.
A new star had been born! His soul caught up the fire of its brilliance.
It was as if his transient faithlessness had been beautifully rebuked;
his faintness of heart driven forth by a glance of his beloved’s eyes.
Nay, it was as if, in some fashion, his mystic espousal had brought
forth life. To him had been given what is not given to man once in a
cycle—to receive the first flash of a world!
Inexpressibly stirred, filled with enthusiasm, he hurried to his
instruments and with eager hand turned the great lenses upon the
apparition.
Out of the chasm of those inconceivable spaces—from the first
contemplation of which, it is said, the neophyte recoils with something
like terror—broke, swirling, the splendour of a star where certainly no
star had ever been seen before. _His star!_ Breaking from the darkness,
it sailed across the field of his vision, radiant, sapphire, gorgeously,
exquisitely blue!
To every man who lives more in the spirit than in the flesh there come
moments when the _afflatus_ of the gods seems to descend upon him;
moments of intuition, inspiration or hallucination, when he sees things
not revealed to the ordinary mortal. What, in his sudden exalted mood,
David Cheveral saw that night was never vouchsafed to him again. It was
beyond anything he could ever put into words; almost, in saner moments,
he shrank from putting it into thought.
When at length he descended from his altitudes and touched earth again,
though still as in a trance, he entered a record of the discovery on his
chart. Every student of the heavens knows that a new star is oftener
than not temporary and may fade away as mysteriously as it has blazed
forth. His next care, although it was against his habits to invite the
company of his fellow creature, was instinctively to seek another
witness to the event.
However man may cut himself adrift from his kin, the impulses of his
nature remain ever the same in critical moments. A joy is not complete
until it is shared; a triumph is savourless until it is acclaimed.
He was still dazed from the strain of watching, from the gloom of the
black tower stairs and of the long unlit passages when he reached the
basement rooms that were Master Simon’s province at Bindon.
Pushing open the heavy oaken door, he stood a moment looking in.
There was cheerful candle-gleam where he was wont to find dimness; a gay
sound of laughter and words where silence used to reign; and instead of
Master Simon’s bent grey head, there rose before his sight, haloed with
light, so white and pure as almost to seem luminous itself, a young
forehead set in a radiance of crisp, fiery-gold hair. His eyes
encountered the beam of two unknown eyes, exquisitely blue. Blue as his
star!
And he thought he still saw visions; thought that his star had as
suddenly and sweetly taken living shape here below as above in the
unattainable skies.
CHAPTER VI
EYES, BLUE AS HIS STAR
——Dwelt on my heaven a face
Most starry-fair, but kindled from within
As ’twere with dawn!
—TENNYSON (_The Lover’s Tale_).
On the new-comer’s entrance Ellinor looked up. The smile was arrested on
her lips and her eyes grew grave with wonder: there was something
curiously unsubstantial, something almost fantastic in the man that
stood thus, framed in the gaping darkness of the doorway.
That pale head, refined to ætherealisation, with its masses of dense,
black hair; that straight figure, unusually tall and seeming taller
still by reason of its exceeding leanness, romantically draped in the
folds of a sable-lined cloak; above all, those eyes, under penthouse
brows, singularly light and luminous in spite of their deep-setting,
gazing straight at her, through her and beyond her—the eyes of the
dreamer, or rather of the seer! In her surprise she failed for the
moment to connect with this apparition the forgotten identity of the
“cousin David” she had known in her girl days; the smooth-cheeked
lad—dandy, fox-hunter, poet, politician—but in every phase, image of
assertive and satisfied youth.
Master Simon broke the spell of the singular moment.
“Ah, David,” quoth he, “dazed—moonstruck as usual? Awake, good dreamer,
awake! There have been fine happenings here below while you were
frittering God’s good time, blinking at your stars!”
He rose from his seat and shuffled round the table with quite unusual
alertness. A glass of the vintage served to him by his daughter had
brought a transient fire into the sluggish veins. As he tapped David on
the arm, the latter turned his abstracted gaze upon him with a new
bewilderment: the bloodless simpler, with a pink glow upon his cheek,
with skull-cap rakishly askew on his bald head, with a roguish gleam in
his usually keenly-cold eye—unwonted spectacle!
“We’ve done great things to-night,” repeated the old gentleman
excitedly. “That experiment, David, successfully carried through at
last! It is exactly as I surmised—you remember? The Geranium of the
Hottentot, Fabricius’ plant and our Ivy here—contain the same principle!
Ah, that was worth finding out, if you like!”
His bony fingers beat a triumphant tattoo on David’s motionless arm.
“What do you say to that?” insisted Master Simon.
The astronomer was still silent. The light in his eyes had faded; but
they brightened again when he brought them back upon Ellinor. This time,
however, they were less distant, less dreamily amazed, more humanly
curious.
“And I have drunk wine,” pursued Master Simon. An unctuous chuckle ran
through his ancient pipe. “Ichor from the veins of a noble plant, _Vitis
Vinifera_, David, compounded of dew and earth juices, sublimated by
sunshine.... Beautiful cryptic processes!” He paused, closed his eyes
over the inward vision, and then added with solemn simplicity: “It is
chemically richer, that’s obvious, I may say it is altogether superior
as a cerebral stimulant to table-ale. That was her opinion.” He jerked
his thumb in the direction of Ellinor. “And I endorse it.... I endorse
it. She——”
“She?” interrupted Sir David. His voice was deep and grave, and Ellinor
then remembered vaguely that even as a child she had liked the sound of
it. A new flood of old memories rushed back upon her; she rose to her
feet and came forward quickly, stretching out both her hands:
“Cousin David, don’t you know me?”
“To be sure,” cried her father gaily, “I have been extremely remiss.
This is Ellinor, our little Ellinor. Shake hands with Ellinor. She’s
come to stay here. So she says.”
He stopped upon the phrase and pulled at his beard, flinging a quick,
doubtful look at the master of the house. “I told her we, neither of us,
are good company for women that—in fact, it is impossible for thinking
men, such as we are, to have a high opinion of her sex, but”—he waved
his arm with a magisterial gesture—“I have already discovered, and you
know my diagnoses are habitually correct, that my daughter is an
unusually intelligent, sensible person, and that we might no doubt both
benefit by her company.”
“If cousin David will allow me to stay,” said Ellinor gently.
She was standing quite motionless in the same attitude, her hands
outstretched, bending a little forward, her face slightly uplifted—for
tall as she was she had to look up to meet her cousin’s eyes. Repose was
so essentially one of her characteristics, that there was nothing
suggestive either of awkwardness or of affectation in this arrested
poise of impulsive gesture.
The heavy cloak fell from David as he unfolded his arms and, hardly
conscious of what he was doing, slowly took both her hands. Her fingers
closed upon his in a grasp that felt warm and firm.
“That’s right,” said Master Simon. “Why, you were big brother and little
sister in the old days. Kiss her David.”
The magic Burgundy was still working wonders; for the moment this old
fantastic being had gone back thirty years in geniality, in humanity.
“Kiss her, David,” he repeated.
The dark and pale face of Sir David, severe yet gentle, bent over
Ellinor.
Half-laughing, half-startled, yet with a feminine unwillingness to be
the one to attach importance to a cousinly greeting, she turned her
cheek towards him. But the kiss of the recluse, was—she never knew
whether by design or accident—laid slowly upon her half-opened, smiling
lips.
Had anyone told Ellinor Marvel who, during four years had cried at love
and during six years more had railed at it, that her heart would ever be
stirred in the old, sweet mad way because of the touch of a man’s lips,
she would, in superb security, have scorned the suggestion. Yet now,
when she turned away, it was to hide a crimsoning face and a quickening
breath.
Nay, such a flutter, as of wild birds’ wings, was in her breast, that
she vaguely feared it could not escape the notice even of Master Simon’s
happy abstractedness.
When she again looked at his kinsman, she found that he had been pressed
into a chair beside hers; and that her father, with guileless
hospitality, was forcing upon his host a glass of his own choice
vintage.
But, as she looked, she thought she could note a flush, kindred to her
own, slowly fading from David’s forehead, and, in the hand he extended
passively for the glass, ever so slight a trembling. The next moment she
was full of doubt: his reserve seemed complete, his presence almost
austere. And she blushed again, for her own blushes.
As if to a silent toast, Sir David drained the goblet; then turning his
eyes upon her:
“You are welcome, Ellinor,” he said.
The young widow started at the words, and her discomposure increased.
There occurred to her for the first time a sense of the strange position
in which she had placed herself; of her impertinence in thus coolly
announcing her intention of taking up her residence at Bindon, without
even the formality of asking its owner’s leave. But after listening a
while to the disjointed conversation that now had become engaged between
her father and David, the quaintness and sweetness of the relationship
between the two men—the unconscious manner in which such whole-hearted
hospitality was bestowed and received without any sense of obligation on
one side, or of generosity on the other, struck her deeply, and brought
at once a smile to her lips and a mist to her eyes.
“To every law there are special exceptions,” remarked Master Simon,
sententiously. “David may be quite convinced that I should not have
entertained the idea of permitting any ordinary young person of the
opposite sex to take up her abode under our studious roof. But a few
moments have convinced me, as I said before, that Ellinor may be classed
among the abnormal—the abnormal which, as you know, David, can be
typically represented as well by the double-hearted rose as by the
double-headed calf.” He paused to enjoy the conceit, then insisted:
“Represented, I say, by the beautiful no less than by the monstrous.”
“By the beautiful indeed,” echoed the astronomer.
Ellinor glanced at him quickly. But his gaze, though fixed upon her
eyes, was so abstracted, that she could not take the words to herself.
Altogether her cousin’s personality baffled her. He had not been one
minute beside her, before, in her woman’s way, she had noted every
detail of his appearance; noted, approved, and wondered.
This recluse, indeed, seemed to bestow the most fastidious care on his
person. At a glance she had marked the long, slender hands, white and
shapely, the singularly fine linen, the fit and texture of the sombre
clothes of a past mode that clung to his spare, but well-knit limbs. The
contrast between this choiceness, which would not have misfitted a dandy
of the Town, and his dreamer’s countenance offered a problem which was
undoubtedly fascinating.
There was also something of pride of blood in her approval of his
high-bred air; and, at the same time, a sufficient consciousness of the
remoteness of their kinship to make the memory of his lips upon hers a
troubling one. Added to this, there was a baffling impression in the
atmosphere of apartness from the world which enwrapped him. His
eyes—what did they see as they looked at her so long, so straight? Not
the living Ellinor: no man could so look on a woman, as man on woman,
without passion or effrontery! Not once had he smiled. With all his
courtesy—a courtesy that sat on him as becomingly as his garments—hardly
had he noticed her ministration to plate or glass. The carelessness,
also, with which he accepted her arrival, without an inquiry as to its
cause, without the smallest show of interest in her past and present
circumstances, stirred her imagination, whilst it vexed her vanity.
“I believe,” she thought, “he has even forgotten I have ever been
married. Nay I vow,” thought she, a little amused, a good deal piqued,
“it is a matter of serene indifference to cousin David whether I be
maid, wife, or widow!”
“Ellinor, my girl,” said the old man, pushing his plate from him, “this
sort of thing is well enough for once in a way, and more particularly as
my work, thanks to your timely assistance, is concluded for the night.
But I must not be tempted to such an abandonment to the appetites
another evening!”
“Very well, father,” answered she demurely, while a dimple crept out, as
she surveyed his unfinished slice of ham and the fragments of his bread.
“As to the wine,” pursued he, “it is another matter. I will not deny
that wine, producing this pleasant exhilaration (were it not accompanied
by the not disagreeable langour which I now feel, and which is the
result of my own self-indulgence) might stimulate the brain to greater
lucidity than does the usual liquor provided by Mrs. Nutmeg. It is quite
possible,” he went on, leaning back in his chair while the lamplight
played on the shrunken line of his figure, on the silver beard, and the
diaphanous countenance. “It is quite possible that even as the plant
requires sun-rays to produce its designed colour, so the veins of man
may require this distillation of sun-heat and sun-light to liberate to
the utmost his potential forces. David, we may both be the better of
this drinkable sunshine!”
As he spoke, he meditatively sipped and gazed at the glass which his
daughter had unobtrusively refilled.
The astronomer had been crumbling the white bread and eating and
drinking much in the same frugal and half unconscious manner as the
simpler; it seemed as if spirits so attuned to secluded paths of thought
could scarce condescend to notice the material needs.
But upon Master Simon’s last remark, Sir David put down his beaker.
“Drinkable sunshine!” he cried, the light of the enthusiast leaped into
his eye. He rose from the table as he spoke. “Ah, cousin Simon, I have
this night drunk into my soul its fill of creating light.”
“Pooh! With your cold stars,” scoffed the simpler, once more eyeing the
gorgeous colour of the wine against the light.
“The sun that raises from the soil and vivifies your plants, that gives
the soul to the wine you are drinking, is one of the lesser stars,” said
the astronomer gravely. “The countless stars you deem so cold are suns—I
have to-night watched the birth of a new distant world of fire.”
“Ah,” commented the other, calmly scientific. “A phenomenon, like
Ellinor here, rare, but possible.”
“I came down to tell you, to bring you back with me to see it,” David
continued, and Ellinor could detect the exaltation of his thoughts in
manner and voice. “Come, master of the microscope and of the test-tube,
come and see the new star. Come and witness such a wonder as those
microscopes, those crucibles will never show you.”
“My good young friend,” exclaimed the aged student, “while you, through
your astrolabes, watch the revolving, the fading and growing of systems
which you can neither control nor make use of, I, through those second
eyes and those regulated fires, not only learn for the great benefit of
science at large, the workings of the atoms that absolutely rule, nay,
compose all life here below, but I can direct and guide them in one
direction, neutralise or stimulate them in another, make them in short
bring good or evil to humanity. I delight my own brain, but I also
benefit the vast, suffering body of my kind.”
“The body, the body!” repeated the other, at once sweetly and
contemptuously but still with the fire in his eye.
On his side Master Simon chuckled and rubbed his hands over his
irrefutable arguments.
Then Sir David said again, almost as if he had not before proffered the
request:
“Come, cousin, I want you to look at my new star.”
“Not I,” laughed Master Simon, tossing down the last drop of his second
glass with the quaintest air of “abandonment,” wrapping his faded gown
about him and folding himself in it as in a mantle of luxurious egotism.
“Not I? Shall I spoil all these excellent impressions and bring my poor
old bones back to a sense of age and infirmity by dragging them up your
cold stairs to the top of your tower, there to stand in your draughty
box and let all the winds of heaven find out my weak points—for the
pleasure of gaping at a speck of light than which this lamp here is not
less handsome, while immeasurably more useful? No, Sir David!”
Ellinor laid her hand upon her cousin’s arm.
“May I come?”
She spoke upon the true feminine impulse which cannot bear to see the
avoidable disappointment inflicted; a feeling which men, and wisely,
cultivate not at all in their commerce with each other.
David, again back in spirit with the heavens, turned upon her much the
same look he had given her upon his first entrance. Then, as he stood a
second, to all outward appearance impassive and detached, a curious
feeling as of the realisation of some beautiful dream took possession of
his senses. The fragrant breath of the distilled and sublimated herbs,
“yielding up their little souls, good little souls!” in aromatic
dissolution, filled his nostrils as with an extraordinary meaning. The
sound of his kinswoman’s voice, the touch of her hand, the subtle,
out-of-door freshness of her presence in this warm room—all these things
struck chords that had long been silent in his being. And the glance of
her eyes! It was as blue as his star!
He took her fingers with a certain grace of gesture, born it might be of
the forgotten minuets of his adolescent days, and prepared to lead her
forth. But at the door he paused.
“As your father says, it is cold upon my tower.”
So speaking, he placed upon her shoulders his own cloak of furs. And, as
he drew the folds together under her chin, their eyes met again. She
looked very young and very fair. For the first time that evening he
smiled.
“Big brother and little sister!” he said.
Now, for some reason which at the moment Ellinor would stoutly have
refused to define even to herself, the words were in no way such as it
pleased her to hear from his lips. But the smile that lit up the
darkness and austerity of his countenance like a ray of light, and
altered its whole character into something indescribably gentle, went
straight to her heart and lingered there as a memory sweet and rare.
Master Simon watched the door close upon them with an expression at once
humourous and philosophically disapproving. Belphegor, sharpening his
claws on the hearthrug, glanced up at his master with a soundless mew,
as after all these distractions and disturbances the well-known quiet
muttering fell again upon the air.
“I took her for the _rara avis_,” said the old man to himself, “but, I
fear me, what I thought at first was the black swan may prove but a
little grey goose after all! handmaid to that poor loony, with his
circles and degrees as to assist me—me! And after displaying such an
intelligent interest, too ...! Alas, my cat, ’tis but a woman!”
CHAPTER VII
NEW ROADS UNFOLDING
The stars at midnight shall be dear
To her; and she shall lean her ear
In many a secret place ...
And beauty born of murmuring sound
Shall pass into her face.
—WORDSWORTH (_Lyrical Poems_).
The first hour which Ellinor spent with David, uplifted from the gloomy
earth into the bosom of the night—they were so unutterably alone, amid
the sleeping world with the great, watchful company of the stars!—was
one, she knew, that would alter the whole course of her life; the pearly
colour of which would thenceforth tint her every emotion.
Not indeed that one word, one touch, one look even of his could lead her
to believe she had made on the man anything approaching the impression
that she herself had felt. On the contrary, the apartness which had been
noticeable even under the genial circumstances of the meal shared
together in the light and warmth of Master Simon’s room became
intensified when they entered the solitude, the mystic atmosphere of his
high, silent retreat.
And yet she knew that she would not by one hair’s breadth have him
different! In the whirlpool of the fast existence into which, like a
straw, her young life had been tossed, there was not one man—even during
that early period when “pinks” and “bucks,” undeniable gentlemen, were
her husband’s faithful companions—but would have regarded the situation
as an opportunity that, “as you live,” should be gallantly taken
advantage of. But he—through the long passages of the house, up the
narrow, winding stairs of the tower, he conducted her, for all his
absent-mindedness, as a courtier might conduct his queen! When they
reached the platform of the keep, upon the threshold of the observatory
she tripped up against some unnoticed step, and would have fallen had he
not caught her in his arms. For an instant her bosom must have lain
against his heart, the strands of her hair against his lips; and she
honoured him for the simplicity with which he supported her and gave her
his hand to lead her in.
A strange apartment, the like of which she had never dreamed, this
chosen haunt of her strange kinsman! Wrapt in the sables that
encompassed her so warmly, her eye wandered, from the dome with its
triangular slit through which a slice of sky looked ineffably remote, to
the fantastic instruments (or so they seemed to her) just visible in the
diffuse light, with gleams here and there of brass or silver, or milky
polish of ivory.
She watched him move about, now a shadow in the shadow, now with a white
flicker from the lamp upon the pale beauty of his face. She listened in
the deep night’s silence, now to the inexorable dry beat of the
astronomer’s clock, now to the grave music of his voice, as he spoke
words which, for all her comprehension of their meaning, might have been
in an unknown tongue, and yet delighted her ear.
“There is the mural circle, and yonder my altazimuth. But what I wanted
to show you is to be best seen in this, the equatorial.”
Under his manipulation the machine moved with a magic softness of
action—the domed roof turning with roll of wheels to let in upon them a
new aspect of space. She reclined, as he bade her, on a couch. He
adjusted the pointing of the mighty lens, and then she made her
initiating plunge into the wonders of the skies.
First there came as it were upon her the great, black chasm before which
the soul is seized with trembling, the infinitude of which the mind
refuses to grasp—then a point of light or two—little fingers it seemed
pointing to the gulphs—then more and more, a medley of brilliancy, of
colours, torch-red, flaming orange, diamond white, sailing slowly across
the black field; then, dropping straight into her brain, like the fall
of a glorious gem into a pool, carrying its own light as it comes—the
blue glory of Sir David’s new-born star.
Ellinor told herself, with a mingling of regret and pride, that since
her soul had received the message of his star she understood David’s
vocation. And, however much she might wish in the coming days to draw
him back to the homely things of earth, she could never be of those now
who mocked or pitied.
A little later they stood upon the open platform together, and he
pointed out to her the exact place of the marvel that had just been
revealed to her. Again he spoke words of little meaning to her, yet
fraught it seemed in their strangeness with deeper significance than
those of a familiar language; but as she listened it was upon his
transfigured countenance that all her wonder hung.
“See you, there, by Alphecca. Nay, you are looking at Vega of the
Lyre-Vega the beautiful she is called: no wonder she draws your eyes!
But lower them, Ellinor, and look a shade to the right. Turn to Corona,
the Northern Crown.”
With the abstraction of the enthusiast, he was quite unconscious that to
her uninitiated ear the names could convey no sense, that to her
uninitiated eye the aspect of the sky could show nothing abnormal.
“See, there, just to the right of Alphecca—oh, you see, surely, the most
beautiful—my star, virgin to man, to the sight of this earth until
to-night!”
Still as he looked upward, she looked at him.
The wind was blustering. The breath of the northwest had swept the
heavens clear before bringing up its own phalanx of cloud and rain. The
complaint of the great woods, far below their feet, rose about them; the
thousand small voices of moving leaf and branch swelling like the murmur
of a crowd into one pervading sound. Ellinor felt as if these voices of
the earth were claiming her while the astronomer’s ears were deaf.
Whilst they had remained within the observatory she had shared for a
moment some of his own exaltation, heard the mysteries speaking to him,
felt as if each star that struck her vision was in direct and personal
communication with herself. But, once in the open air, as she leant over
the parapet, this sense fell away from her. The heavens were chillingly
remote, and remote was the spirit of their high priest and worshipper.
Indeed he was gradually becoming oblivious of her presence.
After a prolonged silence she slipped out of his cloak and quietly
placed it upon his own shoulders. He gathered the folds around him,
crossed his arms with the gesture of the man who suffices to himself—all
unconsciously, without even turning his eyes from their far-off
contemplation.
And so she stole away from him—and sought her father once more. But
finding him peacefully asleep in his high armchair, by a well-heaped
fire and with the dumb _famulus_ in attendance, she made her way through
the deserted, silent house towards her own quarters, a little saddened
in her heart, and yet happy.
A home-coming strange indeed, but strangely sweet.
With the quiet authority that so far had obtained for her all she wanted
this evening, she had, on her arrival, bidden the only servant she could
find prepare the chambers that had been hers in the old days. To these
little gable-rooms, high perched in that wing of the house that
connected it with the ancient keep, she now at last retired. Candle in
hand, she stood still a moment, holding the light above her head, and
dreamily surveyed the place that had known the joyous hopes of her
childhood. There was an odd feeling in her throat akin to a rising sob
of tenderness.
Then she walked slowly round. It was like stepping back into the past;
like awakening from a fever sleep of pain and toil.
Home—the reality! The rest was gone—over—of no more consequence than a
nightmare! And yet, interwoven with this quiet sense of comfort and
shelter, was an eager little thread of hope in the new, unknown life
opening before her.
From her windows she could look up to the faint light of the observatory
at the top of the black mass of the tower; and below it, she knew, the
sheer depth of wall ran down into the dim spaces of the Herb-Garden. She
gazed forth at the heavens. Never before this hour had she seen in its
depths anything but the skies of night or the skies of day; now they
were peopled with marvels. Never could they seem empty or commonplace
again.
She watched for a moment, musingly, the rounded dome on the distant
platform where to-night she had beheld so much in so short a time; where
even now he was, no doubt still working at his lofty schemes. Then she
tried to peer down through the darkness into her favourite haunt of old,
the Herb-Garden—the garden of healing and poisons, where she had so
disastrously plighted her young troth.
Shivering a little, for she was wearied with the long journey and the
emotions of the day, and it was late, she drew back, closed the
casements and sat down by the fire. The place was all strange, yet
familiar. The little narrow, carved oak bed, the billowing feather quilt
covered with Indian chintz by Miss Sophia’s own hands, nothing had
changed in this virginal room after so many years but the occupant
herself. There was the armchair with the faded cushions, and there her
own writing table with the pigeon-holes; aye, and the secret drawer
where her lover’s scrawling protestations had been deposited with
trembling fingers....
The hand that wrote them—it had since been raised to strike her! And the
precious missives themselves? All that was dust and ashes now; dust and
ashes its memory to Ellinor. Yet it was not all a dream after all; and
yonder stood the little cabinet, lest she forgot! It had a secret look,
she thought, of slyness and mockery.
She pulled her seat nearer the hearth. A wood fire was sinking into red
embers between the iron dogs. Leaning her elbows on her knees, she gazed
at it, and mused, until the red faded to grey and the grey blanched into
cold lifelessness.
It was not of the child, of the girl, of the unhappy wife that she now
thought, but of the new roads that opened before the free woman—roads
more alluring, more fantastic in their promise than even the ways in
which her early fancy had loved to roam.
It was a change indeed from the sordid grey and drab atmosphere of her
recent experiences, to be dwelling once more in this ancient mansion,
the majestic interest of which she had before been too young to realise;
to find herself adopted, with a simplicity that savoured more of the
fairy tale than of these workaday times, accepted as their future
companion by those two unworldly beings, the star-gazing lord of Bindon
and his quaint guardian of old, the distiller of simples.
Yet it was not the thought of her father’s odd figure and his venerable
head and his droll sallies that occupied her mind with such absorbing
interest as to make her forget the hour, the cold, and her fatigue; in
truth it was the memory of the tall, fur-clad figure, of the white hand,
and the luminous eyes, and the single moment of that smile. Again she
felt upon her lips the touch that had made her heart leap, and again at
the mere thought flushed and shook.
CHAPTER VIII
WARM HEART, SUPERFLUOUS WISDOM
Of simples in these groves that grow
He’ll learn the perfect skill;
The nature of each herb to know
Which cures and which can kill.
—DRYDEN.
When the fame of her housekeeperly prowesses had gained for comely Miss
Sophia Rickart the unexpected offer of parson Tutterville’s hand and
heart—the divine had taken this wise step after many years of
bachelorhood and varied, but always intolerable slavery to “sluts,
minxes, and hags”—like the dauntless woman she was, she resolved to
prove herself worthy of the promotion.
Although her horizon had hitherto been bounded by duck-pond to the north
and dairy to the south, still-room to the east and linen-cupboard to the
west, she argued that one so admittedly passed mistress in the arts of
providing for her neighbour’s body need have little fear about dealing
with the comparatively simple requirements of his soul! It was,
therefore, after but a short course of study that she claimed to have
graduated from the status of scholar to that of qualified expounder.
Indeed, she was as pungently and comfortably stuffed with undigested
texts and parables as her plumpest roast ducks with sage and onions.
Before long she began to consider herself, entitled by special grace of
state, to interpret _in partibus_ the will of the Almighty to less
privileged individuals; and, in course of time, the enthusiastic spouse
succeeded in taking the more trivial parish cares almost as completely
off the parson’s hands as those of his household. What if, her flow of
ideas being in excess of memory and understanding, the language of the
Bindon prophetess were on occasions the cause of much secret amusement
to the scholarly gentleman—one sip of her exquisite coffee was
sufficient to re-establish the balance of things!
“Sophia’s texts will do the villagers quite as much good as mine,” he
used to say, philosophically, and allow himself an extra spell with his
Horace or his _Spectator_, whilst his wife sallied forth upon the path
of war and mission.
With a large garden hat tied somewhat askew under the most amenable of
her chins, with exuberant ringlets bobbing excitedly round her face,
Madam Tutterville, as old-fashioned Bindon invariably called the
parson’s lady—burst in upon Ellinor’s breakfast the morning after the
latter’s arrival.
It was a day of alternate moods, now with loud wind voice and
storm-tears lamenting, like Shylock, the loss of its treasures; now,
like prodigal Jessica, tossing the gold shekels into space, making mock
in sunshine of age and sorrow, recklessly hurrying on the inevitable
ruin.
That Madam Tutterville had on her way been pelted with rain and buffeted
with wind, her curls testified. But Ellinor, as she rose from behind her
table by the open window, had the glory of a fresh sunburst on her hair
and in her eyes.
She had left her bed early, full of brisk plans which concerned the
greater comfort of her father’s life and were also to reach as far as
her cousin’s tower. But even as she fastened the crisp ’kerchief round a
throat that shamed the cambric with its living white, she had been
handed a note from Master Rickart himself.
This was pencilled on a slip of paper, one half of which had obviously
been devoted to some fugitive calculations, and which ran therefore in a
curious strain:
MY DEAR GIRL,—Do not Ash: salts (50) : (20.1722...)
attempt I beg of you, to disturb traces of sulphur but not
me this morning. I shall be gaugeable Calcium as before in
engaged on important work re- the ratio 7.171 5.32
quiring the undivided attention 7027.001
which solitude alone can secure. Mem. try in Val. foetida.
Ellinor read and was dashed, read again and laughed aloud.—Gracious
powers what a pair of eccentrics had her relatives grown into!
But she was in high spirits, and hope rose in her heart. She was free
from her chains; she was back from her exile, home in England, home in
the dearest spot of that dear island! Her first outlook upon the world
had been into the closes of the Garden of Herbs; and it had been to her
as if the familiar face of a friend had looked back at her unchanged,
yet full of promise. The beauty of the freshly-washed woods (still in
their autumn coats of many colours: from russet to lemon-yellow, from
the vermilion of the turning ash-leaf to the grey-white of the fir
needle), she drew it all into her long-starved soul, even as she
breathed in the wild purity of the air.
Therefore, as she had sat down to breakfast alone in the gay Chinese
parlour where once Miss Sophia had reigned, the refrain of the song in
her heart was an undismayed, nay, joyous: “Wait, my masters, wait!”
And therefore, also, as Madam Tutterville walked on to the scene of her
past dominion she found a merry, hungry niece; and she was scandalised,
for she had come armed with texts wherewith to console the widow.
“‘Him whom he loveth, he blasteth’!” she cried enthusiastically from the
threshold, “‘aye, even to the third and fourth generation’—my afflicted
Ellinor...!”
She stopped, stared, her manner changed with comical suddenness.
“Mercy on us, child, I must have been misinformed!”
“Misinformed, dear aunt!”
“They told me your husband was dead!”
Ellinor came forward, kissed the lady on either wholesome cheek,
divested her of her wet shawl and exclaimed at its condition.
“Tush, child, that is nought. ‘The sun shineth on the evil and the rain
raineth on the just.’ Matthew, my dear.”—Madam Tutterville was on
sufficiently good terms with her authorities to justify a pleasant
familiarity. “They told me,” she repeated, “your husband was dead. I
shall chide cook Rachael for unfounded gossip. What saith Solomon: ‘The
tongue of the wise woman is far above rubies.’”
Ellinor laughed, then became grave.
“Oliver is dead,” she said.
“Dead!”
The rector’s lady fell into a chair, tossed her hat-strings over her
shoulders, and fixed her light, prominent eyes upon her niece.
“Your weeds?” she gasped.
“I do not intend to wear any mourning but this black gown.”
“Ellinor!”
“Please, aunt, not another word upon the subject!”
For yet another outraged, scandalised moment, the spiritual autocrat of
Bindon glared. But the very placidity of Ellinor’s determination was
more baffling than any other attitude could have been to one who, after
all ruled more by opportunity than capacity.
“‘All flesh is hay,’” she remarked at length, in plaintive tones. “We
shall speak further of this anon. Now tell me what are your intentions
for the future?”
Ellinor’s eyes and dimples betrayed mischievous amusement.
“Do you not think, aunt,” she asked, “that Bindon would be the better
for some one who could look after it? The place seems to be going to
rack and ruin!”
“Alas, my niece, since to a higher sphere I was called forth from this
house, ‘the roaring lion who walketh about has entered in with seven
lions worse than himself.’”
Ellinor crossed the floor and suddenly surprised her aunt’s dignity by
falling on her knees beside her and hugging her. And, hiding her sunny
head on the capacious shoulder, she made vain efforts to conceal the
inextinguishable laughter that shook her.
“Why, aunt, why, dear aunt! Oh! Oh! Oh! What has happened since we
parted? You’ve grown so—so learned, so eloquent!”
Despite the strength of Madam Tutterville’s brain, her heart was never
proof against attack. The clinging, young arms awoke memories and tender
instincts. And while the comments upon her new attainments called a
smile upon her countenance (which made it resemble that of a huge,
complacent baby) she responded to the embrace with the utmost warmth.
“Eh, Ellinor, poor little girl!”
“Oh, Aunt Sophia, it’s good to be home again!”
Once more they hugged; then Ellinor sat back on her heels and Madam
Tutterville resumed, as best she could, the mantle of the prophetess.
“You see, my dear, it having pleased the Lord to call me into a place or
state of spiritual supererogation, it hath become necessary for me to
frame the tongue according to its vocation.”
Ellinor nodded, compressing her dimples.
“My brother Simon and your cousin David—God knows I have done my best
for them! But it is casting pearls before—you know the scriptural
allusion, my dear—to endeavour to raise them to any sense of duty. The
place is indeed going to wrack and ruin. They are no better than
Amalakites and Ephesians. Between David’s star-worshipping on the one
side, like the Muezzin on his Marinet, and your father’s black arts and
other incomprehensible doings in his cave of Adullam, my heart is nearly
broken. And yet, my dear child, I have not failed, as Paul enjoins, with
the word in reason and out of reason. I fear for you, child in this
Topheepot!”
“Do not fear for me,” cried Ellinor; her voice was caught up by little
titters. “Perhaps,” she added insinuatingly, “if you advise me things
may alter for the better.”
“Advice shall not fail you.”
“I shall coax cousin David to let me manage for him.”
Ellinor was still sitting on her heels. She now looked up innocently at
Madam Tutterville. And Madam Tutterville looked down at her with a
suddenly appraising eye and was struck by a brilliant inspiration over
which, in her determination to keep to herself, she buttoned up her
mouth with much mystery.
Ellinor had grown—there could be no doubt of that—into a remarkably
handsome woman. There was so much gold in her hair, there were so many
twists and little misty tendrils, that one could hardly find it in one’s
heart to regret that it should so closely verge on the red. It grew in
three peaks and wantoned upon a luminously white forehead.
“She has the Cheveral eyebrows,” thought the parson’s wife, absently
tracing her own with a plump, approving finger.
Of the charm of the little straight nose, of the pointed chin, of the
curves of the wide, eager mouth, there could be no two opinions. Nothing
but admiration likewise for the lines of throat and shoulder and all the
rest of the lithe figure on the eve of perfection. It was the beauty of
the rose the day before it ought to be gathered. Madam Tutterville gave
a small laugh, fraught with secret meaning.
“Amen, child,” said she irrelevantly at last. “Yes, I will have some
corporal refreshment; you may give me a cup of tea. But you will have
your hands full, I can tell you, with that Nutmeg—Oh, what a house of
squanderings and malversations has Bindon become since my days!”
“I saw something of the state of affairs last night,” said Ellinor, as
she lifted the kettle from the hob on to the fire to boil again and
emptied the contents of the squat teapot into the basin.
Madam Tutterville watched her with approval.
“Another girl would have given me cold slop,” she commented internally.
“That husband of hers must have been a brute!”
“Lord, Lord! I never see brother Simon and cousin David, but what I
think of Jacob’s dream of the lean kine devoured by the fat ones.” Madam
Tutterville, contentedly sipping her tea, had settled herself for a
comfortable gossip. “But, there, so long as David is clothed in purple
and fine linen (I speak fictitiously, child, as regards colour, for I do
not think, indeed, I ever saw David in purple) the servants may rob him
as they please. A strange man—never sees a soul, and yet clothes himself
like a prince. That old sinner Giles goes to London twice a year and
brings back trunks full, all in the fashion of ten years ago. He’ll
never use a napkin twice, Ellinor—he don’t care if he never eats but a
bit of bread or drinks but water, but it must be from the most polished
crystal, the finest porcelain.”
Ellinor listened without manifesting either amusement or impatience.
When her aunt paused she herself remained silent for a while; then, in a
low voice, she asked:
“And what then occurred to change his whole life in this manner?”
Madam Tutterville’s eyes became rounder than ever. She shook her head
with an air of the deepest gravity and importance.
“Do not ask me, my dear—do not ask me, for I may not reveal it,” she
said. And the next instant the truth leapt from her guileless lips:
“There are only three people here that know the whole secret, and they
never would tell me, no matter how I tried. David himself, your father
and my Horatio.”
The lady’s countenance assumed a pensive cast, as she reflected upon
this want of conjugal confidence.
“His marriage was to have been soon after ours,” observed Ellinor
musingly.
“Aye, child, so it was. But the girl David loved and that Lochore
man—well, well, I can only surmise. But in the end there was devil’s
work, fighting and duelling! David was brought home wounded, mad, and
like to die; and for days and nights, my dear, Simon and Horatio nursed
him between them and would not let any one near him while his ravings
lasted—not even me, think of that! Of course, my love,” she added
comfortably, “it is not that my Horatio has not the highest opinion of
my discretion; but he had to humour David, and he would die rather than
break his word even to a——” She paused, and significantly tapped her
forehead. “Well, well, the poor lad got better at last, and then——Oh, if
it were not true no one could have believed it! Maud, his sister (I
never could endure her, with her bold black eyes and her proud ways),
nothing would serve her but she must marry the very man who all but
murdered her own brother! She became Lady Lochore—that was all she cared
for! Pride was always eating into her! ‘Proud and haughty scorner is her
name, and her proud heart stirreth up strife.’—Proverbs, dear.”
“And David?”
“David, when he heard the news, fell into the fever again; worse than
ever. Many was the night Horatio never came home at all, expecting each
morning to be the last! It was a terrible time, but, thank the Lord, he
got well, if well it can be called. And then this kind of thing began.
He withdrew himself completely, no one was ever admitted. Bindon became
a waste and a desert. He cannot forgive, child, and he cannot forget—and
that is the long and the short of it! Horatio has secured an honest
bailiff for the estate, ’twas all he could avail—but, inside, that rogue
Margery Nutmeg reigns supreme! And, upon my soul, if something’s not
done, brother Simon and cousin David will be both fit for bedlam before
the end of the chapter!”
Here the flow of Madam Tutterville’s eloquence was suddenly checked. She
sniffed, she snorted; there was a rattle of buckram skirts as of the
clank of armour resumed. With finger sternly extended she pointed in the
direction of the window—all the gossip in her again sunk in the apostle.
Ellinor’s eyes followed the direction of the finger.
The casement gave upon a green-hedged path that led from one of the
moat-bridges to the courtyards behind the keep. By this path the
villagers were admitted to Bindon House.
The head of a lame man bobbed fantastically across Ellinor’s line of
vision. This apparition was succeeded immediately by that of a fiery
shock of hair over which met, in upstanding donkey’s ears, the ends of a
red handkerchief folded round an almost equally red expanse of swollen
cheek. The silhouette of a girl holding her apron to one eye next
flitted past.
“In the name of Heaven,” exclaimed Ellinor, “is the whole of Bindon sick
this morning? And what brings them to the house?”
“The evil one is still busy among them,” quoth the parson’s wife
oracularly, “and I grieve to say it is your father who is his minister!”
There was something so irresistibly comic in the angry disorder
noticeable on the face, heretofore so kindly placid, of Madam
Tutterville, that her niece was again overcome by laughter.
“Do not laugh!” said the lady severely; “‘The mirth of fools is as the
cackle of thorns’—Ecclesiastes—We may all have to laugh one day at the
wrong side of our mouths. I live in fear of a great calamity. There have
been mistakes already!” she added, lowering her voice to a mysterious
whisper, “as Horatio and I know.”
Ellinor had grown grave again.
“Even doctors are not infallible,” said she reproachfully. “Is poor
father the minister of evil because he may have made a mistake?”
“Ah, child, that’s just it! Brother Simon is not a doctor, he is—I don’t
know what he is. He tries his herbs and plants upon the village folk.
They flock to him and swallow his drugs because he bribes them, my love,
by playing on their heathen superstitions about spells and fairies and
bogles and what not. They believe themselves cured because they believe
him to be in league with the powers of darkness—a warlock, Ellinor! Bred
in the bone, alas! Horatio may joke about it, but so long as I have life
I will combat that back-sliding influence. God knows, it is ill and hard
work. I am as the voice of one crying in the wilderness to the locusts
and wild honey, but I’ll not lift my finger from the plough now!”
She rose. “Come child,” she commanded; and followed by Ellinor, led the
way downstairs and through long passages to a small dairy room, the
window of which gave upon the outer entrance to Master Simon’s
laboratory.
Here, with tragic gesture, she halted, and bade her niece look forth.
CHAPTER IX
HEALING HERBS, WARNING TEXTS
Here finds he on the oak rheum-purging Polypode;
And in some open place that to the sun doth lie
He Fumitory gets, and Eyebright for the eye;
The Yarrow wherewithal he stays the wound-made gore,
The healing Tutsan then, and Plantaine for a sore.
—DRAYTON (_Polyolbion_).
The lagging sun of autumn had travelled but a small part of its ascent,
and the green inner courtyard of what was known as “the keep wing” of
Bindon, so stilly enclosed by its three tall walls and the towering
screen of the keep itself, was yet in shadow—not the cheerless,
universal grey of a clouded sky, but the friendly, coloured shadiness
that is the sunshine’s own doing.
Against the grey stone walls the spreading branches of the blush-rose
trees that had yielded of yore so much sweetness to Ellinor’s childish
grasp, clung, yellowing and now but thinly clad, yet not all dismantled,
with here and there a wan flower or a brave rosebud to bear witness,
like the gems of poor gentility, to past riches.
The scene, the special savour of wet grass, the fragrant breath of the
dairy were of old familiar to Ellinor; but not so the bench placed upon
the flags alongside the wall, with its row of dismal figures; not so the
businesslike-looking table, whereat, behind a score of gallipots and
phials, a basin of water and a basket full of leaves, stood Master Simon
in his flowing gown. He was gravely investigating through his spectacles
the finger which a boy whimperingly upheld for his inspection. The
while, Barnaby, uncouthly busy, flitted to and fro between his master’s
chair and the steps that led down to the laboratory.
Ellinor leant out of the window to gaze in surprise. Here, then, was the
work which her father could only pursue in solitude! She now understood
the nature of this branch of his studies: the student was testing upon
the _corpus vile_ of the willing population the virtues of his simples!
“Fortunately,” thought Ellinor, “such remedies can proverbially do but
little harm and often do much good.” And she watched his doings with
amused interest.
But Madam Tutterville could not look upon them in the same tolerant
spirit. When she had numbered the congregation, she stood a moment with
empurpled cheeks and rounded lips, inhaling a mighty breath of
reprobation, preparatory to launching forth the “word in reason and out
of reason” as soon as she saw her chance.
“Now, Thomas Lane,” said the unconscious Master Simon impressively, as
he wrapped round the finger a rag smeared with green ointment, “if you
do as I bid you the fairies won’t pinch your poor thumb any more; let me
see it next Tuesday. Who is next?”
The buxom damsel, whom Ellinor had noted and who still held the corner
of her apron to her eye, advanced and curtseyed.
“Deborah!” cried Madam Tutterville, recognising with horror one of her
model village maids.
Master Simon shot a swift glance upwards from under his bushy brows; too
well did he recognise the tones of his sister’s voice. Ellinor had not
deemed him capable of looking so angry; and, unwilling to be associated
with any hostile interference, she moved away quietly from her aunt’s
side, left the room and proceeded to the courtyard itself. She was drawn
thither also by another reason. There is the woman who shrinks from the
sight of sores and wounds; and there is the woman whose sensitiveness
takes the form of longing to lave and bind. She was of the latter.
When she reached the table the action had briskly begun between Madam
Tutterville and her brother. The artillery on the lady’s side was
characterised rather by rapidity of delivery than by accuracy of aim.
The old man’s replies were few and short, but every shot told.
Deborah, distracted between awe of the wizard’s cunning and deference to
a reproving yet liberal mistress, stood whimpering between the two fires
of words, her apron making excursions from the sick to the sound eye.
Some of the patients grinned, others looked alarmed.
“Are ye not afraid of the Judgment?” Madam Tutterville was saying, ever
more fancifully biblical as her wrath rose higher. “So it’s your eye
that’s sore, Deborah! I’m not surprised. Remember how Elijah the
sorcerer was struck blind by Peter!”
Deborah wailed:
“Please, ma’am, it wasn’t Peter, it was the cat’s tail!”
“The cat’s tail, Deborah! There is no truth in thy bones!”
“Tut, tut!” here interposed Master Simon. “Who bid you go to the cat’s
tail?—Sophia, life is short. You are wasting an hour of valuable
existence. Go away!”
“’Tis the punishment of the deceitful man,” intoned Madam Tutterville
from her window as from a pulpit, and emphatically pounded the sill.
“‘By their figs ye shall know them!’ This cat’s tail work is the fruit
of the tree of your black art, Simon Rickart, of your unholy necrology!”
The simpler’s voice cut in like a knife:
“Who bid you rub your sore eye with a cat’s tail?”
“Please, sir, please, ma’am, Peter hadn’t anything to say to it, indeed
he hadn’t. But, please, ma’am, it was parson’s brindled cat, and Mrs.
Rachael—that’s the cook at Madam’s, sir—she do tell me nothing be better
for a sore eye than the wiping of it with a brindled cat’s tail. And
please, ma’am, I held him while she did rub my sore eye.”
“Mrs. Rachael!”
This was none less than Sophia’s own estimable cook, who read her Bible
as earnestly as Madam herself, and was the stoutest church woman (and
the best cook) in the country; the model, in fact, of Madam
Tutterville’s making.
Master Simon was deftly laving the inflamed eye. And into the silence
allowed for this startling minute by his sister’s discomfiture he
dropped a few sarcastic words:
“You are fond of texts, Sophia.—Here is one for you: ‘First cast the
beam out of thine own eye.’ You have an admirable way of applying them,
pray apply this: ‘Cast the sorcery out of thine own kitchen.’ Cats’
tails, indeed! Now, remember, child! (has anyone got a soft
handkerchief) I am the only proper authorised magician in this county.
If you want magic, come to me and leave Mrs. Rachael and her brindled
receipts severely alone. You understand what I mean; I am Bindon’s
sorcerer as much as parson is Bindon’s parson.”
Here he seized the silk handkerchief which Ellinor silently offered and
began to fold it neatly on the table. Next, from his basket he selected
certain bright-green leaves of smooth and cool texture. One of these he
clapped over the flaming orb, and tied the silk handkerchief neatly
across it.
“And with that upon your eye, my dear, you may defy,” he remarked,
maliciously, “even the witch and her cat.—Let me see it next Friday.”
The poor lady at the window was by no means willing to admit defeat;
but, nonplussed for the moment, she babbled more incoherently than usual
in the endeavour to return the attack.
“The Devil can quote scripts from texture!”
“But give him his due, Sophia, give him his due: he can quote at least
with accuracy! Ha, ha!—Now, Amos Mossmason, come forward! I thought
you’d come to me at last! I have ready for thee a brew of the most
superlative quality! You’re pretty bad, I see, but we shall have you
dancing at the harvest-home. Here are seven little packets, one for
every day in the week in a cup of water. The little plant, Amos, from
which I have extracted this precious stuff, was known to Hippocrates as
Chara Saxifraga (think of that!), and those wise and learned men, the
Monks of Sermano—”
At this Madam Tutterville again lifted up her voice, and with such
piercing insistence that it became impossible to ignore her.
“Now, indeed, has Satan revealed himself! Amos Mossmason, beware! Have
nought to do with these Popish spells—it is thus the Scarlet Woman
disseminates poison!”
At the word poison the patient hurriedly dropped the packets back on the
table, and stared in dismay from the lady of the church to the gentleman
of science.
Ellinor, keeping well in the shadow of the window-ledge, out of the
range of her aunt’s vision, was startled in the midst of her amusement
by an unexpected thunder in her father’s voice:
“Sophia,” he commanded, “go back to your home, open your Bible and seek
among the Proverbs for the following text, to wit: ‘The legs of the lame
are not equal, so is a parable in the mouth of fools.’ ... Thereupon
meditate! You are a good creature, but weak in the brain, and you do not
know your place among the people. Go!”
Madam Tutterville gave a small cry like that of a clucking hen suddenly
seized by the throat. She staggered from the window and retired. To
confound her by a text was indeed to seethe the kid in its mother’s
milk.
“Amos,” said Master Simon, “don’t you be a fool too; take your powders
and begone likewise, and let me hear of you next week. Now who will hold
the bandage while I dress Ebenezer Tozer’s sore ear?”
“I will,” said Ellinor.
“So you are there?” said the father, without astonishment. “Why, you
seem always to be at hand when wanted!”
And Ellinor smiled, well content.
Madam Tutterville sat on a stool in the dairy, fanning herself with her
kerchief. She was in a sort of mental swoon, unable as yet to realise
the fact that she and the church had been worsted before their own
flock.
Presently, with deliberate step, emphasised by a rhythmic jingle of
keys, the housekeeper of Bindon appeared in the doorway and looked in
upon her in affected astonishment.
Mrs. Margery Nutmeg had a meek and suave countenance under a spotless
high-cap unimpeachably goffered and tied under her chin. Her cheeks
looked surprisingly fresh and smooth for her sixty-five years; her hair,
banded across her placid forehead, was surprisingly black. Her eye moved
slowly. She was neither tall nor short, neither fat nor thin. Her hands
were folded at her waist. Anything more decent, more respectful, more
completely attuned to her proper position, it would be impossible to
imagine. Yet before this redoubtable woman, Bindon House and village
shook; and in spite of valiant denunciations at a distance Madam
Tutterville herself was rather disposed to conciliate than to rebuke her
when they met.
There was indeed no one at the present moment whom she so little desired
as witness to her discomposure. Quite deserted by her usual volubility,
she had no word by which to retrieve the situation. It was almost an
imploring eye that she rolled over the fluttering kerchief. She knew
Margery Nutmeg.
“Ain’t you well, ma’am?” asked that dame, with dulcet tones of sympathy.
Madam Tutterville tried to smile, gave it up, panted and shook her head.
“Don’t you, ma’am,” implored Margery, after a moment’s unrelenting gaze,
“don’t you, now, so agitate yourself. It’s not good for you, Miss
Sophia, I beg pardon, I mean ma’am. It’s not indeed! And you so stout
and short-necked! Eh, we’re all sorry for you: the way you’ve been
treated, and before the villagers too! But, there, Master Rickart is a
very learned gentleman! You ought to be more careful of yourself, ma’am,
knowing what a loss you’d be to us all! It do go to my heart to hear
your breath going that hard! Let me get you a glass of buttermilk—’tis a
grand thing for thinning the blood.”
Madam Tutterville pushed away the officious hand and moved past the
steady figure with an indignant ejaculation:
“Margery, you’re an impudent woman!”
She had not even the relief of a text upon her tongue. Her florid cheek
had grown pale as she tottered out again through the now empty
courtyard. Yes, it was a painfully broad shadow that went by her side.
She longed for the comfort of her Horatio’s philosophic presence; for
the respectful atmosphere of her own well-ordered household. But she
dared not hurry: for there was no doubt of it, her breathing was short.
CHAPTER X
COMPACT AND ACCEPTANCE
——Upon nearer view,
A spirit, yet a woman too!
And steps of virgin liberty—
Her household motions light and free
A countenance in which did meet
Sweet records, and promises as sweet.
—WORDSWORTH (_Lyrical Poems_).
“Dear, dear,” said Master Simon, “what can have become of my
‘Woodville’?”
Ellinor looked up from the little packet of powdered herbs that for the
last hour, in the stillness of the laboratory, she had been weighing and
dividing.—Great had been her delight to find her help accepted without
fresh demur, for she was bent on making herself indispensable.
“My ‘Woodville,’ child!” repeated Master Simon. “Ah, true, true, it has
been taken back to the library. David is a good lad, but I could wish
him less absolutely particular about his books. Books are made for use,
not to show a pretty binding on a shelf! But stars and books—’tis all he
cares for!”
Ellinor rose and slipped from the room. Well, she remembered the old
“Woodville,” in its grey-tooled vellum with the thick bands and clasps.
She knew its very resting-place, between “Master Parkinson,” in black
gilt calf, and “Gerard’s Herbal,” in oaken boards.
Once outside she stretched her limbs after the cramping work and began
humming the refrain of a little song that came back to her, she knew not
how or why, as she plunged into the loneliness of the rambling
corridors:
’Twas you, sir, ’twas you, sir!
I tell you nothing new, sir—
’Twas you kissed the pretty girl!
At a bend of the passage she stopped: she thought she heard a stealthy
footfall behind, and her heart beat faster for the moment with a sense
of long-forgotten child-terrors. Then the woman reasserted herself. Yet,
as she took up the burden of her catch again and walked on steadily,
Mrs. Marvel tossed her head in just the same defiant manner as had been
the wont of the child Ellinor, who would have died rather than own to
fear.
Dim was the library, but with a warm and golden dimness that was as far
removed from gloom as the warm twilight of a golden day.
The scent of the burning wood upon the hearth mingled with the spice of
the old leather—Persian, Russian, Morocco, Calf—with the pungency of the
old parchment and of the old print upon ancient paper. The air was
filled as with the breath of ages.
There is not one of our senses which so masterfully controls the
well-springs of memory as that rather contemned and (in this our western
hemisphere) uncultivated sense of smell. With a rush as of leaping
waters, the founts of the past now fully opened upon Ellinor—bitter and
sweet together, as the waters of memory always are. Here had she taken
refuge many a time, in the days when nothing stirred in the library but
the fire licking the logs, and (as she loved to fancy) the kind, honest
spirits of the dead.
Every imaginative child has its bugbear, self-created, or imposed on its
helplessness by the coward cruelty of some older person. Her childish
dreams had been haunted by that perfectly respectable-looking and urbane
bogey, Margery Nutmeg. Under the housekeeper’s sleek exterior she had
instinctively felt an extraordinary power of malice, and had always
recoiled from her most coaxing approach with a repulsion that nothing
could conquer. Just now, as she came along the passage, she had vaguely
thought, just as in the old days, that Margery might be secretly
following her.
She laughed at herself as she closed the door; but the sound of the
catching lock struck comfort in her heart, and so did the enclosed
feeling of sanctuary, of protection.
“Oh, dear old room!” she said aloud. “Dear old books, dear friendly
hearth! God grant this may indeed be home at last!”
She looked round, from the oriel window, purple-hung with its deep
recess; from its shelves, seat, and screen, set apart like the side
chapel of a cathedral for private devotion, to the high-carved ceiling
where, in faded colours, the coat-of-arms of past Cheverals displayed
honours that could never fade. She kissed her hand to the full length
Reynolds of that Sir Everard Cheveral, whose daughter had been her own
mother, empanelled above the stone mantelpiece. It was sweet to feel one
of such a house.
Again she spoke, half to herself, half to the mellow, genial presentment
of her ancestor:
“You would have said that no daughter of Bindon should seek refuge
elsewhere but in the house of her fathers.”
“Please, ma’am,” said a low voice at her elbow.
Ellinor started. A woman whom life had taught to keep her nerves under
control, it is doubtful whether anything but the old terrors of her
childhood would have had the power to send the blood thus back to her
heart. Mrs. Nutmeg was at her elbow—Mrs. Nutmeg hardly changed, with the
same obsequious smile and deadly eye, dropping another curtsey of
greeting as their glances met, and speaking in the familiar, purring
manner:
“Mrs. Marvel, ma’am, begging you’ll forgive the liberty in offering you
my respectful welcome! I made so bold as to follow you and trust you
will excuse the intrusion.”
“How do you do?” said Ellinor.
This, of all possible greetings, was the one she least desired. She
hated herself for her weakness; but as she held out her hand, she shrank
inwardly from the remembered touch.
“How do you do, ma’am?” responded the other, with perfunctory humility.
“I trust I see you well.”
“Thank you,” said Mrs. Marvel over her shoulder, more shortly than her
wont, and turned to the shelf to look for her father’s book.
But the obnoxious presence was not so easily dismissed. It followed her
to the shelves; it stood behind her; it breathed in her ear. After a
minute of irritated endurance, during which her mind absolutely refused
to work, Ellinor whisked round impatiently.
“Well?”
“Asking your pardon, ma’am. But, as you are aware, I was unable to
attend to you last night, having only returned this morning from
Devizes. I must beg your forgiveness for anything you might have to
complain of, not having been made aware that you were coming.”
“Oh, everything was quite comfortable,” began Ellinor. Then suddenly
remembering her raid over-night, she hesitated and fell silent.
“Yes, ma’am,” pursued the housekeeper, who, among other uncanny
characteristics, possessed that of answering thoughts rather than words.
“Yes, I was sorry indeed to hear that you had to get things for
yourself. I am sure if Sir David knew, it would go near to make Mr.
Giles lose his place, that a guest should be treated so—him that has the
cellar key on trust, so to speak.”
“I shall explain to your master,” said Ellinor, after a perceptible
pause.
“Thank you, ma’am. Mr. Giles and me would be obliged. No doubt my master
will give me instructions. But I should be grateful—having to provide,
and gentlemen liking different fare. (I ought to know their tastes by
this time, ma’am.) But ladies being otherwise, and not proposing to lay
before you what satisfies us humble servants—I should be grateful to
you, ma’am, to let me know how many days your visit at the House is
likely to be.”
Again there was silence. Ellinor stood looking down, struggling against
the feeling of helplessness that seemed to be closing in upon her. Once
more the undignified side of her position reasserted itself. But she
fought against the thought. Why, between high-minded people of the same
blood should this sordid question of give and take come to awaken false
pride? Nay, could she not actually serve David by her presence? The hand
and eye of a mistress were sorely needed here. Truly, she had heard
enough from Madam Tutterville, seen enough herself on the previous
night, to realise that Bindon House had become but as a vast cheese in
the heart of which the rats preyed unrebuked.
“I cannot tell you yet,” said she steadily, though the ripe colour still
mounted in her cheeks.
Margery blinked softly like a cat, and, like a cat with claws folded in,
she stood. Her voice had a comfortably shocked note as she replied:
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“That will do,” cried Ellinor.
“Yes, ma’am, thank you. No doubt. But until my master gives me my
instructions——”
She stopped; in the listening silence of the room a slight noise had
caught her ear. She looked slowly round and Ellinor followed the
direction of her eye. From the window recess Sir David himself had
emerged, pen in hand, and now came towards them.
Mrs. Nutmeg passed the corner of her apron over her lips and dropped her
curtsey. Ellinor stood, her head thrown back like a young deer, watching
her cousin’s advance with a look of confidence, though beneath her
folded kerchief her heart beat quick.
He took her hand, bent, and kissed it. Then retaining it in his, turned
upon the housekeeper. Ellinor, with the clasp of his fingers going
straight to her heart, was unable to shift her gaze from his face.
“You wish for instructions, Margery,” said he, “take them now. You shall
obey this lady as you would myself. While she remains here you shall
treat her as my honoured guest. Long may it be! And further, if she so
pleases, Mr. Rickart’s daughter shall be looked upon as mistress at
Bindon. And what she does or orders to be done shall be well done for
me.”
Margery dipped humble acquiescence to each command.
Ellinor had not thought those dreamy eyes of David’s could give so cold
and yet angry a flash. His brows were hardly knitted, and his voice,
though raised to extra clearness, was singularly under control; yet she
had a sudden revelation, not only of present anger in the man, but of an
extraordinary capacity for strong emotion. And she thought that if ever
an evil fate should bring her beneath his wrath, it would be more than
she could bear.
“Go, now,” said Sir David, still addressing his servant, “but remember,
and let the household remember, that though I prefer to watch the stars
rather than your doings, I am not really blind to what goes on.”
“I am truly glad, sir, to be authorised to give the servants any message
from you,” said Mrs. Nutmeg.
She reached the door, paused and threw one of her expressionless glances
for no longer than a second or two towards Ellinor; raising her eyes,
however, no higher than the knees. Then the door closed softly upon the
retreating figure.
David’s slightly slackened grasp was tightened for a moment round his
cousin’s fingers, then it relinquished them.
“Forgive me, Ellinor,” said he, “a bad master makes a bad host.”
“David,” said she, looking him bravely in the eyes, “I have hardly a
guinea in the world.”
“Oh,” he cried quickly, “you humiliate me——”
She interrupted him in her turn, and as quickly:
“Oh, no, indeed do not think that because of what she said I should seek
such protestation from you. But David, though I came here because it was
the only refuge open to me, I could not stay unless I had a task to do.
I saw last night—before I had been in dear old Bindon an hour—that sadly
you want one honest servant here. Let me be that servant to your house;
let me be at least now what Aunt Sophia was. I can do the work.”
She had flushed and paled as she spoke, but gained confidence towards
the end; and she looked what she felt herself to be, a strong, capable
woman.
His eye dwelt upon her, not as last night in exaltation that amounted to
hallucination, but as one whose deep and restless sadness finds an
unsought peace.
“Will you, indeed?” he said at last. “Will you indeed take under your
gracious care my poor, neglected house?”
Their eyes met again. It was a silent compact. After a little pause:
“Do you not think I am very brave to be ready to face Margery?” she
asked, with a mischievous dimple.
At this his rare smile flashed out—that smile before which she felt, as
she had already over-night, that, in her heart, she abdicated.
“Oh, I know Margery well,” he said, “but her husband was my father’s
faithful man, and to keep her was a promise to his dying ears. She knows
it and trades on it. I am not—do not believe it,” he added, “quite the
lunatic cousin Simon would make me out. At least, I have my lucid
moments. This is one. I have profited by it.”
“So have I,” said Ellinor with a lovely smile of gratitude that robbed
the words of any flippancy.
They turned together, tall woman behind tall man, the crest of her
copper curls on a level with his eyes. Thus they traversed together the
great length of the room. Once she paused, mechanically to draw a bunch
of dead roses from a dried-up vase—roses placed there, God knows how
many summers ago! He marked the action by a glance. Almost unconsciously
she lifted the powdering flowers to her lips, inhaling their faint,
ghostly fragrance.
As they passed the window recess where, unknown to the new-comers, he
had been sitting at his work, he stopped in his turn to lay a
paper-weight on the loose sheets that were scattered on the table. A
great map, from Hevelius’s Atlas of the Stars, lay outspread, and
displayed its phantom-like constellation figures. Ellinor bent down to
look.
“See,” said he gravely, placing his finger on the regal crown that the
genial old astronomer had lovingly designed for _Corona Borealis_—“see,
it is there that the new star has come into being; a fresh gem to the
Crown of the North, fairer even, with its sapphire glance, than
Margarita the pearl——”
She looked up, inquiringly:
“Your star?”
“My star,” he answered.
Her words pleased him, and he marked the earnest brilliancy of her blue
eyes. His answering look, though unconsciously, was tender as a caress;
and she felt it most sweetly. The crumbling rose-leaves scattered
themselves in powder upon his papers. She brushed them impatiently away
with a superstitious feeling that the past was already too much with
her, too much with him. And as she leaned over the table, the live,
real, blushing rose that she had gathered in the courtyard that morning
loosened itself from her bosom and fell softly on the outmost sheet of
the manuscript notes. Here David’s hand had sketched boldly the
wreath-like constellation that had borne him an unexpected blossom.
Ellinor saw her flower lie upon it with pleasure.
“Could Hevelius have seen his crown so enriched—but it is given to few
to chronicle a name in the Heavens! A star may appear and then wane, but
not this one, not this one!” He spoke half to himself.
“When was the last great star born?” she asked.
“Before this old Hevelius’ day,” said David. He drew another map from
under the tossed book and flung it open for her, never heeding that it
rested on the petals of her rose. “But see here, 1660—on a day of
rejoicing for England—the King had returned to his own—what seemed to
many to be a new star appeared, brightly burning. Flamsteed named it,
out of the joy of the people, _Cor Caroli_—the Heart of Charles.”
“The heart of Charles,” she repeated. “It is pretty. What will you call
yours?”
“I dare not name it yet,” he said.
“Dare not?” she echoed astonished.
“Lest it should belie me—fade and leave me the poorer,” he answered.
There came a silence. The clock punctuated the fitful rushing sound of
the wind round the house, ticked off a minute of life for Ellinor as
full of thought and as pregnant of possibility, as sweet and as rich in
promise as any she had ever passed in her already eventful life.
She had the impression of some extraordinary happiness that might be
hers; that yet was so elusive, so high, so shy a thing, that it would
melt away in the grasp of human hands. She had, too, a little
unreasonable foreboding, because her rose lay crushed under his
astronomy. With a sigh at last, chiding herself for folly and dreams
unworthy of her new life—she who had offered herself, and been accepted
as his servant, no more—she moved away from the table.
The action roused him. He went with her. On the way to the door he made
another halt, and indicated by a slight gesture the urbane countenance
of that common ancestor whom Ellinor had addressed and who now, lighted
up by a capricious ray, seemed to look down upon them with a living eye
of favour. She stood confused as she remembered how boldly, as if by
right of kinship, she had claimed aloud in that silent room the
hospitality of Bindon.
“I only represent him here,” said he, divining her thought.
“Ah, cousin David,” said she, “say what you will, my father and I will
always be deeply in your debt.”
He turned and looked at her gravely.
“Surely,” he answered, after a pause, “a man’s inheritance is not solely
his own. It is but a trust. It is to be used and passed on. Those that
come after me,” added he musingly, “will not be the poorer, but the
richer for my unwonted mode of life. Yet, meanwhile, Ellinor, you can
help me to put to better purpose the wealth yearly expended in this
house. For there are abuses in a household which only a woman’s hand can
reach.”
“They shall be reached then,” said she.
CHAPTER XI
LAYING THE GHOSTS
Her eyes
Had such a star of morning in their blue
That all neglected places ...
Broke into music.
—TENNYSON (_Aylmer’s Field_).
Out of the warm library into the deserted, echoing round-vaulted hall,
on the walls of which broad sheets of tapestry hung, dimly splendid,
between fluted pilasters of marble. It seemed to Ellinor, when the swing
door had fallen behind her with its soft thud, as if they had left the
nave of some church; left a home-like refuge filled with living
presences, benign spirits and warm incense; to enter the coldness of a
crypt that spoke but of the tomb.
She shivered, and the gay smile faded on her lips. Their footsteps fell
forlorn upon the stone floor. David now seemed to drift apart from her,
to move unsubstantial in these forsaken haunts of grandeur. But it was
her nature to re-act against such impressions. Her alert eye noted the
moth in the tapestry, the rust on the armour, the dust lying thick on
the white marble heads and limbs of statues that kept spectre company in
the semi-darkness.
“Oh,” she cried suddenly, “what red fires we shall have on these cold
hearths! How the village maids shall rub and scrub! How God’s good
sunshine shall come pouring in through those dull windows! How rosy this
Venus shall shine under the glow of the stained glass!”
He turned to her, as if called by the sound of the young voice back from
the habitual grey dream that his own silent home had come to be for him.
“See, cousin David, poor Diana too! She has not felt on her breast a
breath of sweet woodland air, I verily believe, since—since I left the
place myself these ten years. She shall spring,” added Ellinor, after a
moment’s abstraction, “from a grove of palms. And when the wind blows
free, the shadow of the leaves shall fall to and fro upon her and cheat
her forest heart. At least”—catching herself up as she noted his eye
fixed upon her with a strange look—“at least, Sir David, if you will so
permit.”
He still looked at her musingly. In reality he was going over the mere
sound of her words in his mind, as a man might recall the sweetness of a
strain of music.
“You shall have a free hand,” he said. “And, once more, what you do
shall be well done.”
An odd sense of emotion took hold of her, she knew not why. More to
conceal it than from any set intent, she moved forward and turned the
handle of the door that, on the other side of the hall, led to the suite
of drawing-rooms. He followed close and they looked in together. The
vast abandoned apartment was full of a musty darkness.
“Heavens!” she cried, “do they never open a window?”
Narrow slits of light darting in from the divisions in the shutters cut
through the heavy air and revealed, when their eyes had grown accustomed
to this deeper gloom, the shapeless, huddled rows of linen-covered
furniture.
“Ghosts—ghosts!” said David under his breath.
With quick hands she unbarred a shutter and, her impetuous strength
making little of rusty resistance, flung open the casement before he had
had time to divine her intention. He halted on his way to help her,
arrested by the gush of blinding light and the blast of wild wind, that
seemed to leap at his throat.
“Oh,” she exclaimed, standing in the full ray and breathing in—so it
seemed to him—both the elements. “Oh, the warm light, the sweet air!”
A line of Shakespeare awoke in some corner of his memory: “A thing of
fire and air.” ... How vividly it seemed to fit her then!
Without, the changeful day had turned to wind and sun. She stood in the
very shaft of the light, in the flood of the breeze; he stood watching
her from within, in the gloom and the stagnation. Her black gown
fluttered and turned flame at the edges; alternately clung to, and waved
away from her straight limbs, now revealing, now throwing into shadow
the curves of a foot that, in its sandal, pressed the ground as lithely
as ever a Diana’s arrested on the spring. The fresh airs engulfed
themselves under her kerchief into her white bosom. It was as if he
could watch them playing around her throat, even as if he could see them
fluttering and flattering her hair.... Her hair! The sun’s sparkles had
got into it! Now it rose, nimbus-like; now it danced, a spray of fire,
back from her forehead; now again, under the flying touches, it fell
back and rippled like a cornfield in the breeze.
This radiant creature! The more Sir David looked, the further apart he
felt his fate from hers. She seemed to belong all to the dancing wind
and the glad sun-light. From such an one as he, from his melancholy, his
gloom, his fading life, she seemed as much cut off as ever the
unattainable stars from his wondering night watch.
Thus they stood for the space of a minute. Then Ellinor turned. Light
and freshness now filled the great room. The keen breath of the woods
gaily drove into corners and chased away the mouldy vapours, the vague,
shut-up breath of the old brocades, of the crumbling potpourris, of the
sandal-wood and Indian rose; even as the light of Heaven drove the
shadows back under the cabinets and behind the pillars, and awoke to
life the gold moulding and the fleur-de-lis on the white walls, the
delicate wreaths and tracery on the trellised ceilings.
“See, cousin David, the ghosts are gone!”
But the man had withdrawn to the shadow. There was now no answering
light in his eye. He had now no phrase, tardy in coming, yet quick in
the sympathy of her thought, such as had before delighted her. What had
come to him? She gave a little laugh; the vigour, the freedom from
without had got so keenly into her veins that she was as though
intoxicated.
“I vow,” she cried, “you are like a ghost yourself! Why, you look like a
dim knight from the tapestry yonder in the hall, wandering ...”
She broke off. The words were barely out of her mouth before she had
read upon his countenance that they had struck some chord which it
should have been all her care to leave silent. It was not so much that
his pale face had grown paler or his deep eye more brooding, it was more
as if something that had been for a while restored to life had once more
settled into death; as if an open door had been closed upon her.
“A ghost, indeed,” he said at last, after a silence, during which she
thought the sunshine faded and the wind ceased to sing. “A ghost among
ghosts!”
“David!” she cried and quickly came close to him in the shadow. The
light passed from her face as the sun sparkled away from her hair: a
pale woman in a black dress, she was now nothing more!
Imagination, that plant which wreathes with flowers the open life of
man, grows to mere clinging, unwholesome luxuriance of stem and leaf in
dark, secluded existences. Sir David’s fanciful mind, disordered by too
long solitude, had become incapable of viewing in just perspective the
small events and transient pictures of that every day world to which he
had so persistently made himself a stranger.
The sudden difference in Ellinor’s appearance, following as it did upon
a deeply melancholy impression, struck him as an evil portent.—This,
then, was what would happen to her youth and brightness, were fate to
link her life with one so unfortunate as he!
She stretched out her hand to touch him. The riddle of his attitude
baffled her.
“David!” she repeated, pleadingly. He drew gently back from her touch.
“Cousin,” he said, and she heard a vibration as of some dark trouble in
his voice, “keep to what sunshine this old house will admit. But in
God’s name do not seek to explore its shadows.”
“But do you not see,” she cried, pointing to the open window, “that all
shadows give way before my hand?”
He made no answer, unless a long look, inscrutable to her, but yet that
seemed to search into her very soul, could be deemed an answer.
“Come,” she went on resolutely. “Let us go through this dim house of
yours together, and see what can be done. Ghosts!” she repeated, “the
ghosts of Bindon are rust and dust and emptiness and silence and
neglect. God’s light, dear cousin, and the wood airs, the birds’ songs,
soap and water, stout hearts and true, and good company—give me but
these and I’ll warrant you I’ll lay your ghosts.”
Into his earnest gaze came a sort of tender indulgence, as for the
prattle of a child.
“Come then,” said he, simply.
But she felt that now it was to humour her, and not because she had
reached the seat of his melancholy.
However, with heart and spirit as determined as her step, she drew him
with her through the long, desolate rooms, leaving everywhere light and
freshness where she had found darkness and oppression. Then through the
ball-room, where the silence and the weighted atmosphere, the shrouded
splendour and the faded brilliancy made doubly sad a space designed all
for mirth and music. This feeling struck her in spite of her resolution;
and when, before passing out into the hall again, David paused to look
back and said, as if to himself: “Sometimes darkness is best; at least
it hides the void,” she had this time no answer for him.
Slowly they ascended the great oaken stairs that creaked beneath their
tread as if too long unused to human steps. Slowly they paced the length
of the picture gallery, just illumined enough through drawn blinds to
show the little clouds of dust set astir by their feet and to draw the
pale faces of pictured ancestors from the gloom of their canvas
backgrounds. The shadowed eyes, divined rather than seen in the delusive
light, seemed to follow Ellinor with wistful questioning: “What will
this child of ours do for our sorrowful house?”
Slowly and silently they progressed through the long suites of empty
guest-chambers, where four-posters stood like catafalques and
unsuspected mirrors threw back at them sudden phantom-like images of
their own passing countenances. At length Ellinor paused irresolute;
then she arrested David as he once more mechanically advanced to unbar a
shutter.
“Nay,” she said, “the rest shall sleep a few days more. I have seen
enough of the enchanted castle.” She tried to laugh. “Not, mind you,
that I doubt being able to break its spell!” she added. But her laugh
rang muffled, even to herself, in an air that seemed too heavy to hold
it. She caught David by the sleeve, and dragged him into the comparative
cheerfulness of a corridor lit at either end by a blessed gleam of blue
sky.
They had reached once more the keep wing of the house. There was stone
beneath their feet, stone above their heads, stone walls, ochre-washed
on either side.
“Ah,” cried she, a sudden wave of memory breaking over her, called up by
the vision through the deep hewn windows. “How well I recollect! I used
to play here. This is the old nursery.”
She flung open a narrow door; the long, low-ceiled room within was
flooded with whitest light, for its barred windows boasted no shutters.
The shadows of the tall trees outside danced like waters on the walls.
Cobwebs hung in festoons even in the yawning grate. Two little beds
stood covered with a patchwork quilt; a headless rocking-horse was in
one corner, a tiny wooden chair in another. An empty nursery! As sad to
look on as an empty nest! Ellinor’s eyes brightened with tears; a hot
tide of passion, sprung of an inexplicable mixture of feeling, rushed
from her heart to her lips. She turned almost fiercely on David, who had
remained in the doorway.
“Oh, why have you wasted your life?” she cried. “Why have you turned
your back on all the good things God gives man? Why is your home
desolate, your hearth vacant, your heart solitary? David, David, this
house should never have been empty thus; there should be children round
your knee! What have you done with your life?”
The tears brimmed over and ran down her cheeks. Then her strange passion
fell away from her, and she stood ashamed. He had started first and put
up his hand as if to thrust back her words. There was a long silence.
When he broke it, it was as one who speaks upon the second thought, with
the cold control that follows an unadmitted emotion.
“For me such things will never be.”
“Why, why?” The cry seemed forced from her.
He waved his hand with the gesture of the most complete renunciation.
“Never,” he repeated.
The word, she felt, was final. She gazed at him almost angrily; then
tears, caused now by mortification and confusion, rose irresistibly
again. To conceal them she turned to the window, pulled open the queer
little casement and, leaning on her elbows, looked out in silence.
Below her lay the Herb-Garden, with its variegated autumn burden of
berries, red or purple or sinister orange; its groups of fantastically
shaped leaves, turning to tints not usually known in this sober clime;
here a patch, violet, nearly black; and there a streak of tropical
scarlet; elsewhere again mauve, verdigris-green—colours, indeed, that
village folk said, “no Christian plants ought to produce.” The scents of
them, as pungent yet different in decay as ever in their blossom time,
rose to her nostrils mixed sweet and bitter, over-dulcet, poisonous or
aromatic-wholesome.
The sight and the smell were full of subtle reminiscence. She felt her
throbbing heart calm down, her hot cheeks grow cool. In some mysterious
way, now as in her childhood, the Herb-Garden seemed to draw her and to
speak to her; to promise and withhold some fairy secret, she knew not
whether for joy or sorrow, but yet incomparably sweet. As she gazed
forth she noticed the quaint figure of her father come into view from
behind a clump of bushes. He was attended by Barnaby, who, under the
direction of his master’s gesture, culled leaves and flowers. Circling
round the pair, Belphegor, the black cat, could be seen gravely watching
the proceedings. There was something peaceful and world-detached in the
silent scene, and it brought back some of that sense of rest and
home-return which she had found so blessed the previous night.
All at once she felt close to her the shadowing presence of her cousin,
and the next moment his touch upon her shoulder sent her blood leaping.
“For five years,” said David, “your father has been looking for a
certain plant. He says, Ellinor, that it is the ‘True-Grace,’ the
_Euphrosinum_ of the ancients, called by the primitive simplers at home,
‘Star-of-Comfort.’ And its properties, as he believes, are to bring
gladness to the sore heart and the drooping spirit. But all traces of it
have been lost. If it still blooms, it blooms somewhere unknown. Never
an autumn passes but your father plants fresh seeds, seeds that reach
him from all parts of the world ... with fresh hope.” He stopped
significantly.
She turned to him with wide eyes; he looked back at her. Both his glance
and voice were full of kindness.
“That would be a precious plant, would it not?” he went on.
“‘True-Grace’ ... ‘Star-of-Comfort.’ Is there such a thing in this
world? To your father its discovery is what the quest of the Powder of
Projection, of the Elixir of Life was to the alchemist of old; of
Eldorado to the merchant-adventurer, of Truth to the philosopher—does it
exist? Will he ever find it?” Then he added: “Who knows ... perhaps you
will have brought him luck.”
And when he had said this his dark face was lit by his rare smile.
“What is it that could comfort you?” she cried, clasping her hands.
His very gentleness brought her some comprehension of a sadness
illimitable as when the mists rise dimly above vast seas and fall again.
His face set into gravity once more, his gaze wandered from her face out
through the little window to the far-off amethyst hills on the horizon.
“To be able to forget ... perhaps,” he answered, as if in a dream.
CHAPTER XII
A KINDLY EPICURE
——The easy man
Who sits at his own door; and, like the pear
That overhangs his head from the green wall,
Feeds in the sunshine ...
—WORDSWORTH (_Reflective Poems_).
The fruit in the rectory garden, the pears from the rector’s own tree,
had all been culled; Madam Tutterville had seen to that. And where she
ruled, if there was always abundance of the choicest description, there
was no waste.
The rector liked fruit to his breakfast. He belonged to a generation who
made breakfast an important meal; an occasion for the feast of wit as
well as of palate; for the consorting of choice souls, the first
freshness upon them and the dew still sparkling upon the laurel that
binds the poet’s brow. The breakfast hour is one when the mellow beam of
good repose shines still in the eye, mitigating the sarcasm of the man
of humour, enhancing the charm of the man of elegant parts, ripening the
wits of the learned. That hour (not unduly early, mind you) when the
morning has already gained warmth but not lost crispness; when with
pleasure and profit a party of cultured gentlemen can meet, bloom as of
peach on well-shaven cheek—_rasés à velour_, as the French barber of
those days quaintly had it—silk stocking precisely drawn over
re-invigorated muscle; and, thus meeting, exchange the good things of
the mutual mind with critical sobriety, while discussing in similar
manner the good things of bodily refreshment.
They were good days when social convention countenanced such hours of
elegant leisure! Good times were they that still cherished the
delicately dallying scholar, the epicure in life and in learning; that
admired the man who knew how to sip and relish, and to whom essential
quality was of overpoweringly vaster importance than quantity. A good
age, when hurry was looked upon almost as an ungentlemanly vice and the
anxious mind of business was held incompatible with culture!
Of such was the reverend Horatio Tutterville, D.D., late Fellow of Oriel
College, Oxford, Rector of Bindon. And to him the breakfast hour was
still sacred: an hour of serene enjoyment to which he daily looked
forward as the great prize of life, and which prepared him for a day of
duties performed with admirable deliberation.
True, the fates had so marshalled his existence that but few were the
congenial friends who could now and again come and share these pleasant
moments under the flickering shades of the pear-tree, or in the cosy
parsonage dining-room; sit at those tables—both round! —which it was at
once Madam Sophia’s pride and privilege to supply with an exquisite and
varied fare.
But little recked he of that; choice spirits there were still with whom
he could consort at any time; spirits as rare as any who in Oxford
Common-Room, in Town, or in Cathedral precincts ever had communed with
him. Aye, and rarer! Spirits, moreover, ready at all hours of the night
or day, and always in gracious mood, to yield their hoarded wisdom or
sweetness to the lingering appreciation of his palate.
The choice of his morning’s companion always was with Dr. Tutterville
one of solicitude and discrimination. A Virgil, or some other subtle
singer of like brilliance, on mornings when the sun was very hot and the
sky of Italian blue between the high garden walls; when the bees were
extra busy over the fragrant thyme beds, and when some fresh cream
cheese and honey and whitest flour of wheat were most tempting on the
fair cloth. “Rare Ben Jonson,” perhaps, on a stormy autumn day, when the
wood fire roared up the chimney and a fine old hearty English breakfast
of the game pie or boar-head order could be fitly topped up by a short,
but nobly creaming beaker of Audit ale.
Like so many men who have read sedulously in their student days the
reverend Horatio, now in his dignified leisure, read little, but with
nicest discrimination; and in that little found an inexhaustible fund of
unalloyed contentment. He would also quote felicitously from his daily
reading as a man might from the conversation of a valued friend.
It is indeed not every one who ever learns the art of book-enjoyment.
Your true reader must be no devourer of books. To him the thought
committed to the immortality of print, crystallised to its shapeliest
form, polished to its best lustre, is one which demands and repays
lingering communion. If books are worth reading at all, they should be
allowed to speak their full meaning; they should be hearkened to with
deference. And it was always in pages that compelled such honourable
attention that Dr. Tutterville sought that intellectual companionship
which made his country seclusion not only tolerable, but blissfully
serene.
Madam Tutterville, whether from convenience to herself, or (we had
rather believe), from shrewd conception of the proprieties and wifely
respect for the moods of her lord, never shared the forenoon repast.
Indeed, she had generally accomplished much business in household or
village before the learned divine emerged from that sanctuary where the
mysteries of his careful toilet and of his early meditation were
conducted in privacy and decorum.
But it was on rare occasions indeed that she could not snatch five
minutes out of her multifarious occupations for the pure pleasure of
watching her Horatio’s complacency as he sipped her coffee and his book.
Happy man, whose own capacity for enjoyment could so gratify another’s!
On this particular morning—a week after the exciting day of Ellinor
Marvel’s return—Madam Tutterville, having duly examined the
weather-glass, scanned the sky and personally tested the warmth of the
air, deemed that for perhaps the last time that year she might safely
set her rector’s breakfast in the garden.
For it was one of those days which a reluctant summer drops into the lap
of autumn; a day of still airs and high vaulted skies, faintly but
exquisitely blue; when, red and yellow, the leaves cling trembling to
the bough from which there is not a puff of wind to detach them—and if
they fall, fall gently as with a little sigh.
On such a day the frost, that over-night has laid light, white fingers
everywhere, would be unguessed at but for the delicate tart purity of
the air, which the sunshine, however it may warm it, cannot eliminate. A
day in which you might be cheated into thoughts of spring, were it not
for the pathos of the rustling leaf, the solitary monthly rose, the
boughs that let in so much more heaven between them, and the lonely
eaves where swallow broods are rioting no longer.
Madam Tutterville, as we have said, knew her parson’s tastes to a shade.
The round green table and rustic chair were therefore set between that
edge of sunshine and shadow that spelt comfort. In her devoted soul the
autumnal poetry was translated into housewife practicality: into broiled
partridge still fizzling under the silver cover, a comb of
heather-honey, a purple bunch of grapes invitingly stretched on their
own changing leaves.
An hour later the good soul came forth again into the garden to enjoy
her reward. A covered basket on her arm, that same plump, white member
tightly folded with its comrade over the crisp muslin kerchief and the
capacious bosom; the Swiss straw-hat, tied with a black ribband under
the chin, shading, but not concealing the lace cap of fine Mechlin, the
curls, and the rosy smiling countenance.... No unpleasing spectacle for
any reasonable husband’s eye! So thought the parson. As her shadow fell
across the patch of sunshine in front of him, he looked up and smiled
from the pages of his book.
The companion of the morning was the Olympian who has immortalised in
beauty almost every theme and mood of the human mind. It had struck the
divine, whilst inquiringly surveying his shelves, that the noble figure
of Prospero would be evoked with singular fitness on this placid October
morn. The volume—propped against the glistening decanter of water—was
one Baskerville’s edition of Shakespeare and opened at Act IV. of the
Tempest.
The rector, brought back from the green sward of the wizard’s cell to
his actual surroundings, smilingly looked his inquiry as his spouse
stood in patience before him.
“Ah, my delicate Ariel!” said he, with the most benevolent sarcasm.
Nor, as Madam Tutterville gazed down upon him, was she behind him in
conjugal complacency. Nay, as her eyes wandered over the handsome
countenance with the classic firm roundness of outline, which might have
graced a Roman medal, her heart swelled within her with a tender pride.
“What a man is my Horatio!” she thought, not without emphasis on the
word “my.” For well she knew how much her care had contributed to that
same rich outline.
Everything about this excellent man was ample. Ample the wave of hair
that rose in a crest from an expansive brow and still sported a cloud of
scented powder after the fashion of his younger years. Ample the curve
of his high nose; ample the chin and nobly proportioned. Ample the chest
that gently swelled from under the snowy ruffles to that fine display of
broadcloth waistcoat where dangled the golden seals and the watch that
methodically marked the flight of the rector’s golden moments. But the
rector’s legs had so far resisted the encroachment of general amplitude.
There the only curve, one in which he took an innocent pride, was a fine
line that, under the meshes of well-drawn silk hose, led from knee to
heel with clean and elegant finality.
No wonder that Madam Tutterville’s breast should heave with the glory of
possession.
Her smile broadened, as she glanced from the well-picked partridge bones
to the plump fingers that now toyed with the grapes. She noted also the
reticent smile that hovered on the divine’s lips, as if in sympathetic
answer to her own. Yet, though she beamed to see her lord so content,
the true inwardness of this same content escaped her—naturally enough.
What could Madam Sophia know of that thousandth new elusive beauty he
had even now discovered in Prospero’s green and yellow island? How could
she guess that it had broken upon his mental palate with a flavour
cognate to that of the luscious grapes she had provided? What could she
know of the spice of genial sarcasm that likened one of her own vast
proportions to the ministering sprite of the amiable wizard—and yet saw
a delightful modern fitness in the comparison? Far indeed was she from
realising the endless amusement her conversation afforded to a mind as
accurate on one side as it was humourous on the other.
_Sermo index animi._ If speech be the mirror of the mind, Doctor
Tutterville’s mind revealed itself as elegant, balanced, and polished.
Nothing more orderly, more concise, more jealously chosen than his word
and enunciation. Nothing, in short, could have been in more absolute
contrast to the hurling ambitious volubility of his consort.
“Well, Doctor Tutterville,” said madam, “did the bird like you well!”
“The bird? Excellent well, Sophia. But first, or last, your fine
Egyptian cookery shall have the fame!”
“Ah,” said the lady, beaming, “Proverbs!—Yes. I must say that for
Solomon, he knew how to value a wife.”
“No one was ever better qualified, my dear,” said the parson kindly.
It was characteristic of the lady that, however unknown the source of
her husband’s illustrations, however unintelligible his allusions,
sooner would she have perished than own it even to herself. And as he,
in his original enjoyment of her happy shots, was careful never to
correct her, the conversation of the admirable couple proceeded with
unchecked briskness on one side and ungrudging appreciation on the
other.
Doctor Tutterville drew his chair back from the table, crossed his legs
and prepared to enjoy himself, nothing being better for the digestion
than quiet laughter. Madam deposited her basket, and selecting a snowy
churchwarden pipe from the box that reposed upon the bench by the side
of the pear-tree, proceeded to fill it with Bristol tobacco out of a
brass pot. Very lightly did she stuff the bowl: for the Rector took his
tobacco as he took his other pleasures—a few light whiffs, the best of
the herb! “Once the freshness and fragrance gone,” he was wont to say,
“you might as well drink wine after you had ceased to possess its
flavour.”
“Well, my love?” said he, as he took the brittle stem between his fore
and second finger.
“Well, Horatio,” said she, comfortably subsiding on the bench. “I have
been to Bindon, and, oh, my dear Doctor, what a change has come over the
place!”
“I remarked the improvement,” said the parson, “both in sweetness and in
light upon my visit three days ago. That daughter of brother Rickart’s
seems a capable young woman.”
“Bring up a child,” quoth Madam Sophia, complacently. “I flatter myself
she does credit to my early training. You have not forgotten, Doctor,
that ’twas I who (as the scripture bids us) directed that young idea how
to shoot. I vow,” cried she, “I could not be setting about things better
myself. But, oh, Horatio, how are the mighty humbled!... I refer to
Margery Nutmeg.”
“Mrs. Nutmeg’s manners are always so much too humble for my liking,”
said the divine, “that I presume you allude thus rhetorically to her
circumstances.”
“Certainly, my dear Doctor—_ex cathedrum_, as you would say.”
“I never should, my dear. But let it pass.”
“You know what a thorn in the spirits these goings on of hers have been
to me and you will therefore lift up your voice and rejoice, I feel
sure, when I tell you that my dear niece has now all the keys in her
possession. Margery has found her mistress again.”
The divine laid down his pipe and the benign amusement of his expression
gave way to a look of gravity.
“No doubt,” he said, after a pause, “you good ladies know what you are
doing. But personally, I should prefer not to retain Mrs. Nutmeg on the
premises if it was my business to thwart her.”
But madam, strong in a sense of victory over the dreaded enemy, scouted
the suggestion.
“That excellent girl, Ellinor, was actually having the meat weighed and
apportioned,” she announced triumphantly, “at the very moment of my
arrival this morning. So Mistress Margery’s retail business hath come to
an end. A sheep killed every week, Horatio, and pork in the servants’
hall! The woman was an absolute Salomite! How often did I not remind her
of Paul’s warning! ‘Serve ye your masters with flesh in fear and
trembling.’”
The gentle merriment that Madam Tutterville was happily wont to take as
a token of approval in her lord, here shook his goodly form.
“But my voice was as that of the pelican in the wilderness. Well, all
her sweet smiles and curtseys this morning would not take me in. She
knows her day is over—though she hides her rage.”
“_Malevolus animus abditos dentes habet_,” murmured the parson.
“Indeed, my dear Doctor,” plunged the lady, “you never said a truer
word. But what could she expect?”
“And have you forgiven your brother for so incontinently presuming to
quote the scriptures against you the other day?”
“Why, Doctor, you know I never bear malice. And, dear sir, if you had
but seen him, I vow you’d scarcely know him. He hath a new dressing-gown
and that dear, excellent girl has actually prevailed on him to trim his
beard!”
“I hope,” said the parson, “the young lady will leave something of my
old friend. From the days of Samson I mistrust woman when she begins to
wield her scissors upon man. And have Simon’s other peculiarities
departed from him with his patriarchal beard and ancient garments?”
“Indeed, my dear Doctor, he was quite a lamb. I have promised him a
volume of your sermons, that which refers to the keeping of the first,
second, and third commandments, that he may see for himself how
reprehensible are his dealings with magic and such things. ‘Take a
lesson’ (I cried to him) ‘of my Horatio’!”
She was proceeding with ever increasing, ever more tripping volubility
and unction—“Model your life ever upon the Decameron, and you will never
be far wrong!” But here a Homeric burst of merriment interrupted the
flow of her eloquence.
The reverend Horatio lay back in his chair, while the quiet garden close
rang to the unwonted sound of sonorous laughter. When at length, with
catching breath and streaming eyes, he found strength wherewith to
speak:
“Perdition, catch my soul, most excellent wretch, but I do love thee!”
quoted he, and was promptly off again with such whole-hearted and jovial
appreciation that, feeling she must indeed have pointed her moral with
telling appositeness, his lady’s countenance became suffused with
crimson and was also irradiated by her peculiarly infantile smile of
conscious delight. She pursed her lips to prevent herself from spoiling
the situation by another word.
“And what did brother Simon reply?” asked the rector, as soon as he
became able to articulate.
“Oh,” said she proudly, “you will be gratified, Horatio: he looked very
grave and seemed much impressed; said he could not promise, but that he
would think it over; he would watch and see how you got on.”
Loud rang the parson’s laugh again.
“Meanwhile,” shrieked Madam Sophia, triumphantly, “he said he would
prefer to study the question in the original Italian—whatever he may
have meant by that. I cannot but feel there is promise.”
“Extraordinary, extraordinary!” said Horatio Tutterville. “And David?”
he asked presently. “Are you going to enrol him as a follower of
Boccacio?”
“My dear Doctor,” smiled the lady, “I flatter myself that I can follow
you in the vernal tongue as well as anyone—but when it comes to Hebrew,
I plead the privileges of my sex! This much I understand, however: you
refer to David. Well, he also is putting off the old man. Doctor,” she
clasped her hands and drew her large countenance wreathed in smiles of
mystery, close to his ear to whisper: “This will end in marriage bells!
Mark my words.”
“Thus the prophetess!” replied the rector, with the scoff of the true
man for the match-making feminine. “Alas, my poor Sophia, there’s no
marrying stuff in David!”
He wiped his eyes, and rose.
“Well,” he said, “after the bee has sipped he must to work.”
“You will find,” said she, “a fire in your study, your books as you left
them last night and a bunch of our last roses where you love to see
them.”
Sedately the reverend Horatio moved towards the peaceful precincts,
where awaited him the pages of his next Advent sermons—and perhaps also
the manuscripts of those delicate commentaries on Tibullus, long
promised to his Oxford publisher.
THE STAR DREAMER
BOOK II
The night
Hath been to me a more familiar face
Than that of man; and in her starry shade
Of dim and solitary loveliness
I learned the language of another world.
—TENNYSON.
CHAPTER I
MIDSUMMER SUNRISE
... the blue
Bared its eternal bosom, and the dew
Of summer nights collected still to make
The morning precious: Beauty was awake.
—KEATS (_Sleep and Poetry_).
A dawn in June: the dawn of a night that has held no real blackness, but
merged from a sky of sapphire to one of grey pearl—sapphire so starlit,
that ever deeper deeps and ever bluer transparencies seemed to unveil
themselves to the watchers eye; grey pearl pulsing into opal, shot with
milky pinks, faint greens, ambers and primroses.
Into the dewy morning world came Ellinor; down through the long stone
passages that still held night and silence; out into this awakening,
this freshness, this lightsomeness.
The wonders of the summer dawn, day after day, bring to the old Earth,
as it were, a new creation. She awakes and finds the forgotten paradise
from which man, of his own sluggard choice, shuts himself out with gates
of darkness and leaden bolts of sleep.
Ellinor, her fair face emerging from the folds of her dark, grey-hooded
cloak, came pearl-like as the young day itself from the folds of the
night. Her slender foot left its print on the dew-moist path. She passed
between the stately flower-beds through the great formal
pleasure-grounds where, under the sunrise radiance, the masses of
geranium blooms were taking to themselves silvery colours unknown to the
later day; between the ranks of cypress and box, whose grotesque and
fantastic shapes were duskily cut out against the transparent sky one
moment and the next seemed fringed with green flame as the level rays
leaped at them; up the shrubbery walks, where the white syringa was
breaking into odorous stars, scattering its scented dew upon her as she
brushed the outstretched branches; under the black and solemn shades of
the yew-trees, until she reached the gate that gave access to the
Herb-Garden.
She walked slowly, drinking in the loveliness of the hour. The bees were
humming loudly over the spicy beds. The whole garden was full of sweet
growing hum and stir; of the flash of wet bird wings. Its strange
blossoms swaying in the capricious little breeze seemed to hold private
councils, then nod familiarly at her, welcoming and beckoning on.
Ellinor stood, her hand still on the gate, her brow towards the radiant
east; the hood had slipped from her head and a sun-shaft pierced her
hair. She never crossed the threshold of this garden without a curious
sense of something impending. And now, as she paused to breathe its ever
new fragrances, the happy humour in which she had started on her quest
for herbs (to be gathered at the hour of sunrise, according to Master
Gerard’s own prescription) gave place to the old childish sense of
mysterious awe and attraction.
And as she stood, musing, the sound of a rapid step was heard on this
garden space, so far consecrate to herself and to the wild things; a
darker shadow detached itself from the heavy shade of the yew-tree. She
turned round quickly to face it. Sir David was beside her.
“The purity of the morning,” he thought, “and the dawn still in her
eyes!”
“David!” she cried, astonished; and a happy rose leapt into her cheek.
“I saw you,” he said, “from my tower.”
She glanced up to the frowning grey stone mass that was beginning to
cast sharply its long shadow on the sunlit garden—then she looked back
at his face, pallid and a little drawn. And if he had seen the dawn in
her eyes she saw in his shadow of the night watch.
“Ah,” she cried and menaced him with her white finger. “No sleep again,
David! And your promise?”
“The stars lured me,” he answered, smiling faintly. Ellinor, however,
did not smile. The rose flush faded slowly from her face. The stars
lured him! Would it then always be so? She gave a little sigh. Then,
without speaking, she drew a key from her reticule and slipped it into
the lock; it required the effort of both her strong hands to turn it,
but she would do it herself.
“Nay, cousin, it is a fancy of mine. I alone am trusted with the keys of
the sanctuary. It is I that shall open to you the gate of our
Herb-Garden.”
It fell back, groaning on its hinges; and she stood inside, smiling
again.
“Come in, David.”
“Do you know,” he said, still standing on the threshold, humouring her
mood according to his wont, “that I have actually never trodden this
rood of ground before.”
She clapped her hands with joy.
“Then it is indeed I who will have brought you here,” she cried. “That
is right. Oh, cousin, don’t you know, this is the enchanted garden, my
garden! Ah, you did not know that, lord of Bindon! You deemed it was
yours perhaps, though you never bethought yourself even of visiting it.
But it was given to me by a fairy, years and years ago. And it is full
of spells and dreams and magic! I will tell you something: That night,
when I came back last autumn ... the first thing I did when I went to my
room was to open my window that gives on the garden—you see that window
there—and I leant out over the whispering ivy leaves to greet my garden.
And in the dark of the night I heard it speak to me. And it said: I am
still yours—David, come in!”
With one of his unconsciously courtly gestures to mark that it was
indeed on her invitation that he came upon her ground, he entered
slowly, looking at her with a little wonder. For this fantastic Ellinor
was as new to him as this day’s dawn. She guessed his thoughts.
“I vow,” she said and seemed to shake off her fancy as she might have
brushed from before her face a floating gossamer—“I vow that I am
becoming infected with some musing sickness! But between you, my cousin
star-gazer, and my good alchemist father, it were odd if there were no
such humour in the air. Hold my basket, dear David, I will be practical
again.”
CHAPTER II
_EUPHROSINE_, STAR-OF-COMFORT
She still took note that, when the living smile
Died from his lips, across him came a cloud
Of melancholy severe; from which again,
Whenever in her hovering to and fro,
The lily-maid had striven to make him cheer,
There brake a sudden beaming tenderness.
—TENNYSON (_Elaine_).
“And do you not wish to know,” asked Ellinor, “what has brought me with
the dawn to these gardens?”
He had been watching silently by her side—watching her, as here she
snipped a bundle of leaves and there a sheaf of blossoms, and
mechanically extending the basket that she might lay them therein. Now,
after a fashion of his, to which she had grown well accustomed, he let
fall a glance upon her as one bringing himself back from a distance.
She repeated her question, with a little pretence of impatience.
“I do not think that I wondered to see you,” he answered
slowly.—Fastidious as he was in his garb and every exterior detail that
concerned him, it was all as nothing, Ellinor had learned to know,
compared to his mental fastidiousness. A silent man he was, but when he
spoke no words could serve him but such as could clothe the truth to the
most exquisite nicety. Could anyone have been more ill equipped for the
battle of life?
“I was standing on the tower,” he went on, “watching the withdrawal of
the stars and the rise of another day. It is not often that I look to
the earth. When the stars go, then, you see, the world is blank to me.
But this morning, I know not why, when the skies grew faint I did look
upon the earth and found it very fair. And so I stood and watched and
saw the colours grow. Then you came forth into the midst of them; and
somehow I thought it was as if you were part of the beauty of it
all—part of the dawn; as if you were something that the earth and I
myself had unconsciously been waiting for to complete the whole. Thus
you see, Ellinor, it did not enter into my mind to ask why you had come.
I sought you,” he smiled as he spoke, “also, indeed, I know not why.”
As Ellinor listened her white eyelids had fallen over her eyes, lower
and lower, till the long lashes, black at the base, upturned and tipped
with gold at their ends, cast shadows on her cheek. Her breast heaved
with the quickening of her breath. But at the last word she looked up at
him, and her eyes were sad.
“Ah, cousin, will you ever know?”
It was almost a cry; it had a ring of hidden bitterness in it. Then,
after a slight pause, she resumed her snipping and became once more, as
she had announced, practical.
“Well, now you shall be told why I am here. And first, please understand
that I combine with my duties of housekeeper to the lord of Bindon,
those of ’prentice or familiar to the alchemist—simpler—sorcerer; in
short, to Master Simon, my father. Now, as you know,” she pursued,
assuming a mock orating tone, “my said father spends now all his days
and most of his night in extracting divers salts, distilling essences,
elixirs, what not—remedies for which the village folk flock to him with
enthusiasm, and which being, praise Heaven, harmless enough, are applied
to their ills with varying success but entire satisfaction to
themselves. These remedies are mostly grown in this garden.”
She began to move down the path which led from bed to bed and which no
foot but that of the simpler himself, of the dumb boy Barnaby, or her
own having hitherto trod, was so narrow and encroached upon by the wild
luxuriance of the herbs and shrubs that she was fain to walk in front of
him and to speak over her shoulder. And even then, beneath their feet,
many a broken and crushed simple gave forth its spicy ghost.
Her face presented itself to him in different aspects every moment. Now
he caught but a rim of pearly cheek; now a clear cut profile; now nearly
the whole delicate oval narrowed as she turned it towards him over her
shoulder, the white chin more pointed. Meanwhile she spoke on gaily,
with only here and there a pause to consider, to select and cull.
“I need not tell you, who have known my father so many more years than I
myself, that while he makes use of the good old simple writers, Master
Gerard, Master Robert Turner, Master Parkinson and the rest, he scoffs
at what he calls their superstition. But I, having relieved him from the
task of gathering, find it my pleasure to follow the quaint old
directions in their least particular. And when Master Gerard, for
instance, says, ‘This herb loseth its power unless it be gathered under
the rays of the moon in her first quarter’ why then, cousin David,” she
laughed, “under the rays of the moon in her first quarter I gather it.
Who knows if I do not please thereby some honest ghost? Who knows if
there be not in very truth some hidden virtue in the hour? You will have
divined that the hour of sunrise is, on the same authority, the only fit
season for the culling of certain other precious plants. And so I am
here to cull betony and ditander in the dew. (Betony, you must know,
sir, is of all simples, except vervaine, the most excellent, so that it
is an old say: ‘If you be ill, sell your coat and buy betony.’)”
Here she pushed her way through a bed where thyme had grown breast high.
She came back again presently, flushed and be-pearled, merry with the
breath of the spices clinging to her garments, and with as much betony
as one hand could hold together. This she added to the basket’s burden.
On ran her tongue the while:
“Ah,” catching herself up abruptly and retracing her way by a step, “the
ditander is also blossoming, I see. Father will be glad to see it. It is
sovereign against the wounds of arrows ‘shot from guns, and also for the
healing of poisoned hurts.’ You would never guess,” she added, “that the
juice of this modest little plant is so powerful that, Master Gerard
avers, ‘the mere smell of it will drive away venomous beasts and doth
astonish them!’” Her laugh rang out, clear as crystal. “You are not
convinced, cousin. I would I could see more speculation in that eye!
What if I were to tell you that the thing grows under the influence of
Mars—would it awaken more interest?”
His grave lip was faintly lifted to a smile.
“It might account at least for its virtue against wounds of arrows,”
said he.
“Nay, there’s sarcasm in that tone,” she said, shaking her head. “More
respect, I beg of you, Sir David, for this little borage. Does it not
look quaint and simple with its baby-blue flowers and its white downy
stem? Ah, I warrant me you have had borage in your wine ere this—but you
never knew why or how it came there! Oh, sir, it is no less—on
authority, mark me—than one of the four great cordial flowers most
deserving of esteem for cheering the spirits. The other three are the
violet, the rose, and alkanet. And what the alkanet is I should much
like to know!”
... “You know so much,” he said, “that I have no thought to spare for
what you do not know.”
“Sarcastic again—take care, cousin! Do not mock at Jupiter’s own
cordial. And I tell you more, sir: conjoined with hellebore—black
hellebore—that dark and gloomy plant will, as one Robert Burton has it:
‘Purge the veins
Of Melancholy and cheer the Heart
Of those black fumes that make it smart;
And clear the brain of misty fogs
Which dull our senses, our souls’ clogs....
“It’s a favourite quotation of my father’s. Would you drink of it, if I
brewed it for you?”
There fell a sudden silence—a something dividing their pleasant warmth
of sympathy as of a chill breeze blowing between them. And she knew a
thoughtless word had struck upon his hidden sore. She stood, as if
convicted, with eyes averted from his face. Then he spoke:
“Every man in his youth brews the cup of his own life and spends his age
in drinking of it, willy nilly. Sometimes, I think, it is blind fate
that has gathered the ingredients to his hand. Sometimes I see they are
but the choice of his own perversity. But once brewed, he must drink, be
they bitter or sweet.”
“Cousin—” she began timidly. Then, after her woman’s way, courage came
to her on a sudden turn of passion: “I’ll not believe it!” she cried,
flashing upon him. “Throw the poison away, David. There is glad wine yet
in this beautiful world.”
His face relaxed as he looked upon her; the gloomy cloud passed from it.
But the melancholy remained.
“Do you remember,” said he, “for I too can quote—what Lady Macbeth says:
‘All the perfumes of Araby cannot sweeten this little hand!’ My bright
cousin, believe me, there is a bitterness which no sweetness that ever
was distilled, nay, I fear, not even such as you could distil, can ever
mitigate. Have you not learned,” he added, and a certain inner agitation
made his lips twitch and the pupils of his eyes dilate and found a
distant echo in his voice as of some roaring waters deeply hidden—“have
you not learned, over your father’s crucibles and phials, that the
sweetest essence does but lose its nature and become bitter too for
ever, when mingled with but a few drops of the acrid draught. Ellinor, I
have warned you already.”
She felt as if some cold hand had been laid on her heart:—here spoke
again the voice of the sick soul determined to renounce. And here was
the one man in her whole world, to whom she would so fain give
extravagantly. There are natures to which love means taking only; others
to which it means giving all. How she would have given! The ache of the
tide thrust back upon her heart rose to her very throat. She went white,
even to her brave lips. But still they smiled, as women’s lips will
smile in such straits.
“You mind me,” she said, “that I was after all forgetting to gather the
hellebore. ’Tis a dark drug-plant, cousin and loves the shade; and, if
the old simplers speak truth, it must be gathered before a ray of sun
shall of a morning have opened its green petals. I see that I must
hurry. Already the shadow of your grey tower is shortening across the
beds.”
She took her basket from his arm, gave him a little nod as of dismissal
and passed quickly from him. He let her go without a word or a gesture,
standing still, wrapt in himself, with eyes downcast. Those deep waters
in his soul, that for so many long years had lain black and
stagnant—what was it that had so stirred them of late days, that they
should rise in waves like the salt and bitter sea and dash against his
laboriously built dykes of peace and renunciation?
Ellinor was long on her knees beside the hellebore, not indeed that she
was busy picking it, for her hands lay idly before her. With eyes fixed
unseeingly upon its dark, poisonous looking tufts, she was tasting the
savour of a slow gathering tear. Suddenly she felt her cousin’s presence
again close upon her and began feverishly to tear at the plant, every
energy of her mind bent upon concealing her weakness. In another moment,
with a sweetness that was almost overpowering, she knew that he was
kneeling beside her, his shoulder to her shoulder, his hands over hers.
“Dear Ellinor,” he said softly in her ear, “I do not like to see you
touch this poisonous plant, let me——” And then, breaking off, when she
turned her face, so close to his, as if irresistibly drawn to seek his
glance: “Forgive me!” he cried, with more emotion than she had ever
heard his measured tones express before. “By what right am I always thus
casting upon your happy heart the shadow of my gloom!”
Her fingers closed passionately round his.
“David,” she said, almost in a whisper, “don’t forget I too have known
suffering. David you were wrong just now. The sweet and the bitter work
together make wholesome beverage. And see, for that do I gather
hellebore that it may blend with the borage. Did I not tell you so?
And—ah, forgive, but I must say it, sometimes the bitterness and the
sorrow are not real, only fancied.... And then it may be that real
adversity must come to make us see it. And even then, if we do see it,
sweet are the uses of adversity!”
“Why, then, I could believe,” he answered her, and his deep voice still
thrilled with that note of emotion that was so inexpressibly musical to
her ear, “that if a man were to be comforted by such as you, he might
find a sweetness even in adversity—that is,” he added on a yet deeper
note, “did he dare let himself be comforted.”
She sighed and dropped her hands from his; took up her basket and rose
to her feet. He also rose hastily, as if ashamed of his emotion, and
once more wrapped reserve around him like a mantle. Presently he said,
in that slightly jesting manner that never lost touch with melancholy:
“Your father has long been looking for the lost ‘Star-of-Comfort.’ Your
father is an amiable materialist and believes that a right-chosen drug
can minister to a mind diseased. I fear me it will prove to him as frail
a quest as that of the Fern Seed of invisibility and the Lotos of
forgetfulness—and such like dreams of unattainable good!”
“You are wrong, wrong again!” Although the moisture she scorned to brush
away was still in her eyes, the smile was on her lip once more; and the
dimple by it—a triumphant dimple.
“How so?” he asked.
“Why, sir, you once were a truer prophet than now you wot of. Did you
not foretell to me, on the first day of my return, that I might help him
to find it? The lost plant was, according to Master Ralph Prynne (of
fragrant memory) well-known at one time in the south of France where,
says he, upon diligent search it may even now be discovered among ruins
and rocks!” Here she resumed her mock didactic manner. “‘It is my
belief,’ says he, ‘that the gay and singularly careless temper of these
peoples is due in great part to the ancient custom of brewing it into
the wine they did drink of—whereby their sons and daughters did inherit
the happy tendencies engendered in themselves—and splenetic melancholy
which sits so black on many of our country is never known among them.’”
“A wondrous drug!” said David.
“So I thought,” she retorted; and, with a mocking glance at him, went
on: “And knowing how many indeed stand in need of it here, I who had
recently come myself from the south of France, resolved to get him the
seed or root, if such were to be obtained. Master Prynne gives a very
detailed description and I have a good memory. There was one, a wise
woman I knew of, who was learned in simples. In fine, sir, turn and
behold!”
She twisted him round, led him a pace or two forward, and pointed.
On a shallow bed, sloping to due south, screened from the north and
prepared with a kind of rockery clothed with mingled sand and heather
soil, a hardy-looking dwarf plant was growing in thick patches. And
sundry small but vigorous off-shoots, darting here and there gave
promise that they would soon cover the bed and overhang its rocky
borders. The full sunshine blazed down upon it, and the minute bright
and bold blossoms that gemmed it already in places looked like stars of
bluish flame among the lustrous dark green leaves.
“Behold!” repeated Ellinor, with a dramatic gesture.
There was a stimulating aromatic fragrance in the air. The morning sun
which had just emerged from the edge of the keep bore down upon them
with an effulgence as yet merely grateful. A band of puzzled bees was
hovering musically above the last attractive new-comer in the herbary.
David looked from the flourishing bed to the straight, strong figure,
the brave countenance of his cousin.
“And so you have succeeded,” he said with a look of smiling wonder.
“Succeeded where Master Simon has sought in vain so many years!
Everything you touch seems to prosper.”
Some realisation of that spirit of gay perseverance which had been so
beneficently active in his neglected house all these months, beneath
whose influence flowers of order and brightness seemed to have sprung
up, magic and fragrant as the lost “Star-of-Comfort” itself, kindled a
new light in the eye he now kept fixed upon her. It was a realisation, a
sense of admiration, distinct from the ever-present, albeit
hardly-conscious attraction. He looked back at the flame-starred
creeping shrub.
“So there blooms Master Simon’s True-Grace, this _Euphrosinum_, his
Star-of-Comfort, after all these years,” he went on musingly.
And the sense of her presence was intermingled with the penetrating
fragrance of the strange flower, the music of bees and bird call, the
fanning of the breeze, and the warmth of the sun.
“In Persian,” she resumed, “they call it _Rustian-al-Misrour_—the
‘Plant-of-Heart’s-Joy’ is the meaning of it, so Prynne tells us. It was
brought to Europe by the Crusaders, but lost in the destruction of
monastery gardens in England, and fell into disuse elsewhere—and thus
came to be regarded as a myth. But things are not myths because we lose
them,” she added wistfully. “Who knows, sometimes the joy we deem lost
is under our hand.” She picked off a branchlet and absently nibbled it.
And her light breath, already sweet as of clover or lavender, came
wafted across spiced with this new fragrance.
“Well,” said he then slowly, “according to the bygone simplers, there it
lies. Ellinor, when you brew me a cordial of the Star-of-Comfort, I
shall drink it.”
“I may mind you of that promise one day,” said she.
Then, upon the little pause that ensued, she looked at the shortening
shadows and the skies and said, in her womanly, careful manner, that it
was time for her to be in the dairy. At the garden gate, however, he
paused.
“And under the influence of what star,” he asked, “is the wondrous plant
supposed to bloom?”
She could not guess from his manner whether he spoke in jest or in
earnest, but she answered him mischievously, as she turned the key in
the lock: “Master Prynne was silent on this point; and nowhere could I
find news of it. But we are quite safe, cousin David, for I planted the
first cutting myself under your new star.”
He started ever so slightly.
“Did you indeed?” he murmured dreamily.
“But I don’t know its name yet. Tell me, you must have given your new
star a name by now—for I think it grows brighter night by night.”
In silence he let his deep gaze rest for a moment upon her, then
answered:
“To me it is still nameless, though meaning things beyond words.”
He paused, and went on, still compassing her with his absorbed look.
“You and the star came to me together—shall I not call it also,” with a
gesture at the flowering bed, “Euphrosine—Star-of-Comfort?”
These words, accompanied by the glance that seemed to give them so
earnest a significance, troubled Ellinor strangely. She could find no
response. She drew the key from the lock and was moving forward with
downcast eyes when he laid his touch lightly upon her arm.
“Thank you,” said he, “for admitting me into your enchanted garden! Some
morning when the dawn birds are calling, or some evening before the
stars come out, may I knock at this gate again?”
“Nay, David,” cried she, with swift uplifted eyes, holding out to him
the key on the impulse of her leaping heart, “this gate must never be
locked for you! My father has another—take this one!”
His fingers closed upon her hand and then he took the brown key and
looked at it.
“For you and me alone,” he said.
She knew then that this hour they had spent together in the
dew-besprinkled closes was to him as sacred and as sweet as it would
ever be to her. But now he had folded his lips together and went beside
her in silence.
CHAPTER III
A QUEEN OF CURDS AND CREAM
And Enid brought sweet cakes to make them cheer,
· · · · ·
And stood behind and waited ...
And seeing her so sweet and serviceable,
Geraint had longing in him evermore
To stoop and kiss the tender little thumb
That crost the trencher as she laid it down.
—TENNYSON (_Idylls_).
At the end of the lane, Ellinor took the path which branched off to the
courtyards; and, as she made no movement of farewell or dismissal, the
master of the place, with great simplicity, followed her. These
courtyards were located in the most ancient part of Bindon, where in
mediæval days had been the inner bailey. What remained of the lowered
towers and curtains had been utilised for the peaceful purposes of
spences, bakehouses and dairies.
As in the case of all buildings, the life of which has gradually
dwindled, these precincts had gathered to themselves a mellow and placid
picturesqueness. Long tranquil years had clothed them with luxuriance.
It was as if the green tide of surrounding nature had taken delight in
reconquering the whilom bare array of stone and mortar. Rampant ivies
and wild creeping plants had long ago stormed the half-razed ramparts
from the outside, and unchecked in their assault now pounced into the
yards over the roofs. On the inside the blush roses were foaming up the
grey walls; the square of grass in this shaded spot was deeply green.
In the early light and the silence it was a scene of singular placidity
and fitted well with David’s unwontedly pleasant mood; mood of tired
body and vaguely happy mind. A few pigeons from the high-reared cot came
fluttering down and walked about, curtseying expectantly.
Presently two milk-maids, in print frocks, sun bonnets and clogs,
clattered down some stairs and went in quickly through the dairy door,
agitated at perceiving the task-mistress up before them. Their entrance
broke the musing spell of the two unavowed lovers. As they drew near the
open door of the house, the cool breath of the dairy—a sort of cowslip
breath, of much cleanliness, mingled with the faintly acrid sweetness of
the milk—came to their nostrils. A row of shining pails were ranged upon
the low stone bench just outside the door. A lad and maid hurried past,
each carrying two more foaming buckets.
Ellinor now became the decided, almost stern, mistress of household
matters. She counted the milk pails and gave an order to each maid, who
curtseyed and stood at attention, but could not keep a roving, awestruck
eye from the unwonted spectacle of their master.
“Rosemary, three pails for the dairy, as usual. Two for the house: up
with them, Kate! Sally, back to your skimming as soon as you have filled
the steward’s can and carried in the pail for the parish dole out of the
sunshine. Stay a moment,” her tone and manner altered, “leave one of
those here—Cousin David, have you broken your fast? Of course not! Then
you and I, shall we not do so now together? Nay, I shall be disappointed
if you refuse. You have made me queen of these realms—the ‘queen of
curds and cream,’ as Doctor Tutterville calls me—and all must obey me
here!”
There was a stone porch jutting forth over the side door that led into
the passage. Within this refuge, on either side, was set a stone bench
under an unglazed ogee window. Honeysuckle had intermingled its growth
with that of the climbing roses, and made there a parlour of perfume.
Hither Ellinor conducted the lord of Bindon, and here he allowed himself
to be installed, obeying her as one who walks in dreams and is glad to
dream on.
The maids had parted in noisy flight, each on her different errand,
starched gowns crackling, clogs clacking, pails clinking as they went.
Ellinor threw down her cloak and her basket and disappeared, light as
the lapwing, rejoicing with all a woman’s joy to minister to the
beloved. She returned with a little wooden table, which, smiling, she
set before him and was gone again. This time it was out into the yard
and into the dairy, and her head flashed in a sun-shaft. When she
reappeared, she was walking more slowly, and between her hands was a
yellow glazed bowl brimming with new-drawn milk.
“For you, Sir David,” she said.
It was foaming and fragrant of clover blossom as he lifted it to his
lips.
“And now,” she went on, “you shall taste of my baking. I had a batch set
last night and the rolls ought to be crisp to a touch.”
The following minute brought her back, flushed and triumphant, bearing
on a tray a smoking brown loaflet, a ray of amber honey and a rustic
basket full of strawberries. She paused a second reflectively, and
cried:
“A pat of fresh-churned butter!”
And again his eyes watched her cross the shaft of sunshine and come
back, and they were the eyes of a man gazing on a dear and lovely
picture.
“Now, David, is this not a breakfast fit for a king?”
He looked at the table and then at her; and then put down the loaf his
long fingers had been absently crushing.
“And you?” he asked and rose. “You—the queen?”
“I? Oh, I think I forgot myself. Oh, don’t get up, David. Don’t, please!
You cannot imagine how much refreshed I shall feel when you have eaten.
There, then, I will sit beside you. But as there is no pleasure in
waiting upon oneself, I must call up a court menial. Katy! A bowl of
milk for me. Rosemary, another roll from the oven!”
This was to remain a memory of gold in Ellinor’s life. Poets may sing as
they will of the joys of mutual love confessed. But there is an hour
more exquisite yet in man and woman’s life: the hour of love still
untold. The hour of trembling hopes and uncertainties; of ecstasies
hidden away in the inmost sanctuary of the being; of dreams so much more
beautiful than reality; of thoughts that no words can clothe and music
that no instrument can render. Hour of doubt which is to certainty as
the dawn is to the day, as mystery is to revelation: as much more
enthralling, as much more exquisite.
Even as the soul is constrained by the body, so must the ideal thought
lose of its fragrance when limited to the spoken word. But the very
condition of life’s tenure urges us to hasten ever onwards towards the
success of attainment. We may not sit and taste the full sweetness of
the present because our foreseeing nature and old Time are spurring us
on, on! This present of ours is fleeting enough, God knows. Yet the
miserable restlessness within us robs us of the minute even while it is
ours. Thus the most perfect things in our lives will ever be a memory.
But when the golden hours have all tolled for us, when the flowers are
all withered, at least we can look back and say: “That was my sunrise
hour. ... That was my perfect rose!”
They spoke little to each other, but Ellinor saw the lines of melancholy
fade out of his face and become replaced by soft restfulness. Tired he
looked, the watcher of the night, in the broad radiance of the day, but
happy. It was as if the fatigue itself brought a sense of peace, lulling
him to dreaminess and depriving him of the energy to fight against the
sweetness of the moment.
Suddenly, with the light tread of a cat, the squat figure of Mrs.
Nutmeg, in her decent widow’s black and her snowy mutch, came upon them
from the house. She paused with a start of such extreme surprise that it
was in itself an impertinence, and the more galling because it could not
be resented. Ignoring the scarlet-cheeked Ellinor, the housekeeper
dropped her curtsey and offered ostentatious excuses to Sir David.
“I humbly ask your pardon, sir. Indeed, sir, I had no idea, or I would
not have made so bold as to intrude. I hope, sir, you’ll forgive me for
disturbing you at such a moment!”
Her eye roved as she spoke over the disordered table, aside to Ellinor’s
cloak and the basket of withering herbs; then back to Ellinor herself,
where it deliberately measured every detail—the dusty shoe, the green
stains on the gown, the flushed brow, the disordered hair.
Her unconscious master waved his hand a little impatiently with his
formal “Good morrow,” that was more a dismissal than a greeting. Mrs.
Nutmeg returned Sir David’s brief salutation with another unctuous
curtsey. Withdrawing her glance from Ellinor, she fixed it upon his
face, with a vain attempt to throw an expression of tender solicitude
into the opaque white and the meaningless black of her eye.
“Excuse the liberty, sir,” she began again, “but do you feel quite
yourself this morning? It do go to my heart to see how drawn and ill you
be looking! I fear these last months, sir, you haven’t been as usual.
Not at all. More has remarked it than myself.”
Ellinor rose.
“It’s getting late, Margery,” she said, “and the cream is not skimmed
yet. Ring the bell for the girls.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Margery curtseyed, her eyes still clinging unwaveringly to
her master’s face. This was now turned upon her with a sudden frown.
“Do you not hear?” said Sir David.
They robbed him freely in his absence, this household of his, but none
could forget in his presence that he was master.
“Yes, sir, yes ma’am. I ask your pardon,” said Mrs. Nutmeg.
And this time there was flurry in her step as she moved away, her list
slippers padding on the flags. She cast not another glance behind her;
yet Ellinor felt chilled, she knew not why. Upon the dial that had
marked her warm-tinted hour a grey shadow had fallen. She took up her
basket of herbs. Most of the perishable things were already withering,
but the dry vivacious stems of the Star-of-Comfort flaunted their glossy
leaves and their tiny brilliant blossom undimmed. She noticed this, and
was superstitiously glad.
“I must go, cousin,” she said, “but later, if you will, I shall come and
help on with the new chart.”
She nodded and left him. As she moved across the courtyard towards her
father’s den, the maids, hustling each other as they clacked into the
dairy, looked after her with inimical stare. Then one whispered to the
other, and the other nudged back, while the third surreptitiously shook
her mottled fist. And as Ellinor walked on with steady step she knew it
all. She knew that “the Queen of curds and cream” sat on an insecure
throne; and that, were the power that had placed her there to be
withdrawn from her, many eager hands would be stretched out to pull her
into the mire.
But upon the first step leading down to the laboratory, she turned and
cast a glance back: in the deep shadow of the porch David was still
standing. Out of the dark face the light eyes were watching her; when
she turned, he smiled and waved his hand. And her spirits rose again as
she ran down the stairs, to begin her long round of various work. She
had stuck a sprig of the Euphrosinum in her kerchief; and during the
whole day, whether over crucible or household book, in linen closet or
still-room, each time the scent of it was wafted to her nostrils there
came and went upon her lips a little secret smile, as if the fragrant
thing on her bosom were but the symbol of some inner fragrance rising in
little fitful storms from her heart.
CHAPTER IV
OPEN-EYED CONSPIRACY
Let me loose thy tongue with wine:
No, I love not what is new:
She is of the ancient house,
And I think we know the hue
Of that cap upon her brows!
—TENNYSON (_Vision of Sin_).
Old Giles, in the plate-room! Old Giles, butler of Bindon and
confidential servant to Sir David, sunk in his wooden armchair and his
head inclined till his double chin rested on his greasy stock, surveying
with distasteful eye the mug of small-ale on the table before him.
A stout old man with a reddening nose may be no unpleasant picture if
superabundance of flesh and misplacement of carmine bear witness to
jollity and good cheer; but oh lamentable spectacle if melancholy droop
that ruby nose; if fat cheeks hang disconsolate! Then for every added
ounce of avoirdupois is added a pound of misery. Your melancholy thin
man is fitted by nature to bear his burden, but the sad fat man seems to
deliquesce, to collapse—so much in his case is affliction against the
obvious design of nature!
From the inner pantry door Margery stood a moment and contemplated her
fellow servant awhile, with an air of deeper commiseration than her
usually set visage was wont to express. Then she carefully closed the
door and advanced to the table. In her rolled up apron she was clasping
something with both hands.
“Eh,” she said, in a long drawn note, “it do go to my heart, Mister
Giles, to see you so cast down!”
The butler rolled his lack-lustre eye from the mug of beer to the
housekeeper’s countenance; then his underlip began to tremble.
“Ah,” he answered, “that stuff is killing me, Mrs. Nutmeg. The cold of
it on my stomach! It’ll creep up to my heart some of these nights, it
will! And that will be the end of poor old faithful Giles!”
A tear twinkled on his vast cheek. He stretched out his hand for the
glass, gulped a mouthful of it and replaced it on the table, drawing
down the corners of his mouth into a grimace not unlike that which in an
infant heralds a burst of wailing.
“Cold, cruel, poisonous stuff, that lies as heavy as heavy! Half a
caskful, ma’am will not stimulate a man as much as half a wineglassful
of port-wine or sherry-wine. It’s murder—that’s what it is!”
“Murder it is,” assented Margery. She took the glass and threw its
contents into the grate: sympathy personified. Then she began to move
about the room with an air of so much mystery that Giles’ attention was
faintly roused in something external to himself and to the odiousness of
small-ale.
Mrs. Nutmeg went to the pantry door, listened a moment with stooped
head, then released her right hand from the enfolded object and turned
the key in the lock. Stepping to the high-set window, she next squinted
east and west, as if to make sure that no watchers were about; then
returned to the table, slowly unrolled her apron and displayed to the
butler’s astonished gaze a black bottle, cobwebbed, dust-crusted,
red-sealed—a bottle of venerable appearance and, to the initiated, of
Olympian promise. With infinite precaution she tilted it into a vertical
position and placed it on the table, displaying in so doing the dusty
streak of whitewash which had marked the upper side of its repose these
twenty years. Into old Giles’ expressionless stare leaped a light of
rapturous recognition.
“The Comet port, by gum! The port from the fifth bin!”
He raised himself in his chair and, as if sight were not enough for
conviction, began with trembling hands to caress the bottle, and
smacking his lips as if the taste were already upon them. Margery
surveyed him with her head slightly on one side.
“How—how did you get it?” he babbled, now sniffing at the seal, his red
nose laid fondly first on one side then on the other.
“Never you mind,” said she, “I’m not the one to stand by and see old
service drove to death by stinginess nor yet by interference. There’s
more where it came from.”
“The last bottle we drank together,” interrupted he, “was the first to
break in upon the sixth dozen. Six dozen, minus one, seventy-one
bottles. That makes——”
“Seventy bottles still,” said she. “Enough to warm your heart again for
many a long day.” She stooped, and whipped out a corkscrew from one of
her capacious pockets.
“Give me that bottle, Mister Giles.”
She lifted it from his grasp. He raised his hands, protesting,
quivering.
“For Heaven’s sake, don’t shake it, ma’am! Don’t shake it! It’s thirty
year old, if it’s a day. Oh, Lord, Mrs. Nutmeg, give it to me, ma’am!”
She cast one swift, contemptuous glance upon him.
“I think my wrist is steadier than yours,” she remarked drily, while
with the neatest precision she inserted the point of the corkscrew into
the middle of the seal.
“’Tis the yale,” he palpitated.
“Oh, aye,” said she, “the ale, of course.” She smiled in her sleek way
while she turned the corkscrew. “Here,” she added, “is what will steady
them for a while at any rate.”
The cork came forth with a chirp that once more brought the fire to the
toper’s eye.
“Ho, ho!” he cried, every crease in his face that had before spelt
despondency now wreathing rapture.
“Wait a bit,” she bade him, still keeping her strong hand on the bottle
neck. She dived into the left pocket and brought forth a short cut-glass
beaker. “You’re not going,” said she, “to drink Sir David’s Comet port
out of a mug!”
She poured it out, gently tilting the venerable bottle. He could hardly
wait till the gorgeous liquid garnet had brimmed to the edge, before
grasping the glass. But palsied as his hands were not a drop did they
spill. A mouthful first, to let the taste of it lie on his palate;
another to roll round his tongue; then unctuously, as slowly as was
compatible with the act of swallowing, the ichor of the grape destined
to warm a high-born heart and to illumine the workings of a noble mind,
was sent to kindle the base fires of Sir David’s thieving old servant.
“Ah!”
He took a deep-drawn breath of utter satisfaction, reached for the
bottle, boldly poured himself forth another glass and drank again.
Motionless, the woman watched.
“As good a bottle,” said he garrulously, “as ever came out of the bin!
’Twas of the laying of the good Sir Everard—Sir David’s grandfather, you
mark, Mrs. Nutmeg. You wasn’t in these parts then. Ah, a judge of wine
he was. I tell ye I could pick every drop he had bottled blindfold this
minute, at the first taste. He and Master Rickart, Lord, what wild times
they had together! Ah, he was a blade in those days, was old Rickart.
Now——’Tis well there’s someone left at Bindon that knows the valley of
precious liquor, for it’s been disgusting, I assure you, ma’am. There’s
master had nothing but the light clary—French stuff—and not known the
differ these five years! Well, well, ’twould have broken Sir Everard’s
heart, but”—piously, “there’s one left as remembers him and his tastes.
May I offer you a thimbleful, Mrs. Nutmeg? ’Tis as good as a cordial!”
He was once more the man of importance: the steward dispensing his
master’s goods with a fine air of hospitality.
“No, Mister Giles, I thank you kindly,” said the lady. Then she measured
him again with one of her deep looks, marked the hand which he was
stretching out for the port and suddenly whipped the desired object from
its reach. Her calculated moment had come.—The butler’s limbs had lost
their palsied trembling and there was some kind of speculation in his
eye.
“No, Mister Giles,” she said, as he gaped at her. “I came here for a
little chat, if you please. You’re feeling more yourself again?”
The memory of his injuries, forgotten for the brief span of ecstasy,
returned in full force. His lip drooped.
“Aye, ma’am, a little, a little. But I am sadly weak.”
He pushed his glass tentatively forward, but she ignored the hint.
“I thought you was a-dying by inches before my eyes,” she announced
deliberately.
The red face opposite to her grew mottled grey and purple. Mr. Giles
began to whimper:
“So I was, ma’am. So I be!”
Margery sat down and, clasping the bottle with both her determined
hands, leaned her head on one side of it.
“Another month of small-ale,” she said, “would bring you to your grave,
Mister Giles. Aye, you may groan. How many bottles be left of this old
port? Seventy ye said. And there be as good besides.”
“The East India sherry,” said he, the light of his one remaining
interest flickering up again in the aged sockets. “Oh, it’s a beauty,
that wine is! As dry, ma’am, and as mellow!” He smacked his tongue. “And
there’s the Madeiry, got at the Dook of Sussex’s sale. ‘Royal wine,’
says Sir Everard to me. And Royal wine it is! But you know the taste of
it yourself. Then there are the Burgundy bins. Women folk,” said Mr.
Giles, “have that inferiority, they can’t appreciate red wine. But
there’s Burgundy down in my cellars that I’d rather go to bed on a
bottle of as even of the Comet port.”
Margery broke in with a short laugh.
“Yes, yes,” said she; “I’ll warrant there is good stuff in your cellars.
But who’s got the key of them now, if I may make so bold?”
Once again the toper was brought up to the sense of present limitations
as by the tug of a merciless bit cunningly handled. With open mouth and
starting eyes he paused, and the dark, senile blood rushed up to his
face. Then he struck the table with his hand:
“That vixen of old Rickart’s, blast her!”
“And he—the daft old gentleman,” Margery’s voice dropped soft, as oil
trickling down to fire, “eating the bread of charity, one may say,
without so much as doing a stroke of work to save the shame of it!”
“Blast him!” cried Giles, with another thump.
“Oh, yes, when I brought you that bottle, I told you there was more
where it came from. But the question is, who’s to have it, Mr. Giles! Is
it all to be for that clever young lady and her crazy old father—that’s
come like cuckoos to settle at Bindon, and bamfoozle that poor innocent
gentleman, Sir David, and oust us as has served him so faithful and so
long?”
“No, no, no!” cried old Giles, “blast ’em, blast ’em!”
Margery put her finger to her lip with a long drawn “Hush!” and glanced
warningly round the room, though indeed, stronghold as it was, there was
little fear of the sound escaping to the outer world. She then poured
out a measured half glass and pushed it towards the butler, corked the
bottle, placed it on the top of the safe; and betaking herself once
again to her inexhaustible pockets, drew forth one after another and set
in their turn upon the table a small unopened bottle of ink, a goose
quill pen, of which she tested the nib, and a large sheet of paper,
which she unfolded and smoothed.
“Now, Mr. Giles,” said she sharply.
He was absently sucking his empty glass and started to look upon her
preparations uncomprehendingly.
“You write a fine hand,” said she, picking the stopper out of the inkpot
with the point of the corkscrew.
“Ah,” said he, “my cellar book was a sight to see! It’s lain useless
these six months. But so long,” he said, proudly but sadly, “as I kept
the keys no one can say but as I kept the book.”
So he had indeed, with a quaint fidelity; and amazing reading it would
have proved to the casual inspector, who would have founded wild
opinions of Sir David’s and his cousin’s prowesses in the matter of
toping.
“Do you want the keys back?” asked Margery, in a quiet whisper, “or is
this to be the last bottle of port you’ll ever taste?”
He stared at her, his moist lip working. She seemed to find the answer
sufficient, for she motioned him into his seat.
“Then you sit down and write,” said she, “and I promise you Bindon shall
get his rights again, and our good master’s quiet, comfortable house be
rid of her that brings no good to it.”
Giles sat down submissively, dipped the quill into the ink, manipulated
it with the flourish of the proud penman; then, squaring his wrists flat
on the sheet, prepared to start.
“I’d never have troubled you,” explained Margery, apologetically, “had I
had your grand education, Mr. Giles.”
“Who be I to write to?” said Giles, with the stern air of the male mind
controlling the female one, as it would wander from the point.
Again Margery whispered, not for fear of listeners, but to give the
allurement of mystery to her purpose:
“To the Lady Lochore,” said she.
The pen dropped from Giles’ fingers, making a great blot at the top of
the sheet, which Margery, with clacking tongue, deftly mopped up with a
corner of her apron. Consternation and awe wrote themselves on the
butler’s face. Faithless old ingrate as he was, robbing with remorseless
system the hand that fed him, something of family spirit, some sense of
clanship, still existed in his muddled mind. Enough of their master’s
secrets had filtered to the household for everyone to know that his only
sister had wedded the man who, under the pretending cloak of friendship,
had done him mortal injury; and that from the moment she had thus given
herself to his enemy, the lord of Bindon had cut her off from his life.
But there were things beside, which old Giles alone knew; which he had
kept to himself, even after his long devotion to the Bindon cellars had
wreaked havoc upon the intelligence of his conscience.
It was but ten years back when a mounted messenger had brought the
tidings to Sir David of the birth of an heir to the house of Lochore:
heir also, as matters now stood, to the childless house of Bindon. Giles
had conducted this messenger to Sir David’s presence. Giles had stood by
and watched his master’s pale face grow death livid as he listened to
the envoy’s tale, had seen him recoil from even the touch of his
kinsman’s letter. It was Giles who had received the curt instructions:
“Take the messenger away, give him food, rest and drink, and let him
ride and bear back to Lord Lochore that letter he has sent me.” And now
old Giles looked up into Margery’s inscrutable face, and cried with
echoes of forgotten loyalty in his husky voice:
“Write to Miss Maud?—to my Lady, I mean. Nay, nay, Mrs. Nutmeg, I’ll not
do that!”
“Ah,” said Mrs. Nutmeg.
She had been standing over his shoulder, showing more eagerness than her
wont, and licking her lips over the words she was about to dictate to
him, while a light shone in her eyes that was never kindled so long as
she was under observation. At the check of his words the old sleek
change came over her. The curtain of impassiveness fell over her
countenance. The gleam went out in her eyes. She came quietly round, sat
down, opposite him and, folding her hands, let them rest on the table
before her.
“Ah,” said she, “it do go again the grain, don’t it, Mr. Giles? And if
it was not for Sir David——”
Giles meanwhile, having pushed the writing materials on one side, had
risen and helped himself freely again to the Comet port, drinking
courage to his own half-repented resolution, a babble of disjointed
phrases escaping from him in the intervals of his gulps. “No, he could
not go against Sir David—poor old man, not many years to live—served his
father’s father. Eh, and Sir Edmund had put him into these arms; and he
but a babe—the greatest toper in the house, says Sir Edmund...” Here
there was a chuckle and a tear, and a fresh glass poured out.
Margery never blinked towards the bottle. Unfolding her hands, she
presently began to smooth out the writing paper, and by-and-bye began to
speak. At first it was a merely soothing trickle of talk. No one knew
Mr. Giles’ high-mindedness and nobility of character better than she
did; though, indeed, she herself was but a new-comer at Bindon, compared
to him—the third of his generation in the service of the house, and
himself the servant of three Cheveral masters. By-and-bye, from this
primrose path of flattery she turned aside into less smooth ground.
Something she said of the real duties of old service, of the mistaken
duty of blind submission. There was a dark hint of Sir David’s
helplessness, a prey to designing intruders—“and him as easy to cheat as
a child!” A tear here welled to Mistress Margery’s eyelid; there was no
doubt she spoke as one whose knowledge was first hand.
Mister Giles knew best, of course; but, in her humble opinion, it was an
old servitor’s bounden duty to let their master’s nearest relative know.
Here Margery became very dark again; things are so much more terrible
when merely hinted at. The butler’s hand halted with the sixth glass on
the way to his lips; he put it down again untasted.
“Who’s to look after Master, I should like to know?” asked Margery
boldly, “when you and I and all the old faithful folk is turned out of
Bindon, and that deep young lady and Master Rickart reign alone, with
their poisons and their powders?”
“By gum!” cried Giles, with a shout, thumping the table, so that the
precious wine this time slopped over its barrier. “By gum! hand me that
paper, and say your say, ma’am, and I’ll write it!”
The man was just tipsy enough already to be easily worked up, and unable
to analyse the means by which his passion was roused; not too tipsy to
be a perfectly capable instrument in the housekeeper’s hands.
The following was the letter that Giles, the butler of Bindon, wrote to
“the Lady Lochore,” at her house in London:
MY LADY.—Trusting you will excuse the liberty and in the hopes this
finds your Ladyship well, as is the humble wish of the writer. My
Lady, I have not been the servant of your Ladyship’s brother, my most
honoured master, Sir David Cheveral of Bindon, without knowing the sad
facts of family divisions between yourself and Sir David. But, my
Lady, wishing to do my duty by my master, as has always been my humble
endeavour, I should consider myself deaf to the Voice of Conscience,
did I not take the pen this day to let you know the state of affairs
at Bindon at this present time.
Master Rickart’s daughter, Mistress Marvel, has come back to Bindon,
to live, and my Lady, she and her father is now master and mistress
here. Sir David being such as my Lady knows he is, different from
other people, is no match for such.
My Lady, what the end of it will be no one can tell. None of us like
to think of it. What is said in the village and all over the country
already, is what I must excuse myself from writing, not being fit for
your Ladyship’s eyes. But as your Ladyship’s father’s old and trusted
servant, I am doing no less than my bounden duty, in warning your
Ladyship.
Here Margery had halted, and flouted several eager suggestions on the
part of the faithful butler, who was anxious to mention poisons and
phials and black practises, who, moreover, had wished to introduce after
every sentence a detailed account of the unmerited cruelty practised
upon himself in forcing him to give up the keys of the family cellar,
and express his intimate persuasion of the restlessness thereby caused
to the good Sir Everard’s bones in their honoured grave. But Margery was
firm; and now, after due reflection, sternly commanded Mr. Giles’
respects and signature. When this flourishing signature at length
adorned the page, Margery laid a flat finger below it.
“Write: Post-Scriptum,” ordered she. “I humbly trust your Ladyship’s
little son is well. There was great joy among us when we heard of his
honoured birth. We was, up to now, all used to think of him as the heir
to Bindon.”
Here she hesitated again; but finally, true to her instinct that
suggestion is more potent than explanation, demanded the folding of the
letter, its addressing and sealing. The latter duty she undertook
herself, with the help of the inexhaustible bag. And as she laid her
thumb on the hot wax, she smiled, well content, and allowed Giles to
finish the bottle and drown any possible misgivings.
As she left the room to watch for the post-boy, and herself place the
fruit of her morning labour in the bag, Giles, with tipsy gravity and
mechanical neatness, was posting his too long disused cellar book up to
date:
June 24th., 1823.
Comet Port. Bin V. Bottle: One.
CHAPTER V
EVIL PROMPTER, JEALOUSY
Great bliss was with them and great happiness
Grew, like a lusty flower, in June’s caress.
—KEATS (_Pot of Basil_).
July over the meadows, sweeter in death than in life, where the long
grass lay in swathes and the bared earth split and crumbled under the
fierce sun. July in the great woods, with leaves at their deepest green,
nobly still against the noble still azure, throwing blocks of green
shade in the mossy aisles and wondrous grey designs of leaf and branch
on the hardened ground. July in the drowsy hum of the laden bee; in the
birds’ silence and the insects’ orchestra—those undertones of
sounds—everywhere; July in the sweet hearted rose, in the plenitude of
summer fulfilment. July over garden and cornfield and purple moor....
So it had been all day, a long, gorgeous day, busy and yet lazy, full to
the brim of nature’s slow, ripe work. And now the evening had come; the
fires of the sunset had cooled and a deep-bosomed sky had begun to brood
over the teeming earth, lit only by the sickle of a young moon that had
hung, ghost-like, in the airs the whole afternoon.
The fields of heaven were yet nearly as bare of stars as the meadows of
their murdered flowers; but here and there, with a sudden little leap
like a kindling lamp, some distant sun—white Vega or ruddy
Arcturus—began to send its gold or silver messages across the firmament
where the summer sun of our world held lingering monarchy.
Ellinor had spent a long hot day in the parsonage, helping that pearl of
housewives, Madam Tutterville, with the potting of cherry jam. She had
come home across the fields with lagging step, drawing in the luxury of
the evening silence, the cool fragrance of the woods, the beauties of
the advancing night. She bore, as an offering, a handsome basketful of
rectory peaches, over which her soul was grateful: a proper dish to set
before him in whose service she took her joy.
On re-entering the house, according to her usual wont, she at first
sought her father, but found the laboratory empty of any presence save
that of the herb-spirits singing in the throat of the retort. She made
no doubt then but that the simpler had sought the star-gazer’s high
seat.
One result of her presence at Bindon had been the gradual drawing
together of the two men, with herself as a centring link. David was more
prone to come down from his tower and her father to come up from his
vault. And she took a sweet and secret pleasure in the quite unconscious
sense of grievance they would both display when her duty or her mood
took her for any length of time away from either of them.
As she reached the foot of the tower stairs a hand was placed upon her
arm. She turned with that irrepressible inner revulsion which always
heralded to her Margery’s presence.
“Asking your pardon, ma’am,” came the usual silky formula, “may I
inquire if you are going up to see my master?”
“To be sure,” answered Ellinor quietly, though she blushed in the dark.
“Do you not see that I am going up to the tower?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Mrs. Nutmeg, humbly. “I made so bold as to trouble
you, ma’am, not wishing to intrude upon my master myself. The postman
left a letter, ma’am.”
Mrs. Nutmeg drew the object in question from under her black silk apron.
Very white it shone in the gloom:—a large, oblong folded sheet, with a
black blotch in the centre where sprawled an enormous seal.
“This letter, ma’am,” she repeated, “came this evening. Would you be
good enough to hand it yourself to my master?”
Ellinor had a superstitious feeling that Margery Nutmeg was one day,
somehow, destined to bring misfortune upon her; and it was this perhaps
which always left her discomfited after even the most trivial interview
with the housekeeper. But determinedly shaking off the sensation, she
slipped the letter in her basket and began the ascent of the rugged
stairs. No matter how tired she might be, her foot was always light when
it led her to the tower, because her impatient heart went on before.
Leaving the basket in the observatory, she retained the letter in her
hand, instinctively avoiding any scrutiny of its superscription,
although seen here in the lamplight the thought did strike her that it
looked like a woman’s writing. Sir David’s correspondence, as she knew,
was so scanty that the sealed missive might indeed mean an event in
their lives; and now the present was too full of delicate happiness for
her to welcome anything that might portend change.
She stood for a moment on the threshold of the platform, looking out on
the two figures silhouetted against the sky. Her father, as usual in his
gown, seated on the stone ledge of the parapet, was speaking. David,
leaning against the wall with folded arms, was looking down at him.
Master Simon’s chuckle, followed by the rare low note of the
star-gazer’s laughter, fell upon her ear.
“I do assure you,” the old man was saying, “it was the very surliest
fellow in the whole of Bindon village. A complete misanthropist, a
perfect curmudgeon! The poor woman would come to me in tears, with
sometime a black eye, sometime a swollen lip—I have known her actually
cut about the occiput. ‘My poor creature,’ I would say to her, ‘plaster
your wound I can, but alter your husband’s humours is at present beyond
my power.’”
“Not having yet re-discovered the ‘Star-of-Comfort,’” interrupted David.
The sound of that voice, gently sarcastic and indulgently mocking, had
become so dear to Ellinor that she lingered yet for the mere chance of
indulging her ear again unobserved.
“Not having then re-discovered the _Euphrosinum_,” corrected Master
Simon, with emphasis on the word “then.” “But that excellent young
woman, my daughter, has been of service to me there.”
“She has been of service everywhere.”
This tribute brought joy to the listener. Forced by the turn the
conversation was taking to disclose her presence, she emerged upon the
platform, but took a seat beside her father’s in silence, the letter for
the moment quite forgotten in her pocket.
“Ah, there is Ellinor!”
Sir David had seen her coming first and was the first to greet her. She
thought, she hoped, there was gladness in the exclamation.
“Eh, eh!” said Master Simon. “Back from the prophetess’s jam-pots?” He
fondled the hand she had laid on his knee. “Did the virtuous woman open
her mouth with wisdom, while you, my girl, girded your loins with
strength? We were talking of you, my girl. Ah, David, did I not do well
for both you and me, when I craved house-room at Bindon for this
Exception-to-her-Sex?”
David did not answer. But in the gloom she felt his eye upon her, and
her heart throbbed. Master Simon, after a little pause, resumed the
thread of his discourse.
“Ha, I am a mass of selfishness, a mass of selfishness! And the plant of
True Grace is found; the _Euphrosinum_ is found, Sir David Cheveral.
Found, planted, culled and tested.” The utmost triumph was in his
accents. “Aye, my dear young man, you will be rejoiced to hear that the
effects of this most precious of simples have in no wise been overrated
by the writers of old. They have far exceeded my most sanguine
expectation. Why, sir, I said to myself: this fellow, this John Cantrip
with his evil spleen, he has been marked by destiny for the first
experiment. I prepared a decoction, making it duly palatable (for if you
will remember your natural history, even bears like honey), I bade the
poor, much-tried wife—he had just deprived her of both her front
teeth—place a spoonful daily in his morning draught. That was a week
ago. She came here this morning ... you will hardly credit it——”
The speaker paused, became absorbed in a delightful memory and began to
laugh softly to himself. And the infection again gained the listener.
“Well, sir, has the bear turned to lamb? And is the dame content with
the metamorphosis?”
“You will hardly credit it,” repeated the simpler, rubbing his hands,
“the silly woman was beside herself with the most intemperate passion.
There was no sort of abuse she did not heap upon me. She swears I have
bewitched her husband and that she will have the law of me. He, he! You
must know, David, the fellow is a carpenter; and, although his tempers
were objectionable, he was a good worker. Indeed, I gather that the
exasperated condition of his system found relief in the constant
hammering of nails, punching of holes, sawing and planing of hard
substance. But now——” Again delighted chuckle and mental review took the
place of speech.
“Well?” asked Sir David. His tone was broken with an undercurrent of
laughter. Ellinor smiled in her dark corner. She compared this David,
interested and amused in human matters, pleasant of intercourse himself
and appreciative of another’s company, to the man of taciturn moods and
melancholy, who fed on his own morbid thought and fled from his fellow
men—to the David of but a few months ago. She knew it was her woman’s
presence that had, as if unconsciously, wrought the change.
“Well?” said Sir David again.
“My dear fellow,” cried Master Simon, breaking into a louder cackle.
“John Cantrip, as you say, has changed from a bear into a lamb; at least
from a sullen, dangerous animal into an exceedingly pleasant,
light-hearted one. He sings, he whistles, he laughs—all that cerebral
congestion, that nervous irritation, has been soothed away under the
balmy influence of this valuable plant. The excellent creature is able
to take delight in his life, in the beautiful objects of Nature around
him. He admires the blue sky, he rejoices in the seasonable heat, he
embraces his spouse—he will hang over his infant’s cradle and express a
tender, paternal desire to rock him to slumber. Every happy instinct has
been wakened, every morose one lulled. Would I could induce the
government of this land to enforce in each parish the cultivation of
_Euphrosinum_. My good sir, we should have no more need of prisons, or
stocks, or gallows!”
“And yet you say,” quoth David, “that Mrs. Cantrip is dissatisfied.”
“Most excellent David, from early days of the earth downwards, the woman
was ever the most unreasonable of all God’s creatures. She wants the
impossible, she wants the perfection of things, which is not of this
world. Instead of rejoicing, this foolish person complains.”
“Complains?”
“Oh, well, it seems the carpenter is now disinclined for work. I
endeavoured to explain to her that the morbid reason for his love of
hammering no longer exists. The good fellow is placid and content and an
agreeable companion. But the absurd female is tearing her hair! ‘What,’
said I, ‘he has not struck you once since Saturday week, and you do not
rejoice?’ ‘Rejoice!’ she screams. ‘And he’s not struck a nail either.’
‘If this happy effect continues,’ I assured her, ‘you will be able to
keep the remainder of your teeth.’ ‘I’ll have nothing to put between
them if it does,’ she responds. In vain I represented to her,
_mulier_—in short, that I, having done my part, it was now hers to
utilise these new dispositions for her own ends. She must beguile him
back to his everyday duties with tender smiles and womanly wiles—the
female’s place in nature being to play this part towards the ruder male.
But it was absolutely impossible to get her so much as to listen to me!
She vowed that she had lost all patience—which was indeed very
patent—that she had even clouted him (as she expressed it), without
producing any other result than a smile at her. ‘Grins,’ says she, ‘like
a zany!’ and with the want of logic of her sex, utterly fails to
perceive what a triumphant attestation she is making to the efficacy of
my plant.”
“It is extremely droll,” said David.
“Of course it will at once strike you,” pursued the old student, “that
the obvious course was to induce the dissatisfied lady to partake of the
soothing lotion herself. But, would you believe it? She became more
violently abusive than ever at the bare suggestion!”
“Indeed,” said Ellinor, interrupting, “not only did she decline to make
any acquaintance herself with the remedy, but she brought back the jar,
with all that was left of our infusion, and vowed that she was well
punished for dealing with the Devil and his daughter. You know, cousin
David, I fear that I am rapidly gaining something of a reputation for
black art! I do not mind, of course. Only,” she faltered a little, “a
child ran from me in the village this morning. I was sorry for that.”
David’s face grew scornful. Popularity was so poor a thing in his eyes,
that popular hate was not, he deemed, worth even a passing thought. But
Ellinor, who could not look upon the world from a tower and whose
self-allotted tasks lay, of necessity, much among the humble many, had
not this lofty indifference. She knew she had already more enemies than
friends. And she knew also to what she owed the sowing of this
hostility—not to her association with her father, whose eccentric
experiments in pharmacy on the whole worked to the benefit, and gave an
extraordinary zest to the lives, of the village community—not to Madam
Tutterville’s texts; for, indeed, that good lady was so subjugated by
her niece’s housekeeperly qualifications that she elected for the nonce
to be blind to the daughter’s abetting of the father’s pursuits. Well
did Ellinor know to whom it was she owed her growing ill-repute.
Yet the cloud in her sky, no bigger at first than a woman’s hand, was
growing, she felt, and was sufficient already to cast a shadow. And now,
as she sat in such perfect content this summer night between her father
and her cousin, her duty and her love, and felt herself a centre of
peace and harmony, the mere passing remembrance of Margery sufficed to
make her heart contract.
With the thought of Margery, the recollection of her commission leaped
up in her mind. She laid the letter on her knee, gazing down at its
whiteness a moment or two before she could overcome her extraordinary
repugnance to deliver it.
Meanwhile Master Simon was flowing happily on again, quite oblivious of
the fact that neither David, whose gaze had once more turned starward,
nor his daughter, absorbed in inner reflection, were paying the least
heed to his discourse.
“Naturally, poor Cantrip will relapse. And he will hammer wife and nails
once more, and as energetically as ever. But this is immaterial. The
principle, my good young people, you are both intelligent enough to see
at once, is firmly established. In another year the face of Bindon will
have changed. Beldam will scold no more nor maiden mope. You yourself,
David—we should have no more of these heavy sighs, if——”
Here Ellinor broke in, rising and holding out the letter.
“Cousin David, I quite forgot—the post brought this for you and I
promised to give it.”
“A letter,” said Sir David. He took it from her hand and placed it on
the stone parapet. “It is too dark to read it now.” She fancied his
voice was troubled, and immediately there grew upon her an inexplicable
jealous desire that the letter should be opened in her presence, that
she might gain some hint of its contents.
“I will bring out a light,” she said and flew upon her errand, returning
presently with a little silver lantern from the observatory. She placed
it on the ledge; and from the three glass sides its light threw cross
shaped beams, one uselessly into the dark space, one upon the rough
stone and the letter, one upon her own bending face, pale and eager,
with aureole of disordered hair.
From the darkness Sir David looked at her face first: and it was as if
the revealing light had shot into the mists of his own heart.
The passion of love comes to men from so many different paths that to
each individual it may be said to come in a new guise. To no one does it
come as an invited guest. It may be the chance meeting, the love at
first sight—“she never loved at all who loved not at first sight.” But
Shakespeare knew better than to advance this as an axiom. ’Tis but the
insolent phrase on the lover’s mouth who deems his own passion the only
true one, the model for the world. Some, on the other hand, find with
amazement that long, long already, in some sweet and familiar shape,
love has been with them and they knew it not. They have entertained an
angel unawares; and suddenly, it may be on a trivial occasion, the veil
has been lifted and the heavenly countenance revealed. Others, like the
poor man in the fable, take the treacherous thing to the warmth of their
bosom in all trustfulness and only by the sting of it as it uncoils know
that they have been struck to the heart. Others, again, as unfortunate,
bolt their inhospitable doors upon the wayfarer and perhaps, as they sit
by a lonely hearth, never know that it was love that knocked and went
its way, to pass the desolate house no more.
To Sir David Cheveral, whose hot and hopeful youth had been betrayed by
life, this sudden apprehension of love in his set manhood came, not in
sweetness nor yet in pain, but in a bewildering upheaval of all things
ordered—as an earthquake flinging up new heights and baring unknown
depths in the staid familiar landscape; as a flash of light—“the light
that never was on sea or land,” after which nothing ever could look the
same again.
It may, in one sense, be true that the man of pleasure is an easier prey
to his feelings than he who in asceticism spends his days feeding the
spirit at the expense of the flesh; but it is true only because the
former man is weak, not because his passion is strong. By so much as the
deep river that has been driven to course between its own silent banks
is more mighty than the shallow waters that expand themselves in a
hundred noisy channels, by so much is the passion of the recluse a thing
more irresistible, more terrible to reckon with than the bubble
obsession of the self indulgent.
But he who outrages Nature by excess in other direction, by Nature
herself is punished. The recluse of Bindon was now to grapple with the
avenging strength of his denied manhood. By the leaping of his blood and
the tremor of his being, by the joy of his heart, which his instinctive
sudden resistance turned into as fierce an anguish, by the heat that
rushed to his brow, he knew at last that love was upon him; and he knew
that, were he to resist love in obedience to so many unspoken vows,
victory would be more bitter than death.
As he looked with a haggard eye at the lovely transfigured face, it was
suddenly lost in the shadows again; only a hand flashed forth into the
light and this hand held a letter, persisting. He passed his fingers
over his eyes and brushed the damp masses of hair from his forehead.
“Will you not read your letter, cousin David?” asked Ellinor.
Mechanically he took the paper held out towards him. She lifted the
lantern, that its light might serve him: it trembled a little in her
grasp. And now his glance dropped upon the seal. He stared, started,
turned the letter over and stared again. Then his warm emotion fell from
him.
“You,” said he, “you to bring me this!”
She bent forward, the pale oval of her face coming within the radius of
the light again.
“I have no wish to read this letter,” he went on.
There was a deep, a contained emotion in his air. All was fuel to
Ellinor’s suddenly risen unreasoning flame of jealousy. That he should
take the letter into his solitude, maybe, that she should not know,
never know—it was not to be borne!
“Read, read!” she cried, unconsciously imperative by right of her
passion.
Their gaze met. His was gloomy and startled, then suddenly became
ardent. She saw such a flame leap into his eyes that her own fell before
them; then her bold heart sank.
“I would not have opened it. But it shall be as you wish,” he answered.
And as David broke the seal, Master Simon’s curious, wrinkled face
peered over his shoulder.
“Ha,” said the old man, wonderingly, “The Lochore arms.”
Sir David turned the letter in his hand.
“From your sister?” asked the simpler, with amazed emphasis.
“Once I called her so,” answered the astronomer, with an effort that
told of his inner repugnance.
As one wakes from a fevered dream Ellinor awoke from her brief madness.
Her father’s placid tones, the everyday obvious explanation fell upon
her heart like drops of cold water. But the reaction was scarcely one of
relief. How was it possible that she, Ellinor Marvel, the woman of many
experiences, of the cool brain and the strong heart, should have yielded
to this degrading folly, this futile jealousy? What had she done! She
shivered as a rapid sequence of thought forced its logic upon her
unwilling mind. She had feared that the touch of some woman out of his
past should reach David now, at the very moment when a lover’s heart was
opening to her in his bosom. Behold! she had herself delivered him over
to the one woman of all others she had most reason to dread—the woman
who, out of her own outrage upon him had acquired the most influence
over his life. It seemed to Ellinor as if she herself who had so
laboured to call him to the present and lure him with hopes of a
brighter future, had now handed him back to the slavery of the past.
The seal cracked under his fingers.
“Ah, no,” she cried, now springing forward on the new impulse. “No, no,
David, do not read it! Send it back, like the others!”
He flung on her a single glance.
“It is too late,” he said, “the seal is broken.”
“Ah, me,” cried Ellinor. “And we were so happy!”
She remembered Margery’s sleek face as it had peered at her in the
shadows of the passage: “Will you be good enough to hand this letter
yourself to my master?”
Margery had known that from her hand he would take it. Margery had a
devil’s instinct of the folly of men and women.
CHAPTER VI
THE PERFECT ROSE, DROOPING
Such is the fond illusion of my heart,
Such pictures would I at that time have made;
And seen the soul of truth in every part,
A steadfast peace that might not be betrayed.
So once it would have been—’tis so no more:
I have submitted to a new control,
A power is gone which nothing can restore....
—WORDSWORTH (_Elegiacs_).
Sir David sat down upon the parapet, shifted the lantern and began to
read. Ellinor watched him, the tumultuous beating of her heart gradually
sinking down to a dull languor. Master Simon was pacing the platform,
now conning over some chemical formula to himself, now pausing to gaze
upon the stars with a good humoured sneer upon the futility of astronomy
in general and the absurdity of Sir David’s in particular. A bat came
and flapped with noiseless wings round the lantern and was lost again in
the darkness of the surrounding deeps. It seemed to Ellinor a heavy
space of time, and still David sat with a contracted brow, motionless,
staring at the open sheet in his hand. At length he raised his head. His
eyes sought, not herself, but the comrade of his long years of solitude.
“Cousin Simon!”
The old man turned in his walk, a fantastic figure in his flapping
skirts as he shuffled forward out of the gloom. Evidently he had
perceived a note of urgency in Sir David’s tone, for he came quickly.
“Yes, lad!”
Ellinor had not yet heard that inflection of solicitude in her father’s
voice, but she recognised that it belonged also to that past they all
dreaded; and for the first time she realised something of the ties that
bound these unlikely companions to each other.
“Cousin Simon,” said David with stiff lips, “she asks me to receive her
here!”
“Who? Maud?—What! the heathen vixen! Don’t answer her, don’t answer
her!”
Sir David looked up. There was the stamp of pain upon his features; and
yet, as she told herself, it was not so much pain as the loathing of one
forced to contemplate something of utter abhorrence. Both men, she saw,
were quite oblivious of her presence: the past was now stronger about
them than the present. As Sir David made no answer beyond that dumb
look, Master Simon grew yet more vehement.
“Pshaw! man, you’re not going to give way now after all these years! The
thing’s irreparable between you. Why, David, what are you thinking of?
How could you bear it? Think for a moment what her presence here would
mean!”
Then Sir David spoke:
“It is not,” he said, “a question now, of my wishes. So long as I felt
justified in considering myself alone, I had no hesitation. But to-night
I have to face this: What is my duty?”
“Eh? How, now!” Master Simon stuttered, and could find no word. “Pooh!
fudge!” He thrust out a testy hand for the letter.
“Read!” said the master of Bindon, “and then you will understand.”
Master Simon seized the document and, stooping to the light began to
read the words aloud to himself, according to his custom. Ellinor drew
near and listened. Nothing could have now kept her from yielding to her
intense desire to know.
“‘Dear Brother,’” read the old gentleman (“Dear Brother!—A dear sister
she’s proved to you!”) “‘It is very likely you may never read these
lines’ (if that isn’t a woman all over! ... where am I?) ‘according to
your heartless custom’—(Ha!” said Master Simon, shooting a swift
ironical look at Sir David from under his ever-hanging eyebrows, “since
when has Lady Lochore become qualified to pronounce upon heartlessness?
Pooh!”)
Sir David made no reply. His eyes were fixed on some inward visions. The
simpler gave a snort, and resumed his reading:
“‘Oh, David, let me see my home once more!’ (No, Madam!) ‘Let me come to
you alone with my child. I am ill——’ (Devil doubt her—they’re all ill
when they don’t get their way!) ‘I am ill, dying, and sometimes I think
that it is because you have not forgiven me. In the name of our father,
in the name of our mother,’ (’pon my word, she’s a clever one!) ‘I have
a right to demand this! I must see my home before I die.’”
Sir David’s compressed lips suddenly worked. He rose and walked across
to the other side of the platform, where against the lambent sky, his
form once more became a mere silhouette. Master Simon proceeded quietly
to finish the letter.
“There’s a postscript,” he said, and read out: “‘You cannot refuse me
the hospitality of Bindon for a few weeks, remember that I, too, am a
child of the house.’”
“‘Remember that I, too, am a child of the house!’”
Ellinor repeated the words drearily to herself. That was the key she
herself had found to unlock the door of Sir David’s hospitality.
“Upon my soul,” said Master Simon, “I shall never fall foul of the
female intellect again!”
He looked at Ellinor, and laughed drily.
“Oh,” she cried, shocked at this inopportune mirth, “she must not come
here—we must prevent it!”
“Prevent it!” he cried irritably. “Do so, if you can, my girl. By the
Lord Harry!” the forgotten expletive of his jaunty youth leaped oddly
forth over his white beard, “she’s done the trick! Touch David upon his
honour, his family obligations! Ha! she knows it too. A pest on you!” he
went on, his anger rising suddenly, “with your silly female
inquisitiveness. ‘Read it, read it!’ quoth she. Without you, Mrs.
Marvel, he’d have sent the precious missive back—unopened, like all the
others! Ha, that’s an astute one! ‘If you read these lines,’ she writes.
Well she knew that if he once did read them she would win her game!”
Beneath an impatient stamp one slipper fell off. Thrusting his foot back
into it, he began to hobble in the direction of Sir David, muttering and
growling as he went, not unlike his own Belphegor when his cat-dignity
had been grievously offended. Disjointed scraps of his remarks reached
Ellinor, as she stood, disconsolate and cold at heart, facing the
probable results of her impulse:—“A pretty thing ... disturbing the
peace of the house ... a mass of selfishness ... a pack of silly women!”
“Well,” said Sir David, turning round as his cousin drew near.
“Why do you say ‘well’?” snapped the simpler. “You know you’ve made up
your mind already, and need none of my advice.”
A bitter smile flickered over Sir David’s face.
“Can you say after reading that letter that there is any other course
open to me?”
“Stuff and nonsense! A half-dozen excellent courses. You can leave the
letter unanswered. You can write to the lady that these home affections
come a little late in the day. You can write, if you like, and forgive
her by post. You can take coach to London and forgive her there, and....
But, in Heaven’s name, stem the stream of petticoats from invading our
peace here!”
“What,” exclaimed the younger man, a blackness as of thunder gathering
on his brow. “Do you, do you, cousin Simon, bid me enter Lochore’s
house!”
Disconcerted, Master Simon lost his ill humour, though to conceal the
fact he still tried to bluster.
“Pooh! You’re not of this century. You’re mediæval, quixotic! David,
man, high feelings are not worn nowadays. They have been put by, with
knighthood’s armour. Don’t forgive her then, lad. I am sure I see no
reason why you should.”
“Forgiveness!” echoed Sir David.
Ellinor had crept close to them once more. That bitter ring in David’s
voice smote her heart.
“Forgiveness!” he repeated. “Does he who remembers ever forgive? My
sister is ill and craves to return to her old home. Well, I recognise
her right to its hospitality and also to my courtesy as the dispenser of
it. More I cannot give her.”
“She’ll not ask for more!” interrupted the unconvinced simpler. “Eh, eh!
It is my fault, David: I might have known how it would be. I brought in
the first petticoat and there the mischief began.”
“Oh, father!”
The tears sprang to Ellinor’s eyes. Sir David turned round and seemed to
become again aware of her presence.
“No, no,” he said, “that is ungrateful.” He took her hand. “She brought
us sunshine,” he said.
But she missed from his pressure the tremulous touch of passion; she
missed from his eyes that flame she had shrunk from and that now her
heart would always hunger for. Pure kindness, mild sadness—what could
her enkindled soul make now of such gifts as these? With an inarticulate
sound she drew her fingers from his clasp; and, turning, fled downstairs
again and back to her room.
A taper was burning on her writing table, and in its small meek circle
of light a bowl of monthly roses displayed their innocent pink beauty.
The latticed casement was thrown open. In the square of sky a single
silver star pointed the illimitable distance. From the Herb-Garden below
rose gushes of aromatic airs, as, from some secret cloister by night the
voices of the dedicated rise and fall. Vaguely, in her seething misery,
she seemed to recognise the special essence of the new plant giving to
the cool night the sweetness accumulated during the long, hot hours of
the day.
She sat down on the narrow bed, folded her hands on her lap and stared
dully forth at the square of sky and the single star. Presently, almost
without her own consciousness, her bosom began to heave with long sighs
and tears to course down her cheeks. Where was now the strength, the
indifference to passing events which she boasted her long battle with
life had given her? Gone, gone at the first touch of passion! Throughout
a sordid marriage she had remained virgin of heart, she had kept the
virgin’s peace—and now?
Alternations of pride and despair broke over her like waves, salt and
bitter as her own tears. How happy they had been! And the unknown fiend,
jealousy, had urged her to break the still current of that sweet,
restful half-unwitting happiness of their life all three together—a
current flowing, she had told herself with conviction, to a full tide of
unimaginable bliss.
My God, how he had looked at her only that night! And it was in that
pearl of moments that she had thrust his past back upon him and bade
him, with her precious, new-found power, read the letter that should
never have been opened. The perfect rose had been within her grasp. It
was her own hand that had flung it in the dust.
Master Simon, still shaking his head and muttering disapproval, went
slowly back to his laboratory.
“The cunning jade!” he was grumbling, “she’s no more ill than I am. Or
if she be, a pretty business we shall have with her—a fine lady with
vapours, and megrims, and tantrums! I’ve not forgotten the ways of
them...!”
But here an illuminating idea flashed upon his brain. He stopped at the
corner of a passage, cocking his head like an old grey jackdaw. “Eh, but
a fine lady in her tantrums.... What a test for the virtues of my
paragon herb!”
All very well to rejoice at its efficacy upon the homely rustic. Master
Simon had experimented upon the homely rustic too many years not to have
developed a fine contempt for his vile corpus; he was too true an
enthusiast not to long for something like a proper nervous system upon
which to work.
An air of returning good humour now settled upon his face; and by the
time he was seated at his table, he had begun to wish his unwelcome
cousin really a prey to the most advanced melancholia, and was conning
over what phrases he could remember of her letter—delighted when they
seemed to point to that conclusion.
“And even if she be not pining away for sorrow, as she would like poor
David to believe, if I remember the lady aright, she has as disordered a
temper of her own as John Cantrip himself.”
CHAPTER VII
NODS AND WREATHÉD SMILES
... Half light, half shade,
She stood, a sight to make an old man young.
—TENNYSON (_Gardener’s Daughter_).
Within Bindon house the next ten days were as uneventful as those that
had preceded this night of emotional trouble; days similar in routine,
in outward tranquillity. But how unlike in colour, in atmosphere! It was
as if thunder-clouds had chased all the summer peace; as if brooding
skies had taken the place of radiance and laughing blue; as if close
mists enshrouded the earth, robbing the woods of living light and shade,
dulling the tints of flower and turf, contracting the horizon. The
former days had been days of many-hued hope; these now were days of drab
suspense. And ever and anon, in the listening stillness, there came upon
Ellinor’s inner senses, as from behind hiding hills, the far-off mutter
of a gathering storm.
But in the outer world the summer still kept its glory, the sky its
undisturbed azure, the flowers their jewel hues. Never had Bindon looked
fairer, more nobly itself. Preparations went on apace for the reception
of the visitor. Ellinor personally saw to every detail—she piqued
herself that no one could reproach her with not carrying out to the
finest line of conscientiousness her duties as housekeeper of Sir
David’s home. A little paler, a little colder, more silently and with
just a note of sternness, she moved about her tasks. Nothing was made
easy for her: the household, scenting a possible change, became more
openly inclined to mutiny.
Master Simon, also, seemed to become more exacting in his demands upon
her time. Sir David, on the other hand, had withdrawn almost as
completely as had been his wont before her arrival. And her woman’s
pride and tact alike kept her from those raids upon his tower privacy,
which but a little time ago had caused him so much pleasure, it seemed,
and herself such infinite sweetness.
It was hard, too, to have to meet Margery’s paroxysm of astonishment;
Margery’s ostentatious outburst of joy at the thought of “her dear young
lady coming back to her rightful place at last”; Margery’s insolence of
triumph as regarded “the interloper,” astutely conveyed in such humble
garments that to notice it would have been but a crowning humiliation.
“Eh, to think, ma’am,” the ex-housekeeper would say in her innocent
voice, “that it should have been that very letter I handed you myself,
never dreaming, that’s brought this blessed reconciliation about! It do
seem like the finger of the Lord. Ah, ma’am, but you must be glad in
your heart, to feel yourself the instrument of peace. Who knows, if the
master would have taken it from any hand but yours, he that used to
return them as regular and just as fast as they came!”
And then came parson and Madam Tutterville: he, as beseemed the
God-chosen and state-appointed minister of the gospel of charity, most
duly (and unconvincingly) approving the proposed reconciliation; and, as
man of the world, most humanly and convincingly dubious of its results:
she, openly bewailing, with all her store of texts and feminine logic,
so inconvenient a hitch in her secret plans.
Ellinor had to receive them both. For the lower door of Sir David’s
turret stairs was bolted, and Master Simon on his side had stoutly
refused any manner of interview with anyone so sturdily healthy as the
rector, or so disdainful of his remedies as the rector’s lady.
“Under every law,” said Doctor Tutterville, “the Jewish, the Pagan, the
Philosophic and the Christian in its many variations, it has been
enjoined upon our human weakness that it is advisable to forgive: _Æquum
est peccatis veniam poscentem reddere rursus_.
So the rector, acknowledging his share of frailty—a share so pleasant to
himself and so inoffensive to others that it was no wonder he showed
little desire to repudiate it.
“One may forgive,” said Madam Tutterville sententiously. “Heaven knows I
should be the last to deny that!”—this with the air of making a valuable
concession to the decrees of Providence—“But there is another law: that
chastisement shall follow misdoing. Was not David punished through
Jonathan’s hair?”
The parson’s waistcoat rippled over his gentle laughter. He was seated
in one of the deep-winged library armchairs, and while he spoke his eyes
roamed with ever renewed satisfaction over the appointments of the
room—the silver bowl of roses, fresh filled, the artistic neatness of
writing table, the high polish of oak and gilt leather. His fine
appreciation for the fitness of things was tickled; his glance finally
rested with complacency upon the figure of the young woman herself—the
capable young woman who had wrought so many pleasing changes. And as he
looked he smiled: Ellinor was the culminating point of agreeable
contemplation amid exceedingly agreeable surroundings.
She toned in so well with the scene! The sober golds and russets of the
walls repeated their highest note in her burnished hair. Her outline, as
she sat, exactly corresponded to the rector’s theory of what the female
line of beauty should be. He liked the close, fine texture of her skin
and the hues upon her cheeks, which fluctuated from geranium-white to
glorious rose. The proud curl of her lip appealed to him; so did the
sudden dimple. He liked the direct gaze of her honest blue eyes, and he
was not unaware of the thickness and length of eyelashes that seemed to
have little points of fire on their tips.
That scholarly gentleman’s admiration was of so lofty, so philosophic a
nature, that even his Sophia could have found no fault with it. But as
he yielded himself to it, the conviction was ever more strongly borne in
upon him that his wife, in her impetuosity, had reached to a juster
conclusion concerning Ellinor than he in his own ripe wisdom. He had
treated her repeated remark that “Here was just the wife for David, here
the proper mistress of Bindon,” with his usual good-natured contempt.
But to-day he saw Ellinor with new eyes. Yes, this was a gem worthy of
Bindon setting. This would be a noble wife for any man; an ideal one for
David—for fastidious David, to whom the old epicure felt especially
drawn, although he recognised that one may make of fastidiousness a fine
art and not push the cult to the point of David’s eccentricity.
Here, then, was a woman fair enough to bring the Star-Dreamer, the
soaring idealist back to earth; wholesomely human enough to keep him
there in sanity and content, once Love had clipped his wing.
Meanwhile Madam Tutterville was bringing a long dissertation to an end.
In it, by the help of the scriptures, old and new, she had proved that
while it was indubitably David’s duty to forgive his sister up to a
certain point, it was likewise indubitably incumbent upon him to
continue to keep her in wholesome remembrance of her offences by
excluding her from Bindon, until——. Here the lady became exceedingly
mysterious and addressed herself with nods and becks solely to her
husband, ignoring Ellinor’s presence, much after the fashion of nurses
over the heads of their charges.
“At least until that happy consummation of affairs, Horatio, which you
and I have so much discussed.”
“My dear Ellinor,” she pursued, turning blandly to her niece, who with a
suddenly scarlet face was trying in vain to look as if she had not
understood, “be guided by my advice, by my advice. It is extremely
desirable, I might say imperative, that things should remain at present
at Bindon House in what your good uncle would term the state of quo, a
Greek word, my dear, signifying that it is best to leave well alone.”
“What is it you would have me do?”
“Well, my dear, seeing that everything has been going on so nicely these
months, and that Bindon has become no longer like a family lunatic
asylum, but quite a respectable, clean house, and that Nutmeg thing
reduced to proper order, and David almost human, coming down to meals
just as if he were in his right mind (though I’ve given up your father,
my dear), I’m afraid that in his case that clear cohesion of intellect
which is so necessary (is it not, Horatio?) is irrevocably affected.”
She tapped her forehead and shook her head, murmured something about the
instance of John Cantrip, hesitated for a moment, as if on the point of
gliding off in another direction, but saved herself with a heroic jerk.
“I would be glad,” she went on, “to have had speech of David myself; but
since you tell me that is impossible, Ellinor, I must be content with
laying my injunctions upon you. And indeed (is it not so, Horatio?) you
are perhaps the most fitted for this delicate task. The voice of the
turtle, my dear, is more likely to reach his heart than the dictates of
wisdom.”
“The voice of the turtle, aunt?”
“Yes, my dear,” said Madam Tutterville, putting her head on one side
with a languishing air. “In the beautiful imagery of Solomon the
turtle—the bird, my love, not the shell-fish—is always brought forward
as the emblem of female devotion.”
“I don’t see how that can refer to me!”
Ellinor sprang to her feet as she spoke: the rector’s gurgle of
amusement was the last straw to her patience. Angry humiliation dyed her
face, her blue eyes shot flames.
“Oh, don’t explain, I can’t bear it! But please, dear aunt, please,
don’t call me a turtle again! It’s the last thing I am, or want to be!”
She broke, in spite of herself, into laughter; laughter with a lump in
her throat.
Parson Tutterville had been highly entertained. Mrs. Marvel was quite as
agreeable to watch in wrath as in repose. But he was a man of feeling.
“I think, Sophia,” he said, in the tone she never resisted, “we will
pursue the subject no further. However we may regret any interruption to
the present satisfactory state of affairs, regret for David a visit that
is likely to prove distressing, we cannot but agree with Mrs. Marvel
that it is not her place to interfere.”
He rose as he spoke. The morning visit was at an end.
Even an encounter with Mrs. Nutmeg could not have left Ellinor in a more
irritated condition.
“What do they all think of me?” she asked herself, and pride forbade her
to shed a single one of the hot tears that rose to her lids.
“What have I done?” was the question that next forced itself upon a mind
that was singularly truthful. She had placed herself indeed in a
position open to comment and misinterpretation. And then and there she
had given herself up so wholly, so unrestrainedly to love that she had
actually come to measure the strength of her attraction for her
unconsenting lover against the strength, or the weakness, of his will.
As she faced the thought, a sense of shame overcame her. Had she not
known how helpless both her father and David would be without her,
especially at this juncture, she would have been sorely tempted to be
gone as she had come. It was not in her nature to contemplate anything
ungenerous, even for the gratification of that strongest of passions in
woman, self respect. But in her present mood, even the rector’s
well-meant, kindly words recurred to sting—“It was not her place to
interfere!” Well, she would keep her place, as David’s servant, and not
presume again beyond her duty!
Yes, and she would take that other place, too—the woman’s place, the
queen’s place, not to be won without being wooed. If David wanted her
now he must seek her!
CHAPTER VIII
A GREY GOWN AND RED ROSES
And then we met in wrath and wrong.
We met, but only meant to part.
Full cold my greeting was and dry;
She faintly smiled ...
—TENNYSON (_The Letters_).
Fain would Ellinor have avoided being present at the reception of the
guests. But Sir David willed it otherwise.
Bearing an armful of roses, she met him on the morning of the arrival at
the foot of the great stairs. She had scarcely seen him since the night
on the tower; and hurt to her heart’s core, as only a woman can be, by
his seeming avoidance of her, she faced him with a front as cold, a
manner as courteously reserved as his own. For it was a different David
from any she had hitherto known that now emerged from many days’
seclusion and soul struggle.
“What, ’tis you, cousin Ellinor!” He took her hand and ceremoniously
kissed it.
There was a tone of artificiality about his words. This perfunctory
touch of his lips on her hand, this formal bow, all these things
belonged to that past of the lord of Bindon, when society knew and
petted him; and in that past Ellinor felt with fresh acuteness that she
had no part. She drew her hand away.
“I hope,” she said, “the arrangements may be to your liking.”
He glanced at her as if puzzled; then his eye travelled over her
figure—an exquisite model of neatness she always was, but in this, her
working gown, no more fashionably clad than dairy Moll or Sue. He took
up a fold of her sleeve between his first and second finger.
“My sister used to be a very fine lady,” said he gently.
“And I am none,” cried Ellinor, flushing. Then, gathering the roses into
her arms and moving away: “But it matters the less,” she added over her
shoulder, “as Lady Lochore and I are not likely to come much across each
other.”
But David, this new David, a painful enigma to her, touched her
detainingly on the shoulder; and in his touch was authority.
“On the contrary,” said he, “I beg you will see much of my sister.
Dispenser as you are of my hospitality, you must needs see much of her.”
The flush had faded. Proud and pale she looked at him long, but his face
was as a sealed page to her. What was this turn of fortune’s wheel
bringing, glory or abasement?
“I must keep my place,” insisted Ellinor.
“That will be your place,” he answered. “Pray be ready to receive my
guests with me.”
She raised her eyes, startled, indeterminate.
“I and my frocks are poor company for great ladies,” she said with a
scornful dimple.
At that he smiled as one smiles upon a child.
“You have a certain grey gown,” he said. And, after a little pause, he
added: “Some of those roses.”
The fragrance of them had come over to him as they moved with her
breath. Once more she hesitated for a second, then dropping her eyelids,
she said, with mock humility:
“It shall be as you order,” and went up the stairs with head erect and
steady step, feeling that his gaze was following her.
She could hardly have explained to herself why this attitude of David’s,
this sudden proof of his strength in forcing himself to become like
other people, should cause her so much resentment and so much pain. But
she felt that this man of the world was infinitely far removed from the
absent star-gazer, from the neglected recluse who had so needed her
ministrations. The _rôles_ seemed reversed. It was no longer she who was
the protector, the power directing events, no longer she who ruled by
right of wisdom and sweet common sense. David had become independent of
her. Hardest thing of all, to be no longer indispensable to him! And yet
even in this unexpected cup of bitterness there was a redeeming sweet:
he had remembered her grey gown, he had noticed that the roses became
her.
My Lady Lochore arrived towards that falling hour of the day when the
shadows are growing long and soft, when the slanting light is amber: it
might be called the coloured hour, for the sun begins to veil its
splendour, so that eyes, undazzled, may rejoice. The swallows were
dipping across the sward of golden-emerald and Bindon stood proudly
golden-grey in the light, silver-grey in the shadows and against the
blue.
This daughter of the house came back to it with a fine clatter of horses
and a blasting of post horns; followed by a retinue of valets and maids;
acclaimed along the village street by shouting children, while aged
gaffers and gammers bobbed on their cottage door-steps and showered
interested blessings. (Margery had prepared that ground in good time.)
She was welcomed in stately fashion by the chief servants and the master
of the house himself on the threshold of her old home.
Ellinor, half hidden behind the statue of Diana and its spreading green,
watched the scene, waiting for her own moment.
How different had been, she thought to herself, the return of poor
Ellinor Marvel, that other daughter of Bindon, upon the cold September
night, solitary, travel-worn, penniless, knocking in vain at the door
her forefathers had built, creeping round back ways like a beggar,
with the bats circling by her in the darkness and the watchdog
growling at her from his kennel; unbidden, entering her old house,
unwelcomed.—Unwelcomed? Was cousin Maud welcomed?
In her rustling thin silk spencer and her fluttering muslin, with
hectic, handsome face, looking anxiously out from under the wide
befeathered bonnet, Lady Lochore advanced her thin sandalled foot on the
step of the coach and rested her hand upon David’s extended arm.
This was their meeting after years of estrangement! For a second she
wavered, made a movement as if she would fling herself into her
brother’s arms; the ribbons on her bosom fluttered—was it with a heaving
sob? She glanced up at David’s severe countenance and suddenly stiffened
herself. He bent and brushed the gloved wrist with his lips.
“Sister, Bindon greets you!”
She tossed her head, and her plumes shook. It seemed to the watching
Ellinor as if she would have twitched her hand from his fingers; but he
led her on. And the two last Cheverals walked up the steps together.
The servants, Margery at their head, breathed respectful whispers of
welcome. The lady nodded haughtily and vaguely. She stood in the hall
and David dropped her hand. His eye was cold, there was a faint sneer on
his lips.
Welcomed? Ah, no! Ellinor would not have exchanged her dark night of
home-coming for her cousin’s golden ceremonious day. Ellinor had cared
little at heart—absorbed in her young freedom and her new confidence in
life—how she should be received, but the lord of Bindon had looked into
her eyes and bade her “welcome,” and laid his lips, lips that could not
lie, upon hers.
When Ellinor emerged from behind her foliage screen, Lady Lochore was
struggling in Madam Tutterville’s stout embrace. Sir David had summoned
all his family upon the scene; and—yes, actually it was her father (in a
wonderful blue anachronism of a coat) who was talking so eagerly to the
smiling rector that he seemed quite oblivious of the purpose of his own
presence.
Aunt Sophia had prepared a fitting address for one whom she had been
long wont to regard (however regretfully) as Jezebel. But, as usual, her
sternness had melted under the impulse of her warm heart.
“My goodness, child,” she exclaimed, “you look ill indeed!” and folded
her arms about her wasted figure.
Lady Lochore disengaged herself unceremoniously.
“Is that you, Aunt Sophy? Lord, you have grown stout! Ill? Of course I
am! And your jolting roads are not likely to mend matters. Has the
second coach come up? Where’s Josephine? Where is my boy?”
“The second coach is just rounding the avenue corner,” said Margery at
her elbow, “please my lady.”
Lady Lochore wheeled round. Her movements were all restless and
impatient, like those of a creature fevered. “Goodness, woman, how you
made me jump!”
She put up her long handled eyeglasses and fixed the simpler and the
parson with a momentary interest. Her white teeth shone in a smile soon
gone. Hardly would she answer the rector’s elegantly turned compliment;
but she vouchsafed a more flattering attention to Master Simon, as he
bowed with an antiquated, severe courtesy that was quite his own.
“That’s cousin Simon! I remember him and all his little watch-glasses,
tubes, and things. I hope you’ve got the little watch-glasses still,
cousin. I used to like you. You made Bindon rather interesting, I
remember.” She yawned, as if to the recollection of past dulness; an
open unchecked yawn, such as your fine lady alone can comfortably
achieve in company. “I hope you’ll make some little nostrum for me,
something nice smelling to dab on a freckle, or kill a wrinkle with—I
think I have a wrinkle coming under my left eye.”
She suddenly arrested the dropping impudent langour of her speech,
clenched a fine gloved hand over the stick of her eyeglass and stared
fixedly: Ellinor had come out and stood in a shaft of light, as she had
an unconscious trick of doing, seeking the warmth instinctively as any
frank young animal might.
A radiant thing she looked, grey-clad, with the gorgeous crimson of a
summer rose at her belt, her crisp rebellious hair on fire, her chin and
neck gold outlined.
“Who is this?” said Lady Lochore, in a new voice, as sharp as a needle.
It was David who answered:
“Our cousin, Ellinor Marvel!”
“How do you do,” said Ellinor composedly.
There was no attempt on either side at even a hand touch. Lady Lochore
nodded.
“Ellinor is my good providence here,” continued Sir David. “I should not
have ventured to receive you in this bachelor establishment had it not
been for her presence. But now everything, I am confident, will be as it
should be during the month that you honour this house with your
presence.” He enunciated each word with determined deliberateness; it
was like the pronouncing of a sentence. Once again Ellinor felt the
implacable passion of the man under the set, controlled manner. “If you
should desire anything, pray address yourself to cousin Ellinor,” he
added.
Lady Lochore put down her eyeglasses and looked for a second with
natural angry eyes from one to the other. She bit her lip and it seemed
as if beneath the rouge her cheek turned ghastly.
She had come prepared to fight and prepared to hate. Yet this sudden
rage springing up within her was not due to reason but to instinct. It
was the ferocious antipathy of the fading woman for the fresh beauty; of
the woman who has failed in love for her who seems born to command love
as she goes. Lady Lochore could not look upon her cousin’s fairness
without that inner revulsion of anger which not only works havoc with
the mind but distils acrid poison into the blood.
The clatter of the second coach was heard without.
“Give me the child, give me the boy!” cried Lady Lochore. She made a
rush, with fluttering silks, to the doors. “No one shall show my boy to
his uncle but myself!”
“Mamma’s own!”
Could that be Lady Lochore’s voice? She came staggering back upon them,
clasping a lusty, kicking child in her frail arms; the whole countenance
of the woman was changed—“A heartless, callow creature,” so Madam
Tutterville had called her, and so Ellinor had learned to regard her.
But even the legendary monster has its vulnerable spot: there could be
no mistaking Maud Lochore’s passionate maternity. Ellinor drew a step
nearer, attracted in spite of herself; she could almost have wished to
see David’s face unbend. But its previous severity only gave way to
something like mockery, as he looked at mother and child.
“David!” cried his sister, “David, this is my boy!” There was a wild
appeal in her voice, almost breaking upon tears. “Edmund I have called
him, after our father, David. Edmund, my treasure, speak to your uncle!”
“I will, if you put me down!” The three-year-old boy struggled to free
himself from his mother’s embrace. His velvet cap fell off and a cherub
face under deep red curls was revealed. Ellinor remembered how the
Master of Lochore’s red head had flashed through these very halls in the
old days, and she hardly dared glance at David.
“I’ll stand down on my own legs, please!” said the child. “And now I’ll
speak.”
He shook out his ruffled petticoat and looked up, and his great, velvet
brown eyes wandered from face to face. The genial ruddiness, the
benevolent smile of the good, childless parson appealed to him first.
“Good morning, mine uncle, I hope you’ll learn to love——”
Lady Lochore plunged upon him.
“No, Edmund, no! not there! See boy, this is your uncle.”
She clutched at David’s sleeve, while Madam Tutterville’s tears of easy
emotion ran into her melting smile; and quite unscriptural exclamations,
such as “duck,” and “little pet,” and “lambkin” fell from her delighted
lips.
“Speak to uncle David, darling! David, won’t you say a word to my
child?”
Ellinor could almost have echoed the wail—it cut into her womanly heart
to see David repel the little one. But he bent and looked down
searchingly into the little face. At that moment the child, again
struggling against the maternal control, drew his baby brows together
and set his baby features into a scowl of temper. Sir David looked; and
in the defiant eyes, in the little set mouth, in the very frown, saw the
image of his traitor friend. His own brows gathered into as black a knot
as if he had been confronting Lochore himself. He drew himself up and
folded his arms:
“Cease prompting the child, Maud,” said he, “let his lips speak truth,
at least as long as they may!”
He turned and left them. The little Master of Lochore was ill-accustomed
to meet an angry eye or to hear a disapproving voice. And, as his mother
rose to her feet, shooting fury through her wet eyes upon the
discomfited circle, he, too, glanced round for comfort and rapidly
making his choice, flung himself upon Ellinor and hid his face in her
skirts, screaming.
The clinging hands, the hot, tear-stained cheeks, the baby lips, opened
yet responsive to her kisses—Ellinor never forgot the touch of these
things. Almost it was, when Lady Lochore wrenched him from her arms, as
if something of her own had been plucked from her.
“I want the pretty lady, I will have the pretty lady!” roared the heir,
as Josephine, the nurse, and Margery carried him between them to his
nursery.
As Lady Lochore, following in their wake, swept by Ellinor, she gathered
her draperies and shot a single phrase from between her teeth. It was so
low, however, that Ellinor only caught one word. The blood leaped to her
brow as under the flick of a lash. But even alone, in her bed at night,
she would not, could not admit to herself that it had had the hideous
significance which the look, the gesture seemed to throw into it.
“So it is war!” said Lady Lochore, standing in the middle of her
gorgeous room, the flame of anger devouring her tears. “Well, so much
the better!”
She stood before the mirror, her chin sunk on her breast, biting at the
laces of her kerchief, while her great eyes stared unseeingly at the
reflection of her own sullen, wasted beauty. War! On the whole it suited
her better than a hypocritical peace. Hers was not a nature that could
long wear a mask. She was one who could better fight for what she loved
than fawn. And now she had got her foot into her old home at last; aye,
and her boy’s! After so many years of struggle and failure it was a
triumph that must augur well for the future.
Never had she realised so fully how prosperous, how noble an estate was
Bindon, how altogether desirable; how different from the barren acres of
Roy and the savage discomfort of its neglected castle. To this plenty,
this refinement, this richness, these traditions, her splendid boy was
heir by right of blood. And she would have him remain so! She laughed
aloud, suddenly, scornfully, and tossed her head with a ghost of the
wild grace that had made Maud Cheveral the toast of a London season; a
grace that still drew in the wake of the capricious, fading Lady Lochore
a score of idle admirers. It would be odd indeed if the sly country
widow, pink and white as she was, should be a match for her, now that
they could meet on level ground.
There came a knock at the door.
“If you please, my lady,” said Margery, “humbly asking your pardon for
intruding, I hope your ladyship remembers me. I’m one of the old
servants, and glad to welcome your ladyship back again to your rightful
place. And the little heir, as we call him, God bless him for a
beauty——”
“Come in, woman,” cried Lady Lochore, “come in and shut the door!”
CHAPTER IX
A RIDER INTO BATH
It is not quiet, is not ease,
But something deeper far than these:
The separation that is here is of the grave.
—WORDSWORTH (_Elegiac Poems_).
If a woman, being in love, gain thereby a certain intuition into the
character of the man she loves, the thousand contradictory emotions of
that unrestful state, its despairs, angers, jealousies, its unreasonable
susceptibilities, all combine to obscure her judgment; so that, at the
same time she knows him better than anyone else can, and yet can be
harsher, more unjust to him than the rest of the world.
Thus Ellinor understood exactly what was now causing the metamorphosis
of David. She alone guessed the struggle of his week’s seclusion, from
which he had emerged armoured, as it were, to face the slings and arrows
of the new turn of fate. She alone knew the inward shrinking, the sick
distaste which were covered by this polished breast-plate of sarcastic
reserve; knew that this deadly courtesy was the only weapon to his hand,
and that he would not lay it aside for a second in the enemy’s presence.
At that moment when she had seen him read in the child’s face the image
of its father, she had read in his own eyes the irrevocable truth of
those slow words of his under the night sky: “He who remembers never
forgives.”
She felt, too, that his very regard for her made it incumbent on him to
treat her now as ceremoniously as his other guest; that to have openly
singled her out for notice, or privately to have indulged himself with
her company, would have been alike tactless and ungenerous. But in spite
of all reason could tell her, she felt hurt, she was chilled, she gave
him back coldness for coldness and mocking formality for his grave
courtesy.
Now and again his eyes would rest upon her, questioning. But shut out
from his night watch on the tower; shut out by day from their former
intimacy by his every speech and gesture, Ellinor’s feminine sensibility
always overcame her clear head and her generous heart.
A few days dragged by thus; slow, stiff, intolerable days. At last Lady
Lochore threw off the mask insolently. Towards the end of their late
breakfast, after an hour of yawns and sighs and pettish tossing of the
good things upon her plate, she suddenly requested of her brother, in
tones that made of the request a command, permission to invite some
guests.
“Bindon shrieks for company,” said she, “and, thanks as I understand, to
Mrs. Marvel, it is fairly fit to receive company. And, I know you like
frankness, brother, I will admit I am used to some company.”
She flung a fleering look from Ellinor’s erect head to the alchemist’s
bent, rounded crown. (Master Simon was deeply interested in Lady
Lochore’s case, and as he entertained certain experimental schemes in
his own mind, sought her company at every opportunity: hence his
unwonted appearance at meals.) Sir David slowly turned an eye of ironic
inquiry upon his sister; but his lips were too polite to criticise.
“Anything that can add to your entertainment during your short stay
here,” said he, “must, of course, commend itself to us.”
Had Ellinor been less straitened by her own passionate pride, she might
have stooped to pick up solace from that little plural word.
“Then I shall write,” said Lady Lochore, with her usual toss of the
head. “If you’ll kindly send a rider into Bath—there are a few of my
friends yet there, I learn by my morning’s _courier_—I’ll have the
letters ready for the mail.”
Sir David went on slowly peeling a peach. For a while he seemed absorbed
in the delicate task. Then, laying down the fruit, but without looking
up from his plate, he said:
“I presume, before you write those letters that you intend to submit the
names of my prospective guests to me.”
Lady Lochore flushed. She knew to what he referred; knew that there was
one guest to which the doors of Bindon would never be opened in its
present master’s lifetime. She was angry with herself for having made
the blunder of allowing him to imagine for a moment that she was
plotting so absurd a move. She hesitated, and then, with characteristic
cynicism:
“What!” she cried, “do you think I want that devil here? No more than
you do yourself.”
“Hey, hey!” cried Master Simon, startled from some abstruse cogitation.
Still Sir David looked rigidly down at his plate.
“God knows,” pursued the reckless woman, “it’s little enough I see of
him now—but that is already too much!”
She paused, and yet there was no answer. Then with her scornful laugh:
“There’s old Mrs. Geary, the Honourable Caroline—you remember her,
David?—the Dishonourable Caroline, as they call her in the Assembly
Rooms; whether she cheats or not is no business of mine, but she is the
only woman I care to play piquet with. There’s Colonel Harcourt and Luke
Herrick—they make up the four, and I don’t think you’ll find anything
wrong with their pedigree. Herrick’s too young for you to know.
Priscilla Geary is in love with him—he’s a _parti_, as rich as he is
handsome—and I’ll want a bait to lure the old lady from the green cloth
at Bath. And if we have Herrick we must have Tom Villars too, else
Herrick will have no one to jest at. And besides, the creature is useful
to me.”
Sir David interrupted her with a sudden movement. He pushed his chair
away from the table and, looking up from the untouched fruit, fixed for
a second a glance of such weary contempt upon his sister that even her
bold eyes fell.
“A Jew, a libertine, an admitted cheat—oh yes, I remember Mr. Villars,
Colonel Harcourt, and Mrs. Geary. The younger generation, of whose
acquaintance I have not yet the honour, will no doubt prove worthy of
such elders!” He paused again, to continue in his uninflected voice:
“Since these are the sort of guests you most wish to see at Bindon, you
have my permission to invite them.”
He rose as he spoke, giving the signal for the breaking up of the
uncomfortable circle. As Lady Lochore whisked past Master Simon, in his
antiquated blue garment, she paused. She had a sort of liking for the
old man, odd enough when contrasted with the deadly enmity she had vowed
his daughter.
“Could you not discover,” she whispered, “a leaf or a berry that might
take some effect upon the disease of priggishness? That new plant of
yours. Did you not say ... didn’t you call it the Star-of-Comfort? I am
sure it would be a comfort.”
The effect of the whisper told upon a chest that occasionally found the
ordinary drawing of breath too much for it. She broke off to cough, and
coughed till her frail form seemed like to be riven. Master Simon
watched her gravely.
“I could give you something for that cough, child,” said he. Then his
withered cheek began to kindle, “Something to soothe the cough first,
and then, perhaps, I—I—that restless temperament of yours, that
dissatisfied and capricious disposition—the Star-of-Comfort, indeed——”
She shook her hand in his face.
“Not I,” she gasped. “No more quackery for me! Lord, I’m as tough as a
worm, Simon.” She laughed and coughed and struggled for breath. “I
believe if you were to cut me up into little bits, I’d wriggle together
again, but I’ll not answer for poison.”
She flung him a malicious look and flaunted forth, ostentatiously
oblivious of Ellinor—her habitual practise when not openly insulting.
When Sir David and Master Simon were alone together the old man went
solemnly up to his cousin, and laid his hand upon his breast.
“David,” said he, “that sister of yours won’t live another year unless
she gives up the adverse climate of Scotland, the impure air of the town
and the racket of fashionable life.”
“Tell her so, then,” said Sir David.
Master Simon drew back and blinkingly surveyed the set face with an
expression of doubt, surprise and unwilling respect.
“The woman’s ill,” he ventured at last.
“Shall I bid her rest? Shall I cancel those letters of invitation?”
asked Sir David ironically.
THE STAR DREAMER
BOOK III
Come down ... from yonder mountain heights.
And come, for Love is of the valley, come,
For Love is of the valley, come thou down!
TENNYSON (_The Princess._)
CHAPTER I
THE LITTLE MASTER OF BINDON
She played about with slight and sprightly talk,
And vivid smiles, and faintly venom’d points
Of slander, glancing here and grazing there.
—TENNYSON (_Merlin and Vivien_).
In the terraced gardens, under the spreading shadows of the cedar trees,
was gathered a motley group. Beyond that patch of shade the sun blazed
down on stone steps and balusters, on green turf and scarlet geranium,
with a fervour the eye could scarce endure. The air was full of hot
scents. On a day such as this, Bindon of old was wont to seem asleep:
lulled by the rhythmic, rocking dream-note of the wild pigeons, deep in
its encircling woods. On a day such as this, the wise rooks would put
off conclave and it would be but some irrepressible younger member of
the ancient community that would take a wild flight away from leafy
shade and, wheeling over the tree tops, drop between the blue and the
green a drowsy caw. But things were changed this July at Bindon: these
very rooks held noisy counsel in mid air and discussed what flock of
strange bright birds it was that had alighted in their quiet corner of
the world, to startle its greens and greys, to out-flaunt its
flower-beds with outlandish parrot plumage, to break the humming summer
silence with unknown clamours.
“The Deyvil take my soul!” said Thomas Villars reflectively.
He was sitting on the grass at Lady Lochore’s feet; his long legs in the
last cut of trousers strapped over positively the latest boots. The
slimness of his waist, the juvenility of his manner, the black curls
that hung luxuriantly over his clean-shaven face, all this conspired to
give Mr. Villars quite an illusive air of youth, even from a very short
distance. Only a close examination revealed the lines on the rouged
cheek and the wrinkled fall of chin that the highest and finest stock
could not quite conceal. The latest pedigree gave the year of his birth
as some lost fifty years ago—it also described the lady who had presided
at that event as belonging to the illustrious Castillian house of Lara.
But ill-natured friends persisted, averred that this lady had belonged
to no more foreign regions than the Minories, and thus they accounted
for Tom’s black ringlets, for his bold arch of nose, for his slightly
thick consonants and his unconquerable fondness for personal jewellery.
Mr. Villars was, however, almost universally accepted by society: his
knowledge of the share market was only second to his astounding
acquaintance with everyone’s exact financial situation.
“Deyvil take my soul!” he insisted. Tom Villars was fond of an oath as
of a fine genteel habit.
“I defy even the Devil to do that,” said Lady Lochore, stopping the
languidly pettish flap of her fan to shoot an angry look at him over its
edge.
“Why so, fairest Queen of the Roses?”
“Tom Villars sold his soul to the Devil long ago,” put in Colonel
Harcourt. “It is no longer an asset.”
Frankly fifty, with a handsome ruddy face under a sweep of grey hair
that almost gave the impression of the forgotten becomingness of the
powdered peruke, Colonel Harcourt, of the Grenadiers, erect,
broad-chested, pleasantly swaggering, good humoured and yet haughty,
proclaimed the guardsman to the first glance, even in his easy country
garb.
“Sold his soul to the Devil?” echoed Luke Herrick, lifting his handsome
young face from the daisies he was piling in pretty Priscilla Geary’s
pink silk lap. “Sold his soul, did he? Uncommon bargain for Beelzebub
and Co.! I thought the firm did better business.”
“You are quite wrong,” said Lady Lochore, looking down with disfavour
upon the countenance of her victim, who feigned excessive enjoyment of
the ambient wit and humour. “The Devil cannot take Tom Villars’ soul,
nor could Tom Villars sell it to the Devil, for the very good reason
that Tom Villars never had a soul to be disposed of.”
A shout of laughter went round the glowing idle group.
“Cruel, cruel, lady mine!” murmured the oriental Villars, striving to
throw a fire of pleading devotion into his close-set shallow eyes as he
looked up at Lady Lochore and at the same time to turn a dignified deaf
ear upon his less important tormentors. “In how have I offended that you
thus make a pincushion of my heart?”
Mr. Villars knew right well that with Lady Lochore, as with the other
fair of his acquaintance, his favour fell with the barometer of certain
little negotiations. But it was a characteristic—no doubt maternally
inherited—that soft as he was upon the pleasure side of nature, when it
came to business, he was invulnerable.
At this point Mr. Herrick burst into song. He had a pretty tenor voice:
Come, bring your sampler, and with art
Draw in’t a wounded heart
And dropping here and there!
Not that I think that any dart
Can make yours bleed a tear
Or pierce it anywhere——
This youth was proud of tracing a collateral relationship with the
genial Cavalier singer, whom he was fond of quoting in season and out of
season. He was a poet himself, or fancied so; cultivated loose locks,
open collars and flying ties—something also of poetic license in other
matters besides verse. But as his spirits were as inexhaustible as his
purse—and he was at heart a guileless boy—there were not many who would
hold him in rigour.
Lady Lochore looked at him with approval, as he lay stretched at her
feet, just then pleasantly occupied in sticking his decapitated daisies
into Miss Priscilla’s uncovered curls—a process to which that damsel
submitted without so much as a blink of her demure eyelid.
“Heart!” echoed Lady Lochore. She had received that morning a postal
application for overdue interest, and Tom Villars had been so detachedly
sympathetic that there were no tortures she would not now cheerfully
have inflicted upon him. “Heart!” she cried again, “why don’t you know
what is going to happen, when the poor old machine that is Tom Villars
comes to a standstill at last——”
“There will be a great concourse of physicians,” broke in Colonel
Harcourt, whose wit was not equal to his humour, “and when they’ve taken
off his wig and his stays and cut him open——”
“Out will fall,” interrupted Herrick, “the portrait of his dear cousin
Rebecca—whom he loved in the days of George II.
‘Be she likewise one of those
That an acre hath of nose——’”
“The physician will find a dreadful little withered fungus,” pursued
Lady Lochore, unheeding.
“Which,” lisped Priscilla, suddenly raising the most innocent eyes in
all the world, “which they will send to Master Rickart to find a grand
name for, as the deadliest kind of poison that ever set doctors
wondering. And sure, ’tisn’t poison at all! Master Rickart will say, but
just a poor kind of snuff that wouldn’t even make a cat sneeze.”
Mr. Villars had met Miss Priscilla Geary upon the great oak stair this
morning; and, examining her through his single eyeglass, had vowed she
was a rosebud, and pinched her chin—all in a very condescending manner.
“I think you’re all talking very great nonsense,” remarked the
Dishonourable Caroline.
Mrs. Geary was comfortably ensconced in a deep garden chair. Now raising
her large pale face and protuberant pale eye from a note-book upon which
she had been making calculations, she seemed to become aware for the
first time of the irresponsible clatter around her.
“Mr. Villars,” she proceeded, in soft gurgling notes not unlike those of
the ringdove’s, “I have been just going over last night’s calculations
and I think there’s a little error—on your side, dear Mr. Villars.”
Mr. Villars scrambled to his feet, more discomfited by this polite
observation than by the broad insolence of the others’ banter.
“My dear Madam, I really think, ah—pray allow me—we went thoroughly into
the matter last night.”
The little pupils in Mrs. Geary’s goggling eyes narrowed to pins’
points.
“I do not think anyone can ever accuse me of inaccuracy,” she cooed with
emphasis. “Come and look for yourself, Mr. Villars. You owe me still
three pounds nine and eightpence—and three farthings.”
“Bianca let
Me pay the debt
I owe thee, for a kiss!”
sang the irrepressible Herrick—stretching his arms dramatically to
Priscilla, and advancing his impudent comely face as if to substantiate
the words—upon which she slapped him with little angry fingers
outspread; and Lady Lochore first frowned, then laughed; then suddenly
sighed.
“Peep-bo, mamma!” cried a high baby voice.
Every line of Lady Lochore’s face became softened, at the same time
intensified with that wonderful change that her child’s presence always
brought to her. But her heavy frown instantly came back as she beheld
Ellinor, hatless, bearing a glass of milk upon a tray, while, from
behind the crisp folds of her skirt, the heir-presumptive of Lochore
(and Bindon) peeped roguishly at his mother.
Herrick sprang to his feet. Colonel Harcourt turned his brown face to
measure the new-comer with his frank eye and then rose also.
“Hebe,” said he, looking down with admiration at the fresh, sun-kissed
cheek and the sun-illumined head, “Hebe, with the nectar of the God!”
He took the tray from her hand.
“Give me my milk,” said Lady Lochore. “Edmund, come here! Come here,
darling. Are you thirsty? You shall drink out of mother’s glass. Come
here, sir, this minute! Really, Mrs. Marvel, you should not take him
from his nurse like this!”
With a shrill cry the child rushed back to Ellinor and clutched her
skirt again, announcing in his wilful way that he would have no nasty
milk, and that he loved the pretty lady. Ellinor had some little ado to
restore him to his mother. Then, seeing him firmly captured at last by
the end of his tartan sash, she stood a moment facing Lady Lochore’s
vindictive eyes with scornful placidity.
“My father hopes you will drink the milk, cousin Maud,” said she, “and
if you would add to it the little packet of powder that lies beside it
on the tray, he bids me say that it would be most beneficial to your
cough.”
For all response Lady Lochore drank off the glass; then handed back the
tray to Ellinor as if she had been a servant, the little powder
conspicuously untouched. Ellinor looked from one to the other of the two
men; then with a fine careless gesture passed her burden to Herrick,
and, without another word, walked away up the terrace steps.
Herrick glanced after her, glanced at the tray in his hand, and breaking
into a quick laugh, promptly thrust it into Colonel Harcourt’s hands and
scurried off in pursuit. Colonel Harcourt good-humouredly echoed the
laugh, as he finally deposited the object on the grass, then stood in
his turn, gazing philosophically after the two retreating figures that
were now progressing side by side, while Lady Lochore and her son
out-wrangled Mrs. Geary and Mr. Villars.
“’Pon my soul,” said Colonel Harcourt, “_vera incessu patuit Dea_. That
woman walks as well as any I’ve ever seen!”
Lady Lochore caught the words, and they added to the irritation with
which she was endeavouring to stifle her son’s protestation that he
hated mamma.
“I’ll have you know who’s master, sir!” she cried, pinning down the
struggling arms with sudden anger.
“I’m master. I am the little Master of Lochore—and Margery says I’m to
be the little master here!”
The mother suddenly relaxed her grasp of him and sat stonily gazing at
him while he rubbed his chubby arm and stared back at her with pouting
lips. The next moment she went down on her knees beside him, and took
him up in her arms, smothering him with kisses.
“Darling, so he shall be, darling, darling!”
A panting nurse here rushed upon the scene.
“Wretch!” exclaimed my lady, “you are not worth your salt! How dare you
let the child escape you. Yes, take him, take him!—the weight of him!”
She caught Harcourt’s eye fixed reflectively upon her.
“Come and walk with me,” she commanded.
“I was two by honours, you remember,” cooed Mrs. Geary.
“I am positive, the Deyvil take my soul, Madam! But ’tis my score you
are marking instead of your own!”
Deserted Priscilla sat making reflective bunches of daisies. She had not
once looked up since Herrick so unceremoniously left her.
The sky was still as blue, the grass as green, the flowers as bright,
the whole summer’s day as lovely; but fret and discord had crept in
among them.
CHAPTER II
TOTTERING LIFE AND FORTUNE
... Loathsome sight,
How from the rosy lips of life and love
Flashed the bare grinning skeleton of death!
White was her cheek; sharp breaths of anger puff’d
Her nostrils....
—TENNYSON (_Merlin and Vivien_).
With head erect, Lady Lochore walked on between the borders of lilies.
The path was so narrow and the lilies had grown to such height and
luxuriance that they struck heavily against her; and each time, like
swinging censers, sent gushes of perfume up towards the hot blue sky.
Colonel Harcourt went perforce a step behind her, just avoiding to tread
on her garments as they trailed, dragging the little pebbles on the hot
grey soil. Now and again he mopped his brow. He liked neither the sun on
his back nor the strong breath of the flowers, nor this aimless
promenade. But, in his dealings with women, he had kept an invariable
rule of almost exaggerated deference in little things, and he had found
that he could go further in great ones than most men who disdained such
nicety.
Suddenly Lady Lochore stopped and began to cough. Then she wheeled round
and looked at Harcourt with irate eyes over the folds of her
handkerchief she was pressing to her lips.
Anthony Harcourt possessed a breast as hard as granite, withal an easy
superficial gentlemanly benevolence which did very well for the world in
lieu of deeper feeling; and a great deal better for himself. He was
quite shocked at the sound of that cough; still more so when Lady
Lochore flung out the handkerchief towards him with the inimitable
gesture of the living tragedy and showed it to him stained with blood.
“Look at that, Tony,” said she, “and tell me how long do you think it
will be before I bark myself to death?”
Her cheek was scarlet and her eyes shone with unnatural brilliance in
their wasted sockets. She swayed a little as she stood, like the lilies
about her; and indeed she herself looked like some passionate southern
flower wasting life and essence even as one looked at her.
“Come out of this heat,” said Harcourt. He took her left arm and placed
it within his; led her to a stone bench in the shade. She sat down with
an impatient sigh, passed the back of the hand he had held impatiently
over her wet forehead and closed her eyes. In her right hand, crushed
upon her lap, the stained cambric lay hidden.
“Is not this better,” said her companion, as if he were speaking to a
child, “out of that sunshine and the sickly smell of those flowers? Here
we get the breeze from the woods and the scent of the hay. A sort of
little heaven after a successful imitation of the infernal regions.”
“If you mean Hell, why don’t you say Hell?” said Lady Lochore. She
laughed in that bitterness of soul that can find no expression but in
irony. “Bah!” she went on, half to herself. “It’s no use trying not to
believe in Hell, my friend; you have to, when you’ve got it in you! Look
here,” she suddenly blazed her unhappy eyes upon him. “Look here,
Tony—honour, now! How long do you give me?”
All the man’s superficial benevolence looked sadly at her from his
handsome face.
“I am no doctor.”
“Faugh! Subterfuge!”
“Why, then, at the rate going, not three months,” said he. “But, with
rational care, I’ve no doubt, as long as most.”
“Not three months!” She clenched her right hand convulsively and glanced
down at the white folds escaping from her fingers as if they contained
her death warrant. “Thank, you, Tony. You’re a beast at heart, like the
rest of us, but you’re a gentleman. I am going at a rapid rate, am I
not? Oh, God! I shouldn’t care—what’s beyond can’t be worse than what’s
here. But it’s the child!”
The man made no answer. He had the tact of all situations. Here silence
spoke the sympathy that was deeper than words. There was a pause, Lady
Lochore drew her breath in gasps.
“It’s a pretty state of affairs here,” she said, at last, with her hard
laugh.
“You mean——?”
“I mean my sanctimonious brother and his prudish lady!”
“Surely——?” He raised his eyebrows in expressive query.
“Not she!” cried Lady Lochore in passionate disgust. “I would think the
better of her if she did. No, she’s none of those who deem the world
well lost for love. Oh, she’ll calculate! She’ll give nothing for
nothing! She’s laid her plans.” Lady Lochore began reckoning on three
angry fingers uplifted. “There’s the equivocal position—one; my
brother’s diseased notions of honour—two; her own bread-and-butter
comeliness—three. She’ll hook him, Tony. She’ll hook him, and my boy
will go a beggar! Lochore has pretty well ruined us as it is.”
“I should not regard Sir David as a marrying man, myself,” said the
colonel soothingly.
“No,” said she, “the last man in the world to marry, but the first to be
married on some preposterous claim! Look here, Tony, we are old friends.
I have not walked you off here to waste your time. You know that my
fortunes are in even more rapid decline than myself. There’s the child;
he is the heir to this place. Before God, what is it to me, but the
child and his rights! I’ll fight for them till I die. Not much of a
boast, you say, but when a woman’s pushed to it, as I am”—her voice
failed her. There was something awful in the contrast between the energy
of her passion and the frailness of her body and in the way they reacted
one upon another.
“Poor soul!” said Colonel Harcourt to himself—and his kind eyes were
almost suffused.
“Tony, Tony!” she panted in a whisper of frantic intensity, “you can
help. Oh, don’t look like that! I know I’m boring you, but I’ll not bore
anyone for long. Think what it means to me! Fool! As if any man could
understand! Don’t be afraid, I won’t ask anything hard of you. Only to
make love to the rosy dairymaid, to the prim housekeeper, to the pretty
widow. Why, man, you can’t keep your wicked eyes off her as it is!”
He leaned back against the bench, crossed one shapely leg over the
other, closed his eyes and laughed gently to himself. Lady Lochore,
bending forward, measured him with a swift glance, and her lips parted
in a sneer.
“You’re but a lazy fellow. You like your peach growing at your elbow.
You’ve been afraid of hurting my feelings ... you have been so long
regarded as my possession! Oh, Tony, that’s all over now. Listen—if you
don’t know the ways of woman, who does? The case is very plain: that
creature is planning to compromise David. I know how you can make love
when you choose, and I know my fool of a brother. I’ll have her
compromised first! And then——”
She pressed her hands to her heart, then to her throat; for a moment or
two the poor body had struck work. Only her eyes pleaded, threatened.
“And then? Before the Lord, you ladies!”
For all his _bonhommie de viveur_, Colonel Harcourt, of the First
Guards, was known about Town to be a good deal of “a tiger,” as the cant
of the day had it; and he held a justified reputation as an expert with
the “saw-handle and hair-trigger.” Conscious of this, he went on:
“Truly, Maud, it may well be said there’s never a man sent below but a
woman showed the way! But is there not something a little crude in your
plan?”
“Crude! Have I time to be mealy-mouthed? I’m not asking you anything
very hard, God knows! Merely to follow your own bent, Tony Harcourt; you
have had your way with me, but that is over now, and you know it. I want
you to devote yourself to that piece of country bloom instead. In three
months you know what I shall be!...”
“My dear Maud.... And then?” He was amused no longer: Lady Lochore was
undeniably crude. “A regular conspiracy!” he went on. But, after a
moment’s musing, a gleam came into his eye. “What of it!” he cried,
“all’s fair in love and war—a soldier’s motto, and it has been mine! And
as for you, why, your spirits would keep twenty alive!”
She laughed scornfully.
“It sounds better to say so, anyhow,” she retorted. “I don’t want any
mewing over me. So it’s a bargain, Tony? For old sake’s sake you’ll go
against all your principles and make love to a pretty woman? And we’ll
have this new Pamela out of the citadel. We’ll have this scheming
dairy-wench shown up in her true colours! My precious brother, as you
know, or you don’t know, has got some rather freakish notions about
women. He’s had a slap in the face once already, and it turned him
silly. Disgust him of this second love affair, he’ll never have a third
and I shall die in peace. You have marked the affectionate, fraternal
way in which he treats me! I had to force my way back into this house.
He’ll never forgive me for marrying Lochore—and as for Lochore himself,
to the trump of doom David will never forgive him for.... Bah! for doing
him the best turn one man ever did another!”
“And what was that?” asked the colonel, with a slight yawn.
“What you and I are going to do now,” said my Lady. She smoothed her
ruffled hair, folded her stained kerchief and slipped it into her bag;
rose, and looked down smiling once more at the man, her fine nostrils
fluttering with her quick breath in a way that gave a singular
expression of mocking cruelty to her face. “Lochore saved Sir David from
marrying beneath him.”
“And how did he accomplish that?” asked the colonel, rising too.
There was now a faint flutter of curiosity in his breast The reasons for
Sir David’s eccentricity had once been much discussed. Lady Lochore took
two steps down the path, then looked back over her shoulder.
“In the simplest way in the world,” she answered. “He gave a greedy
child an apple, while my simpleton of a brother was solemnly forging a
wedding ring.”
“Why”—the colonel stared, then laughed—“my Lady,” said he “these are
strange counsels! Why—absurd! How could I think the plump, pretty
Phyllis would as much as blink at an old fogey like me. And, as for
me——”
Again Lady Lochore turned her head and looked long and fully at the
speaker.
“Oh, Tony!” she said slowly at last. “Tony, Tony!”
Colonel Harcourt tried in vain to present a set face of innocence; the
self-conscious smile of the gratified _roué_ quivered on his lips. He
broke into a sudden loud laugh and wagged his head at her. She dropped
her eyelids for a second to shut out the sight.
“And she bit into the apple?” asked the colonel, presently.
“With all her teeth, my dear friend. Heavens! isn’t the world’s history
but one long monotonous repetition? With us Eves, everything depends
upon the way the fruit is offered. And that is why, I suppose, it is
seldom Adam and his legitimate orchard that tempts us. Reflect on that,
Tony.”
With this fleer, and a careless forbidding motion of her hand, she left
him standing and looking after her.
There was a mixture of admiration and distrust in his eyes.
“By George, what a woman!” said he. “Gad, I’m glad I am not her Adam,
anyhow!”
Then his glance grew veiled, as it fixed itself upon an inward thought,
and a slow complacent smile crept upon his face.
CHAPTER III
STRAWS ON THE WIND
... I feel my genial spirits droop,
My hopes all flat....
—MILTON (_Samson Agonistes_).
“I never heard you, my dear Doctor, preach better!” said Madam
Tutterville.
But the worthy lady’s countenance was overcast as she spoke; and the
hands which were smoothing and folding the surplice that the parson had
just laid aside were shaking. The reverend Horatio turned upon his
spouse with a philosophic smile. The lady did not use to seek him thus
in the sacristy after service unless something in the Sunday
congregation seemed to call for her immediate comment. On this
particular morning he well knew where the thorn pricked; for he himself,
mounting to the pulpit with the consciousness of an extra-polished
discourse awaiting that choice Oxford delivery which had so rare a
chance of being appreciated, had not seen without a pang of vexation
that the Bindon House pew was empty save for its usual occupant—Mrs.
Marvel. Having promptly overcome his small weakness and proceeded with
his sermon with all the eloquence he would have bestowed on the expected
cultivated, or at least fashionable, audience, he was now all the more
ready to banter his wife upon her distress.
“What is the matter, dear Sophia?”
“An ungrateful and reprobate generation! He that will not hear the
church, let him be to thee as the heathen and the publican!” cried
Madam, suddenly rolling the surplice into a tight bundle and indignantly
gesticulating with it.
“How now! has Joe Mossmason been snoring under your very nose, or has
Barbara——”
“Tush, tush, Doctor! You know right well what I mean. Was not that empty
pew a scandal and a disgrace? Bindon House full of guests and not one to
come and bend the knee to their Lord!”
“And admire my rolling periods, is it not so, my faithful spouse?” quoth
the parson good-naturedly.
“I took special care to remind them of the hour of service last night;
not, indeed, that I ever expected anything of Maud; although she might
well be thinking that in every cough she gives she can find the
hand-writing on the wall. Amen, amen, I come like a thief in the night!”
The parson’s eyelids contracted slightly, but he made no reply. Seating
himself in the wooden armchair, he began with some labour to encircle
his unimpeachable legs with the light summer gaiters that their
unprotected, silk-stocking state demanded for out-door walking.
“My dear Horatio, what are you doing? Allow me!” She was down on her
knees in a second; and while, with her amazing activity of body, she
wielded the button-hook, her tongue never ceased to wag under the stress
of her equally amazing activity of mind.
“But that card-playing woman—that Jezebel—one would have thought she’d
have had the decency to open a prayer-book on the day when the
commandments of the Lord forbid her to shuffle a pack; she’s old enough
to know better!”
“I’m not so sure,” said the reverend Horatio, complacently stretching
out the other leg, “that she interprets the Sabbath ordinance in that
spirit.”
“Horatio!” ejaculated the outraged churchwoman, “you do not mean to
insinuate that such simony could take place within our diocese as
card-playing on the Sunday?”
“I think, from what I have seen from the Honourable Mrs. Geary, that she
is likely to show more interest in the card-tables than in the tables of
Moses.”
He laughed gently.
“Talking of Moses,” cried Madam Tutterville, feverishly buttoning,
“there’s that Mr. Villars—one would have thought he would come, if only
to show himself a Christian.”
But she was careful, even in her righteous exasperation, not to nip her
parson’s tender flesh.
“Thank you, Sophia!”
He rose and reached for his broad-brimmed hat; then suddenly perceiving
from his wife’s empurpled cheek and trembling lip that the slight had
gone deeper than he thought, he patted her on the shoulder and said in
an altered manner:
“Come, come, Sophia, let us remember that fortunately we are not
responsible for the shortcomings of Lady Lochore’s guests. Indeed, from
what I saw last night, it is a matter of far deeper moment to consider
the effect of their presence upon those two who are dear to us at
Bindon.”
“You mean, Doctor?”
“I did not like David’s looks, my dear. I fear the strain and the
disgust, and the effort to repress himself, are too much for him. And
besides”—he paused a moment—“I don’t know that I altogether liked
Ellinor’s looks either.”
“My dear Horatio! I thought I had never seen her so gay and so
handsome.”
“Too gay, Sophia, and too handsome. So Mr. Herrick and Colonel Harcourt
not to speak of that pitiable person, Mr. Villars, seem to find her. She
appears to me to take their admiration with rather more ease than is
perhaps altogether wise in a young woman in her position. I do not say,”
he went on, bearing down the lady’s horrified exclamation—“I do not go
so far as yourself in surmising that David had formed any serious
attachment in that quarter; but then, you see, it might have ripened
into one. There is no doubt there was a singular air of peace and
happiness about Bindon before this most undesirable influx. But last
night David’s eyes——” He broke off, readied for his cane and moved
towards the porch.
“My dear sir,” panted Madam Tutterville after him, “you have plunged me
in very deep anxiety! We seem indeed, as Paul says, to be going from
Scyllis to Charybda! Pray proceed with your sentence—David’s eyes?”
But the parson had already repented.
“Nay, it is after all but a small matter. All I mean is that this noise,
this wrangling, this frivolity, this trivial mirth, which is, after all,
but the crackling of thorns, is peculiarly distasteful to such a man as
David, and I was only sorry that your niece should seem to countenance
it.”
“I will speak to her,” announced Madam Tutterville. “I will instantly
seek her.”
“Nay,” said her lord, “my dear Sophia, here we have no right to
interfere. Ellinor has sufficient experience of the world to be left to
her own devices. I understand that Colonel Harcourt and Mr. Herrick are
neither of them a mean _parti_, and, unless I am seriously mistaken, the
younger man at least is genuinely enamoured. By what right can we permit
our own secret wishes, our own rather wild match-making plans, to step
in here?”
“Oh, dear!” sighed Sophia. “And we were so comfortable!”
The two stood arm-in-arm at the lych-gate and absently watched the last
of their parishioners straggling homeward in groups through the avenue
trees. Suddenly Madam Tutterville touched her husband’s arm and pointed
with a dramatic gesture in the direction of the House.
Two tall slight figures were moving side by side across the sunlit
green. Even as the rector looked a third, emerging from the shadows of
the beeches, joined them with sweeping gestures of greeting.
“They have been, I declare, lying in wait for Ellinor ... and there she
goes off between them, Sunday morning and all!”
Deeply shocked and annoyed was Madam Tutterville.
“I think,” said the parson, “that I will take an hour’s rest in the
garden. I would, my dear Sophia, you had as soothing an acquaintance, on
such an occasion as Ovid.”
CHAPTER IV
A SHOCK AND A REVELATION
Into these sacred shades (quoth she)
How dar’st thou be so bold
To enter, consecrate to me,
Or touch this hallowed mould?
—MICHAEL DRAYTON (_Quest of Cynthia_).
Ellinor sat on the stone bench in the Herb-Garden, gazing disconsolately
at the flourishing bed of _Euphrosinum_—at the Star-of-Comfort—and
reviewing the events of the past days with a heavy and discomforted
heart.
It is but seldom now that she could find a few minutes of solitude, so
many were the claims upon her time. For, besides the household duties
and Master Simon’s unconscious tyranny, she was subjected to a kind of
persecution of admiration on the part of Bindon’s male guests. There
were times, indeed, when Colonel Harcourt’s shadowing attendance became
so embarrassing that she was glad to turn to the protection which the
boyish worship of Luke Herrick afforded.
With the former she felt instinctively that under an almost exaggerated
gentleness and deference there lurked a gathering danger; whereas the
youthful poet, however exuberant in his devotion, was not only a
harmless, but a sympathetic companion.
While she was far from realising the peril in which she stood where her
dearest hopes were concerned, she felt the difficulty of her position
increase at every turn. Forced by David’s wish into the society of his
visitors, she was there completely ostracised by the ladies after an art
only known to the feminine community. Thus she was thrown upon the
mercies of the gentlemen, and they were extended to her with but too
ready charity. It would not have been in human nature not to talk and
laugh with Luke Herrick when Miss Priscilla was going by, her little
nose in the air. It was impossible not to accept with a smiling grace
the chair, the footstool, the greeting offered to her with a mixture of
paternal and courtierlike solicitude, amid the icy silence and the
drawing away of skirts whenever she entered upon the circle.
Now and again, perhaps, her laugh may have been a little too loud, her
smile a shade too sweet; but she would not have been a woman had the
insulting attitude of the other women not led her to some reprisals.
Moreover there was a deep sore place in her soul which cried out that he
who should by rights be her protector held himself too scornfully aloof;
nay, that he actually included her now and again in the cold glance
which he swept round the table upon his unwelcome guests. To the end of
the chapter a woman will always seize the obvious weapon wherewith to
fight the indifference of the man she loves, and nine times out of ten
it is herself she wounds therewith.
The basket that was to hold the health of the village was still empty by
her side. Absently she fingered a sprig of wormwood—meet emblem, she
thought, of her present mood. Indeed, Ellinor’s thoughts were not often
so bitter. Not often was her brave spirit so dashed.
There came a light rapid step behind her, a burst of laughter; and, as
she turned, the triumphant face of Herrick met her glance at so slight a
distance from her own that she drew back in double indignation.
“Why have you followed me?” she exclaimed indignantly. “You know that no
one is allowed here!”
“How can I choose but love and follow her
Whose shadow smells like mild pomander?
How can I choose but——”
The gay voice broke off suddenly, and a flush—fellow to that of Ellinor,
yet one of engaging embarrassment, overspread the singer’s face.
“Well, sir?” she asked.
How stern, how stiff, how unapproachable, this woman whom nature had
made of such soft lovely stuff! Luke Herrick stooped, lifted a corner of
her muslin apron, and carried it humbly to his lips.
“How could I choose but kiss her! Whence does come
The storax, spikenard, myrrh and labdanum?”
he went on, dropping his recitative note for what was almost a whisper.
From his suppliant posture he looked up with eyes in which the man
pleaded, yet where the boy’s irrepressible, irresponsible
mischievousness still lurked. It was impossible not to feel that anger
was an absurd weapon against so frivolous a foe. Moreover she liked him.
There was something infectious in his mercurial humour, something
attractive in the honest boy nature that lay open for all to read. There
was something of a relief, also, to be obliged to jest and to laugh. To
be near him was like meeting a breeze from some lost, careless youth.
Why, after all, should she not try and forget her own troubles? What was
the Herb-Garden to him, to David, that, with a fond faithfulness she
should insist on keeping it consecrate to the memory of one dawn! He who
had begged for the key of it—what use had he made of the gift? How many
a golden morning, how many a pearly day-break, how many an amethyst
evening, had she haunted the scented enclosure—always alone!
“I’ll not say a single little word,” he urged. “I’ll be as mute as a
sundial, if you’ll only let me bask in your radiance! I’ll just hold
your basket and your scissors, and I’ll chew every single herb and tell
you whether its taste be sweet, sour or bitter, if you’ll only give me a
leaf between your white fingers. And then if I die——”
He thumped his ruffled shirt and languished.
“How did you get in?” she asked.
But though her tone was still rebuking, he laughed back into her blue
eyes. He made a gesture: she saw the traces of moss, of lichen and
crumbling mortar upon his kerseymere, the rent in his lace ruffle, the
tiny broken twig that had caught his crisp curl.
“Ah,” she cried, “you have found my old secret scaling place.... Did you
land in the balm bed?” she asked, laughing.
Colonel Harcourt, in search of Ellinor, looked in through the locked
gate and knocked once or twice, then called gently. But, though he could
hear bursts of laughter and the intermingling sounds of voices in gay
conversation, he could see nothing but the strange herb-beds and bushes,
intersected by narrow paths, overhung by swarmlets of humming bees and
other honey-seeking insects; and no one seemed to hear him.
As he stood, smiling to himself in good humoured cynicism, the tall
figure of his host, with bare head, came slowly out of the laurel walk
that led to the open plot before the gate. Sir David seemed absorbed in
thought. And it was not until he was within a pace or two of the other
man that he suddenly looked up.
“Good morning!” said the colonel genially. “A lovely day, is it not?
Queer place, that old garden of weeds—our friend, Master Simon’s
herbary, as I understand. The gate is locked, I find.”
As he spoke, Colonel Harcourt scanned the set, pallid face with a keen
curiosity. It required all a sick woman’s disordered fancy (he told
himself) to imagine that this cold-blooded student, this walking symbol
of abstractedness should be in danger of being led away into romantic
folly. The soldier’s full smiling lips parted still more broadly, as he
went on to reflect that, whatever designs the pretty widow might have
upon her cousin’s fortune, her warm splendid personality was scarce
likely to be attracted by “this long, thin, icy, fish of a fellow!”
Sir David had inclined his head gravely on the other’s greeting. When
the hearty voice had rattled off its speech, he answered that he
regretted that it was the rule to admit no visitors to the Herb-Garden.
And then drew a key from his pocket and slipped it into the lock, so
completely ignoring his guest’s persistent proximity, that the colonel,
as a man of breeding would have felt it incumbent upon him to retire,
had he not special reasons for standing his ground.
“Indeed!” said he. “Forbidden ground?”
“Yes, the plants are many of them deadly poison. It is a necessary
precaution.”
“No doubt—quite right. Very prudent. But—what about the charming Mrs.
Ellinor Marvel, the beauteous widow, the bewitching and amiable cousin,
whom you are fortunate to have as companion in this romantic house?”
David dropped his hand from the key, turned and fixed his grave eyes on
the speaker. Their expression was merely one of waiting for the next
remark. The colonel hardly felt quite as assured of his ground as
before, but he resumed in the same tone of banter:
“I saw her going there just now. Is it quite safe to let so precious a
being into such dangerous precincts?”
The remark ended with that laugh upon the hearty note of which so much
of his popularity rested. Most people found it impossible not to respond
to this breezy way of Colonel Harcourt’s. But there was not a flicker of
change upon Sir David’s countenance.
Yet, when he spoke, after coldly pausing till the other’s mirth should
have utterly ceased, and remarked that his cousin, Mrs. Marvel, was
associated with her father’s scientific investigations and therefore was
the only person, besides the speaker himself, whom he allowed to make
use of the garden, the colonel felt that his insinuation had been
understood and rebuked by a courtesy severer than anger. His resentment
suddenly rose. The easy contempt with which he had hitherto regarded the
uncongenial personality of his host, flamed on the instant into active
dislike; and he was glad to have a weapon in his hand which might find a
joint in this irritatingly impenetrable armour.
“Indeed!” cried he, ruffled out of his usual commanding urbanity.—Trying
to smile he found himself sneering. “Indeed? Aha, very good, I declare!
It is worth while living on a tower to be able to retain those confiding
views of life! It has never struck you, I suppose—the stars are
doubtless never in the least irregular in their courses, but young and
charming widows have little ways of their own—it has never struck you
that this forbidden wilderness might be an ideal spot for rendezvous?”
Sir David shot at the speaker a look very unlike that far-off
indifferent glance which was all he had hitherto vouchsafed him. This
sudden, steel-bright, concentrated gaze was like the baring of a blade.
Dim stories of the recluse’s romantic and violent youth began to stir in
Harcourt’s memory. He straightened his own sturdy figure and the
instinctive hot defiance of the fighter at the first hint of an opposing
spirit ran tingling to his stiffening muscles.
So, for a quick-breathing moment, they fixed each other. Then, through
the drowsy humming summer stillness rang from within the Herb-Garden the
note of Herrick’s singing voice:
“Go, lovely rose and, interwove
With other flowers, bind my love.
Tell her too, she must not be,
Longer flowing, longer free——”
The melody broke off. There was a burst of laughter; and then Ellinor’s
voice, with an unusual sound of young merriment in it, sprang up into
hearing as a crystal fountain springs into sight:
“Foolish boy, there are no roses here!”
Sir David started. His eyes remained fixed, but they no longer saw. In
yet another moment he had turned away and was gone, leaving Colonel
Harcourt staring after him.
“’Pon my life,” said the _roué_ to himself, “the woman was right—My God,
he’s mad for her!”
Upon a second and more composed thought, he began to chuckle and feel
his own personality resume its lost importance.
“The situation is becoming interesting,” he thought. His eye fell on the
key, forgotten in the lock and he broke into a short laugh. He then
unlocked the gate, slipped the key into his pocket and walked into the
garden.
“I had no idea,” he said, addressing the balm beds, as he passed them,
“that I could be such a useful friend to my Lady.”
CHAPTER V
SILENT NIGHT THE REFUGE
My life has crept so long on a broken wing
Thro’ cells of madness, haunts of horror and fear,
That I come to be grateful at last for a little thing:
My mood is changed, for it fell at a time of year
When the face of night is fair on the dewy downs
... and the Charioteer
And starry Gemini hang like glorious crowns
Over Orion’s grave low down in the west.
—TENNYSON.
Ellinor had had, perforce, so busy an afternoon (to make up for time
lost in the morning) that, marshalled by Lady Lochore, all the guests
were already at table when she came in that night.
She stood a moment framed in the doorway, a brilliant apparition.
Despite its many candelabras and the soft light that still poured into
it through open windows, the great room—oak-panelled and oak-ceiled—was
of its essence richly dark. Nearly black were those panels, polished by
centuries to inimitable gloss and reflecting the flames of the candles
like so many little yellow crocuses.—Such walls are the best background
for fair women and fine clothes; for roses and silver and gold.
This evening Ellinor had been moved—though she hardly knew why—to
discard her severely simple gowns for a relic of the early days of her
married life, a garment of a fashion already passed. In the embroidered
fabric she was clothed as a flower is clothed by its sheath. A narrow
white satin train with a heavy border of little golden roses fell from
her shoulders in folds that accentuated her height. The classic cut,
that laid bare a sweep of neck and arm that not another woman in the
county could boast, became her as simplicity does royalty. The mingling
of the white and gold was repeated by her skin and hair. As she cast a
last look at herself, in the mirror before leaving her room, a smile of
innocent delight had parted her lips. She had seen herself beautiful—how
beautiful she was, she herself indeed did not know. She had thought of
David and had been glad. The ever more open admiration with which both
Herrick and Colonel Harcourt had surrounded her throughout the day had
stimulated her in some strange, but very feminine and quite pure,
manner, to make better use of these gifts of hers to pleasure the eyes
of the man she loved.
Now Lady Lochore was the first to see her on her entrance. She put up
her eyeglasses and stared, and then dropped them with a pale convulsion
which turned the next moment to a vindictive smile.
Colonel Harcourt followed the direction of her eyes and positively
started with a frank stare of delight. He wheeled boldly round to feast
his eyes at ease; the action and the attitude were almost equivalent to
applause. Then it seemed to Ellinor that every head was turned, that
every eye was upon her; and her innocent assurance suddenly failed her.
Timidly she shot a glance towards the head of the table. Alas! everyone
was looking at her, except him whose gaze alone meant anything. All her
childish pleasure fell from her.
She advanced composedly enough, however, and took the only vacant seat,
which was between the colonel and young Herrick, vaguely responding to
their advance. After a while a sort of invincible attraction made her
look up. She met David’s eyes—met the chill of death where she had
expected the warmth of life!
What had happened? Her heart seemed to wither away, the smile was
paralysed on her lips; the flowers, the lights, the flashes of silver
and colour, the babel of talk about her—it all became nightmare, an
unreal world of mocking shadows, in which one thing only was horribly
and intensely alive, the pain of her sudden misery. After a moment,
however, some kind of self-possession returned. The pressing exigency
that weighs upon us all, of preserving our bearing in company, no matter
whether soul or body be at torture, forced her to answer the running
fire of remarks that seemed to be levelled at her with diabolical
persistency.
Even the kind, friendly presence of the rectory pair seemed destined
that night to add to her difficulty; for while uncle Horatio was quoting
Greek at her across the table, Madam Tutterville was assuring her
neighbors that if Mrs. Marvel was unpunctual for once she was
nevertheless the faithful virgin with lamp in excellent condition, who
knew how to trim her wicks; and was, in fact, the strong woman of
Proverbs who got up early.
“One rose in the fair garden was missing, and I missed her!” said the
rector, poetically, while he turned an affectionate glance upon his
niece.
“Dear uncle Horatio,” said she, “I had rather be greeted by you than
acclaimed by a court.”
“Horrible, horrible cruel to poor adoring courtiers!” murmured Colonel
Harcourt in her ear.
At any moment, that confidential lowering of the voice, that bold
intimacy of the gaze would have excited Ellinor’s swiftest rebuke; but
now she only laughed nervously as she endeavoured to rally in reply to
Herrick’s equally low-pitched, but quite guileless show of interest.
“What is the matter with you?” he was whispering; “you went as white as
a sheet just now. Has anyone annoyed you? Do tell me!”
“I, white—what nonsense!” she cried; and her voice rang a little louder
and harder than usual in her effort, while the rush of blood that had
succeeded her momentary faintness left an unusual scarlet on both
cheeks. “Why, I am burning! And so would you be if you had spent the day
between the alembic stove and the kitchen!”
“Perhaps,” said Miss Priscilla, lifting her innocent eyes to shoot
baby-anger across at the neglectful Herrick, “perhaps,” she said, in her
small soft voice, “it also was sitting so long in the sun in the
Herb-Garden, that’s given you that colour. There’s Mister Luke has got
the match of it himself.”
Lady Lochore gave a loud laugh.
“Mrs. Marvel has so many irons in the fire!” she suggested.
Ellinor looked round the table. She seemed to remain the centre of
notice: on the part of the women (with the exception of aunt Sophia) an
inimical, almost vindictive notice; while, where the men were concerned,
she could not turn her gaze without meeting glances of undisguised hot
admiration. Instinctively, as if for help, she again sought David’s
gaze, and again was thrown back into indescribable terror and
bewilderment by his countenance. Only once through all the phases of
gloom, discouragement, renunciation that his soul had passed through in
her company, had she seen his features wear that deathlike mask—it was
when he had battled with himself before reading his sister’s letter. And
now this repudiation, nay, this contempt of things, was directed—she
felt it with a nightmare sense of inevitableness—towards herself.
Herself!
Oh, the torture of that long elaborate repast, the nauseating weariness
of the ceaseless round of dishes, the inane ceremonies of wine-taking,
the glass clinking, the jokes, the laughter, the compliments, the
struggle to parry the spiteful or the too ardent innuendo, to laugh with
the rest at Aunt Sophia’s happy inaccuracy, to respond to her proud
congratulations over the success of each remove! Ellinor’s life had not
been an easy one; but no harder hour had it ever meted out to her than
this.
Parson Tutterville had suddenly become grave and silent. His kind,
shrewd gaze had wandered several times from the gloom of David’s
countenance to the flush upon Ellinor’s cheek. Then, with fixed eyes,
fell into a reflection so profound that—most unusual occurrence in the
amiable epicure’s existence—the superb wine before him waited in vain to
whisper its fragrant secret, and the most artistic succulence was left
untasted upon his plate.
When the party at length broke up, he himself, in a coign of vantage,
caught Ellinor’s arm as she passed him.
“My dear child,” he said under his voice, “something must have happened!
I have not seen David look like this since the old evil days—the Black
Dog is sitting on his shoulder with a vengeance! What is it?”
Ellinor’s lip quivered. She shook her head, words failed her. A shade of
severity crept into the rector’s face.
“Have you quarrelled?”
Again the mute reply.
“Have you nothing to tell me? Ah, child, take care; David is not like
other men! His mind is a complicated piece of machinery—and the common
tools, Ellinor, will only work havoc here!”
Ellinor’s sore heart was stabbed again. She understood the veiled
rebuke; and the injustice of it so hurt her that to hide her tears, she
broke from the kind hand and rushed from the room in the wake of the
disdainful petticoats that had just swept by her.
Parson Tutterville looked after her with puzzled air; then, sighing,
returned to the table. Here David was dispensing the hospitality of
Bindon’s matchless cellar, discoursing to his guests in a mood of irony
so bitter yet so intangible as to fill the rector with fresh alarm.
The reverend Horatio took his seat at the right of the master; and,
without a spark of interest, watched the pale hand busy among the
decanters fill his beaker. He would, indeed, have preferred not to put
his lips to it, had the exigencies of the social moment but permitted
it, so utterly had that smile of David’s turned its flavour for him.
“By George!” exclaimed the colonel, flinging himself luxuriously back in
his chair and speaking with the enthusiasm of an experienced sensualist,
“by George, a glorious tipple! Enough to turn the whitest-livered cur
into a hero! Come, come, gentlemen, we must not let such grape juice run
down our throats unconsecrate, as if we were beasts. Let us dedicate
every drop of it.—A toast, a toast!”
He had reached that agreeable state which should be the aim of the
expert diner at this crucial moment of the repast. He had eaten well and
had drunk wisely; and was now on the fine border line where the utmost
enjoyment of the sober man merges into the first elevation of spirit of
the slightly intoxicated.
“I propose our amiable host,” he went on, just as Herrick, springing to
his feet and raising his glass exclaimed:
“There can be here but one worthy toast—the fair ones of Bindon.”
“Our Queens, our Goddesses, our Nymphs, our Angels!” interrupted
Villars, with his usual inspiration.
“Our fair ones!” echoed David, rising also; “indeed nothing could be
more just than that we should devote the blood wrung from the grape that
makes, as Colonel Harcourt truly says, heroes of mankind, to woman, that
other spring of all our noble actions. Is it not so, my gallant
Colonel?”
“Hear him, hear!” cried innocent Herrick, beating the table with an
excited hand.
David’s glacial eye fell for a moment on the hot boy-face, and there
flickered in it a kind of faint pity. So, one might fantastically fancy,
would a spirit recently rent from the body by an agonising death, look
from its own corpse upon those who had yet to die.
“Let us drink,” said David, and raised his glass, “to Woman! Without her
what should we know of ourselves, of our friends, of the treasures of
the human heart and the nobility of the human mind, of honour, of
purity, of faithfulness!”
Dr. Tutterville looked up at the speaker, resting his hand on the table
in the attitude of one prepared to spring forward in an emergency. As
David’s voice rang out ever more incisive he was reminded of the
breaking of sheets of ice under the stress of dark waters below.
“A moment, please,” here intervened Colonel Harcourt’s mellow note.
“Friend Herrick’s excellent suggestion, and our host’s most eloquent
adoption of it, can yet (craving your pardon, gentlemen) be amended. Let
us not dilute the enjoyment of this excellent moment—let us concentrate
it, as good Master Simon would say. Gentlemen, this glass not to women,
but to the one woman! Come, parson, up with you! Fie—what would Madam
Tutterville say? And he has but given half his heart who fears to
proclaim its mistress. Hoy! Gone away! And out on you if you shy at the
fence! I drink to Mistress Marvel—to the marvel of Marvels, aha!”
He tossed down his glass, looking coolly at David, while Herrick,
leaning forward with the furious eyes of the young lover stung, glared
across the table and balanced his own glass in his hand with an intent
which another second had seen carried out, had not the parson’s fingers
quietly closed upon his; had not the parson’s voice murmured in his ear:
“Remember, my young friend, that the imprudent champion is a lady’s
greatest enemy.”
This while Villars, on his side, sputtering into silly laughter,
protested that fair play was a jewel and that if Harcourt had stolen a
march upon him, he Villars might yet be in “at the death!”
David stood still, glass in hand, dangerously still, while his eyes
first wandered round the table, from face to face, and then beyond out
to the midsummer twilight sky that shone through the parted folds of the
curtains. And then the parson, who was watching him, saw a marvellous
change come over the bitter passion of his face. It was as if the mask
had fallen away. The rigid composure, the tense lines relaxed, the
sombre eye was lit with a new light; and ethereal peace touched the
troubled forehead.
Wondering, the divine turned to the window also; followed the direction
of David’s abstracted gaze and saw how, in the placid primrose space,
the first evening star had lit her tender little lamp.
There was a moment’s curious silence in the great room. Then, from
David’s hand the glass fell, breaking on the mahogany; and the ruby wine
was spilled in a great splash and ran stealthily, looking like blood.
And the host, the lord of Bindon, with head erect and eyes fixed upon
visions that none could even guess at, turned and left them all—without
a word.
Re-acting against the unusual sensation that had almost paralysed them,
Bindon’s guests raised a shout of protest, and Harcourt sprang angrily
towards the closing door. But the parson again interposed.
“I pray you,” he said, with a dignity that imposed obedience, “I pray
you let Sir David depart. He has gone back to his tower, and there no
one must disturb him. He leaves you to your own more congenial company.”
Colonel Harcourt broke into a boisterous laugh as he sank back into his
chair, and reached for the bottle.
“Pity for the good wine spilt—that’s all,” he cried. “But ’twas wasted
anyhow upon such a dreamy lunatic!”
Unceremoniously he filled himself another brimmer, and reflecting a
moment—
“Now to my Lady Lochore!” said he at length slowly, “and to the wish of
her heart!”
Doctor Tutterville looked at him askance. Then, after a moment, he too
rose, and with an old-fashioned bow all round, left the room.
CHAPTER VI
THE LUST OF RENUNCIATION
O purblind race of miserable men,
How many among us at this very hour
Do forge a life-long trouble for ourselves
By taking true for false or false for true!
—TENNYSON (_Geraint and Enid_).
Ellinor went straight from the dining-room to seek her father in his
peaceful retreat. Courage failed her to face the company any longer that
night; she had, moreover, a longing to be with one who at least would
not misunderstand her.
But, on the very threshold, her heart sank. It hardly needed Barnaby’s
warning clutch at her gown from where he sat like a statue of
watchfulness, just inside the door, his shake of the head and mysterious
finger on lip to show her that her coming was inopportune. The very
atmosphere of the room forbade interruption. The air seemed full of
floating thoughts, of whispering voices and stealthy vapours; of these
singular aromas that to her were like the letters of a strange language
which she had hardly yet learned to spell. Up to the vaulted roof the
whole space was humming with mysterious activity; a thousand energies
were in being around some secret work. And there, master-brain and
centre power, her father, seated at his table, like a mimic creator
evolving a world of his own out of the forces of his chaos!
She came forward a step or two. His underlip was moving rapidly; and
broken, unintelligible words dropped from time to time among the
whispering vapour-voices all about him, like stones into a singing
fountain. Now he lifted his blue eyes, stared straight at her—and saw
her not!
Once or twice before she had known him in this state of mental
isolation; she was aware that his brain was wound up to an extraordinary
pitch, and that to interfere with its operations or endeavour now to
bring its thoughts into another current would be at once useless to
herself and cruel to him.
Alas! He had been at his mysterious drugs again—those unknown powers
that were beginning to fill her with secret terrors. She had more than
once implored him to deal no more with them; but she might as well have
implored a Napoleon to desist from planning conquest as the old chemist
from experimenting upon himself or others.
She turned, and looked questioningly at Barnaby, who, by some strange
dog-like intuition, never failed to remain within sight of his master at
such moments. And the lad’s expressive pantomime convinced her that her
surmises were right. With a new anxiety added to her burden, she
withdrew.
As she stood a moment outside the door, in deep despondency, she heard
footfalls coming rapidly down the long passage which led from the
tower-wing to the main body of the house. Her heart leaped: her heart
would always echo to the sound of that step, as an untouched lute will
answer to the call of its own harmony. It was David!
His brow uplifted, his gaze fixed, he came swiftly out of the shadow
into the little circle of light; passed her so closely as nearly to
brush her with his sleeve and crossed into the darkness again. And she
heard the beat of his foot on the tower stairs in the distance, mount,
mount, and die away. As little as her father, had he been aware of her
presence!
She pressed her hands against her breast; and the taste of the tears she
would not shed lay bitter on her tongue, the grip of the sob she would
not utter left strangling pain in her throat. Poor all-human thing, with
all her human passions, human longings, human weakness, what was she to
do between these two visionaries!
Then, in the natural revolt of youth repressed, she came to a sudden
resolution. Her father was old; and, besides, he had drugged himself
to-night till nothing lived in him but the mind. But David was young,
young like herself! What was to hinder from following him again to his
altitude; from calling upon him, by all the blood of her beating heart
to the blood of his own, to come back from that spirit-world where she
could not stand beside him—back to her level, where only a little while
ago he had found a green and flowering resting-place? Then she would let
him look into her soul. Then, with a tender hand, she would take that
mask from his face. Then the hideous incomprehensible shadow that had
come between them would fly before the light of truth, and (even to
herself she could hardly formulate the sweetness of that hope into
words) before the revelation of Love!
She caught up her heavy satin train and her gossamer muslins and ran, as
if flying from her own hesitation, up the great stone stairs without a
pause to listen to the beating of her heart, across the threshold of
that room where, upon that first evening of tender memory, she had
tripped and been caught against his breast.
He was not in the observatory. She sought the platform. She had known
that she would find him there: and there indeed he stood, even as
pictured in her mind, with folded arms and looking up at the sky. She
looked up also, and was jealously glad, in her woman’s heart, that, so
radiant was the summer moon to-night, those shining rivals of hers were
but few and faint to the eye.
She laid her hand upon his arm; he turned, without a word, stared a
second:
“Ellinor!”
She had meant to call him back to earth, but not like this! Here was
again the incomprehensible look that had rested upon her at dinner, but
with an added fierceness of anger so foreign to all she had known of him
that she felt as if it slashed her.
“Oh, what has happened? David, what have I done?”
She clasped and wrung her hands. On her heat of pleading his answer fell
like ice.
“Done?” he echoed, with that pale smile that seemed to mock at itself;
“done, my fair cousin? Nothing in truth that anyone—I least of all—could
find fault with. It would be as wise to chide the winds for shifting
from north to south as to hold a woman responsible for her own nature.”
His light tones was in startling contrast with the flame of his eye. All
unaware of any incident of the day that could have afforded ground for
this change, she found as yet no clue in his words to guide her.
“David, David—what is it?” she cried again.
In the anguish of her desire to break down the barrier between them, to
get close to his soul again, she stepped towards him, hardly noticing
that he drew back from her until he was brought up by the parapet of the
platform. When he could retreat no further, he threw out his hand with a
forbidding gesture.
She stood obedient but bewildered, as a child that is threatened though
it knows not why. The winds of the summer night played with the tendrils
of her hair and softly blew the fair white fabric of her gown closer
against her, while the tide of moon rays, pouring over her bare
shoulders and arms, glorifying the smooth skin with a radiant gleam as
of mother-of-pearl, flashed back in scintillations from the burnished
embroideries of her robes; so that, with the heaving of her breast and
the tremor which shook her whole frame, she seemed to be enveloped with
running silver fires.
Something—a passion, a mad desire—flickered into the man’s face, as if,
for an instant, a hidden fire had leapt up. The next instant this was
succeeded by the former cruel gaze of contempt and anger, the more
intense because so icily controlled. Once more measuring her from head
to foot, he murmured, with an extraordinary bitterness of accent:
“Are all women either fools or wantons?”
One moment indeed she swayed as if she would have fallen; but instantly
she recovered herself, and, with a movement, full of pride and dignity,
stooped to gather the folds of her heavy train into her hands and fling
them across those shoulders and arms she had so innocently left bare to
walk in beauty before him. That the man she loved could have looked,
could have spoken such insult, oh, no hand could ever draw the blade
from out her heart! There would it remain and rust till she died. Her
cheeks—nothing but death indeed would ever cool them again, she thought.
And no waters, no snow, no fire would cleanse her white garments from
the mud he had just cast at them.
She turned upon him, her arms folded under the swathes of satin.
They were no longer master of the place and voluntary servant; no longer
rich lord of the land and recipient of his bounty; no longer the
protector and the protected—no longer even the secretly beloved and the
loving—they were man and woman upon the equality in which Nature had
placed them in their young life. Man and woman, alone in the night,
under the great open sky, the wide star-pointed heaven, high-uplifted
above the land, far apart from any living creature, unrestrained by any
convention, any extraneous touch; face to face, so utterly man and woman
alone on this high peak of passion, that it almost seemed as if their
bodily envelope must fall away also and leave naked soul to naked soul.
And yet, such lonely things has God made us in spirit, He who
nevertheless said: “It is not good for man to be alone,” that when two
souls meet in conflict and there is no tender hand touch, no meeting of
lip to lip to draw the two together without words (we are always so
betrayed by the treachery of word!) the difference in each soul is so
essential that it seems as if nothing could ever bring them into union
again. And there are battles in life which the soul traverses as utterly
single as that final battle of all which each one of us is doomed to
fight alone.
“David!” cried Ellinor, “explain!”
It was a command, enforced by eye and tone. So had Ellinor never looked
before upon David; so had her voice never rung in his ear.
“Explain!” he echoed. “Of what value can the opinions of this poor fool
among men, this recluse, this dreamer be to you, what consequences can
you attach to them? Go back to the gay circle to which your nature
belongs! There is your centre. Have I not seen it this month? Did I not
see it to-day—to-night? What have we really in common, you and I?”
A glimmer of comprehension began to dawn upon Ellinor’s mind. But,
sweetly stirring as it might have been at another moment to know David
jealous, his mistrust came too closely upon his offence to avail. It was
but added fuel to her wrath.
“How unjust!” she cried. “How ungenerous, how untrue!”
His haggard eye rested upon her with a sudden doubt of himself. Yet it
was but as the pause before the widening rent in the breach—the pressure
of the pent-up feelings on their unnatural height was too much now for
the already weakened defences. The torrents were loose! He began, in
hoarse, rapid, whispering voice:
“Oh, how you must laugh—you women that make us dance like puppets as you
hold the strings!”
Then, suddenly, as with a crash and almost a cry, came the first leap of
the flood.
“Why do you seek me? Could you not be content to have brought into my
peace—God knows how hardly won!—this disturbance, this trouble, this
disillusion? Have you not shown me once again that no woman, however
kind, can be true; however fair but must be false; however
straight-limbed, but must be tortuous of mind; however sweet to draw a
man to her but must be black at heart! Is not that enough? I had gone
back to my stars, back to all they mean to me; they had called me from
among that ignoble crew where you—oh, incredible! seem to have found
yourself so well! I had gone back to them, to their serenity, to their
high communion.... Why did you call me down? Take your false troubling
beauty from this my own peace ground!”
“But David! But, dear cousin, what insanity is this?”
“No,” he cried, with outflung hands beating back the sudden tender
relaxation in her voice, the loosening movement of her folded arms under
their mantle. “No,” he repeated loudly and harshly. “Once deceived where
I most loved! Again deceived where I most trusted! Deceived again where
nature, common blood, and family honour, should have most bound to
faithfulness—it is enough! I have done with life. I will never again
risk my hard-won peace of mind—life’s most precious possession—upon the
frail stake of another’s loyalty. I have no friend, I have no sister.
Ellinor, I will love no woman!”
His loud voice suddenly sank; and towards the last sentences, with a
falling of her high spirit of anger, she saw him resume the old
unnatural look, the old passionless tone of detachment and renunciation.
The phrase with which he concluded rang in her ears more like a knell of
all her secret hopes than the conventional offence.
“Oh,” said she, and the clear sweet note was shot through with a tremor
of pain, “neither friend nor kin nor love? It is a hard sentence, David!
Is it not as bad to mistrust truth as to break troth?”
But though her words were gentle she felt herself more aloof as she
spoke than at any moment of their interview. Their two souls were
drawing away from each other in the storm as the same wind and the same
waves may part consorting vessels.
She moved, as to leave him, when he arrested her.
“You know the story of my life,” said he. “Stay, Ellinor, the night is
mild.”
He put out his hand; but hesitated, and did not touch her. The frenzy of
passion had left him, with that sudden change of mood that marks the
fevered brain. She sat down on the parapet without a word. The night was
mild, as he had said; yet, even under her improvised mantle she was
cold—cold to the soul.
Now he had sealed the vial of her love. And, unless his hand knew the
cunning of it and could break it open again, sealed it must remain till
death. Had he but looked upon her first as now, but spoken as now, how
different she might have made it! But even with his eyes upon her once
more kind, and his voice in her ear once more gentle; with his hand
trembling upon the stone of the bench, but a tiny span from hers; with
the atmosphere of his presence enfolding her, she felt that they were
still drifting apart further and further across the waste of waters.
“What have I said to you to-night?” he asked, and drew his hand across
his brow. “Forgive me, you have always been very good to me. I owe you a
great deal.”
She smiled with a welling bitterness.
“If you speak of owing,” she said, “I owe you the very bread I eat.”
“And never felt it till to-night,” she added in her heart, but could not
speak those words aloud because, in spite of everything, she loved him
with that woman’s love that is kept tender by the mother instinct.—She
could not hurt him who had hurt her so much.
His troubled gaze on her widened and then became abstracted.
“I have become a creature of the night,” said he, almost as if to
himself. “For, by the light of day I cast such shadows as I go, that
nothing, I think, could prosper near me. Always I have paid such toll
for every good that it had been better I had never known it. The old
curse is still upon me. Even for the comfort of your smile, Ellinor, I
have had to pay.”
She drew a breath as if she would speak, but closed her lips proudly
again. She could not plead for his happiness, for now that meant
pleading for herself.
“Let me tell you,” said he once more, “what life has done to me.”
“I am listening,” she replied coldly, after a pause.
“Thank you—you are always patient with me. It is the last time that I
shall ever bring a human being into my confidence, but I think you have
a right to know, Ellinor, why I have been so moved to-day; to know how
it is that events have once more shown me my own unfitness to mix with
my fellow-creatures.”
He paused a second, then went on, resentment once more threatening in
his voice like distant thunder.
“I cannot do with the meanness, the small duplicities, the little
treacheries. Oh, God, duplicity is never small, and to me there is no
little treachery. Ellinor, let but the tiniest rift be sprung in the
crystal, and its note can never ring pure again. Oh, Ellinor, had you
forgotten that?”
He stared at her with a new passion of reproach. But she sat,
marble-still, with downcast lids: a cold white thing in the moonlight.
And that passion of his that might just then have broken into
tenderness, like a wave upon a gentle beach, recoiled upon itself as it
met the barrier of her high hard pride.
He rose, thrust his nervous hands through his hair, pulling the heavy
locks back from his brow. Then he began to speak very rapidly; sometimes
turning towards her, as if his emotion must find an object; sometimes in
lower tones, as if communing with himself; sometimes again throwing his
words, as it were, into space. And thus he made his indictment against
the mysterious powers that had ruled his fate.
CHAPTER VII
SHADOWS OF THE HEART OF YOUTH
Be mine a philosopher’s life in the quiet woodland ways,
Where, if I cannot be gay, let a passionless peace be my lot.
Far off from the clamour of liars, ...
And most of all would I flee from the cruel madness of love,
The poison of honey-flowers, and all the measureless ills!
—TENNYSON (_Maud_).
The moon, fulfilling its lower summer circuit, had moved already a
considerable span upon the wondrous measure that, to the watcher, seems
imperceptibly slow, and yet, like the passing of the hour, asserts
itself with such irrevocable swiftness. The night had deepened from pale
sapphire to dark amethyst. Below, all around, the great woods at Bindon,
silver-crested southwards, whispered; and the light airs that stirred
them gathered sweets from the rose-gardens and spices from the Herbary
before reaching the two on their tower. These airs, Ellinor thought,
must pass on their way again, heavy with the sighs of her heart!
“On such a night,” what might not have been this meeting! With life all
before them yet, what perversity was it to spend this silvery hour in
the story of old and ugly wrongs; when God had made a heaven so fair, an
earth so scented and a woman’s heart so true, to see all with distorted
vision and consort with the remembrance of injury until the voice of no
better comrade could make itself heard!
He told her with how high a heart he had set forth on life; and indeed
she well remembered his gallant figure in the pride of youth, his lofty
idealism and his fine intolerant scorn. She remembered, too, the witty
mocking countenance, the cold green eye, the dark, auburn head of the
Master of Lochore.—Lochore! Ellinor had instinctively dreaded and hated
him. But with David he had taken the lead in everything; the relentless
strength of the elder man’s nature had transformed him into a kind of
hero for the younger, at a time when student-brains are peopled with
ideals of the highest pitch in all things, be it love or sport, war or
friendship. David’s reflective temperament was fascinated by a spirit of
essential joyousness and fierceness.—In but a few words David touched on
his past romantic affection for this Cosmo Lochore. It was with a sneer,
as if the ghost of his own green youth had risen up before him and he
could have withered it for his contemptible folly.
“Then,” he went on, “came the long-promised month on the moors, at the
edge of the Lochore Forest. Cosmo, in his kilt, at early dawn ... to see
his crest of hair and his eagle feather flame in the first shaft of
light! I don’t suppose that any feelings can ever be quite so pure, so
strong, so ideal, as this sort of boy adoration for the man. Ideal!”
repeated David, and struck with his buckled shoe against a fernlet that
had found a home for itself between two stones of the tower flooring and
cast a little shadow in the moonlight.
Ellinor saw how he set his foot upon it, and thought the action
symbolic.
“Ideal!” cried he, gibing at himself. “That is my curse, you see, that I
cannot even now, accept life as it is! Fie! How ugly is all reality to
me! What is in the doom of corruption that we carry in the flesh
compared to the doom of corruption in the spirit? No! Rather this stone
at my feet and the stars above my head!” He lifted, as he spoke, his
face towards the sky; but it caught now no reflection of serenity, only
light upon its own trouble. “I was an idealiser in friendship—how much
more when it came to love!”
Impassively as she held herself, she could not control a slight start, a
quick look at him. He was gazing beyond her, as if out there, in the
night, the phantom of his first lost love had arisen before him. And
when he went on speaking after a pause, it was as if he were addressing
not Ellinor, but her—the Unknown—who had brought short joy and lasting
sorrow into his life. Oh! Ellinor had been a fool not to have known how
deep it had gone with him, since, after all these long years his every
word, every action, bore witness to it! And yet, as she now looked at
his face, she told herself she had not known it.
“A little creature—a kind of sprite, as light as a little brown bird, as
lissom, as hardy as a heather blossom!”
Thus, from the unknown past, Ellinor’s rival rose before her: to be
light, to be little, to be swift and lissom and brown—that was the way
into his heart!... In every inch of her own splendid frame the listening
woman felt great and massive, marble-white and still.
He paused. His mind was miles and years away. She caught her breath with
a sigh that sounded so loud in her own ears that she tried to cover it
with a laugh. Quickly the man wheeled round upon her.
“There is humour in my tale, is there not?” cried he, and his look and
tone cut like the lash of a whip. “But give me your patience—the cream
of the humour has yet to come!”
“Oh, David,” cried she in anger. “If I am not light of body, neither am
I light of mind!”
If one like Colonel Harcourt, who understood the ways of women, had
heard this cry, how knowing would have been his smile! What could David
see of the heart laid bare? He looked upon her face and marked it
scornful. The anger in her voice had struck him, but the wail of it had
passed him by.
“Do I accuse you women?” he exclaimed. “Why should I! Have you not been
made to match us men? The night that Lochore and I lost our way upon the
moor and found refuge under the roof where she dwelt was the beginning
of my instruction in life! Ah, God! The old story—I fell in love as I
had fallen in friendship. It had been sweet to me to look up and feel
myself protected by one like Lochore, stronger and better, as I thought,
than myself. I thought it was ineffably sweet to find something so much
weaker, so much smaller than I; something I could protect, something
that looked up to me; brown eyes that seemed as true as they were
deep—and scarlet lips that could kiss with such innocently ardent
kisses....”
A fresh wave of anger swept through Ellinor’s veins. There came to her
an almost overpowering impulse to spring to her feet, throw away her
cloak and stand forth in her scorn, in her pride of life, in her
wholesome humanity. Those unknown lips, those scarlet lips ... disowned
now as they were, had still power to sting her. But she sat immovable,
and let jealousy and love work their torture.
“You must think me mad,” cried David, with another abrupt change, “to
inflict the old story upon you, the trite old story all the world knows.
You know, Ellinor, you know.” He now addressed her with a personal,
almost violent, directness. The matter seemed once more to lie between
him and her alone. “I loved her, and she said she loved me. I was to
make her my wife—my wife! Lochore mocked first, then stormed. We had our
first quarrel; he swore he would prevent this madness. I was strong
against him with a new strength—the strength of love against
friendship.... Friendship! I forgave him, because I thought I must
forgive such friendship! I left her. She wrote tender letters. I was to
claim her in a few weeks. Suddenly I got a longing for her that could
not be denied: a poet’s longing—the poet that lies in the heart of every
lad of twenty! And then, do you need to be told how there was murder
done upon that poet, murder upon the dreamer! upon his trust and his
faith, upon his every hold on life? Had it been but on his wretched
flesh! But that they let live!”
He now bent over her, a bitter laugh upon his lips.
“There was a certain walk, Ellinor, sacred to our love. All those weeks
I had dreamed of it, of the primrose sky and the meeting of our lips—in
my ideal way!” He laughed aloud. “I ran to it straight. I had not gone
two steps when I heard there on that consecrated spot, a laugh. The
sound of her laughter so much more joyous than ever she had laughed for
me—the sound of her voice, high and bright. And mingling with it, in
familiar jests and tenderness the sound of a man’s voice——” He stopped,
and fixed her; then, once more drawing back, laughed again: “I had
thought it was consecrated ground, you see!”
His ironic fury, as yet contained, was so intently pointed at herself
that it could not but be revealing. The reproach of betrayal, then, was
not to the little brown thing of the moor, but to her—to the great white
woman!
Could it be possible? What insanity! And yet what sweetness! He had
known, then, of that infraction in their own Herb-Garden this morning!
Jealousy! There is no jealousy without love ... oh, then, she could
forgive him all!
She rose, drawing a deep, joyous breath, and answered the indictment as
she had taken it to herself.
“And what of it, David?” said she. Trembling upon her lips was almost
that surrender which it is a woman’s pride never to offer. “What of it?”
And she would have added—“A woman cannot always be guardian of the outer
world, however consecrated she may hold certain gardens. But so long as
her heart remains inviolate, so long as that remains consecrate, what
does anything else matter?” But he had quickly caught up her spoken word
with a fresh outburst of frenzy.
“What of it?” he echoed. “You may well ask the question. Is it not a
thing that happens every day? You are right, the man who would live in
the world must close his ears to what is not meant for them; as he must
shut his eyes, no matter how flagrant the treachery, that is spread out
before him. And then, no doubt, he may find the world a vastly pleasant
place. That is the proper doctrine. Oh, and ’tis the natural one, for we
are all made cowards? I myself, when I heard, I ran from the sound. I
threw myself upon the moor that evening. I thrust my fingers into my
ears. I reasoned with myself against what I knew was the truth—that is
what people call reason. And I said what you have said: What of it!”
There was a moment’s silence. Then his voice rang out once more:
“But I could not!” He struck his breast. “I could not. There is
something here even now in this dead heart of mine that must live in me
as long as the spirit is in me. The truth, the truth! I cannot lie to
myself, I cannot believe in another’s lies—I had heard, I must see. I
rose from the ground, it was drenched with dew. It was night. Something
led me, angel or demon. There was fire-light leaping up against the
window. I looked in—I saw. Oh, you woman, turn away your false,
compassionate eyes, for one thing I have sworn that I will never look on
a woman’s treachery again!”
“David,” cried Ellinor again, “remember that I am of your blood!”
“Aye, of my blood. The mockery of fate is complete: betrayed by
friendship, betrayed by love, betrayed by my own blood——!”
“David!”
“Yes—Maud, my sister, that is my own blood, is it not? Maud laughed, oh,
she laughed! She came and sat by the side of my bed, the wound that
Lochore’s bullet had made was yet green in my lung—for the memory of our
old friendship he could not even do me the mercy to shoot straight—and
she, my own sister ... my blood! She was to marry the man whose hand was
red and whose soul was black, the man who had openly flaunted about
Town, as the latest Corinthian, the girl that was to have been his
friend’s bride, and boasted that he had done me what he called the best
service one man could do another. ‘Why, fool, you owe him eternal
gratitude,’ said Maud. It was a huge joke!”
Terrified, Ellinor stood looking at him. If her pride had allowed her to
reason with him earlier, perhaps it might have availed. Now she felt
that any words of hers would be worse than useless. As well try to
reason away ague or delirium.
“My friend, my love, my kin, you see!” he cried. “History repeats
itself. You, you,” he came close to her with a frenzied gesture as if to
overwhelm her with reproach, “you, my kin, you who came into my solitude
as my friend, you whom some blind madness has kept whispering to me was
to be my love, you would combine in your single person the three
traitors that stabbed my youth!”
She never knew if she had screamed, or if it was only the cry of her
heart that suddenly rang in her ears. But she seized and clung to his
descending hand as it would have waved her from him for ever.
“Ah, no, David, no!” she repeated, the denegation in a voice as frenzied
as his own. And suddenly her ice of pride melted and the tears came
streaming from her eyes. At the sight the man seemed to come back in
some way to his senses. The cold hand she held became more human warm.
“Tears?” he said in an altered voice. “Have I caused you tears? Ah,
don’t cry, Ellinor! I must not blame you; it is only that the world is
not made for me, nor I for the world. Forgive me and forget. You are
what you are. I am what I am.” He drew his hand from hers, turned his
glance away. “To-night, as you sat, so resplendent, so pleased with the
flattery and the admiration of these ... these creatures; so decked out,
so different, the scales fell away from my eyes. I saw the new course of
self-deception I had entered upon; and it was very bitter. I have had no
sleep this month. The past has been brought back upon me. I knew that it
would be so—and dreaded it. Forgive me, Ellinor!”
He took her hand and led her, as he spoke, back into the observatory and
towards the stairs. She felt she was being dismissed from her high place
in his life.
When they reached the tower stair he said again: “Forgive me, forget.”
And as he spoke he dropped her hand. And she ran from him into the
shelter of the darkness.
She wept through the night. But, heavy as was the darkness about her
soul, in it shone one star at least. Jealous! He was jealous ... and
without love there is no jealousy.
CHAPTER VIII
THE HERB EUPHROSINE
Had’st thou but shook thy head or made a pause
When I spake darkly ...
Or turned an eye of doubt upon my face
As bid me tell my tale in express words....
—SHAKESPEARE (_King John_).
Before her mirror the next morning Lady Lochore sat wrapt in sullen
thoughts, thoughts of impotent anger, of failure, punctuated now and
again by glances at her own ravaged countenance.
She had dwelt in Bindon well-nigh her allotted month, and she had
accomplished nothing—unless an increase of David’s eccentricity and a
marked accentuation of his antipathy towards herself could be reckoned a
gain! The sands were running low. But it was not the span of the time
that remained hers at Bindon (for she had no intention of leaving of her
own accord and hardly believed the dreamer would find the energy to
expel her, if, indeed, he were even aware of the consummation of
time)—it was the span of her own life.
The sands were running very low. Meanwhile she had not conciliated
David, nor had she ousted Ellinor. She had not even compromised her.
Herrick was sighing _pour le bon motif_ (young fool!) and in vain.
Harcourt _roué_ and duellist, “he who ought to have rid me,” thought
she, raging, “of one or the other in a week,” had made no more progress
than might old Villars himself. “Lochore did his business better!” she
said half-aloud, and broke into a solitary laugh of inexpressible
bitterness.
There came a tap at the door and Margery entered. Lady Lochore wheeled
round, but it was idle to try and read any tidings upon the
housekeeper’s impassive face.
“Well,” cried she, imperiously waving away the usual morning inquiries.
“Well, speak, woman! Have you something to tell me at last?”
“Indeed, my lady, very little. Everything is much as usual. I am sorry
to see your ladyship looking so ill. There do seem to be sickness about
the house this morning, to be sure! Master Rickart indeed took to
drugging himself last night—though that’s nothing new—and Barnaby sat up
with him and lies in a dead sleep on the mat this minute outside the
laboratory door just like a dog.”
“Pshaw! Go on.”
“Sir David, he was not himself yesterday, so Mr. Giles tells me; and a
bad night he had too. Eh! He paced that platform, my lady, right through
from midnight to dawn. Not a wink of sleep did I have either with
hearing through the window the sound of his steps and knowing him so
tormented, poor gentleman! That was after Mrs. Marvel had left him!”
Lady Lochore struck the table with her beringed hand and started to her
feet.
“Mrs. Marvel!”
Margery began to pleat a corner of her apron.
“Yes, my lady. She was up with him there on the tower till nigh
midnight.”
“On the tower!”
“Oh, yes, my lady. Not that that’s anything new either. She used to be
half the night with him sometimes. But that was before your ladyship
came. She stopped going this last month. But last night—eh, my lady,
they did talk! I could hear the sound of their voices—she has great
power with Sir David—has Mrs. Marvel.”
Lady Lochore sat down again. Her fingers closed on the muslin of the
dressing-table. Helplessly and hopelessly her haggard eyes looked forth
into a black prospective. Oh, she had failed—failed!
“’Tis indeed a sad day for Bindon,” said Margery after a pause, as if in
answer to Lady Lochore. “No wonder your ladyship is anxious. There are
times when I do think we’ll have some dreadful catastrophe here. If it’s
nothing worse there’ll be an accident with them drugs, as sure as fate.
Master Rickart will be poisoning some of the poor folk again, or
himself, maybe, or, indeed, it might be Mrs. Marvel, she that’s always
in with him.”
Lady Lochore started ever so slightly and turned round sharply. Never
had Margery looked more benevolent, more virtuous.
“Yes, that’s what I do be saying to myself,” pursued the housekeeper.
“Somebody will be found dead, and nobody to fix the blame on, with the
way things are going on.” (The pupils of Lady Lochore’s eyes narrowed
like a hawk’s.) “And when I see Mrs. Marvel going about, so young and
fresh and strong, and sure of herself:—‘Maybe it will be you,’ thinks
I.”
“Oh, get away with you!” cried Lady Lochore, and buried her head on her
hands with a frenzied gesture.
“Shall we go and look through the bars into the little paradise of
poisons?”
When Colonel Harcourt had suddenly made this suggestion to his friends,
as they lay, in somewhat discontented mood, under the shade of the
spreading cedar tree this oppressive summer day, he had cast a meaning
glance towards Lady Lochore and she had risen with alacrity.
“Excellent!” she cried, when at the forbidden gate Harcourt produced the
key with a flourish.
She knew of David’s difference with the colonel on the previous day; and
though it had sunk into insignificance before the news of Ellinor’s
return to the tower, she was now as the drowning creature that clutches
at straws-Colonel Harcourt was a noted shot. And she clapped her hands
when the gate rolled back on its hinges. She had no need to be told that
the dangerous Mrs. Marvel was busy among the herbs within.
Herrick, moodily striding beside the Dishonourable Caroline, gave but
the most perfunctory ear to a discourse upon the inductions to be drawn
from a partner’s first play of trumps—with especial reference to certain
crimes of his own committed the previous night. He started as he saw
Harcourt’s action.
“No—no!” he exclaimed. “I understand that this would be an
indiscretion.”
“You will perhaps allow me,” said Harcourt blandly, “to make use of a
key delivered over by no less a person than our host himself.”
“Mr. Herrick thinks it more discreet to climb over the wall!” suggested
Priscilla. She had a happy faculty for being spiteful with a rosebud
look of innocence.
“What, Luke!” cried Lady Lochore, seizing the young man by the arm and
dragging him towards the entrance, “so cast down! Was the fair widow
then hard of approach to-day? Pluck up heart, lad. What! You a poet, you
a little nephew of the original Herrick, and not know that when a woman
assumes the defensive she is just considering the question of surrender?
Why, what a lady this is! Eh, Priscilla, poor you and poor me must hide
our diminished heads!”
She broke into a jeering laugh as the girl crimsoned and tossed her
chin; her great hollow eyes danced, brighter even that those of the
lover in his renewed confidence; her cheeks flamed a deeper scarlet than
those of the mortified girl herself. She sketched a favorite gavotte
step or two, as she gave her hand with a flourish to Colonel Harcourt
that he might lead her across the forbidden threshold.
Ellinor, seated on the stone bench, with her empty basket before her,
staring with unseeing eyes at the little bluish stars that spread all
over the bed where flourished the herb Euphrosine, was suddenly
disturbed from her melancholy musing.
These loud voices, this trivial laughter! By what freak of irresponsible
folly were these few roods of ground (which now she had as much interest
to keep inviolate, as ever Vestal virgin to keep her flame alive) to be
again invaded? The intruders were actually in the garden: and no spot of
it was hidden from David’s tower! She had just been chiding herself for
her thoughtlessness of the previous day in permitting for a moment
Herrick’s uninvited presence; for her light-mindedness in having found
transient amusement in his company. Had she now failed again in
faithfulness, was it possible that she could have omitted to lock the
gate behind her? She hurriedly felt for her key; it hung on the ribbon
of her apron. Then she rose upon an impulse: David had made her guardian
here, she would keep the trust.
With head held high and with determined step, she went to meet them. She
lifted her voice boldly as she came within speaking distance.
“Lady Lochore, if you found the gate open, this garden is none the less
forbidden to visitors, by your brother’s wish. I must beg you all to
leave it!”
Lady Lochore, her white teeth gleaming between her parted lips, her deep
eyes insolently fixed upon her cousin’s face, listened without a word.
Then:
“_Calmez-vous, ma chère_,” said she, “the gate was opened for us.”
“Chide me!” Colonel Harcourt thrust his handsome presence to the front.
“It would be sweet to be chidden by those rosy lips. The next best
thing, I declare, to being——” He paused, let his eye finish the phrase
with bold suggestion, and then concluded humourously, with an almost
farcical hesitation and change of tone: “praised by them!”
There was a new freedom in his manner and Ellinor was prompt to feel it.
She remembered as with a dim sense of nightmare those burning glances,
unnoticed then, which had fixed her last night. What had she done to
forfeit the respect even of this hitherto courteous and kindly
gentleman? She stepped back as he approached and looked at him icily.
“Whether you opened the gate or found it opened, I must repeat, Colonel
Harcourt, that your presence here is a breach of courtesy—to your host
and to me.”
Smiling, Colonel Harcourt opened his mouth to speak. But Lady Lochore
intervened.
“How well you know my brother’s mind, Mrs. Marvel!” she jeered. “But you
see, even men change their minds sometimes. Colonel Harcourt, show the
lady with whose key you opened the gate.”
“Sir David’s own key,” confirmed the colonel blandly, as he held it
aloft. “We are not quite the trespassers you think.”
“David gave it to you?” Her eyes were dark with trouble as she said the
words, less as a question than as if she were setting forth her own
grief. Harcourt did not answer for a moment. Then, slipping the key into
his pocket with a laugh:
“Gave?” he cried. “Gave is hardly the word. He abandoned it to me.
People change their minds, as my lady says. Sir David may once have
wished to keep this curious spot sacred to himself——”
“And to Mistress Marvel, but now you may all eat the forbidden fruit!”
cried Lady Lochore, with a glance first at the three men and then at
Ellinor. “Sir David has at last found that it is not worth keeping to
himself.”
Herrick, quick to perceive that Ellinor was being baited yet unable to
gather the clue to the purpose which seemed to underlie her tormentor’s
words, now came forward.
“But surely,” he urged, blushing ingenuously, “it is enough for us if
Mrs. Marvel does not wish our presence.”
Almost before Lady Lochore’s hard laugh had time to ring out, Ellinor
answered:
“Oh, no,” she said. The exceeding bitterness of her humiliation drew
down the lips that tried to smile. “Pray, what can it be to me? I was
only guardian. I am relieved of my trust.”
She made a sort of little curtsey, half-ironic. And then moved away from
them.
But she was not destined to carry her bursting heart to solitude this
morning.—Master Simon, his white hair fluttering, the tassel of his
velvet cap swinging, the skirts of his dressing-gown flapping as he
advanced with a high jerky step quite unlike his usual slow shuffling
gait, emerged from the shade of the yew-tree, even as she stood on the
threshold of the gate.
One glance at his wildly-lighted eye and the flush on his cheek bones,
sufficed to convince Ellinor of the cause of this extraordinary
infraction of his rule of life. He was still under the influence of the
last night’s drug; or, worse still perhaps, of some new one. He waved
his arm at her and at the group beyond.
“Admit me among you, ladies!” he cried, in a high thin tone. “I will
tell you all great news! Daughter, child, this hour strikes a new era in
the world’s history! The herb Euphrosine has given me back my youth!”
And, to complete the fantastic scene, Belphegor, every hair bristling,
tail erect, eyes aflame with green phosphorescence, sprang from the
bushes and performed a wild saraband around his master, uttering uncouth
little cries.
Master Simon broke into shrill laughter.
“Ask Belphegor if we have not found the secret of youth restored!”
CHAPTER IX
AN OMINOUS JINGLE
Within the infant rind of this weak flower
Poison hath residence, and medicine power.
—SHAKESPEARE (_Romeo and Juliet_).
The old man good-humouredly, but firmly, resisted his daughter’s anxious
endeavours to lead him back to his room. He entered the garden,
established himself on the bench, and, waving a branch of the beloved
herb to emphasise his words, embarked upon a profuse discourse upon its
properties. The others gathered round him in curiosity and amusement.
Ellinor could not leave him a prey to the freakish humours of the
company at such a moment. His brain seemed to work with an extraordinary
clarity and vigour, his worn frame seemed to have regained an energy and
elasticity it could not have known these twenty years. And the contrast
between his aspect of æthereal age and the youthful exuberance of joy
now written on his features struck her as alarming in the extreme.
Her anxiety was not lessened when Master Simon now wound up his first
oration by proclaiming that, after various long hours of work, he had at
last extracted so pure an essence of the _Euphrosine_ that one drop had
sufficed to produce this result upon himself.
“Then, surely, father,” she cried, “you have prepared a dangerous drug!
Out of its beneficence you must have drawn a deadly poison——”
Lady Lochore had seated herself on the bench on the other side of the
old student. She evinced a great interest in his remarks; encouraged him
by exclamation, laughter and question to further garrulity. At Ellinor’s
words she lifted her head with a sudden quick movement, like that of a
stag on the alert. And into her eyes flashed a look so eager, and so
evil, that she herself, in consciousness of it, instantly dropped the
lids over them. She felt Harcourt’s glance upon her.
“Poison,” said she, feigning to yawn. “Oh, fie! then I’ll have none of
your remedy.”
Priscilla, idly turning the pages of the “Gerard” which Ellinor had left
out of her hand on the sundial, stood silent, shooting glances by turns
at Harcourt and Herrick. The former, standing with folded arms behind
Ellinor, the latter, lying stretched on the hot soil at her feet, seemed
too thoroughly content with their posts to be lured from them. But at
Ellinor’s exclamation, the little circle had been stirred.
“Poison?” echoed Master Simon in his turn. “Tush! Ellinor, I am ashamed
of you! By this time you should know better. Is not every medicine, nay,
every distilled spirit, poison in certain degrees? And how about Opium?
How about Digitalis, Aconite and Laurel, Mercury and Antimony? Pooh!
What need of names?”
“Even in love a poison lies!” murmured Herrick, and looked up
languishingly at Ellinor’s unseeing face.
“No doubt,” said Harcourt, in a most indifferent voice, “so wise a
philosopher as Master Simon always locks up his poisons!”
“Child,” pursued the old man, “I tell you, this herb which was lost to
the world, but which you yourself found again, planted and nurtured, is
destined to be the greatest boon mankind has yet known! The older
students had some hints of its powers, some glimmering of its uses. But
it wanted the resources of modern methods of modern chemistry to develop
them. I have now reduced its essence to the most convenient form. A
drop, one drop a day—ah, ladies and gentlemen, farewell to all your
miseries!”
“Is it not wonderful!” cried Lady Lochore. She clasped her hands and
looked keenly at the old man; and he, anxious to improve the occasion
upon so earnest a believer and so interesting a case for experiment, now
gave her his undivided attention.
Ellinor, with a sigh of impatience, rose, and, taking up her basket,
proceeded to her neglected work of plant gathering, here and there
consulting a pencilled list that was pinned to the handle. Herrick was
promptly at her side.
“What are you going to make of those?” he asked, plucking in his turn a
leaf from every plant that her scissors had visited.
“A febrifuge for an old woman in the village. It is promised for
to-night.”
“And if I do—I have half a mind to come into your den and let you give
it to me yourself—what effect could one drop have on me?” Lady Lochore
was saying. And the old man answered:
“It would arrest the disease that is ravaging your strength and at the
same time stimulate your nerves; so that, waste ceasing, all the
energies of your body would unite in building up strength and health
again.”
“How truly delightful!”
“Your restlessness would vanish. This morbid mental condition, which is
so apparent, would become replaced by a calm, cheerful, contented frame
of mind—like mine!”
“My dear Sir! How my friends would bless you!”
“In the course of a few months——”
“Months? La! I can’t wait months. I’ll have five drops a day.”
“God forbid! That would defeat its own end. To stimulate is one thing,
but to over-excite——”
“Would five drops over-excite me?”
“Indubitably. If one has already so potently invigorating an effect,
five drops would produce a most undesirable condition of mental
super-excitement—most undesirable!”
“Then ten drops?”
“Colonel Harcourt,” cried Priscilla pettishly, “pray come to my rescue:
there’s a wasp on my book!”
The colonel obeyed the summons, but without any extraordinary alacrity;
Lady Lochore’s conversation with Master Simon was unexpectedly
interesting.
“Ten drops?” Master Simon was explaining. “Madness probably. More than
ten, paralysis, no doubt. Twenty? Oh, twenty would be stillness for
evermore—Death!”
Having duly murdered the wasp, Colonel Harcourt was chagrined to find
that the new student of pharmacopœia seemed to have already had enough
of her lesson. She had risen to her feet and was standing deeply
reflective. Her great eyes were roaming from side to side, yet unseeing.
Her lips were moving noiselessly. He went up to her. An unusual gravity
was upon his smooth countenance. He bent to her ear:
“What are you saying to yourself?” he whispered.
She started, flashed round half in anger, half in mockery; then their
glances met and her face grew hard.
“I was merely conning over to myself,” answered she, “our dear old
necromancer’s last pregnant utterance; it sounds like a popular rhyme:
One drop gladness,
Ten drops madness,
Twice ten a living death
After that no more breath.
Have I not put it into a useful jingle for you?” she cried,
interpellating the old man.
But Master Simon, deeply absorbed in watching Belphegor, as the beast
stretched and yawned and rolled restlessly in the sun, never turned his
head. Colonel Harcourt laid a finger on her wrist, and drew her away
from the others.
“What are you planning now?” he asked, in the same repressed undertone
as before.
“Planning?” she echoed, and crossed his searching gaze with one of
stormy defiance. “Oh, my dear confidant, do you not know all my inmost
secrets? _Dieu_, how you stare! Two drops gladness, ten drops madness.
Let me give you some of the stimulant—say three drops—’twould stir your
sluggish wits. Do, I pray you, accompany me to the laboratory, and with
these fair hands I will measure you a dose from the magic phial. Oh, how
Master Simon will love me if I bring him a new patient! Believe me, it
will do you a vast service, my dear sir, you have grown dull and slow of
late—very slow.”
Out of her laughing face her eyes looked fiercely. He walked away from
her; paused, with his back upon them all, to ponder. Then he frowned,
and after that shrugged his shoulders.
“What a fool you are, Antony Harcourt,” said he to himself, “to have let
yourself be mixed up with this woman’s business! I vow you’ll pack!”
Lady Lochore had returned to the bench and was again sitting beside
Master Simon, and once more brooding. Tragedy was writ in large letters
all over her wasted, death-stricken figure. Above all things the colonel
hated tragedy. Violent emotions were so ill-bred, tiresome. What could
not be accomplished with a gentlemanly ease, that, by the Lord, was not
for him! A love intrigue, well and good. And if there were tears at the
end of it, so long as they were not shed upon his waistcoat—and none
knew better how to avoid that—here was your man. But when it came to—“By
Gad!” thought Colonel Harcourt, with fresh emphasis, “the place is
getting too hot for me.”
And back again he came to his resolution; this time fixed.
“I will take my leave of all this to-night. But, faith! I’ll part
friends with the pretty widow.”
After her spasmodic fashion Lady Lochore now suddenly resumed her wild
humours. She smiled as she saw how the two cavaliers were now again in
close attendance upon Ellinor; smiled at the deserted Priscilla; and
finally, at the sight of two figures approaching from the direction of
the entrance, broke into open laughter.
David in the strange comradeship of Villars!
David, jealous and wrathful, coming to rescue his invaded garden,
suspicious of Ellinor’s faithlessness—a possible quarrel! For the mere
mischief of it, it was enough to make Lady Lochore laugh. And laugh she
did.
CHAPTER X
A VAGUE DESPERATE SCHEME
Now let it work: mischief thou art afoot!
Take thou what course thou wilt.
—SHAKESPEARE (_Julius Cæsar_).
“Ah, David,” cried Master Simon, in excited greeting, “you come very
well to complete our pleasant party—you come well! ’Tis the
red-letter day in the calendar of my life. See that flourishing
growth?” He waved his spray in the direction of the parent bed. “It
is bearing fruit, lad! Seed of health, for the future generation! My
long life has borne its fruit at last! Euphrosine ... Gladsome
Wort ... Etoile-de-Bon-Secours ... Star-of-Comfort indeed! Behold a
more useful constellation than any of yours, aha! I can cry
_Eureka_! I can sing _Nunc dimittis_. ’Tis the Elixir of Genius!”
Sir David threw a wondering glance at his old friend, but was arrested
before he could speak in reply. Miss Priscilla put out her hand in shy
greeting. (Sir David and she had never exchanged but a bow before; but
it was quite evident that retiring people could not get on in this
world.) David, taking off his wide-brimmed hat, bowed mechanically over
the little hand, and Priscilla looked quickly up as he bent over her.
But as she looked, she shrunk back. She could not have believed that any
one should be so pale and yet be alive and walk abroad and smile. She
flew to Herrick’s side and caught his arm upon the impulse of the
moment.
“Why, Miss Pris?” said the young poet. If his eyes were not lover-like,
they were kind; his cheek was ruddy-brown, his lip was red. Priscilla
clung to the sturdy arm she had captured.
“It’s never you, my brother?” cried Lady Lochore. “What brings you among
us frivolous humans at this unwonted hour? Have you come to turn us out
of paradise with a flaming sword?”
Ellinor, who had been anxiously gazing at David, thrust herself forward
in a manner quite unlike her usual reserve.
“David,” she cried, “you are ill!” She laid her hand a second upon his.
“Father,” she went on, turning round appealingly, “do you not see?
Cousin David is ill.” And as Master Simon took no heed, but rambled on
in fresh rhapsodies, she and David remained a moment as if alone.
“They had your key, David,” she said, speaking rapidly, “and forced
their way in. I have never opened the gate of our garden to a human
being since you and I were here together.”
He turned to her, and seemed to bring, from a great distance, his mind
to bear upon her words. Then his eyes softened, became almost tender as
they rested upon her face. After a little pause, during which he was
quite oblivious of the curious looks cast from all sides upon him, he
answered in a low voice:
“Thank you. I think I understand now.”
Then he turned—bracing himself in mind and body—and swept the company
with the gaze of the master and the host.
“I forgot my key in the gate, it seems, and you all took advantage of
the circumstance—Oh, pray, not a word, Colonel Harcourt! Indeed, Mr.
Herrick, do not misunderstand me. I should be infringing the most
elementary tenets of hospitality did I wish to deny such honoured guests
when it seems they had set their hearts on so trifling a pleasure. Pray
remain in the garden, pray use it as much as you wish—to-day. I have no
doubt,” he went on with a sarcastic smile, “that you will all be
heartily sick of it before nightfall. Meanwhile, since to-morrow sees
the end of your visit to my house, I am the more glad to gratify you in
this instance.”
There was a slight pause. Harcourt exchanged a look with Herrick and
shrugged his shoulders; then he turned his glance towards Lady Lochore.
Her face was livid, but for the hectic patch on either cheek.
“A _congé_, as neatly given as ever I heard!” whispered Herrick to
Priscilla, while his cheek reddened.
“Very courteous, very courteous indeed!” cried Villars in his cracked
voice, making two or three quick bows in Sir David’s direction.
“My sister,” said David, taking up his unfinished thread of speech, in
the same decided tone, “was good enough to promise me a month out of her
gay existence. I should be indeed ungrateful if I did not appreciate the
manner in which she has brought so much life and animation into our
seclusion, and I must be deeply indebted to her for the well-chosen
company she has collected for this purpose under my roof.” Here he made
a grave inclination in which his astonished guests were all included.
“But all good things come to an end; and to-morrow will see Bindon
deserted of its lively guests, see us resuming the former quiet tenor of
our lives with what heart we may.”
He smiled again as he concluded.
Herrick, in boyish huff, walked abruptly off with Priscilla still on his
arm. Villars followed in their wake, anxious to discuss so extraordinary
a situation. Lady Lochore wheeled round and caught Harcourt by the arm.
“Tony, will you submit to such treatment?” she whispered fiercely.
For a moment Harcourt looked at her, with a curious green gleam in his
eye:—the affable _roué_ was also “something of a tiger,” as David’s
sister had not forgotten. But the next instant he shrugged his shoulders
and detached himself from her grasp with some show of annoyance. Ellinor
stood beside her cousin, face uplifted, pride of him, joy for herself
exulting within her. But David suddenly put his hands to his forehead:
“If I do not get some sleep at last,” he murmured with a distraught air,
“I shall go mad!”
“Father,” she cried sharply once more alarmed. “Look to David, he is
ill!”
Master Simon woke up this time like the hound to the sound of the horn,
and came forward with quite a new expression of acuteness and gravity on
his face.
“And, by my faith!” exclaimed Lady Lochore, in fury, “this passes
endurance! With your leave, Mrs. Marvel, if David is unwell, he has his
sister to see to him.”
She pushed past Master Simon, who, however, put her back with a decided
hand.
“One minute, Madam, this good lad will be seen to by him who has done so
these many years—and in much graver circumstances, as you may remember.”
Abashed, yet still raging, she stood back.
“A trifle of fever,” said the simpler, shooting scrutiny at his
patient’s face from under his drawn bushy eyebrows. “Hot and cold, flame
and shiver? Eh, eh. I can read you like a book. Never has my insight
been clearer. We’ll make you a draught, we’ll have you a new man.
Ellinor shall brew you an anodyne. Eh, what? Come now, you’ll have to
drink it. What’s that?”
David was speaking, but not to Master Simon.
“I will drink it if she gives it to me,” he said dreamily. It was to
Ellinor he turned.
“And perhaps a drop—eh, child?—just one drop of the Elixir!” continued
the old man, ruminating and chuckling again.
“Not one,” said Ellinor to herself. “Vervaine and violet, and perhaps
one poppy head.” “David,” she pursued aloud, “no hand but mine shall mix
this cup.”
And, with a swift foot she departed.
“The Elixir?” exclaimed Lady Lochore, taking up Master Simon’s word; and
seizing a fold of his gown pulled at it like a spoiled child to force
his attention. “Don’t forget you have promised me first some of that
marvellous remedy. Look at me! Don’t you think I want a new lease of
life? The present one is pretty well run out anyhow.”
She tried to smile, but her lips only twitched convulsively. There was
desperation in her eye. Master Simon, instantly bestowing upon her the
concentrated, almost loving, attention which a willing patient never
failed to arouse in him, noted these symptoms, those of a soul well nigh
as mortally sick as the body; noted them with joyous confidence. The
greater the need the greater the triumph. What a subject for the grand
panacea!
“Ah, you’ll give me a little bottle. You’ll give me some, now, into my
hands—now—dear cousin!”
“I will myself measure you what is required, myself watch!” replied
Simon. “Then, after I——”
She broke in upon his complacent speech.
“Don’t you know that we are turned out to-morrow!” she screamed. “Have
you not heard David dismissing his dying sister from her father’s door!”
But Sir David, slowly moving in Ellinor’s wake, never even turned his
head at this wild cry. Lady Lochore caught herself back with surprising
strength of will.
“Supposing you were to take me to your mysterious room now—old Rickart?”
she wheedled. “Since we have so little time, the sooner the better to
begin this magic treatment. I’ve never been in that room of yours, you
know, since I was a brat—I do want my little bottle!” she reiterated.
The simpler was flattered by her words to the choicest fibre of his
soul. The mental intoxication had got hold of him once more. She was
right, a thousand times right! She knew better than that lunatic brother
of hers. The first maxim of all intelligent existence was to take the
good that came, and without delay. Delay, delay! More lives lost, more
discoveries lost, empires lost, souls lost by hesitation than by any
other crime.
She hooked her arm in his gaily.
“To your cavern we will go!”
Half ways towards the house, Colonel Harcourt suddenly drew alongside
with Sir David. They were separated from the rest of the company by the
turn of the path. The guest spoke twice before he could awaken his
host’s attention to his proximity. But the second interpellation was so
peremptory that David started from his fevered abstraction and came to a
halt, with an angry look and very much alive to the occasion.
“Well, Colonel Harcourt?”
The colonel was, on the instant, his urbane self once more.
“Forgive my interrupting you in the midst of your lofty cogitations;
but, as it is my purpose to leave your hospitable house to-day, and not
to-morrow, I will even say farewell to my genial entertainer, and
proffer my thanks for a hearty welcome and a no less hearty speeding.”
“Farewell, then, sir,” said David coldly. “Yet one word more, before we
part,” he added, with sternness: “If hosts have duties toward their
guests, Colonel Harcourt—you have reminded me of it—do not yourself
forget again that guests have a duty toward their hosts. That key, of
which you unwarrantably——”
“A lesson, sir? By Heaven!——”
“May you take it so, Colonel Harcourt.”
The colonel’s face became purple, but Sir David was angry too: and the
white heat is even more deadly than the red. The guardsman, actor in
endless honourable encounters, had learned to know his match when he met
him; and, as the beast passion within him cooled to merely human pitch,
he was seized with a kind of grudging admiration. Here he could no
longer sneer and contend. Nay, here, as a gentleman, he must show
himself worthy of his antagonist.
Bowing his still crimson face with as good a grace as he could assume:
“Then, no farewell yet, Sir David; to our next meeting,” he said.
The lord of Bindon raised his hat and passed on whilst his guest
remained standing.
CHAPTER XI
A PARLOUR OF PERFUME
O magic sleep! O comfortable bird
That broodest o’er the troubled sea of the mind,
Till it is hushed and smooth!...
—KEATS (_Endymion_).
The atmosphere of Master Simon’s laboratory was much the same, winter or
summer. No extreme of heat or cold could penetrate this crypt, deep set
as it was in the foundations of the keep; and, though against the long
narrow windows, cut into the wall on the level of the moat, one could
see the slender spikes of reed and rushy grass perpetually trembling in
the airs, there was but little direct sunshine. Sometimes, however,
downward thrusts, like spears, when Sol was high; or again when he was
about to sink a level shaft, rose-red in winter, amber glowing in
summer, would come driving in through the vaulted spaces, high above
Master Simon’s head and show to the eye that cared to notice, how dim
and vapour-heavy was all the room below.
The two fires then came not amiss. Despite the flame on the open hearth
and the glow of the little furnace, Lady Lochore, as she entered,
shivered after the hot sunshine.
“How dark it is with you!” she cried. “And what strange odours! Ha! It
smells of poison here!”
“To treat the unknown as unwholesome is the animal instinct,” said the
chemist, didactically, with a glance of contempt. “How differently does
it affect the intellectual being! Fortunately it is in man’s power to
extract good or bad from everything. Listen! Every one of those little
apparatus simmering over yonder is yielding up juices for healing. Did I
choose, child—there might indeed be death in those retorts; just as
there is death in fire and water, in air and in sun. These things are
our servants, and we use them. Poison! How you women prate of poison!
Timorous souls!”
“I, prate of poison?” exclaimed Lady Lochore. “I, timorous! Where is my
phial, sir? Oh, I’ll show you if I am afraid!”
She advanced upon him swiftly through the half light to which her eyes
had not yet become accustomed, and instantly belied her own words by a
violent start and scream. Out of the recess where murmured the furnace
fires, Barnaby illumined by the lurid glow, with elf locks hanging and
face and hands blackened, suddenly emerged in his peculiar noiseless
fashion; on his shoulder was Belphegor still all a-bristle and with
phosphorescent eyes.
“Do you keep devils here, too?” she screeched.
The dumb boy made an inarticulate sound and stared at the lady. Who
shall say the thoughts that revolved in that brain relentlessly shut off
from communion with the rest of the world? In those beings who are
deprived of certain senses the remaining wits seem often to become
proportionately acute! Nobody could walk so softly, touch so gently as
Barnaby; and nobody could see so swiftly, so deeply. He started back in
his turn and glowered. This was the first time he had looked into the
visitor’s face; her hectic cheek, her roving eyes, her eager teeth
glimmering between ever parted lips—they liked him not. Or, perhaps, who
can say, it was the soul behind those eyes that liked him not.
Master Simon chuckled.
“Poisons and devils!... my good Herbs! My faithful Barnaby! A deaf and
dumb lad, my dear, nothing more! But we shall have these nerves of yours
in vastly different trim, even before the day is out. Come here to the
table and sit you down. Nay, now, if you laugh like that, how can we
discuss in reason, how can I trust you with this precious stuff?”
Lady Lochore made a violent effort to repress the nervous tremor that
still shook her.
“When I’ve had my first dose,” she said, artfully, “I shall be so much
better that you will trust me with anything.”
This betokened so excellent a spirit that Master Simon could not be
expected to show further disapproval. How could he, indeed, feeling in
his own veins a new ichor of life, in his own brain an increased
lucidity, in his temper so grand a mood of confidence and decision? He
had seated the lady in his own chair and was seeking in the press for
the new essence, when Barnaby arrested his attention by a timid hand.
The lad pointed significantly to the cat which he was now nursing
against his breast. Master Simon glanced at the animal’s staring coat,
its protruding eye, noted the quick breathing and touched the hot ear.
Belphegor growled fiercely.
The old man’s countenance became clouded for a moment; a shade as of
misgiving crept into his eye.
“Come, come cousin,” rose the complaining note of his new patient’s
voice; and Master Simon waved Barnaby away with peremptory gesture.
The boy slunk back with his burden and the simpler lifted the precious
phial from its shelf.
“Here,” said he, bearing it over to the table with infinite care, and
admiring its orange colour against the light, “here is the Elixir.”
When Ellinor came down the steps into the laboratory, she found her
father still holding forth in the highest good humour, and Lady Lochore
listening with bent head in an attitude of profound attention. At the
sound of her step he broke off with an excited laugh.
“Aha, Ellinor, the cure has begun! She’s better, she’s better already.
Look at her. Ah, you doubted, you, my daughter, you who worked with me
side by side! Out on you, you of little faith! This is to be my best
case. In a month’s time you will see what you will see.”
Lady Lochore had risen from her chair and, fixing Ellinor with
unfathomable looks, in the same measure as she drew nearer drew slowly
back herself.
“By the lord, to see her come, in her hateful youth and strength, in her
pride—and I, I to have failed!” These were the words of the interior
voice. With a convulsive movement she lifted her hand, pressed the
little phial where it lay against the wasted bosom. And the pain of that
pressure was, of a sudden, fierce joy. Failed? Not yet! Her glorious boy
was not to go a beggar whilst such creatures as that rode!
Like a tingling fire the exultation of that single drop of magic cordial
began to course through her. She had hated Ellinor before she knew her,
with the instinctive hatred of the destined enemy. The instant she had
set eyes upon the fresh face, the placid brow, the serious quiet eyes,
this instinctive hatred had surged into a living passion that was like a
wild beast ever ready to spring. And if now she were to slip the leash
and let the leopard go, who could punish her, dying woman as she was?
What evil would it bring upon her, were it ever known? Aye, who would
ever be the wiser (as Margery said) in this house of craziness where
people dabbled with unknown poisons at their own fantasy?
Thus the muttering voice within. Then it was hushed upon the silence of
a resolution.
“Lady Lochore,” said Ellinor, “I must warn you, that drug is not safe!”
“Be silent!” exclaimed Master Simon, angrily.
Lady Lochore did not answer, for she was seized with laughter.
“Dear father,” insisted Ellinor. She had come round to the old man and
had laid her hand caressingly upon his shoulder, “I have nothing but
mistrust for your new Elixir. You have taught me too much for me not to
realise its danger. If you were not now under its influence yourself, I
know you would see it too. Even a mere infusion of the leaves has so
strange an effect, that I have ceased—forgive me, dear—to let the
villagers have it.”
The simpler threw off her touch in high displeasure.
“A woman all over!” he muttered. “Fool indeed that I was to think there
could be an exception to the ineptitude of the sex! A pretty helpmate
for a man of science! But I went myself to the village to-day. Aye!” the
fanatic light once more shone under the white eyebrows. “There were many
who needed it. Wait, Ellinor, wait! My discovery shall speak for
itself—shall refute——”
“Good God!” cried Mrs. Marvel, aghast, and turned instinctively to Lady
Lochore, “what will be the outcome of this?”
Lady Lochore laughed again.
“Mrs. Marvel,” she gibed, “has developed all of a sudden a mighty dread
of scientific investigation. Out upon such paltry spirit! She should
take a lesson by my valour, should she not, most wise and excellent
alchemist? And if a little mistake does occur now and again, ’tis but
the more instructive, all in the interest of mankind. Now, Mistress
Marvel, would not that console you?”
Still clasping her hand over the phial in her breast, Lady Lochore now
moved towards the door—slowly, for the little voice within was beginning
to speak again, and she had to listen as she went. There was a new
jingle rustling in her brain:
“Ten drops madness
Twenty stillness,
And after that ... blackness!
It should be easy!... Yes, it should be easy ... in a dish of tea! What
a round throat the hussy has!”
“Well, father,” said Ellinor’s clear voice, “I must see to David’s
sleeping draught.”
Lady Lochore in the doorway started and turned round. All at once a
light shone into her brain as if some invisible hand had turned the lens
of a lantern upon it: David’s sleeping draught—David.... Of course! How
clear the whole thing lay before her! She had been about to be clumsy,
stupid, inartistic. But now.... Oh, truly this one drop of the old man’s
Elixir had been a drop of genius.... “The secret of genius,” had the old
man said! Ellinor—what of Ellinor! Merely a thing in the way; a stone to
trip up the step of her son’s fate. Throw it aside, and who shall say
how soon another might not cast the beloved lad to earth? Aye, and when
she would not be there to help. David—it was David!... Who could reckon
on the doings of such a madman as David now this wooing mood had been
started?
Presently, with slow steps, she came down the room once more.
Ellinor, bending over her fragrant infusion, felt a shadowing presence
and looked round, to find Lady Lochore at her shoulder. It was in the
dim and vapoury corner behind the screen lit only by the glow of the
charcoal. An impression of gleaming eyes and of teeth from which the
lips were drawn back for one moment troubled her vaguely; but the next
she was full of pity. “Poor creature! How ill she is, and how restless!”
she thought.
“Is that the stuff?” inquired Lady Lochore, laughing aimlessly like a
mischievous child. And Mrs. Marvel answered her gently, as if it had
been indeed a child who questioned:
“Yes, does it not smell sweet? An old recipe, ‘The Good Woman’s Brew’;
Vervaine, Red Lavender and Violet, Thyme, Camphire, and a sprig of
Basil.”
She now placed the vessel on a low shelf close at hand, and began deftly
lifting out the sodden herbs with a glass rod. Little jets of aromatic
steam rose and circled about her. Lady Lochore followed her, and once
again bent over her shoulder. Barnaby seated, cross-legged, in the
darkest corner near the furnace and nursing humpy Belphegor, stared at
the two women with all the might of his wistful eyes.
“What are you doing?” asked Lady Lochore.
“Surely you see: clearing these grosser leaves away before finally
straining.”
“Oh, let me!”
Ellinor laid down the rod and looked at the speaker with mingled
surprise and anxiety. “I hope in Heaven,” she was thinking, “that my
father has given her no more than the one drop.”
“Do let me,” insisted Lady Lochore and laid a burning finger on the
other’s cool hand.
“Oh, certainly if it pleases you. Meanwhile I will get the cup,” said
Ellinor and turned away.
She had hardly had time to take down the chosen goblet from a cupboard,
when there came a strange and sudden uproar from behind the screen.—A
growl like that of a wild beast from Barnaby, a snarl from Belphegor, a
wild shriek from Lady Lochore.
“Help, help!”
Ellinor sprang to the rescue. But her father had already forestalled
her. When she reached the spot he was in the act of plucking the dumb
boy’s great hands from Lady Lochore’s throat. Lady Lochore was talking
volubly, in a high hysterical voice, between laughing and crying:
“He’s mad, I think! These afflicted creatures are never safe! He wants
to murder me. I was just stirring David’s potion, as she told me, and he
sprang on me like an ape. Ah, God! I am nearly strangled! Fortunately,”
she added, with a shrieking laugh, “David’s precious potion is safe!”
She had been clasping both hands over her breast, and now rapidly
passing one hand over the other, drew the folds of her kerchief closer
about her throat; for glancing down, she had seen a small yellow stain
upon the lace, and quickly covered it.
“But what can have happened?” exclaimed Ellinor, “Barnaby is the
gentlest creature....”
Gentle, however, seemed hardly a word to apply to the lad at the moment.
Struggling in Master Simon’s grasp, mouthing, gesticulating, uttering
ghastly sounds, Barnaby seemed indeed to justify Lady Lochore’s
epithet—mad.
“He must be shut up!” cried Master Simon, and, with unwonted harshness,
shook the boy as he led him away by the collar.
Now Barnaby crouched down and whimpered. The old man paused:
“It’s possible he may have been at my drugs,” said he, looking at his
servant curiously. “So—it will be interesting to watch. I will make the
rogue show me by and by which it is he has been after. Strange! That
would be the first time!”
“For God’s sake, lock him up, lock him up!” screamed Lady Lochore,
suddenly breaking into fury. “One’s life’s not safe in this lunatic
asylum, between your potions and your idiots. Lock him up, I say, or
I’ll not dare trust myself alone another minute. I ought to be thankful,
surely,” she turned sneering upon Ellinor, “that David’s hospitality
ends for us to-morrow.”
“Come, come,” said Master Simon, as if the afflicted creature could hear
him. So deep engrained was the habit of submissiveness, that it needed
but the pressure of the old man’s finger to lead the culprit to the
little room off the laboratory. Master Simon pointed with his finger and
Barnaby crawled in, much as a dog retires to his kennel against his
will, pausing to cast imploring glances back. But as the chemist closed
the door and turned the key, there came a fresh outburst from within,
followed by a muffled sound of sobs and cries.
Master Simon stood a moment with reflective eye, muttering to himself:
he had an unwilling notion that the famous Euphrosinum Elixir might have
something to say to these unpleasant symptoms.
Sir David came into the laboratory. He was seeking Ellinor; he looked
neither to the right nor to the left, nor seemed aware of any other
presence.
“Dear Ellinor,” said he, taking both her hands in his, “I feel more and
more weary—and sleep would be most blessed. Give me the promised cup.”
“Dear David,” said Ellinor, starting from him, “it is ready.”
Lady Lochore watched them a moment, darkly intent. Then she came
striding down the length of the room with great steps, her silken skirts
swishing from side to side. She halted before the simpler:
“Good evening and good-bye, cousin!”
“Stay a moment,” said he perturbedly. “That phial——”
“What of it?” she cried, and her eyes shot defiance.
“I have been thinking, my child—not that I have any doubt of it, for it
is a grand drug—but I have been thinking it might be better, perhaps, if
I prepared a more diluted solution. Give me back that bottle.”
“Not for the world!” said she harshly, and fingered the empty bottle in
her bosom. “What, can you not trust me? Oh, it’s precious, precious!”
Her voice rang again with wild note. “It has given me back my life.”
She turned to gaze once more, with chin bent down and half-closed eyes,
at the figures of Ellinor and David at the distant end of the room.
“Look, look! She pours his draught into the cup. From her hand he takes
it! ‘Dear Ellinor, sleep would be most blessed to-night.’ He drinks! He
will sleep——” So the interior voice, shrill in the silence of her soul.
Then aloud:
“Good evening, cousin Simon, and good-bye!” she repeated.
She again took up her interrupted way. As she drew nearer to the door:
“And good-bye to you, David, sleep well!” she called from the threshold
upon a strange high pitch.
Master Simon looked after her, shook his head, drew a deep breath of
doubt through his nostrils and ran his hand distractedly through his
beard. He was very tired, and felt a certain confusion in his head,
succeeding the exhilaration of an hour ago. Belphegor was humped in a
corner. Nothing seemed to be going quite according to calculations.
David passed him with a quick step. “I am going to sleep,” said he, in a
curious still voice, as he went by.
Sleep! It was a pleasing suggestion.
“Ellinor,” said the old man plaintively, “if there is any of that
calming decoction left, I think I might do well to partake of it myself
to-night.”
“There is a whole cup still,” said Ellinor, and turned back to the
shelf.
CHAPTER XII
TO SLEEP—PERCHANCE TO DREAM!
My heart a charmed slumber keeps
And a languid fire creeps
Through my veins to all my frame,
Dissolvingly and slowly: soon
From thy rose-red lips my name
Floweth. And then, as in a swoon,
With dinning sounds my ears are rife.
My tremulous tongue faltereth.
I lose my colour, I lose my breath,
I drink the cup of a costly death
Brimmed with delirious draughts of warmest life!
—TENNYSON (_Eleänore_).
Ellinor brought so weary a body, so weary a mind to bed that night, that
almost as soon as her head touched the pillow she fell into a deep
dreamless sleep.
But before long a dim consciousness of trouble began to stir within her
mind, a feeling of sorrow and oppression to bring sighs from her breast.
There was in her ears a sound as of lamentation and tears. At first this
was vaguely interwoven with her own sub-acute consciousness of distress;
but presently, and suddenly it seemed, it became so insistent that she
started and sat straight up in bed, eyes and ears alert, staring and
listening.
It was her custom to keep both her windows uncurtained at night, so
that, waking, she might exchange a look with his stars, and sleeping,
let them look at her. One window was always wide open. Like a flower,
she craved for all the light and air that heaven and earth could give.
She sat and stared and listened. Not from her own heart, as she at first
thought, did these sounds of trouble ring in her dream: attuned to
trouble as it was, her heart had but echoed another’s misery.
Something—what was it? Nothing human, surely—was appealing, calling with
moans and whines, like that of some piteous trapped animal that clamours
to the unhearing skies. Aye, and that square of closed moonlit window,
where there should be but the silhouette of an ivy spray or two, was
blocked out by some monstrous shape. Again she thought it was nothing
human, though the casement shook and there were sounds of taps as if
from desperate hands. Her pulses beat thick and hard in her temples and
she had a moment’s paralysing terror. But she was at least a fearless
woman. The next instant she sprang out of bed, and wrapping herself in
the cloak that lay to her hand, she seized the rushlight and advanced
boldly. Before raising an alarm she would see for herself what the thing
was.
She had not reached within a yard of the window, when with an
exclamation of mingled relief and astonishment, she laid the light aside
and sprang forward and flung open the casement.
“Barnaby!” she cried, and drew the boy by main force into the room.
He fell like a dead weight at her feet, exhausted, unable to sustain
himself, his hands feebly closing upon the hem of her garment as if
thereby clinging to safety.
On the wall of the Herb-Garden the young poetaster Herrick had sought a
sentimental seat from which he could feast his love-lorn gaze on the
windows of Mrs. Marvel’s chamber; and, watching the tiny flickering
light within rise and sink against the naked panes, feast his heart on
God knows what innocently passionate dreams.
It was an ideal night for such dreamings; and the Italian-soft airs that
blew upon young Romeo’s cheek could scarcely have been more tender than
this English Lammas-night breath that gently fanned young Luke’s ardour.
A night of nights to sit lost in luxurious despair, to rock a fancied
sorrow and a fanciful love with poetic metre and rhyme; to weave the
sacred thought of the lady’s bower with the melancholy of the moonlit
hour, the sob of unrequited love with the plaint of the night-bird in
the grove.
To this idyllic love-dream what an awakening! Shattering these ideals
how brutal, how horrid a reality!
There came running steps in the shaded garden paths, a black, furtive
figure across a white-lit garden space; and then—Herrick looked and
rubbed his eyes like a child and looked again before he could believe—a
man’s figure, to his distressed vision tall and largely proportioned,
climbing, yes, ye gods! climbing up, up, the ivy ropes, up to that
window where his own fancy hardly dared to-night to reach, albeit with
such reverend haltings, with such swoonings almost from its own
temerity.
The night picture swam before his eyes. He gripped the stones on either
side of him. When the mists cleared, he must look again. He looked and
saw a white figure, all white even as he had held her to be—all white
above the world—was it a minute, was it a lifetime ago? The white figure
opened its arms, drew into its embrace the dark visitor. All the
whiteness seemed to become lost in the blackness. Black, too, it grew
before the eyes of the youthful poet—black the whole world and black his
heart!
He let himself drop from his perch down into the herb-beds. And there he
lay, crushing vervaine and balsam and sweet thyme into aromatic death.
There he lay a long, long time.
Mistress Margery Nutmeg had tied her goffered nightcap under her decent
chin and laid her respectable head upon a chaste pillow with all her
usual expectation of that rest which is the reward of an excellent
conscience. But (as she afterwards averred) the first strange thing in a
night which was to prove one of the strangest at Bindon-Cheveral was
that she could not sleep. She felt, she said, as if the Angel of Death
was beating his wings about the House; and whenever she closed her eyes
she saw rows of little phials before her; and, considering she was so
much accustomed to poor dear Master Rickart’s odd ways, it was the most
curious thing of all that she could not get the thought of Poison out of
her head. At last she could almost have believed she was beginning to
doze when there came sounds without her window as of a tapping, a
scratching, a scraping, a rustling.
She listened; there was no mistake. Out of bed she got. Out of the
window she looked!
In Lady Lochore’s boudoir, despite the midnight hour, the candles were
still burning in goodly array, illuminating round the green board four
tired faces, the play of eight hands, the flutter of cards and the flash
of dice. Two of these faces showed greedy interest: the wax-like
pale-orbed countenance, to wit, of the Dishonourable Caroline and the
oriental visage of Villars. But the third, Lady Lochore’s, fever-spotted
and haunted, beheld the capricious fortunes of chance ebb or flow with
equal indifference. What cared she whether gold grew in a little pile
beside her, or whether she had to jot down sums no banker would credit
now to the name of Lochore? As little for the game, as little for loss
or profit, as small Priscilla herself, whose black-rimmed eyes pleaded
for bed, who took no pains to conceal her yawns and played her cards as
if she were already in a dream.
Yet Lady Lochore was eager to keep company about her to-night. She was
the first to insist on the fresh round; the first to press the willing
elderly gamblers to another cast. It seemed as if she wanted to throw
her heart into the excitement; to hear the rattle of the dice and her
own loud laugh; to force herself to interest in her opponents’ wrangles;
to pin her attention to the adding of points and the deduction of loss
and gain—as if she welcomed anything that might drown the small
insistent whisper at her ear. Anything to drive away the vision of the
great four-post bed waiting for her in the night’s solitude.
Crouching at Ellinor’s feet, Barnaby was trying to tell her, to tell her
something, to get her aid for something, with all the agonised effort of
the human soul struggling to find expression through limitations worse
than those of the brute animal. Deaf and dumb, and so vital a message to
be conveyed!
With patience as pitiful as the creature was pitiable, Ellinor bent and
tried in vain to understand.
How he had come to seek her in so perilous a fashion she had, however,
no difficulty in divining. It was but too likely that Master Simon in
his present condition had been oblivious of his prisoner, insensible of
his cries and knocks. But, with his ape-like activity, the lad could
escape easily enough through the window; and she was herself the only
person from whom he could confidently seek help. All that she could
understand readily enough. But why should he require this help?
As a first thought she endeavoured to discover if he were hungry; he
vehemently shook his head. He almost struck from her hand the glass of
water she, misled by his repeated gesture of one in the act of drinking,
then held to his lips. He was obviously in sore need of restorative, but
the mental distress overshadowed the physical. Now his plucking fingers
began to urge her to the door: he pointed, dragged himself a little way
on his hands and knees, like a dog, came back and again pulled her
towards it.
Ellinor might have been more alarmed had she not remembered his attack
on Lady Lochore, and been persuaded that the poor fellow was still
suffering from the effects of her father’s mania for experiment.
She resolved at length to humour the boy as far as she could, and at the
same time, from her own little pharmacy downstairs, to obtain some
harmless sedative and then coax him into bed again. Drawing her cloak
more closely over her white garb, she took up the rushlight in one hand
and extended the other to Barnaby, who in joy staggered to his feet and
precipitated himself forward.
As they entered the ante-room there came from the stone passage without
a sound of unfaltering steps, approaching with singular rapidity. They
hardly seemed to halt a second upon the threshold of the outer door
before its lock was turned and it opened before them.
Ellinor glanced at Barnaby in surprise, and marked a sudden terror in
his face that infected her in spite of herself. But the next instant, as
she looked round to see Sir David standing before her, sprung as it were
out of the blackness, the feeling gave way to a glow of courage.
Ellinor’s heart always rose to the fence. Barnaby, however, remained
very differently impressed; the human soul in him seemed to wither away
in fear. Like an animal before some abnormal manifestation of nature, he
crept back, cowering, with eyes fixed on the new-comer’s face, to the
further corner of the inner room.
So impossible a situation was it that her cousin should seek her in her
own apartment at midnight, that it hardly needed the look on his face to
convince her that something was strangely wrong.
Faint as was the gleam of colour thrown by the rushlight she held aloft,
his countenance appeared to her all transfigured; so much so that she
had an unreasoning impression that his white face itself diffused
radiance in the gloom. His heavy hair was tossed away from his forehead
as if wild fingers had played with it. Fragments of moss, a withered
leaf here and there, clung to his garments; but it did not need this
evidence to tell Ellinor that he was straight from the woods—the breath
of the trees and of the deep night emanated from him, fresh and pungent,
indescribable.
“David!” she cried, retreating step by step from his advance. “I
thought, I hoped you had been asleep!”
“Asleep!” he answered. He tossed his hair from his brow. “Nay, Ellinor I
have but just awakened from a long, long sleep: from a sleep like the
sleep of death.”
Notwithstanding his pallor, he looked strong and young; the tired lines
and the unconscious frown of sorrow were smoothed away. Slowly she had
stepped back into the inner room and he had followed eagerly. She had
little thought at the moment for transgressed conventions. Every energy
of her being was absorbed in the desire so to deal with him as to give
no shock to a brain acting under some inexplicable influence. She
instinctively felt that he must be treated even as the sleep-walker who
has above all things to be guarded against sudden waking.
Assuming a look of perfect calmness, she lit her candles and made him
welcome with a smile as if her white bedchamber had been a drawing-room,
and she, in her cloaked nightdress, had worn garments of state.
“Sit down, dear cousin, and we can talk a little—but not long, for we
both must sleep.”
His eye clung to her, as she moved about, with an unfaltering gaze of
delight. So had she seen him look at his stars! In her turmoil of doubt
and anxiety there was an under movement, as of a long conceived joy that
had strength to stir at last. Even if he were distraught, he loved her!
But the impression that things were ill with him soon devoured every
other.
“I, sit down!” he cried. “I, sleep! Nay, Ellinor, do you not understand!
I have been in bondage all this time, and now this blessed cup you gave
me has set my soul free. First it ran like fire through my veins. It
drove me out into the woods, I ran among the singing trees. I cannot
tell how it was with me, but I felt strength growing within my soul.
There was struggle, there was pain, but this giant strength grew up. I
fought. One by one I broke the rusting chains that so long have bound
me—I threw the links away! Memories, doubt, hate, despondency, I cast
them all by! I stood in the glade, looked up to the stars. I was
free—free, Ellinor, free to act, free to speak. To love you, to love
you...! Then the trees took voice: ‘Go to her!’ they said, and waved
their arms towards you. They ran with me. Straight as the arrow from the
bow, I started, leaping over the mountains. And now, Ellinor, love, I
have come!”
He drew near to her as he spoke, and in his hands, cold as ice, he held
both hers. She would not have drawn away if she could. About herself
with David she had not a second’s doubt; by a look, she knew, she could
have thrown him to her feet.
His words flowed on like ceaseless music. Was woman ever wooed by lips
so eloquent and so beautiful, with touch so passionate and yet so
reverent! The pity of it: it was only a dream!
“I knew you were waiting for me in your white garments, with your light
burning. I knew you would open your inner door for me. Oh, faithful
heart!”
Now he raised both her hands and brushed them with his lips one after
the other but so lightly that she hardly knew the caress. Then she felt
his arms hover about her like wings: the shadow of a lover’s embrace. He
bent his face close to hers. His voice, through passionate inflexions,
sank to an undertone of tenderness.
“You have stood beside me on my platform at night. You did not know it
always, but you were always there! You have stood beside me in the dawn,
and in the dawn I sought you in the garden. Ah, that morning I would
have broken my chains and awakened to freedom if I could! Always, since
that first night, my heart has been singing to you, though my lips were
silent. But you heard, did you not, the song of my heart? I heard the
song of yours, Ellinor, through all the evil things that beat around me,
demons of the past that put troubles and discords between two songs that
should ever rise together. Do not say anything—do not tell me anything
of those dark hours!” he went on, arresting her as she was about to
speak. The serenity of his own countenance became disturbed for a
moment, its radiance overclouded. He fixed her, with piercing question:
“Can I trust you?”
And, her true eyes on his, she made answer:
“To the death!”
He drew a long deep breath; and, with both hands, made a gesture as if
thrusting back victoriously some spectre enemy. Smiling, and with
exultation clanging in his voice:
“See, see,” he cried, “how they fade, how they melt away! Freedom is
ours!”
Now he flung his arm around her and strained her to his breast. To be
held to his heart and feel the passion of his embrace—it ought to have
brought to her that sweet ecstasy of trouble, which to a pure woman is
sacred to her only love. But to Ellinor this moment was perhaps the
cruellest of her life. Must love remain to her ever but a dream, that
only in dream, or in delirium, she should be wooed! Her dominant
thought, however, was still for David. She saw him, like the
sleep-walker of the legend, advancing along a perilous bridge beneath
which lay the chasm of madness or death.
“Oh, God,” she cried in her soul, “let not mine be the hand to thrust
him down!”
Then, as if in answer to her prayer, there came upon her through the
open window, like a promise of peace, the vision of the night’s sky.
Just against the black edge of the tower, emerging even as she looked,
appeared pure and bright and steady the effulgent light of the new star.
“See, David,” she said, and turned his face from its ardent seeking of
her own, “there are the stars, there is your Star, looking in upon us!
Shall we not go and look at her from the tower. Surely she is even more
radiant than usual!”
For a second his passion resisted the gentle touch; then all at once she
felt his frenzied grasp relax. She drew a long breath! She slipped from
his relaxing hold as the mother slips her arm from under her sleeping
child. A change came over his face; a wistful expression of struggle and
doubt as between reason and madness. But the next instant the wild light
flamed up again.
“The star!” he whispered, then loudly repeated: “My star!” and stretched
out his arms to it, with the airy unmeasured gesture of the delirious.
Her heart stood still. Like a fire or a fever, his exaltation had but
leaped up the higher for the momentary check.
“Ellinor, my star! The world’s desire, my love—I come to you!”
He made a spring towards the window, and paused. With arms still wide
outstretched, he looked like some god poised before taking wing for
endless space. She flung herself against him, and forced him back from
the window.
“David—Beloved...!” And, almost with relief, she felt the second danger
of his passion close round her again.
“My star!” he repeated exultingly. His voice rang out now with high
unnatural note, now sank to rapid whispering. “Sweet miracle—the star
that shines in my sky and walks in beauty beside me! You remember, you
remember, Ellinor,” he whispered, “we had met already, that first night,
spirit to spirit, my soul to yours, O Star, before we met in the flesh!”
He laughed in joy, and she felt the scalding tears rush up to her eyes.
“Ah, poor David!”
“Oh, I knew you at once! There you shone out of the dim old room, as you
had shone out of my black spaces. Your brow of radiance, your hair of
fire! And your eyes—oh, blue, blue! Ellinor, you remember! I kissed
you—my star! I held you and I kissed you.” The whisper now sank so low
that she could hardly follow his words. A tremor had come into the arms
that encompassed her. She felt as if a weakness, a dimness, were
gathered upon him. “That night we opened the door and stood upon the
threshold of the golden chamber. Why did we not go in? I do not know.
Shall we not go in now? Ellinor, bride, give me again your lips, those
lips that have haunted me waking and sleeping. Ellinor!”
The last articulate words broke way almost upon a moan. He was breathing
with panting effort. Suddenly he swayed, and she upheld him. Then he
failed altogether, and she guided his fall—strong as she was, it was all
she could do—till he lay stretched his length on the floor at her feet.
Then she knelt beside him.
His eyes looked up at her, pleading through the mists that were
thickening over them. His lips, without sound, formed the prayer for her
kiss. She knew not what despair was coming upon her. The apprehensions,
vague yet so evil, that had yet been gathering thick about her all this
strange acute hour, seemed now massed into one terrible tangible shape:
in a second she must look upon its awful face. Well, what she could
still give her beloved in life—that she would give from her breaking
woman’s heart.
And bending down, she laid her lips upon his.
She thought it was the kiss of death. He smiled faintly, his eyelids
fell. Like a child, he turned his head upon his arm and drew a long deep
sigh as of the peace of repose after unutterable restlessness. She
crouched down close to watch for the moment of the passing of all she
loved.
Once before she had seen another strong man’s life go from him as she
knelt by his side; had known the very instant between the last heaving
of his breast and its eternal stillness. And she thought now, that when
that minute should again strike for her and she should wait for the
sound of the breath that was never to come, her own life would be driven
out under the pressure of that slow agony!
So prepared was she for horror that she could hardly credit her own
senses when presently it was borne in upon her that his respiration was
becoming gradually deeper and more assured, that his pallid face was
assuming a more natural look. She slid her trembling fingers upon his
hand; it was warm and humanly relaxed.
He was alive! He was asleep! The Spectre of Terror had fled from before
her without unveiling its countenance. She had thought their kiss was
the kiss of death, and behold, it was as the kiss of Life!
Yet the tide of relief, passionate as it was, could not carry away with
it all doubt and fear. He was deaf to her call, insensible to the
pressure of her fingers. Even as she knew that no man in ordinary
circumstances could fall thus suddenly from waking into slumber, she
knew that this was the unconsciousness of the drugged.
CHAPTER XIII
THOU CANST NOT SAY I DID IT
O! my fear interprets. What! is he dead?
—SHAKESPEARE (_Othello_).
Across a lively interchange of words between Mrs. Geary and Mr. Villars,
across Lady Lochore’s shrill laughter and malicious intervention, there
fell a silence. It was as if a shadow had suddenly eaten up the light.
Lady Lochore became rigid, and the dice-box dropped from her hand.—All
looked towards the door. There stood a broad and placid figure,
white-capped and white-aproned, with folded hands; a figure surely the
very sight of which should have brought comfort and confidence. But Lady
Lochore stared at it with terror on her face.
“Please, my lady, could I speak with you a minute?”
Sir David’s sister rose slowly and moved like an automaton across the
room. She lifted her hand to her contracted throat.
“I am sorry to tell you, my lady, there is something seriously amiss.”
Lady Lochore spread out her arms as if groping for support. Her dry
tongue clicked.
“I knew there was no use going to Sir David,” continued the unctuous
whisper.
Sir David! The blackness suddenly passed away from before Lady Lochore’s
eyes.
“Sir David, woman!” She clutched the housekeeper’s wrist and pinched it
sharply.
“Yes, my lady.” Margery looked mildly surprised. “Him being always lost
in stars, so to speak, and locked up in his tower.”
“Then he’s not ill?” Lady Lochore flung the servant’s hand away from
her. She drew a deep breath, then gave a little rasping laugh. What news
she had hoped for? Relief and disappointment ran through her like cross
currents.
“Ill, my lady? Sir David? Thank God, no! Not as I know, my lady.”
Margery did not often show emotion beyond a well fixed point. But she
was surprised; she really was.
“Please, my lady,” began the whisper again, and Lady Lochore bent for a
moment a scornful ear. Then her laughter rang out again, louder this
time.
“Excellent Nutmeg! What a story! You have been having toasted cheese for
supper, sure!—Listen, good people: some one has been trying to break
into Margery’s sacred chamber. Oh, fie, Mrs. Nutmeg!”
Her pale lips seemed withered with her forced merriment as she turned
upon the trio still sitting round the green cloth. The gamblers halted
in their renewed wrangle to give her an impatient attention. Little
Priscilla, arrested in a yawn, twisted a small weary face over her
shoulder to stare.
“Not my chamber,” said Mrs. Nutmeg, raising her voice slightly, but
otherwise quite unmoved.
“Not yours.”
“No, my lady—the chamber over mine.”
“Mrs. Marvel’s!”
And once more Maud Lochore’s hysterical mirth broke forth. The next
instant it was suddenly hushed, and stillness fell again upon them.
Priscilla rose from the table and came forward three steps impetuously,
then halted, crimsoning to the roots of her hair, clasping and
unclasping her hands. The Dishonourable Caroline looked at her daughter
for a second with a pale, hard eye, then said in a repressive tone
curiously at variance with the meaning of her words:
“Thieves and housebreakers; we shall all be murdered in our beds! Let
the men be called! Let search be made! Come, Priscilla.” She slowly
waddled round to the girl’s side. “You shall remain in my room till the
miscreants are captured. No doubt some of the gentlemen would stay
within call.”
“The gentlemen—where are they?” asked Lady Lochore. Then bending her
brow darkly on Margery: “But why did you not call the men?” she asked.
Margery pleated her apron.
“Please, your ladyship,” she answered, in that sort of whisper that is
more effectively heard than the natural voice, “it was no thief, whoever
it was. He knocked at Mrs. Marvel’s window and the window was opened to
him.”
Lady Lochore gave a cry, a cry charged with a curious triumph as well as
a stabbing remorse. Was her enemy delivered into her hands after all!
Then that secret minute in the laboratory, that dire deed of impulse and
opportunity, it had all been useless! For a brief black space she fought
the thought in her heart. Well, who could tell, after all? Old Rickart
was mad, mad as a hatter; and his theories, his famous discoveries might
well prove but moonshine spun from his own crazy brain, while she, poor
fool, was wearing out her short remnant of life with leaps and bounds,
with senseless terrors, with weak repentances for a deed that perhaps
had never been done! And if it were done? Up sprang her indomitable
spirit. If it were done, it was well done! And, done or no, the hour of
personal vengeance was vouchsafed her at the moment she had ceased to
hope for it, least expected it. She would not be Maud Lochore, with the
strength of death upon her, did she not use it to the full.
Old Villars rose from his seat, his face working with varied emotions:
anger, greedy curiosity, low vindictive pleasure. The Dishonourable
Caroline packed her daughter’s arm firmly under her own.
“It is time for bed,” she asserted.
But Priscilla wrenched herself from her mother’s grasp and stamped her
foot.
“Where is Mr. Herrick?” she exclaimed, and burst into tears.
Meanwhile Lady Lochore was speaking in broken sentences of ejaculation
and command: “Shame, disgrace upon the House of Bindon! How dared the
creature bring her wanton ways under our roof? But it was well, order
should be put to it all.”
“Take these candles, Margery,” she ordered, “and lead the way. My good
friends, I crave your support. I am a daughter of this house. I have to
defend its honour and expose those who would bring shame upon it. You
see, you have all seen: I stand alone. My poor brother—” But her voice
broke. Again the awful sickening qualm that she had been fighting
against all the evening seized upon her. Of him she could not nerve
herself to speak. Savagely rallying her strength, she took up her
candle. “I must have some disinterested witnesses,” she went on. “Come
and see me pluck the mask from a smooth hypocrite’s face. What’s the
child sobbing for? Why doesn’t she go to bed as she is bid? Is she so
very anxious to see Mrs. Marvel’s Romeo?”
With a cruel little laugh she passed on, disdaining Villars’ eagerly
proffered arm.
“Thank you, but you had better follow behind, most faithful cavalier.
How strange that both the other gentlemen should be missing! But we
shall soon know which has the best excuse.”
Ellinor knelt brooding over her beloved, now cold to the heart again
with the doubt how this might end, now reassured by the depth of his
repose. There was nothing stertorous in the long easy breathing. A
natural moisture had gathered on the sleeper’s brow. The fluttering
irregularity of the pulse was settling down under her fingers into
fuller, slower measure. That the “Good Woman’s” sleeping draught which
she had herself prepared for David could produce so potent an effect
was, she knew, impossible. But, however produced, it seemed, so far,
beneficial.
It was for a space of time, almost happiness to see him sleep and in
such peace, with the shadow of the smile her kiss had called up still
upon his lips; to feel herself so necessary to him; to be alone with him
and her secret in the night.
Not yet had she time to examine the wild conjectures flitting through
her mind; not yet time to face the problem of saving her good name and
his gentleman’s honour from the consequences of this most innocent love
meeting. She wanted to taste this exquisite relief, to rest her soul
upon the brown-gold wings of hope before taking up her burden again.
Suddenly an insolent knock on the panel of her door startled her from
her contemplation. She had but the time to spring to her feet; and upon
the flash of a single thought, to unfasten her cloak and fling it
hastily over David’s body, before the knock was repeated louder and the
door thrown open.
Lady Lochore stood on the threshold.
Behind her was a peering group. Ellinor, in the first moment of strained
fancy, saw a thousand lights, a thousand staring eyes, a sea of faces.
The next instant the tide of blood began slowly to ebb from her brain.
She felt herself strong, cold, indifferent. She knew she stood in
night-garb before them all, she knew that the covered figure lay in full
line of sight, in full light. She did not care. All her energies were
concentrated in one fierce resolve: she would save the honour of this
helpless man, no matter at what cost. So long as she had life and could
stand before him, no one should lift that cloak to see who lay beneath
it.
She took her post and faced the intruders:—Lady Lochore, with harpy
countenance, craning forward, greedy of vengeance; Mr. Villars, with
goatish face, looking over her shoulder, greedy of scandal; Margery with
stony eyes, holding the candelabra up aloft to shed more light upon her
enemy’s shame; Mrs. Geary, staring with pallid orbs.... Ellinor clenched
her arms over her heaving breast.
But they who had expected so different a scene, and thought to find a
panting young Romeo behind a curtain or a suave experienced Don Juan
ready with explanations, a languorous Juliet or a distraught Elvira,
halted almost with fear before the strange spectacle:—the prone figure,
quite still, covered away, more sinister in its suggestion than even the
sight of death; the menacing woman nobly robed from the spring of her
full throat to the arch of her bare foot in heavy white folds, who, in
her strength and purity, might have been a model for the vestal virgin
guarding her sacred fire.
Lady Lochore’s indictment froze unspoken upon her lips; her face became
set as in a mask of terror; the hand flung out in gesture of vindictive
reprobation, finger ready pointed in scorn, shook as with palsy. Her eye
quailed from the stern beauty of Ellinor’s face and dropped to the dark
mask on the floor; there, clear of the folds, lay a slender hand,
helpless and relaxed, with the gleam of a well-known signet-ring upon
the third finger. Her mouth dropped open, her terrified eyes almost
started from their sockets. She flung a bewildered look around, and met
full the accusing glare of Barnaby’s gaze fixed upon her from the shadow
of the window curtain. Barnaby, monstrous figure, as if her crime itself
had taken shape, to call for retribution!
“Lady Lochore, what do you seek here? Have you not done evil enough
already in this house!”
Ellinor’s voice pierced with direct accusation to Lady Lochore’s soul.
For a second the guilty woman fairly struggled for breath. Margery saved
her from self-betrayal:
“Her ladyship has surely seen enough!”
Their eyes met. These words, too, were capable of a terrible
undermeaning. But the housekeeper contrived to convey through her
expressionless gaze a sense of support. If this woman knew the secret,
she knew it as an accomplice; there was help in the thought.
“You are right,” cried Lady Lochore shrilly, “we have seen enough!
Forgive me, my friends, for having brought you to such a spectacle.
Back, back, shut the door. I forbid—I forbid anyone to make a step
forward. Leave the creature to her shame. Oh, it is horrible!”
She beat them back with her hands as she felt Villars’ eager pressure on
one side and the slow, steady advance of Mrs. Geary on the other. She
knew that their fingers itched to raise the veil of that cloak. If they
had raised it, she must have gone mad!
Margery firmly closed the door.
“Really, my dear Lady Lochore,” complained Villars, “I think the matter
should be further investigated. I can understand your delicate
repugnance, but positively that figure on the floor—Deyvil take me—it
looked like a corpse!”
“Fool, do you not see it was a ruse, a trick? Ah, it has made me sick—it
is too disgusting——”
She wiped the sweat from her brow, and then in truth shuddered as from a
deadly nausea.
Mrs. Geary, breathing hard and fanning herself with her handkerchief,
had fixed her gaze on the speaker’s face. Her ideas moved very slowly,
but they were sure.
“My dear, your whole behaviour is incomprehensible,” she said. “Mr.
Villars is quite right. The matter should be investigated. Who, and in
what condition, is the man under that woman’s cloak? It is our duty to
elucidate the matter. Where is Mr. Herrick?”
“And for that matter, where is Colonel Harcourt?” sneered Mr. Villars.
“You shall not dare!” screamed Lady Lochore. She arrested a retrograde
movement on either side with violently extended arms. “Out—back to your
rooms, all of you! Are you devils, that you should want to gloat—”
Margery laid her left hand warningly on her elbow, and Lady Lochore
broke off abruptly. What had she said? She had no idea herself. She
could have flung herself on her face and shrieked aloud. The fearful
deed was done! There could now be no more doubt. The brand of Cain was
on her brow! Her death-sweat would not wash it off! It was burnt into
the very bone!
She had thrust her guests into the passage with as little ceremony as
Lady Macbeth dismissing the feasters. When the door of Ellinor’s outer
room was closed between them and that something with Sir David’s
signet-ring, the clutch at her heart relaxed a little and she could draw
her breath with more ease. A sort of apathy began to creep over her.
Margery was speaking and she could listen:
“Her ladyship being so delicate, it is quite natural she should be
upset. It is her ladyship’s way to act on impulse. But to find such
doings under her ladyship’s own roof, so to speak, and the person a
close relation of the family! Mistress Marvel is a very clever lady, and
whether the gentleman were drunk or asleep—” she looked up a second
swiftly at Lady Lochore, and resumed the soothing trickle of speech,
“her ladyship is quite right. So long as she knows how she stands with
regard to Mrs. Marvel, there had better be no open scandal, such as
leads,” said Margery piously, “to gentlemen’s duels and the like.”
There now came a patter of feet, a flutter of soft garments, a sobbing,
uplifted voice—
“What was it? Which of them was it?”
“Priscilla!” Mrs. Geary caught her daughter’s wrist and the girl gave a
cry of pain. “Disobedient child, back to your room!”
Priscilla whimpered and writhed; but the lady maintained her firm grasp
and, with dignity accepting a candle from Margery’s candelabra, turned
and marched the truant down the passage that led to her apartments.
Bowing and smirking, Mr. Villars, whose further advice and proffers of
help were ruthlessly cut short by an impatient wave of Lady Lochore’s
hand, had no resource but to betake himself with his triple light in the
direction of his own quarters. He had no idea of letting matters rest
there, but feigned nevertheless immediate submission.
They parted in the round gallery where three corridors met—two belonging
to the modern house, the third leading to the tower-wing which had been
the territory of their raid. Mrs. Nutmeg looked awhile after the bobbing
lights; then, with a pensive smile upon her lips, laid down the
candelabra, and after some effort, for it was not usually moved, closed
the heavy oaken door which shut off the tower-wing from the newer parts
of the Bindon House; locked it, and in silence placed the key in her
apron pocket. Lady Lochore stared at her uncomprehendingly.
“It is as well, my lady, to know that no one can get in or out of the
keep end—except through the window! The lower door I locked myself and
Sir David of course has his key. But it is to be hoped that none of the
disturbance reach him on his tower, poor gentleman!”
The horror returned to Lady Lochore’s eyes; how much did this secret,
impassive woman really know of to-night’s deeds?
“Margery!” she cried.
“Yes, my lady, it is a grand night for the stars,” said Margery. And as
the other groaned: “Will your ladyship come to bed?” she went on; “I
humbly hope you have not let Master Rickart give you any of his queer
drugs; you don’t look yourself. He has a kind of stuff, I have heard
tell, that upsets people’s brains, fills them with queer fancies, like
nightmare, so to speak. And there’s been madness in the village already.
Master Rickart will have a deal to explain, I’m thinking. There, my
lady, you’re shivering. Come to bed!”
Lady Lochore suffered herself to be led to her room; to be unclothed and
assisted into the great four-post bed. Margery’s presence, her touch,
was agony to her, and yet, when she left the room, Lady Lochore could
have shrieked after her. But she closed her lips, closed her eyes.
At last she was shut in alone with her own conscience. She had never
before been afraid, this woman who had been ready to take death as
recklessly as she had taken life. After a while, she crawled out of bed
and into the adjoining room. Above the throbbing of her pulses and her
own gasping respiration she could hear the light breathing from the cot.
Noiselessly she parted the curtains and let an opalescent ray of moon in
upon the little sleeper.
Surely, surely, when she looked upon him for whom she had done it—her
boy, whom a fool and a wanton would have conspired to keep out of his
rights!—this horrible agony would leave her. She would be proud of her
own courage, proud to have been strong enough to act. Crime! What was
crime? The crime had been to try and defraud her child! “Ten drops
madness!” How many drops could that phial have contained? Madness! Well,
he had method enough in his madness to remember the way to his
mistress’s arms!... “After that darkness”—the long, long Darkness! Her
teeth chattered. What then? It was but retribution if his long sleep
came upon him thus! Ah, they had caught the scheming widow red-handed.
Red-handed was the word—oh, the hussy’s conscience was not so clear
either! Why had she covered him up from their sight? Let her answer for
it, she and her poisoning old father! But what was this fantastic water?
Surely it was his hideous drug, little as she had had of it, that drove
out this clammy sweat upon her, made her heart sink—sink with this awful
sickness, filled her brain with those black fleeting shadows that even
the child’s warm presence could not conjure away.
She closed her eyes, for it was almost as if the unconscious baby-visage
added to her terror. But a glare swam before her inner vision, and out
of it and in the midst of it, in some horrible fashion, Barnaby’s face
with accusing eyes looked forth. What had brought Barnaby in Mrs.
Marvel’s room—Barnaby who knew? She put her hands to her throat as if
she still felt the clutch of his fingers upon it. The next instant, with
a spasm of relief, she had almost called aloud with guilty Macbeth—“Thou
canst not say I did it!” Let the deaf and dumb boy point and mouth and
gibber, what he had seen he never could bear witness to.... Deaf and
dumb—oh rare!
She stood beside the cot and gazed with a desperate tenderness upon it.
There now slept the lord of Bindon! His fortune was secured, and by her
deed. She bent her head to kiss the little chubby hand. But before her
lips had reached it she shuddered back:—between her and her child’s hand
rose the vision of another hand, pale, limp, with a signet-ring.
CHAPTER XIV
JEALOUS WATCHERS OF THE NIGHT
Fie on’t! Oh fie! ’Tis an unweeded garden
That’s gone to seed: things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely....
... Frailty thy name is woman!
—SHAKESPEARE (_Hamlet_).
It was late at night when Colonel Harcourt dismounted, stiff and tired,
in front of the _Cheveral Arms_. He had successfully sought at Bath a
pair of friends who were to call upon Sir David on the morrow; but he
had, somewhat morosely, declined their proffered hospitality. For some
ill-defined reason he had been drawn back to Bindon.
The sleepy landlord had but a poor supper to serve: _per contra_ an
excellent bottle of wine. One, indeed, that so curiously resembled the
Clos-Royal of which the colonel had approved at Bindon House that, as he
tasted it, he found himself sardonically regretting that he had not
pressed a more handsome gratuity into old Giles’s palm.
Indeed, he soon called for another bottle. Yet he was in no better a
humour after the cracking of the second seal. The thoughts seething in
his brain remained as dark and heavy as the liquor in his glass, but
were far from being as generous.
His physical equilibrium was disturbed. It had always been a part of
Antony Harcourt’s power with men, as with women, that no matter how
seriously they might take him, he should take himself and them with
gentlest ease. But to-night he was a prey to two passions that would not
let their presence be denied. A passion of resentment against his whilom
host; a longing to feel his own hand striking that cold, pale cheek, or
yet to see a thin stain of blood upon that affectedly old-fashioned
waistcoat spreading and running down, whilst he should smile and wonder
that it should actually show red.
The other passion! He was in love with the widow Marvel—as damnably in
love as the raw boy, Herrick, himself, with the added torture of the
_roué_ who has never yet known denial, of the materialist who can
console himself with no poetic fancies and can dull his senses with no
falutin of sensibility.
A month ago, if anyone had told him that his elegant person should house
two such wild beasts, he would not have thought the suggestion even
worth the trouble of a smile. Now, as he lay back on his wooden chair,
eyeing the ruby in his glass with a deep, vindictive eye, Colonel
Harcourt felt his savage guests tear at him, and was in as dangerous a
mood as ever undid a fool or made a criminal. All at once the heat of
the room, of the wine, of his own fierce mood, stifled him. He rose, lit
himself a cigar, and sallied out, bare-headed and uncloaked, into the
sweet, still night.
The inn stood a little apart from the village—a gunshot distance from
the gates of Bindon Park. Colonel Harcourt paced a few steps down the
moonlit white road and paused, drawing reflective puffs, feeling almost
without noticing how grateful was the cool air upon his head, hearing
without listening the mysterious whisper of the trees on the other side
of the park walls. He moved his cigar from his lips and hesitated.
Then, on an impulse that was as sudden as it was purposeless, he turned
off from the hard road, silver in the moonlight, and struck over the
stile into the darkness of the narrow, tree-shaded path that led to the
church on the grounds. From this, giving the Rectory a wide berth, he
branched off, and, aimlessly enough, directed his steps towards the
House. Twelve strokes of the night floated gravely from the little
square church tower. A dog bayed in the village and was answered in
deeper note from Bindon stable-yards. On went Antony Harcourt fitfully,
slowly, now pausing, now beating time with steady footfall to an evil
little pipe of song that the dark secret world and his own heart seemed
to take up, one after the other, like a catch.
A dry stick snapped sharply under his feet, the light of a lantern
flashed upon his face, a hand fell heavily on his shoulder. It was one
of the keepers, who instantly apologised profoundly to Bindon’s
personable guest and sped him on his way with a reverential “Good-night,
sir,” succeeded by a stare and a shrug. The ways of gentle-folk were
strange.
Burgundy is a wine that long remains hot in the blood. Colonel
Harcourt’s pulses were throbbing. A curious excitement pervaded his
being. Like the sails of a mill under a fitful breeze, anon his brain
whirled with plans, anon seemed to stagnate, unable to formulate a
thought. He found himself at last standing at the entrance of the ruins,
at the back of the Herb-Garden. Before him the tower-wing of the house
cut the shimmering star-shine with pointed gable, with massed chimney
stack, with the huge black square of the keep, all fantastically picked
out by stripes of moonlight. The curious exotic spices of the
Herb-Garden rose against his nostrils.
He flung upwards a look of scorn:—was the brain-sick star-gazer even now
at his telescope? Upon the sweep of his downward glance an illumined
window caught and arrested his attention. He made a rapid calculation
from the gables—Mistress Marvel’s window!
Lady Lochore still kept them at late hours it seemed, in this whilom
sleepy house! The fair widow was doubtless but just disrobing for the
night. As he gazed somewhat sentimentally—what tricks will Clos-Royal
and the witchery of a Lammas-night play even with a middle-aged
gentleman of vast experience and acute sense of humour!—suddenly he
started and stared, open mouthed upon a curse.
Something black and tall and slight, a man’s figure, had appeared
against the bright open window, cutting it across with outstretched arms
and, almost at the same moment, something dimly pale and of soft
outline, a woman’s figure, flung itself between his eyes and the
unexpected vision. He caught a glimpse of white bare arms. Then all
vanished again as if it had not been, and there was naught but the
lighted window, open to the night, confiding, innocent, tranquil.
Colonel Harcourt gnashed his teeth and cursed long and deep within
himself. For all his libertine theories and Lady Lochore’s denunciations
he had never doubted for a moment but that Mrs. Marvel’s favours were a
prize as yet untouched. And now—behold! One more audacious than himself
had slily reached up and plucked the golden fruit!
“By the Lord, I’ll run that Lovelace to earth!” This was the first
articulate thing out of his fury.
He began scrambling through the ruins in his frantic desire to reach a
closer point of view. A dangerous way, in truth, but one that would
perchance prove more dangerous by daylight, since the perils that are
unknown do not exist and the god of chance proverbially favours the
reckless. Colonel Harcourt risked his life a score of times and knew it
not. Hot in his determination, he scarcely felt the hurt when he fell;
and, when he spurned the crumbling, slipping stone beside him, the sound
of its drop into unknown vaults evoked no image of what he himself had
escaped. As little had he heeded the song of the bullet in his ear or
the roar of the mine beside him when he had led his lads up the French
lines at Barrosa, a dozen years before. Torn, panting, bruised, he
landed at length safely on a poison-plot of the Herb-Garden. Even as he
looked up again the light at the gable-end window went out.
With that light went out his own heat of disappointed passion. _Homme à
bonnes fortunes_ as he was, he was not the man to care to come second
anywhere. Mrs. Marvel’s chief charm after all had been her
unattainableness. The colonel, as he stood in the moonlight, was all at
once a sober man. It seemed to him now that, culminating with that
second bottle, he had gradually been getting drunk this whole fantastic
fortnight.
“What, in all the devils’ names, did it really matter that a weak-minded
recluse should slight him and his fellow guests, that he should have
taken upon himself this absurd challenge, from which there was now no
retreat? What was there in the country widow? And why should he have
seen red because of the timely discovery that she was wanton and not
virtuous? And how the devil was he to get out of this infernal garden?”
A pretty situation wherein to bring his forty-eight years’ experience
and his thirteen stone of flesh! As he ruefully felt over his bruised
body and damaged garments, his fingers struck against a hard outline in
his waistcoat pocket. The key! He gave a soft chuckle. It was a poor end
to a summer night’s venture, but an undoubted relief to be able to
extricate oneself in commonplace fashion by walking out through an open
gate.
Wrapping his philosophical humour round him as the best cloak to cover
his sense of moral dilapidation, he was cautiously picking his way, when
he became aware of a hasty footstep behind him. As he turned round, the
moonlight showed him a tall, slender black figure, a haggard, white
face!
“Luke Herrick!”
“Colonel Harcourt!”
The older man was the first to speak. He was not astonished—only (he
told himself) highly amused. There was a tone in his voice, however,
which belonged less to amusement than to some biting desire to use the
keenest-edged weapon wits could provide.
“How fortunate that I should have the key of the gate and be able to let
you out, Mr. Herrick!”
He began to fumble for the lock in the darkness of that shaded spot, and
laughed as he felt the young man press forward suddenly behind him and
then draw back a step with a hissing breath. The gate creaked on its
hinges. Colonel Harcourt, with a gesture the mocking courtesy of which
was lost in the night, invited the other to proceed.
“After you, sir. Why do you hesitate? It is quite fit that dashing youth
should take precedence of middle-age on certain occasions.”
Herrick clenched his fist; then with a desperate effort regained control
of his most sore and injured self and stalked out of the garden,
spurning that earth his feet would tread for the last time.
“You walk late, my young friend,” resumed Harcourt, as he joined him.
“So do you, sir!” cried Herrick thickly.
The colonel laughed with quite a mellow sound. In proportion as
Herrick’s discomfiture became manifest his own geniality returned.
“Our ways lie together as far as the moat-bridge,” remarked he.
Herrick made no reply. What though she had fallen, and fallen to such an
one, she was still a woman; and through him, who had worshipped her,
shame should not come upon her. Let Harcourt mock and jeer in his
triumph, he would be patient ... till a fitter moment.
“By George! our little Romeo is discreet,” thought the colonel. “But
I’ll loosen your tongue yet, you dog!—A charming night!” quoth he aloud.
“Delightful last remembrance to carry away with one, is it not?”
Herrick paused for an appreciable instant; then steadily took up his way
again, still in silence.
“I presume you leave to-morrow?” pursued the elder man. “Our good
host——”
“You, I presume,” interrupted Herrick, “intend to remain, at least in
the neighbourhood!”
They were in the thickest shade of the shrubbery, but each knew the
other’s eye upon him. Their attitude, morally, was like that of men
fencing in the dark, feeling blade on blade yet never venturing a full
thrust.
“You are right. I do not leave just yet. In truth, I have a transaction
to complete before I altogether withdraw from this delightful spot. But
you——”
“I, sir?” echoed Luke, breathing quickly through his nostrils.
“Oh, you——” Harcourt laughed good-humouredly, almost paternally. “I was
going, I declare, to commit the folly, unpardonable in my years, of
offering a young man advice. I was going to say, my good lad, that from
the poetic point of view, your visit here must have been so inspiring,
so, what shall I say? so eminently successful, that it would be a
thousand pities for you to prolong it. Disillusion,” he added, with a
light sigh, “swiftly follows upon joy.”
Herrick chewed a thousand savage retorts, but let not one escape beyond
his clenched teeth.
“You have doubtless a vast experience, sir,” he responded at last; and
the colonel was forced to admit in his own mind that his adversary was
stronger than he had deemed him.
In this mood they reached the moat-bridge, and the full-spaced
moonlight. Then both paused, and, for the first time, saw each other
clearly. The imaginary rivals stood a moment and took stock of each
other’s tell-tale appearance.
“By the Lord,” thought Colonel Harcourt, running his eye sardonically
over the dark stains on Herrick’s handsome evening suit, his tossed and
dishevelled hair, “it is all correct and complete! He’s had to come down
by the window! The deuce!... I who thought the situation would have
suited me!” He had another quiet laugh which enraged the youth almost
beyond endurance. For one voluptuous moment Herrick saw himself laying
this triumphant elderly Lothario at his feet. For every stain, for every
rent in that riding suit, for every stone scratch on those heavy
boots—brute beast, who could enter thus into his lady’s presence!—he
should feel the cuffing of an honest fist! Nor were Colonel Harcourt’s
next words likely to conduce to the young man’s self-control.
“Most poetical Herrick,” he said, “you have lost your hat, and you are
in sad need of a brush!”
“For the matter of that, sir, where is your hat? And as for requiring a
brush——”
Then he clenched his fist, this time for a most deliberate purpose. The
situation was undoubtedly strained. Suddenly a piping voice drew their
attention to quite a new quarter.—Upon the other side of the moat-bridge
stood the quaint be-frilled, be-ringletted, tightly be-pantalooned
figure of Mr. Villars. And even as they gazed this worthy hobbled across
and came close to them, his face under the moonlight visibly quivering
with excitement.
“My dear Harcourt! ... Luke, my poor lad!”
They turned upon him like angry dogs disturbed in the preliminaries of a
private quarrel. The colonel’s somewhat precarious and thin-spread
geniality was not proof against this witness of his inexplicable plight.
“My good friends,” pursued Villars, the mystification on his countenance
giving way to a gloating delight as he looked from one to the other,
“what has happened? This has been indeed a night of adventures! We
thought you had gone to Bath, Colonel. Luke, lad, the ladies have missed
you—at least some of them, he—he—he!” The skin of his dry hands crackled
as he rubbed them. “This is extraordinary. This is something quite
romantic, he—he!”
“Mr. Villars,” interrupted Harcourt suddenly, “is it not time you were
in your beauty sleep, and your hair in curl papers?”
He turned his broad back upon the inquisitive gentleman and fixed
Herrick for a couple of seconds with a hard straight look.
“Colonel Harcourt,” cried the boy hotly in answer, “I am at your
service.”
“Mr. Herrick,” returned the other, “you are an understanding youth. I
regret to be unable to respond just now as I should wish. But in a few
days perhaps—I have a good memory.”
His tone was now as hard as his eye. He nodded towards the speechless
poet with a little wave of the hand that was full of significance. Then
without further noticing Mr. Villars, he turned on his heel and walked
away towards the trees where he was instantly swallowed in the black
shadows.
As Herrick stood glaring after him into space, his wrist was seized and
a wrinkled eager face was thrust offensively close to his.
“My dear boy, I know all about it—all about it. The Deyvil! But that was
a brilliant idea of yours to fox under that cloak. Her suggestion, eh?
Naughty boy. Lucky dog, he—he! But what about the colonel, eh? What? You
don’t mean to say the pretty widow has two——”
In the great silence of this hour before the dawn the sound of a master
slap rang out sharp as a pistol shot; and the echo of it came back like
a jeer from the terrace walls.
“A raving lunatic,” said Villars to himself with wry lips, as he nursed
his cheek and blankly watched Herrick stride towards the house.
“Certainly not worth taking the least notice of!”
Nevertheless, if that young man’s paper ever fell into his hands!
But Herrick was taking to his rooms a heart heavy enough to have
satisfied even the financier’s vindictiveness.
CHAPTER XV
A SIMPLER’S EUTHANASIA
Tired, he sleeps, and life’s poor play is o’er.
—POPE (_Essay on Man_).
Ellinor, after hastily donning a few garments, stole on light foot in
her visitors’ wake and reached the cross-door at the instant when, on
the other side, the key was being turned by Margery. There she waited in
the darkness until voices and footsteps had died away beyond, when,
feeling for the old disused bolt on the inside, she drew it into its
socket. Then she ran back to her own room. She had arduous work to
perform before Margery should have time to return round by all the
basement passages to the keep wing and resume her office of spy. She
had, by some means or other, to convey David back to his tower so that
none should ever know the truth of this night’s events—none but he and
she.
How with her unaided strength she was to achieve this she did not stop
to consider: it must be done. As she re-entered the room it was a joyful
relief to find Barnaby kneeling on the floor beside Sir David.—Barnaby!
In the agitation of the night she had forgotten his presence.
Barnaby—the ideal silent helper.
The dumb lad looked up, nodded, then pillowed his cheek on his hand,
closed his eyes, drew a few deep breaths in pantomime of sleep and
nodded again. She knelt down for a moment beside him and laid her hand
lightly on David’s brow and over his heart. It was in truth a deep, and
it seemed a healing, sleep. Then she rose to her purpose. And in a
shorter space of time than she had dared to hope, Barnaby with her help
had safely laid Sir David on the couch in the observatory. A pillow was
placed under his head, his furred cloak over his feet; and still he
slept like a tired-out soldier.
After a quick look round, Ellinor closed the rolling dome and shut out
the sky, drew the heavy curtains before the door, and, satisfied that
all was as well as she could make it, was hurrying forth again when
Barnaby arrested her.
He had been passive enough under her imperative demand for help, but
now, to her surprise, the old look of distress and pleading had returned
upon his face. Again he plucked her by the sleeve and gesticulated, then
stopped short, pointed to the sleeper, and once more made that gesture
of conveying something to his lips which he had repeated so often after
his attack on Lady Lochore that afternoon.
Ellinor stood still, palsied by the lightning stroke that flashed into
her brain: she had divided the cup between David and her father! Now she
knew who it was Barnaby was seeking help for with such persistence.
The space of time between the moments when she fled from David’s side
and reached the threshold of the laboratory was ever a blank in
Ellinor’s memory. She had no consciousness even of Barnaby’s piteous joy
at being at last understood, of the long passages, the steep, winding
stairs, down and ever down. She never knew that she had crossed Margery
coming up with lighted candle, and staring at them in blank amazement.
She only knew that, when she stood upon the threshold of the room that
had received her with so dear a welcome, there in his chair, under the
light of the lamp, sat Master Simon, his grey head fallen forward on his
breast. He seemed profoundly and peacefully asleep—just as she had left
David. But even before she had laid her hand on his forehead to find it
stone cold, she knew in her heart that her father was dead.
Squatting on the old man’s knee, Belphegor gazed at her inquiringly with
yellow eyes.
Out of warm slumber, tinted like his books with rich and sober hues of
fawn and russet, with here and there a glint of faded gold, Parson
Tutterville was roused in the chill encircling dawn by a cry beneath his
windows—a wild and urgent cry that drew him from his down before he was
well awake:
“Uncle Horatio, for God’s sake!”
And as he thrust his night-capped head out of the casement, he asked
himself if he had not suddenly wandered into a terrible dream, for the
voice went on:
“My father is dead, and David, for aught I know, is dying!”
CHAPTER XVI
THE TIME IS OUT OF JOINT
“Thou Ghost,” I said, “and is thy name To-day?—
Yesterday’s son, with such an abject brow!—
And can To-morrow be more pale than thou?”
While yet I spoke, the silence answered: Yea,
Henceforth our issue is all grieved and grey....
—ROSSETTI (_The House of Life_).
The morning after Master Simon’s death was filled for Parson Tutterville
with sadder and more responsible duties than any in his experience.
Before a stormy scarlet sun had well cleared the eastern line of the
hill he was standing with Mr. Webb (the country practitioner) by the
body of his life-long friend, and listening to the professional verdict
on the obvious fact.
The medical man, a not particularly sagacious specimen of his order, who
had for many years treated Master Rickart’s pursuits with the contempt
of prejudice, discovered no specific symptoms of any known toxic,
declared the death to be perfectly natural and announced his intention
of so certifying it. This decision was, in the circumstances, too
desirable not to be accepted with alacrity.
Leaving Ellinor at the head of the truckle-bed whereon lay the shrunken
figure with the waxen, silver-bearded face—the one so pitiably small
under the white sheet, the other so startlingly great with the peace of
the striving thinker who has attained Truth at last—the Doctor of
Divinity led the Doctor of Medicine away, and hurried him from the side
of the dead to that of the living patient. As he mounted the weary
stairs, his mind was uncomfortably haunted by the remembrance of
Ellinor’s haggard and wistful eyes, of her unnatural composure. She had
not shed a tear, though the rector’s own eyes had overflowed at the
sound of Barnaby’s sobs. With dry lips she had told him a brief, bald
story:
“My father was making experiments all day with his new extract. I
divided the sleeping draught between him and David. Barnaby called me in
the night. I found my father dead. When I tried to rouse David, I could
not. He lies in a deep sleep in the observatory.”
His insistent questions could draw no further detail from her. It was
almost like a lesson learnt off by heart; each time she replied in
exactly the same words.
Mr. Webb, who had been almost brutally superficial upon the cause of his
old antagonist’s death, became extremely learned and involved over Sir
David’s case. But the parson, accustomed by his calling to the sight of
the sick, was happily able to see for himself that David’s sleep, though
abnormally profound, was restful; he promptly took it upon himself to
interfere when the doctor offered to proceed to blistering and
blood-letting as a rousing treatment.
Somewhat unceremoniously he insisted on his withdrawal; and, returning
himself to the observatory, stood gazing at his friend for some time
before determining on the step of sending a post-boy into Bath for a
more noted physician. As the divine was thus pondering, David suddenly
opened his eyes, saw and recognised him, without surprise; smiled and
fell asleep again. And Dr. Tutterville felt greatly reassured. Whatever
the cup may have contained that Ellinor had divided between the
star-dreamer and the simpler, here it was evident that nature was
working her own cure and that no other physician was needed.
Upon this the parson carefully piloted Dr. Webb out of the tower-wing
and delivered him to Giles to be ministered unto as the hour required.
Then he sent a note to his good lady, bidding her come and take up her
post by David’s couch until he could himself relieve her watch. His
heart was much eased.
He was on his way to bring his consoling report to Ellinor, when, at a
corner of the passage, he heard his name called in a hoarse whisper,
and, looking round, beheld Lady Lochore, ghastly-faced, in her flaming
brocade dressing-gown.
“How is it with——” she cried. Something seemed to click in her throat,
she could not pronounce the name. But Dr. Tutterville thought that her
twitching hand pointed towards the laboratory door. He shook his head.
“Alas, I fear there is nothing to be done!”
Her lips framed the word:
“Dead!”
Then she swayed and he had to uphold her.
“Come, come!” said he soothingly, yet shuddering all over his
comfortable flesh to feel what skeleton attenuation lay between his
hands. “My dear child, do not give way to this. There is nothing, there
can be really nothing alarming about the passing away of one who has
attained the allotted span. Poor Simon!”
She reared herself with extraordinary energy to fix eyes full of fierce
questioning upon him. He went on:
“Thank God, I can quite reassure you about David—”
“David!”
She echoed the name with what was almost a shriek; then caught the end
of her hanging sleeve and thrust it to her mouth, as if to keep any
further sound from escaping.
“Did you not know?” asked the rector. “We were in much anxiety, but
whatever noxious drug was——” he stopped unwilling to raise the question.
He saw a terror come into those strange fixed eyes. Quite bewildered
himself, he proceeded again, trying to reassure the woman:
“David’s in no danger, thank Heaven!”
Dropping her hand, Lady Lochore turned upon the astonished rector a
countenance of such fury that he stepped back hastily as from a
madwoman.
“Thank Heaven!” she repeated with a laugh, that made his blood run cold.
The next instant she turned and fled from him, once more stopping her
mouth with her sleeve; in spite of which the sound of her hysterical
mirth continued to echo back to him down the vaulted passage after she
had turned the corner. The rector remained lost in thought.
“She is very ill—dying!” he told himself. “Lord, thy hand is heavy on
this house!”
Even in the secrecy of his soul he was loth to search into the weird
feeling now encompassing him, that there was more than illness in Lady
Lochore’s face.
The parson hoped that, under the reaction of the good news he brought
her, Ellinor might obtain the relief of tears. But in this he was
disappointed.
“Thank you,” she said, in a whisper; and sat down again upon the bench
from which, upon his entrance, she had risen rigidly and as if bracing
herself for a final blow. Her clenched hands relaxed; while the left lay
passive on her knee, she began with the right absently to pat and fondle
the folds of sheet that lay over her father’s cold breast.
Dr. Tutterville looked at her in puzzled silence. The action was full of
a woman’s tenderness, yet he intuitively felt that the thoughts behind
the faintly drawn brow, under the marble composure, were not occupied
with a daughter’s sorrow. He felt he had been denied a confidence of
vital importance. Strange things had taken place in the house, of which
he had yet no explanation. Gently he laid the warm comfort of his clasp
upon the woman’s hand and stayed its futile caress.
“Dear child, what is it? Can I not help?”
She started, and flung a swift look at his wise and grave face. There
came a sort of fear also in her eyes. Fear into the true eyes of
Ellinor! Then she fell back into her abstraction.
“Thank you,” she repeated in a slow dreamy tone. “I can wait.”
He was pondering over the inexplicable word, when a new call drew him to
other cares. “Two gentlemen,” a servant informed him, “had driven over
from Bath and were demanding to see Sir David. They had not seemed
satisfied on being told that Sir David was not well enough to receive
visitors.” Visitors for Sir David! So unwonted an event these ten years
that even the rector was moved to curiosity as he hastened to wait on
the callers.
Pacing the library were found an elderly man of military bearing and
haughty countenance, in befrogged coat and smart Hessians, and a slight,
fair youth—in the extreme of the fashion, with an eyeglass on a black
ribband, miraculous kerseymeres, a velvet waistcoat embroidered with
gold and silver roses, and a fob with more seals and watches than any
one person could require. The elder stranger turned to the younger with
a sarcastic smile as the door opened; and then, with a slight bow,
addressed the new-comer.
“Sir David Cheveral, I presume,” he began, and stopped short.
His eyes rested in amaze upon the clerical silk hose; ran swiftly up to
the long clerical waistcoat, over its gentle undulation across the
unmistakable neckband, to stop at last with angry insolent stare upon
the clerical countenance, handsome, dignified and self-possessed despite
a fasting morning and unshaven chin. Then he flung another quizzical
look at the younger man and shrugged his shoulders; whereat the latter
gave vent to a shrill titter and vowed with a lisp that in all his life,
by gad, he had never come across anything so rich!
“To whom have I the honour—?” asked Dr. Tutterville.
“Before we waste our breath, sir, and take you away from the thoughts of
your next sermon, one word.” Thus the military gentleman, with the tone
of one in superior form of courtesy mockingly addressing an inferior
species. “Do you represent here Sir David Cheveral?” he asked.
“Sir David,” said the parson, with that serene ignoring of impertinence
which is its best rebuke, “is unable this morning, either to receive
visitors himself or to instruct a delegate.”
For a third time the visitors exchanged looks.
“A curious indisposition, evidently,” remarked the elder, slapping his
Hessians with his cane. “Cursed curious!”
“Deuced opportune, by gad!” added the younger.
“No, sir,” said Dr. Tutterville, turning so suddenly and severely upon
the youth that he started back a couple of paces. “No, young man, not
opportune. There is death in this house, and the master of it is wanted
for more important matters than either you or your friend can possibly
have to communicate—I wish you good morning.” And he wheeled upon his
heel with an elastic bounce.
Before he had reached the door, however, the strident voice of the
well-booted visitor arrested him:
“Tis, of course, your trade, sir, to preach the peace. But the mere
gentleman is prejudiced in favour of honour being considered first.
However, if Sir David Cheveral, who cannot but have been prepared for
our visit, has deputed you in the interest of holy peace, perhaps you
will kindly bestow upon us now sufficient of your reverend time to
enable us to gather what form of apology Sir David——”
The reverend Horatio again turned round, this time slowly, and showed to
this trivial sneering pair a Jove-like countenance, which the wrath of
natural humanity and the reprobation of the church combined to empurple.
He allowed the weight of his silent rebuke to press upon them
sufficiently long for their grins to give place to looks of anger. Then
he spoke. And although under the silk meshes of his stockings the very
muscles were quivering with the intensity of his feelings, never in hall
or pulpit had the parson delivered himself to better effect. Yet his
discourse was extremely brief:
“Gentlemen—forgive me if, not having the advantage of your acquaintance,
I am forced to address you thus indeterminedly—as regards the honour of
Sir David Cheveral, my kinsman:
_Falsus Honor juvat et mendax infamia terret
Quem nisi mendosum et mendacem?_
You may possibly fail to follow me. I will translate liberally: The
dog—aye, and the puppy—may bark at the moon, it will not affect her
brightness.... As regards an apology, I will take upon myself to allow
you to convey this one to your principal, whoever he may be, convinced
from what I know of Sir David that he will not repudiate the form of
it:—If, as I gather, he is called upon to give a lesson in honourable
dealing to some friend of yours, he regrets having to postpone that duty
for a short while. The delay, allow me to assure you, will but the
better enable him to fulfil his part when the time comes. You will find
paper and all that is necessary upon yonder table. You can write your
communication to Sir David, and I will undertake to see that it is
delivered at a fitting moment.”
“’Pon my soul,” said the elder ambassador, turning to his satellite as
the door closed upon the clergyman’s dignified exit—“that’s a game old
cock!”
“Dog! by Jove—aye, and puppy!” growled the younger man.
On the other side of the oak the rector had halted, rubbing his
unusually bristly chin, and uncomfortably mindful of certain remarks
from the still small voice within concerning next Sunday’s sermon that
was to be upon the beatitude: “Blessed are the peacemakers.”
“I will change my text,” thought the rector. “It were a sorry thing for
a scholar and a clergyman if there were no issues from such accidental
straits! ‘Ye shall smite them hip and thigh!’ Yes, that will do. That
will meet the case.”
The excellent gentleman had scarcely settled this delicate point with
his conscience when he was intercepted by Mrs. Geary. The lady was in a
high state of indignation, first at a death having actually been allowed
to take place in a house where she was guest, secondly and especially at
Lady Lochore having locked herself up in her own apartments and rudely
denied her admittance. She now demanded instant means of departure for
herself and her daughter; for her man and her maid. This the rector,
with joy, promised to provide forthwith; and even suggested that the
remaining gentlemen of the party might make use of the same conveyance
with both pleasure and profit to all concerned. But even as he was
congratulating himself upon an easy riddance of at least one difficulty,
he was plunged into a far deeper state of perturbation by a most
unexpected word:
“Mr. Herrick has already gone,” sniffed Priscilla, who stood at her
mother’s elbow. Her face was swollen with crying; she spoke in a small
vindictive voice which drew the parson’s attention to her in mild
surprise.
Mrs. Geary tossed her head:
“I am glad to hear it,” she remarked icily, “and I am surprised you
should have suggested his accompanying us.”
“My dear madam,” protested the rector, who found the look of meaning in
the lady’s protuberant eye exceedingly discomforting. “My dear madam?”
“After last night’s scandal,” said she in her deepest bass.
“Last night’s scandal!” he echoed.
“Hush!” she cried, “I will not have the innocence of my child further
contaminated——”
“Contaminated, madam!”
“Contaminated, sir! Ask Mrs. Marvel, Dr. Tutterville! Ask your niece!”
She brushed past, hustling Priscilla before her.
“A most unpleasant female,” thought the parson, endeavouring to dismiss
Mrs. Geary from his mind. But she had left a disturbing impression,
which was presently to be heightened. In response to a message,
courteous, but firm, informing him at what hour the chaise would await
him, Mr. Villars next presented himself before the rector and
interrupted him in the midst of some of his sad business details.
“Sir?” said the parson, at the same time arresting by a gesture the
withdrawing of the bailiff with whom he was then in consultation. “In
what can I be of service?”
“My dear Dr. Tutterville, I came to offer my services to you.”
“You are vastly obliging, Mr. Villars. The best service friends can
render a house of mourning is to leave it to itself.”
“Sad business—sad business this! Deyvilish!”
“Good-bye, sir, I trust you may have a pleasant journey. Good-bye.”
“One word, dear and reverend sir. How is—how is Mrs. Marvel?”
“Bearing up fairly well, I thank you.”
“I am rejoiced. Rejoiced. After so many emotions! Ah, I was going to
suggest that it might perhaps be of some advantage, some advantage,
perhaps, to Mrs. Marvel, were I to defer my departure for a day or two.
I would gladly do so if——”
“I cannot conceive,” interrupted Dr. Tutterville, “any circumstance that
would make this probable.”
Mr. Villars hemmed meaningly, looked at the bailiff’s stolid
countenance, and winked importantly at the rector. But as the latter
remained unresponsive, Mr. Villars proceeded with a point of acrimony in
his tone:
“No doubt Mrs. Marvel has already given satisfactory explanation of last
night’s——”
“Sir,” interposed Dr. Tutterville, opening the study door, “you force me
to remark that my time is valuable.”
“Your wife’s niece, sir, I understand.”
“Mr. Villars, the chaise will be ready in half an hour.”
“Dr. Tutterville, you are making a mistake. I might have been of some
use. Of use, sir, as a witness, in this unfortunate scandal——”
“Mr. Villars, I am a clergyman, and this is a house of mourning. But——”
Mr. Villars slipped suddenly like an eel through the half-open door; for
there was something ominously unclerical both in the parson’s eye and in
the twitching of his right hand. But as Horatio Tutterville sat down to
his table and beckoned once more to the bailiff, the word scandal
weighed heavily on his heart.
Half an hour later, the comforting vision of Madam Tutterville’s round
countenance rose upon his cold distress like a ruddy sunrise over a
winter scene. But, though she brought him upon a fair tray, crowned with
a most fragrant aroma, restoratives for the inner man as well as
excellent tidings of her patient in his tower, she had a further budget
of news which was to add considerably to the burden of his day.
“My dear doctor,” she said with effusion, and for once unscripturally,
“I came the instant I received your note. David is sleeping like a lamb.
You need have no anxiety there. I shall instantly return to him. But
there is no use in the world in your making yourself ill too. You were
off without bite or sup this morning, and not one has thought of making
you so much as a cup of tea! The world is a vastly selfish place, and I
am surprised at Ellinor. Drink this coffee, my dear doctor. I have
prepared some likewise for David—’tis a sovereign restorative. Nay, and
you must eat too.”
The rector smiled faintly. The prospect was in sooth not ungrateful. And
now that his attention was drawn to it, the unusual vacuity within
became painfully obvious.
“Excellent Sophia!” he murmured.
Her coffee was always incomparable. It may be a moot point whether, in
moments of man’s trouble, the woman who ministers to the
creature-comforts is not the truer helpmate than the transcendental
consoler.
Madam Tutterville watched her lord partake in silence. That in itself
was a notable thing. She showed little of her usual satisfaction in his
appetite; and that was ominous. Her whole person was clouded over with
an anxiety which could not be attributed to her brother’s death; a trial
indeed she had promptly dismissed with two tears and one text. As soon
as the rector appeared sufficiently fortified, Madam Tutterville drew a
deep breath; no more odious task could be assigned to her than that of
having to bring trouble to her Horatio.
“It is my duty to tell you, doctor, that there have been several calls
for you this morning. I went through the village to ascertain for myself
and I found indeed some cases of serious illness. The widow Green died
suddenly last night. Joe (the hedger) has gone raving mad; it took four
men to bind him with ropes and lock him in a barn. I heard his screams
myself. Mossmason seems struck with a kind of palsy. Penelope Jones and
old——”
“In God’s name,” cried the reverend Horatio, springing to his feet,
“stop, woman, or I shall go crazy myself! What can have happened? How
have we all sinned against Heaven to be thus stricken upon the same
day!”
Madam Tutterville pursed her mouth for an awful whisper:
“They say,” she breathed, “that poor Simon went all round the place
yesterday with some of his dreadful little bottles.”
The rector clapped his hands on his knees:
“Then have we indeed been mad to let him have his way so long!” For an
instant the learned man looked helplessly at his wife: “What is to be
done?”
“A doctor,” she murmured.
“A doctor—Sophia, you’re a woman in a thousand. Not that noodle we’ve
had here just now, but the best opinion from Bath. I shall despatch a
post-boy. My poor simple flock!”
He had reached the door when she caught him by the skirts of his coat.
“They are raging against poor Simon in the village, and against Ellinor.
It might well end in a riot. Had you not better warn constables and the
headborough?”
He turned upon his heel in fresh dismay. Then resuming courage:
“Nay, nay, I must see what I can do myself first!”
But Madam Tutterville looked unconvinced.
“I believe they would tear Ellinor in pieces, were she to go out among
them to-day. I have had to warn her. Horatio—Horatio, have you seen
Ellinor?”
Dr. Tutterville nodded. For some undefined reasons he would have given
worlds not to be obliged to discuss Ellinor just now. He tried to slip
his portly person through the door, but the hand of his spouse was still
restraining.
“Do you think she could have been given any of that dreadful stuff too?
She is so strange in her manner. And the servants are saying such
extraordinary things—not that I would allow them to do so before me—but
I could not help hearing.”
With one mute look of reproach the rector wrenched himself away.
“Lord, Lord,” he was saying to himself in a grim spirit of prophecy, as
he hurried towards the stables: “There will be but too much time I fear
by and by, for the drawing to light of poor Ellinor’s affairs whatever
they may be.”
Love is the crown of life: a life without love is a life wasted. Not
necessarily must the love that crowns be that of lovers: love of saint
for God, of soldier for captain, of comrade for comrade, of student for
master, of partisan for King; or, again, love for the abstract object,
of artist for art; of patriot for country, of philanthropist for the
cause, of seekers for science—one such great love in a life is
sufficient to fill it to the brim, to absorb all its energy. But how few
are capable of the passion that shall crown them heroes or saints,
leaders of thought or of men! Though every man and every woman avidly
claim to possess in the full the power of natural love, _the real lover
is a genius_. And genius, of its essence, is rare. To nearly all it is
given to strum the tune, to how few is it given to bring forth the full
harmony!
Ellinor had one of those rare natures especially designed for the
heights and the deeps of love. It had been for many years her curse that
some indefinable charm, quite apart from her beauty and strength,
should, wherever she went, make her the desire of men’s eyes. But she
herself had passed as untouched by the flame, through her too early
marriage and the ordeals to which she had been recklessly exposed, as
true gold through the test-furnace.
Now, like a wave that has been gathering from the fulness of the ocean’s
bosom, the great waters had broken over her and were sweeping her on.
As she sat by her father’s body she tried to force the image of her loss
upon her mind—in vain. One single idea absorbed her; the whole energy of
her being was with David. Anon she recalled every instant of his
fantastic wooing of the previous night. Anon she would be seized with an
agony of terror about his present condition. Again she would float away
in a vague warm dream of the moment when he should awaken.... Awaken and
remember! People addressed her, and she answered mechanically; but, even
while answering, forgot the speaker’s presence.
When Madam Tutterville came to conduct her to her room that night,
Ellinor was aware that she had walked through a group of whispering and
pointing servants; and she was indifferent. She felt that the good lady
herself was looking at her with strange, anxious gaze; and she merely
smiled vaguely back. Her soul was in the tower.
Madam Tutterville wore a grave countenance.
“Have you nothing to say to me, Ellinor?” she asked at length.
Ellinor hesitated a second; she wanted to beg for a share in the watch
by David’s side; wanted to hear repeated once more the last reassuring
news. But the deeper the passion the more closely the woman draws the
veil about her; she could not even speak his name.
“Nothing, dear aunt,” she answered.
Madam Tutterville shook her head in troubled fashion, sighed and
withdrew.
CHAPTER XVII
TREACHERIES OF SILENCE
——Slander, meanest spawn of Hell,
And woman’s slander is the worst...!
—TENNYSON (_The Letters_).
On the following morning Margery drew the curtains of Lady Lochore’s bed
and looked down upon her.
It was ten o’clock, and not even the barred shutters, not even the heavy
hangings, could keep shafts of sunshine from piercing through. Lady
Lochore wanted to shut out the light and the day and the world: whatever
the news might be that the morning was to bring, whether of life or of
death, they were fearful to her. And now, though she knew well enough
whose eyes were fixed upon her, she feigned sleep. Margery, on her side,
perfectly aware of the pretence, drew a stool with ostentatious
precautions to the bedside, sat down and waited. But the feeling of
being watched became quickly intolerable. Lady Lochore rolled petulantly
over on her pillows.
“What in God’s name do you want? Great heavens, one would imagine that
you at least would know better than to disturb me!”
“My lady,” cooed Margery, “Sir David is awake.”
Lady Lochore sat bolt upright and, under the thin cambric and lace that
fell in such empty folds over her bosom, the sudden leaping of her heart
was visible.
“Awake!”
“Yes, my lady—awake and up. I thought it my duty to let your ladyship
know.”
“You have seen him! You——?”
A horrible hope danced like a flame in her eyes; but even to Margery she
dared not speak the question that would make it patent.
“Quite himself, yes, my lady,” went on the steady tones, answering as
usual the unspoken thought. There was a lengthy silence. Then Margery
began again: “Whatever drug Mrs. Marvel gave Sir David, it has done him
good, my lady. I’ve not known Sir David look so well, nor speak so dear
and sensible since before his—his great illness.”
Mrs. Nutmeg had respectfully shifted her gaze from her ladyship’s
countenance to a knot of ribbons at her ladyship’s breast. But,
nevertheless, Maud Lochore felt that her criminal soul was being
mercilessly laid bare.
“Leave me alone,” she said faintly, leaning back on her pillow and
turning her head away.
“I think your ladyship had better get up,” said Margery Nutmeg, and
stood her ground.
By the time Maud Lochore, robed and tired, had sailed from her
apartments, with head set high and determined step, to seek her brother,
the housekeeper was able to retreat to her own room with the feeling
that the morning’s eloquence of insinuation had not been altogether
wasted. What though Fortune still seemed to favour Mrs. Marvel, the path
of that would-be mistress of Bindon might yet, after all, be made rough
enough to trip her.
Sir David turned his head as the door of the library opened, and Lady
Lochore was involuntarily brought to a halt in her indignant entry.
Those clear eyes! The steady, peaceful gaze was that of a man looking
upon health returned after long sickness. Margery was right. She was
right! Sir David was himself again; and the coiling, twisting serpents
within her seemed to nip at her heart in their thwarted fury. Hers had
been the hand to fill this magic cup! She could have laughed aloud for
the irony at it. Then there came a second thought, lashing her with an
unknown terror! Was God himself against her, that the poison which had
uselessly brought death and madness to so many besides old Simon, should
here have turned to a healing remedy?
Sir David and the rector had been engaged in earnest converse for the
last hour. The matter of the challenge had first demanded their
attention. Sir David had, with a contemptuous smile, perused the letter
left on his table, had listened to Dr. Tutterville’s account of the
interview without comment and briefly dismissed the subject with the
announcement of his intention to send a messenger to Bath that day. His
whole treatment of the affair was such as vastly pleased the
old-fashioned spirit of the parson—a duly shaven parson, this morning,
who could not keep the beam of satisfaction from his glance every time
it rested upon his companion.
And yet it was a rare complication of troubles they had to face. Three
deaths in the village, besides that of the poor old alchemist himself; a
case of madness, and one or two of minor brain disturbance. And a
general threatening resentment throughout the parish. Good cause indeed
had the spiritual and the secular masters of Bindon for consultation
together; little cause had they to welcome interruption. But both
gentlemen rose with due courtesy; and while the parson placed a chair,
Sir David took his sister’s hand and led her to it, inquiring upon her
health.
She looked up at him without speaking, an exceedingly bitter smile on
her lips. Yes, there was no doubt about it: her brother stood before
her, master of himself, master of his fate once more.
In the silence, the two men exchanged a glance as upon some pre-decided
arrangement. Then the rector spoke:
“These sad events have necessarily postponed your departure; but,
believe me, my dear Maud, you will do well, and it is also David’s
opinion, to delay it no longer than this afternoon.”
Lady Lochore clutched the arms of her chair.
“We anticipate some excitement among the villagers,” pursued the parson.
“Then there is the ceremony to-morrow. You are unfortunately in no state
of health to risk painful emotions. And, in fact, David would not be
doing his duty did he not insist upon your being safely out of the way.”
Lady Lochore rose stiffly.
“And Mrs. Marvel?”
The rector fell back a pace; the hissing word had struck him like a
stone. But Sir David stepped forward, a light flame mounting to his
brow.
“Does David consider it his duty to have Mistress Marvel also removed
from this dangerous house?” she inquired, and her voice broke on a
shrill laugh.
“Maud,” said her brother, almost under his breath, “have a care!”
But Lady Lochore had let herself go; the serpents were hissing, ready to
strike. Glib words of venom fell from her lips:
“His duty! Touching solicitude all at once for my humble self! ’Tis
vastly flattering, my God! What a model host, so preoccupied about his
guests! Excellent Rector, is this your work? A conversion you may well
be proud of: but is it not a little abrupt for security?” A hard cough
here cut the thread of her tirade. And the acrid taste of blood,
loathsome reminder of doom, brought her suddenly from irony to open
rage: “Yes, turn your sister out of the house! Turn your flesh and blood
from your doors! But house the wanton, cherish the abandoned wretch that
dares to call herself our kin, that brought under Bindon’s roof
practices that would disgrace Cremorne! Keep Mrs. Marvel, Sir David
Cheveral, put her tarnished honour in our mother’s place and you—and
you—you sanctimonious old man, give the blessing of the church upon that
degrading union! Oh, Mistress Marvel is a young, comely woman, and David
is indeed converted! This time, I am glad to see, he has been more
practical than with his other—lady!”
“Silence!”
It was not that the word rang very loud, or that Sir David’s mien was
threatening; but, as she herself had grasped the truth a little while
ago, that he was master. It seemed to her now as if she must wither
before him. Her voice, her laugh sank into the silence bidden. Then Sir
David turned:
“She is mad!” he said, addressing the rector, and made a gesture with
his hand as if dismissing a subject painful in the abstract, but
unimportant to himself.
His sister’s glance followed his movement to alight upon Dr.
Tutterville. Then the cowering snakes reared their crests again. If he
had to be slain for it, the parson could not have kept a look of
perturbation, almost of guilt from his countenance; and the woman was
quick to see it. She pointed her finger at him:
“Ask the reverend gentleman if I am so mad. Ask him if some account of
the virtues of his niece has not already reached his consecrated ears!
Oh, brother David, the mere stretching of a cloak is not quite
sufficient to hide scandal.”
Scandal!—that evil word again! The more burningly it stung the parson,
the more gallantly he resisted the doubt.
“Maud,” said he firmly; “hearing is one thing, believing, thank Heaven,
is another. Those who would assail Ellinor Marvel’s honour, I should be
inclined to rebuke much more severely than David has done. Madness? No,
Lady Lochore, but deliberate falsehood, the fruit of Envy, Malice and
all uncharitableness.”
“Ellinor Marvel’s honour!” said Sir David. He repeated the words
steadily, then threw up his head and slightly uplifted his eyes and
looked away as if fixing some entrancing vision.
Health of body and health of mind had, it seemed, been restored to him
by the cup of strange mixing. The morbid doubt, the fever, the long
oppression—all were gone. He had faith where he loved. The expression of
his face drove the furious woman nigh to the madness he had proclaimed.
“Ellinor Marvel’s honour!” she repeated in her turn, “the honour of a
woman, who receives her lover in her room at midnight!”
The rector gave a short groan; it might have been horror or indignation.
Sir David merely turned to stare at his sister; then he smiled in
contemptuous pity.
“Oh, David, David!” cried Lady Lochore, shaking in an agony of laughter
and rage, “whom do you think to take in with these hypocritical airs,
this ostrich concealment? It is, of course, your interest to hush things
up. Naturally! But—”
He would not permit her to finish:
“Naturally it is my interest,” he said, hotly, “to defend a woman whom I
know to be as innocent of what you accuse her as I am myself; in whose
honour I believe as in my own.”
In the diplomacy of life, how often does the course of fate turn to
unexpected channels upon the mere speaking of one word. At the strenuous
instant of the conflict of purpose, how far-reaching may be the
consequence of one phrase, perhaps pronounced too soon, or left unsaid
too long!
Had David not thus cut short the speech on his sister’s lips, her very
next word would have rendered the object of her hatred the best service
that at such a strange juncture could have been devised; and she would
at the same time have dashed for ever the success of her last desperate
scheme. The revealing accusation that still hung on her tongue was
barely arrested in time. With her familiar gesture, she had to clap her
hand to her mouth.
“Why, great God! He knows nothing! he remembers nothing! First madness,
then long, long sleep! Old man, I thank thee for that fantastic drug!”
Over her gagging hand Lady Lochore’s eyes danced with a flame so fierce
and unholy that the bewildered and unhappy parson shuddered. He felt
instinctively as if the meshes of the web which seemed to have been
skilfully flung round Ellinor were tightening in remorseless hands. The
very deliberation, the sudden calmness which presently came over Lady
Lochore filled him with a yet deeper foreboding. She dropped her hand,
stood a moment, tall and straight and dignified, as if wrapt in thought,
her countenance composed: a noble looking woman, in spite of the ravages
of disease, now that the unlovely mask of fury had fallen from her. Then
she turned to Sir David, who had deliberately seated himself at his
papers as if for him the discussion were ended, and said:
“Since neither brother nor kinsman believe my word worthy of credit, I
am forced to bring other testimony—much as I should wish to spare myself
and this house the humiliation.”
She stretched her hand to the bell-rope, and the parson upon an impulse
of weakness for which he immediately chided himself, stretched out his
own to arrest her. But David, without looking up from his writing, said
gently: “Let her call up whom she will.” And Lady Lochore demanded Mrs.
Nutmeg’s appearance.
“My friends,” she added, after a spell of brooding silence, once more
addressing her brother, “have been so summarily turned out of this house
that their immediate evidence is unobtainable. A letter to Bath,
however, would produce their attendance or their answer by writing if——”
But at this point Margery knocked at the door. Slowly Sir David looked
up:
“I may as well tell you at once,” said he, “that were you to fetch
witnesses from the four corners of the globe, there is but one person’s
word which I would be willing to take in this matter—and hers I do not
intend to ask for.”
The rector gazed in astonishment upon the determined speaker. This
confidence, he thought, showed almost like a new phase of eccentricity;
it was as exaggerated in its way as the previous universal distrust of
humanity and more likely to be followed by a reaction. Sir David had but
shortly before informed him that since the moment when he had received
the sleeping draught from Ellinor’s hand, he had not met her. His
attitude seemed the more inexplicable. But Dr. Tutterville was now all
anxious to clear up this strange matter; for, since Lady Lochore’s
excited entrance upon the scene, he had become convinced that Ellinor
was the victim of some cunning conspiracy, and was increasingly ashamed
of his own previous misgivings.
“Nay, David,” he cried, interposing sudden authority, “that is not fair
to Mrs. Marvel. She must have the opportunity of self-vindication; she
must be urged to speak that word which we indeed do not need, but
without which, slanderous tongues will continue to wag. See, yonder she
goes,” he added, pointing through the window.
David then, without a word, rose and went to the open casement; he
beckoned and called:
“Ellinor! Can you come to me?”
Margery Nutmeg took a few humble steps aside and remained in a shadowy
corner.
CHAPTER XVIII
GONE LIKE A DREAM
... My sweet dream
Fell into nothing.
Ah, my sighs, my tears,
My clenched hands;—for, lo! the poppies hung
Dew-dabbled on their stalk, the ousel sung
A heavy ditty, and the sullen day
Had chidden herald Hesperus away
With leaden looks.
—KEATS (_Endymion_).
Ellinor entered the room.
“The heartless wretch!” thought Lady Lochore, with the marvellous
inconsequence of hatred, “her old father lying dead and she in all these
colours!”
But the next glance showed her that the only colours Ellinor wore were
those that cannot be doffed at will—gold of hair, rose of cheek, blue of
eye and dazzling white of throat. The flower had opened wide to the sun
of great love! The presence of death itself cannot rob the living thing
of the beauty of its destined hour.
Ellinor’s arms, moreover, were full of branching leaves and strange
blossoms. She had had the womanly thought to lay upon her father’s body
a wreath made of the plants he had loved. Purple and mauve, crimson and
orange, with foliage of many greens, it was a sheaf of rich hues she
held against her black dress; and she seemed to bring with her into the
room all the breath of the Herb-Garden and all its imprisoned sunshine.
She had walked straight in, seeking and seeing no one but David. He was
still standing and, as she halted he moved nearer to her. For a while
they were silent, gazing on each other. And her beauty seemed to grow
into brighter and brighter radiance.—Every woman is a goddess once at
least in her life. But Ellinor stood upon her Olympian height but for a
short moment.
“Mrs. Marvel!”
At the first sound of Lady Lochore’s voice, at the sight of Margery’s
face, she fell from her pinnacle, suddenly and piteously. Why were
these, her enemies, here, and why had she been convened into their
presence? Why did the rector sit there like a judge and wear that uneasy
countenance? Her brain whirled. It could fasten on no settled thought.
But in the great crisis of life what woman trusts to thought when she
can feel! Ellinor felt:—this bodes evil! Yet David had looked at her
with beautiful eyes of faith and gladness. Her fate was in his hands,
what then had she to fear? She turned her glance again upon him. In
spite of her boding heart she trusted.
“Mrs. Marvel,” said Lady Lochore. “I have considered it my duty to speak
to my brother on the subject of the painful episode of the other night.”
Ellinor crimsoned to the roots of her hair, to the tips of her fingers.
She dropped her eyes. Yet in the midst of all the agony of woman’s
modesty outraged before the man she loved, there remained a deep
sweetness of anticipation in her heart. She waited, motionless, for the
touch of his hand, the sound of his voice that should proclaim her his
bride. She waited. The silence enveloped her like a pall. Lady Lochore
laughed and the blood rushed back to Ellinor’s heart.
“David!”
There was everything in that cry, everything in the look she cast upon
him, to appeal to a man’s chivalry, to his honour, to his love: the
pride of the innocent woman, the reproach of the wronged woman, the
trust of the loving woman. And David spoke:
“You need say nothing, Ellinor, need not condescend to answer.”
Alas, what vindication was this!
“Does Mrs. Marvel deny then,” resumed Lady Lochore, “that she was
discovered two nights ago——”
David lifted his hand and his voice in a superb unison of anger:
“Be silent. It is I who deny it! And let that suffice!” Then he went on
rapidly, with more self-control yet still vibrating with indignation: “I
know this to be a base lie, an iniquitous conspiracy. Your motives, my
poor sister, are but too obvious! Your treatment of our kinswoman who
has brought comfort and gladness to my house, has been odious from the
first moment of your uninvited presence here. This is the climax! Now
hear my last word:—not only is Mrs. Marvel, as I know her, incapable of
desecrating the hospitality she honours me by accepting, but she is
incapable of harbouring an unworthy thought.”
David’s countenance was lit by every generous impulse. Yet each
vindicating word fell upon Ellinor’s ear like the sounds of her death
sentence—death to both honour and happiness! A chasm was opening before
her feet, the depths of which she could not yet fathom. One thing alone
was dawning upon her moment by moment, with more inexorable light—_David
did not know! All this had been but a dream to him._ And even as a dream
he remembered nothing. _He did not remember!_ Unconsciously she repeated
to herself, even as Lady Lochore awhile before: _Madness and then
sleep!_ He knew nothing of his own vows of love to her, he knew nothing
of his own words of passion! _He did not know; and her lips were
sealed!_
At first Lady Lochore wondered whether David were playing a deep and
subtle game; whether the two were in collusion. But a glance from his
transfigured countenance to Ellinor’s stricken look, the sight of the
rector’s evident perturbation, her own knowledge of the crystal truth of
her brother’s character, promptly dispelled the doubt. The game was
hers!
“All well and good,” said she. “Your cavalier attitude, most romantic
David, is fit to grace the pages of the latest Scotch novel! But allow
me to point out that it will not pass current in the every day world.
Besides the fact that these eyes of mine and those of my friends beheld
a scene in Mrs. Marvel’s room the like of which our honourable house
never sheltered before, Margery Nutmeg can tell you how she heard an
adventurous climber mount to Mrs. Marvel’s window. How Joyce, your
head-keeper, met Colonel Harcourt, skulking through the park at
midnight—”
Dr. Tutterville started. David made no movement, but something in his
very stillness showed that the words had struck him.
“Mr. Villars, again, could have informed you, how he came upon Mr.
Herrick and Colonel Harcourt brawling on the bridge an hour later, both
in torn garments and as highly incensed one against the other, as only
rivals——”
“Needless, all this,” said Ellinor, in a low clear voice. She had flung
back her head and stood, white as death, but composed, holding herself
as proudly as a queen. “I deny nothing. It would be useless to deny, did
I wish it, what Lady Lochore and her friends and Mrs. Nutmeg have seen
for themselves.” She paused, then resumed, gaining firmness in voice and
manner: “I give you the truth, in so far as I am myself concerned. Judge
of me as you will. Barnaby escaped from his room after my father had
locked him up, climbed up to my window, where I let him in—”
“Barnaby,” exclaimed the parson with a loud burst of relieved laughter.
“’Pon my word, a pretty storm in a tea-cup, Maud Lochore!”
Lady Lochore grew grey, save for the bloody fingerprint of death upon
either cheek.
“And was it Barnaby,” she hissed, “whom you covered with your cloak, to
hide him from our eyes?”
Ellinor flung a glance of a sad, yet lovely self-abnegation upon David
before she answered:
“No, it was not Barnaby.”
For all its melancholy ring of renunciation the word could not have
fallen from her lips in a tone of more exquisite sweetness had it been
an avowal of love in the ear of the only one who had a right to demand
it. The love that makes the willing martyr, as well as the pride that
can face ignominy, had enabled her to surmount the failing of her heart
over this bitterness. Was she not bound to silence by a thousand
shackles of loyalty, of woman’s reticence, of elementary delicacy, of
love for him? The sacrifice was for him. He must never know that it was
his madness that had wronged her in the world’s eyes. Her hand could not
deal this blow to his fastidious honour. _Moreover, had it not been all
a dream?_ How did she know that, waking, he could love her as he had
loved her in his dream? Nay, his very defence of her, his calmness and
freedom from jealousy seemed to her aching heart to argue a mere
friendliness incompatible with passion. Thus for herself, too, her pride
could endure to stand with tarnished fame before him, but could not
stoop to demand the reparation she knew he would so quickly have
offered. She went on, steadily ignoring alike the rector’s shocked
distress, Lady Lochore’s triumph and Margery’s insolent silence.
“After Barnaby had taken refuge with me—some one, a man, entered my
room. He did not know what he was doing. And because of that I shall
never tell his name.”
Lady Lochore quailed before the high soul and generous heart of the
woman she was ruining; and quailing, abashed, shamed in her own
tempest-tossed desperate nature, hated her but the more.
The poor rector clacked his tongue aloud in dismay, chiding himself for
his over-zeal. He had meant to straighten matters, and, lo, they were
more inextricably knotted than ever! Here was a mystery to which he had
not the beginning of a clue. No man of his mind and heart could look
upon Ellinor and deem her a wanton as she now stood; and yet both her
self-accusation and her reticence proclaimed how deeply she must love
the unknown man she could thus shield with her own honour. Was this the
end of all their fond secret hopes for Bindon!
Now David gazed at Ellinor almost as if the old dream-palsy had returned
upon him. As in a dream, too, he seemed to see again some past picture
which had foretold this hour. Thus on the first day of her return to
Bindon had he seen her pass from sunshine and colour and brilliancy into
darkness; seen the goddess turn to a pale woman in a black dress. Was
this what his house had brought upon her!
His eyes dilated with pity, his whole being seemed to become broken by
pity, given over to pity, till, for the moment, there was no room for
any other feeling. Pity of the man for the woman, of the strong for the
weak. He sank back into his seat and shaded his eyes with his hand. He
could not look upon that high golden head abased.
But Ellinor had lost little of her proud bearing. Love is royalty, and
royalty can walk to the scaffold as if to the throne.
“I cannot think,” she said with a pale smile, “that Lady Lochore can
have any further need of my testimony.”
“Stay, stay!” cried Dr. Tutterville. “There is more in this than meets
the eye. Ellinor, you have let yourself be caught in some cunning trap!”
“Uncle Horatio,” answered she, “you are right. Yes, things are not as
you think.”
And upon this enigmatic phrase she left them.
Lady Lochore went straight up to her child. She told herself she was
extraordinarily happy. She had been providentially saved from fratricide
and yet had encompassed her end:—Ellinor’s position at Bindon had at
last been rendered untenable. And her boy’s inheritance was safe! She
hugged him, teased him, rollicked with him till he shrieked with joy.
But for all that her heart was well-nigh as heavy within her as it had
been upon her awakening; if she had not her brother’s death on her
conscience, it could not acquit her of all share in Master Simon’s
sudden end. David and he had shared the same cup—that was servant’s talk
all through the house. And how much did Margery know? That inscrutable
woman was now at her elbow; and the sleek and meaning words that fell
from her lips, the very feeling of her shadowy presence irritated the
guilty woman almost beyond bounds. Yet she could not, dared not, dismiss
this Margery.
David lifted a grave face from his shielding hands, looked at Dr.
Tutterville and then, arrested by a gesture the words brimming on the
elder man’s lips:
“Hush! Do not let us discuss this now.”
The parson, wondering, saw him sort his papers and lay them aside, then
ring the bell, and again send for Margery. Sir David looked at her for a
brief moment as she stood before him apparently wrapt in her usual smug
composure, but, by the twitching of her hands and the furtive working of
her lips, betraying some hidden agitation.
“Margery Nutmeg,” said her master then, “in an hour you leave my house
and my service.” A sudden livid fury came over the woman’s face. But
David’s gesture, his determined speech bore down the inarticulate
protest that broke from her. “It is useless to attempt to make me alter
my decision. I know how you have considered me bound by promise to your
husband, and how you have traded upon it. That promise, in so far as I
consider it binding, I shall keep till you die. You shall receive fit
and sufficient maintenance from me. But in my house or upon my estate
you shall dwell no more.” He dismissed her with a wave of the hand,
merely adding: “If you present yourself at the bailiffs office in an
hour, you will receive your money. Go!”
And Margery went, without another word.
“Ah, David,” said the reverend Horatio admiringly, “had you but done
this earlier!” And in his heart was the thought, based upon too
unsubstantial ground to put it into words: “Then things would surely not
stand now at this pass!”
Sir David made no reply. He did not even seem to hear. He was seated at
his writing table, inditing a letter of reply to Colonel Harcourt’s
friend. As he wrote, the crimson of a deep, slow-burning resentment
mounted to his face.
Lady Lochore’s enforced departure fitted in well enough in her mind with
the new turn of events. Now that Master Simon was dead, Ellinor’s
residence at Bindon became an impossibility so soon as she herself had
gone. To be sure Madam Tutterville might give her niece harbourage; but
Lady Lochore was quite satisfied that if she had failed to convince the
rector of Mrs. Marvel’s frailty the rector’s wife had been more easy to
deal with. Therefore she hurried on her preparations with a sick desire
to escape from surroundings charged with such ugly memories. Even as the
four horses drew the travelling chaise up to the door she stood ready in
the hall, feverishly hustling her servants.
Sir David was there too, attentive to speed his sister’s parting, but
certes, with even less warmth than he had welcomed her arrival. She
spoke her bitterly sarcastic word of thanks. He answered by the cold
wish that her health might have been benefited, according to her hopes,
by her visit to her home of old. This time even the kiss upon the hand
was omitted. But as he was leading her across the threshold, her mood
changed hysterically:
“David,” said she, in a panting whisper, “oh, no, you cannot let me go
like this! Some day you’ll thank me for having saved you ... for you are
saved a second time.” She could not keep the taunt out of her mouth.
“After all, I am your only sister, and this is the last time we shall
ever meet. I am dying!”
“My only sister died to me ten years ago,” said David. His tone was
quite unmoved; and he added, almost in the same breath: “There is a high
wind rising, you had better wrap your cloak over your mouth.”
She struck away in fury the hand that held hers, ran down the steps
alone, and sprang into the carriage, where, seizing the child, she held
him up at the window in a sort of vengeful mute defiance that, louder
than any shriek, spoke her secret meaning: “Fool, you shall not keep
this hated flesh and blood from ruling in your place some day!”
As the wheels began to crunch round in the gravel, she suddenly became
aware of a dull grey face and black eyes looking upon her out of the
shade of the opposite seat. It was not her maid! A shudder ran through
her frame. She stared without speaking.
But Margery’s voice was silky as ever:
“Asking your pardon, my lady, I made so bold. Mamselle Josephine is in
the other coach. Sir David has dismissed me. But I knew your ladyship
would offer me a home and welcome, seeing that it is my devotion to your
ladyship that’s lost me my bread and my station in my old age. I made so
bold,” repeated Mrs. Nutmeg, and the veiled threat was all the more
awful to the listener because of the unemotional tone, “knowing your
ladyship’s heart as I know it.”
“Mamma,” cried the spoilt child, “let me go! I don’t like your cold
hands!”
And thus, with Nemesis by her side, Lady Lochore left Bindon-Cheveral
for the last time, and drove through the gathering storm on her speedy
way to die Valley of the Shadows.
Ellinor took her last look at her father’s face and laid the wreath of
herbs at his feet and a sprig of his Euphrosinum, fatal plant! upon his
breast.
Madam Tutterville, in wifely solicitude for her Horatio’s unphilosophic
depression, had insisted on his returning with her to the rectory.
Without her, Ellinor could not remain at Bindon. But even had it not
been so, to abide as David’s guest would have been the one thing to
render her trouble unbearable. And there was nothing in the last cruel
details that precede the returning of earth to earth to make her desire
to linger in the death-chamber. She, therefore, accepted her aunt
Sophia’s offer of hospitality. Had she not been all absorbed in her own
troubles the lady’s altered manner, and the rebuffingly Christian spirit
in which the invitation was offered, might have struck her painfully.
But she was past noticing such things.
The falling dusk of that miserable day found her at the door of the
tower-wing, Barnaby at her side loaded with her modest baggage,
Belphegor ruffled and protesting under her arm. She was dry-eyed: there
is an arid misery the desolation of which no well-spring can relieve. In
this silent company she sallied out.
A dumb boy, and a cat! After these months of full life, after her
gorgeous dream of happiness—this was all that was left her. The road
that had opened before her, alluring, fantastic almost in its promise,
had led to this desolation.
The Star-Dreamer sat by the open coffin in the laboratory, his head
bent, his hands clasped upon his knees, holding between them the sprig
of the Euphrosinum which he had absently taken from the heap of wild
flowers that lay on his old friend’s breast. He was absorbed in thought.
A great silence was in the room erstwhile so filled with a thousand
minute sounds of restless energy. Extinct the hearth; extinct the
furnace which for over twenty years had glowed night and day; mute all
the little voices, cold the matras and crucibles, all as silent and as
cold, as extinguished as the once eager brain of their master. But the
watcher’s mind was seething with keen thoughts, busy sorrows. He had
lost her—she was gone! She who had come like a lovely vision to this
house when it was held as under a spell of twilight dreaming; who had
reanimated it with her own life; who had brought, as she had promised,
sunshine into its dusk, fresh air into its stagnation, sweetness where
the must had lain; she was gone from his sweet hopes, gone in sorrow and
shame! Her bright head dimmed as even now was his star under the clouds
that were gathering thick and thicker with the brooding storm.
And he, the Star-Dreamer? He had been called back from his unnatural
life of solitude, step by step had been brought down from his height,
had been taught once more to see the fairness of earth, had been made to
feel the desire of the eyes, to hear the cry of his forgotten manhood:
all to the end of this vault, this chamber of death, this knowledge of
loss. Yet, no! She had once said to him in an unforgettable hour:
“Sometimes a harboured sorrow is only fancied, not real; and it may be
that real adversity must come to make us see it.” And now he felt that
she had been right. His reawakened virility was strong within him. True,
he had for a second time, and in middle life, been struck to the heart;
yet, strange working of Fate! the new sorrow seemed not only to drive
away the last remnant of the old, but actually to strengthen and arm him
again for the fight of life. Although from his long sleep he had carried
forth no conscious memory of a dream, that hour spent in Ellinor’s room
when, in the body’s weakness, his spirit had come so close to hers, had
left an ineffaceable stamp upon his mind. He had asked her, in trouble:
“Can I trust you?” She had answered him: “To the death,” and he had
believed. And now, though he had seen her stand self-accused before him,
he believed still.
The crisis often heralds the cure. He was cured of his strange palsy of
mind, of his infirmity of purpose, of his sick melancholy. He was a
fighting man again in a world where everything must be fought for, above
all things happiness. Cured—aye, but too late! She, the joy he might but
a few weeks before have taken for his own, she had passed from his
gates.
Cured, made strong again.... How? By what? In that soothing draught, of
whose nature he had known nothing, but which her own hand had prepared,
had she steeped a branch of that wondrous plant which held so many
unknown properties? Had that given him a new life and sanity while it
had brought death or madness to others? Ah, no! The transformation was
her own doing. She had found him weak and ignorant of the one beauty of
life, and left him strong, awakened. Awakened, but desolate.
CHAPTER XIX
GREY DEPARTURE
Here then she comes.—I’ll have a bout with thee:
Devil, or devil’s dam!...
Blood will I draw on thee—thou art a witch!
And straightway give thy soul to him thou serv’st!
—SHAKESPEARE (_Henry VI._)
The next morning, at an hour unwontedly early for such a ceremony, they
laid Master Simon’s remains to rest in the family vault. The discontent
in the village, aroused by the series of mishaps attendant on the
simpler’s last experiments and fostered of late by Margery’s subtle
calumnies, had been fanned to fury by her last round of farewell visits.
The death of the warlock himself had little effect in assuaging the
new-risen hatred which now was aimed at his living daughter.
It was a morning of weeping skies; a fine rain-shroud enveloped the
land; Bindon looked desolate enough to be mourning a mightier scion than
this poor eccentric old child. The creepers clung to the tower and the
ruins, like sodden garments. The blurred panes looked like tear-dimmed
eyes. The dripping flag of Bindon-Cheveral hung at half-mast, so limp
and darkened with wet that it might have been a funeral scarf.
The ceremonial was performed before a congregation pitiable in its
tenuity. Beyond the sexton, the clerk, old Giles and sobbing Barnaby,
not another human being escorted the dead student to his last home, save
the narrow circle of his own kinsfolk. Not one of the many he had helped
in life, or of the many he had healed, could remember his debt of
gratitude, so little did the many lives he had saved weigh against those
few he had lost.
Good Doctor Tutterville officiated with something less than his usual
dignity. He was painfully distracted. There were two or three raw graves
yawning, without, in the little wet churchyard, that felt to his kind
heart as if they had been dug into it. He was anxious too; his ear was
strained for the dreaded sound of angry voices breaking in upon the
sanctity of his dead. The words of the solemn service escaped his lips
in haste, and he breathed a sigh of relief when at last the great stone
was rolled back into its place and, the keys being returned to his own
possession, he knew his old friend’s remains were safe from desecration.
When he emerged from the vestry with David beside him, both
instinctively looked round for Ellinor. But she was gone, and Madam
Tutterville, her round face for once the image of dissatisfaction, could
or would give them no information on the subject. Her high nostril and
short answer quite sufficiently indicated that she regarded Ellinor’s
departure and their curiosity concerning it as equally unbecoming.
“No doubt you will find her at the rectory, if you wish,” she remarked
with a snort.
But here old Giles, who had betaken his way back to the House—the
thought of his restored keys and the comfort of a glowing glass on such
a morning luring him to a sort of shuffling trot—returned hastily to the
church, emotion of a very different kind lending speed to his clogged
limbs:
“They were up at the house,” he explained, panting, “a score of them,
and even more on the way! They were in the Herb-Garden; they had sworn
to leave standing neither stick nor leaf! They had broken into Master
Simon’s laboratory, laying about them like mad! They meant to leave no
bottle or powders of the sorcerer to poison any more of them!”
Sir David and the rector looked at each other as the same thought
flashed into each brain: Ellinor!
Then they started off running. It was a fearful possibility that the
daughter might have returned to either of her father’s haunts; and the
thought of the danger to which she was exposed amid an angry, ignorant
rabble was hardly to be framed in words.
But Ellinor had had but little time to bestow on the sensibility of
grief.
An interview which her aunt had inflicted upon her the previous night
had taught her that the last day’s events had left her poorer even than
she had reckoned. Her hope had been to find a few days’ harbourage in
the rectory and the counsel of friends, before sailing further on the
bitter waters of life. She had hoped—God knows what a woman will hope,
so long as she is in the neighbourhood of her beloved! But Madam
Tutterville’s very first words had called her pride in arms.
The lady had gathered good store of awful texts and apposite instances
wherewith to lace her discourse; and before a tithe of them had been
delivered, Ellinor, scarlet-faced and writhing, had felt herself sullied
in all her chastest instincts by the mere fact of listening.
Madam Tutterville looked upon this case as well within her competence:
she had not consulted with her lord. But her self-sufficiency
overreached her purpose. It was little likely that her pragmatic methods
should have extracted the humble and full confession from her niece
which seemed to be demanded by every authority, old or new, even had the
young widow’s steadfastness been less complete than it was.
Above the turmoil of Ellinor’s emotions one thing soon became clear: not
an hour longer than possible could she remain under this roof. The bread
of Madam Tutterville would stick in her throat. The cold charity of
strangers would be sweet compared with the bounty of one that could
think so meanly of her own kin. Ellinor was indignant, Madam Tutterville
severe; so true it is that where most the human of all feelings is
concerned, the best and most tender-hearted woman seems suddenly
merciless. They parted in anger.
Early then, on this most gloomy day, had Ellinor taken all her measures.
Her available funds were small, but she had saved enough from those
limited stores which her father had handed over to her to provide for
the immediate future. She had, besides, the capital of splendid health,
of indomitable will and energy; so that, for her modest material needs
Ellinor Marvel, though now a poor woman once more, had no anxiety. But,
oh, for the needs of her heart—that passionate awakened heart that had
learned to want so much! It was worse than death to have to tear herself
from Bindon.
Nevertheless, unfalteringly, with the secrecy of one who will not be
prevented, she considered and carried out her plans. A place was
privately retained on the Bath and Devizes coach which passed every
morning before the gates of Bindon. Her few garments were gathered and
packed. A letter to the rector was left to be delivered after her
departure. It briefly stated that she felt it impossible to remain at
Bindon, and promised to communicate with him later on.
Unnoticed, she slipped away through the shadows of the little church;
and after consigning her small effects to Barnaby (and picking up, on a
sudden tender thought of her father, the anxious Belphegor) she struck
across the wet grass towards the park entrance, followed by the dismal
tolling of the Bindon church bell.
The hood of her cloak pulled over her face, its folds wrapped round her,
she sped through the misting rain, so plunged in thought as scarcely to
notice, until within a few paces, the knot of village folk advancing up
the avenue.
Then she halted, unpleasantly struck by something strange and
threatening in their demeanour. They were coming along at a great rate,
like people belated, talking eagerly among themselves, and with fierce
gesture. There were some eight or ten of them: an elderly man with a
long draggled streamer of black crape tied to a bludgeon, a couple of
lanky lads fighting over the possession of a pitchfork, and the rest
women, one of whom dragged a child by the hand.
Upon the instant that Ellinor and Barnaby halted they were recognised,
and a shout went up that made her blood run cold. The next moment she
was surrounded, and the words of execration hurled at her fell with
almost as stunning effect as the blows they seemed to presage.
“Witch! Poisoner! Murderer of poor people! She’s trying to run away! It
was she planted the poison bush: burn her with a faggot of it! She’s in
league with the Devil, and that’s the Devil’s imp. The witch and her
boy! Seize her, duck her!”
Angry hands were outstretched, and Ellinor, with energies suddenly
restored by the realisation of danger, stepped back against one of the
mighty beeches, holding out the wide cloak to shield Barnaby. A new howl
broke out at the sight of her burden.
“The witch and her cat! Burn her! Burn them!”
“Give me back my wife!” cried the man with the bludgeon.
“And where’s good Mrs. Nutmeg?” shrieked an old hag.
“See, Jamesie,” exclaimed the woman with the child, “spit upon her! It
is she who bewitched your poor daddy!”
The child hurled a stone which fell short of its aim. This was the
signal for the passage from anger to frenzy; and it would have fared ill
with Master Simon’s three innocent associates, had not it been for an
unexpected aid. Barnaby’s face was already streaming with blood, and
Ellinor had received on her arm a vicious blow—which Jamesie’s mother,
armed with a flint, had levelled at Belphegor—when the sound of an
authoritative shout produced a sudden halt. The sight of the keeper,
advancing at full run from his gate-lodge and significantly handling his
gun, immediately altered the complexion of affairs. Yet he had not come
a moment too soon, nor was there one to be lost; for already a few
stragglers, drunk with the triumph of destruction, were running down the
avenue towards them from the Herb-Garden.
“Stand back!” cried the keeper. “Stand back, John Mossmason, or I’ll
plug you! And you, Joe Barnwall, if you don’t drop that pitchfork you’ll
never dig a turnip again, or my name is not keeper!”
The broad cord-clad back was now between Ellinor and her foes. Keeping
his barrels levelled at the rioters, he whispered to her over his
shoulder:
“Run, ma’am, run and get into the lodge!”
At that instant the note of the post-horn rang out upon the air; the
Bath and Devizes coach was passing through the village.
The younger of the two discontented gentlemen who occupied damp outside
seats on the coach that day and had been looking forth in dudgeon upon a
world of dudgeon, never ceased in after years to recall the tale of that
ride as one fit for walnuts and wine.
“It was raining cats and dogs, and by ill-luck (as I thought then), I
and an elderly old buck had to put up with outsides: it was packed
inside. Well, sir, I was cursing pretty freely by the time we were
drawing Devizes. And when the coachman said he had to pick up a
passenger at the gates of Bindon-Cheveral, I was getting a curse out of
that, for an irregularity—when, gad, the words died on my tongue!
“A woman, sir, the loveliest woman these eyes were ever laid upon (my
good lady is not here, I can say it in your ear), running, running for
her life, bare-headed in the rain! By George, that was hair worth gazing
at! She held a cat in her arms, like a baby, her cloak, half-torn from
her back, flying behind. She was making for our coach. After her, an
overgrown gawk of a lad, with a bloody sconce, lugging her bundles
anyhow, the most frightened hare of a fellow it has ever been my lot to
see—turned out afterwards, to be a kind of natural, deaf and dumb. But
she, gad! she was brave for both! A grand creature, ’pon my word! Inside
the park there was a prodigious deal of shouting and scuffling, and two
or three big devils with pitchforks yelling something about a witch.
“‘Pray, gentlemen,’ says she, looking up at us, her eyes as blue as
forget-me-nots, her face as white as this napkin, but as calm as you or
I, ‘help me up,’ says she, ‘or they will kill me.’ And would you
believe, it, she hands the cat up first before she’d let any one extend
a hand to her? And the boy, he must come too! ‘I can’t leave him
behind,’ says she, ‘they would tear him to pieces.’ And, zounds, sir, if
it had not been for a keeper fellow with a gun who ran up and locked the
wicket gate in their very faces, some of those lads meant murder or I
never saw it written on a human face. Then it was: ‘On with you John!’
Off went the horn. Off went we, the inside females screeching like mad,
and the devils at the gate bellowing like wild beasts after their
prey....
“‘Well, this is a rum go!’ says the coachman, as he tucks the cat
between his boots. ‘I always thought this here place of the Cheverals
was asleep; dang me if it hasn’t wakened up with a vengeance!’
“A witch, sir, they’d called her. Not so far wrong there! Between you
and me and the bottle I’ve never been able to forget her. A strange
creature—all the women I’ve known would have gone off in a screaming fit
or a swoon. Not she. The first thing she does is to whip open one of her
little bundles and out with her handkerchief, and wipe and bind the
boy’s broken head as he squatted beside her; and then she turns to me on
the other side and hands me a scarf, and says she: ‘Would I be so kind
as to tie it round her arm, as tight as might be.’ And then I saw an
ugly gash in the pretty white flesh. ‘A hit with a stone,’ she says. And
not another word could I get, nor the other old boy (who was green with
jealousy at her speaking with me), nor John the coachman, though he
called her ‘my dear,’ and was as round as round with her, a fatherly
sort of man that any young female might confide in.
“She just pulled her hood over her face and lay back folding her arms,
the sound one over the hurt one, and sat staring at the gray wet walls
of Cheveral park as we skirted them. Her face looked like a white rose
in the black shadow, and by and by, I saw the great tears begin to
gather and roll down her cheeks one by one. I tell you, sir, my heart’s
not a particularly soft one, but it made it ache.
“Well, we set her down and her cat and her boy at York House. She paid
the boy’s fare and thanked us. I thought she was going in at the
York—but she went up without another word by Bartlett street. And I
never saw her again, nor heard more of her story.—Pass the bottle.”
THE STAR DREAMER
BOOK IV
Haunted by the starry head
Of her whose gentle will has changed my faith
And made my life a perfumed altar flame.
TENNYSON (_Maud_)
CHAPTER I
AH ME, THE MIGHT-HAVE-BEEN!
I cry to vacant chairs and widowed walls,
My house is left unto me desolate.
—TENNYSON (_Aylmer’s Field_).
Bindon woods were growing yellow. After an early and glorious summer,
rain had set in with much wind and storm, and though it was but the
first of September, the country had already begun to don its autumn
livery.
Sir David, returning from a devious pilgrimage, rode slowly up the
avenue. There was the scent of fallen leaves in the air and the ground
beneath the tread of his horse’s feet was sodden and spongy. It was a
sad and cloudy afternoon, with just now a brief respite between two
gusts of wind and rain, a streak of blue in the watery sky above the
soaking land. He had come fast and far; his horse was mud-bespattered,
his riding-boots discoloured to the knees. Both rider and steed seemed
dejected: so comes a man home from fruitless quest.
At the bend of the way, where the rectory walls skirted the avenue, Dr.
Tutterville suddenly stood forth. From afar, and with anxious eyes, the
parson and the squire scrutinised each other’s bearing, and it hardly
needed the melancholy greeting:
“No news!”
“No news!” to confirm the impression of failure.
The reverend Horatio had, during the last four weeks of anxiety and
fruitless search, lost some of his comfortable rotundity, some of his
placid ease of manner. The iron grey of his hair had lightened a little
more towards silver. He laid his hand upon the rider’s muddy knee and
paced beside him towards the house. After a little silence a melancholy
converse began.
“Wherever the poor child may be,” said the parson, “at any rate you are
satisfied that she has not fallen into the hands either of that
evil-living man, Colonel Harcourt, or of that light-spirited youth, Mr.
Luke Herrick. That at least should be a consolation.”
Yet he sighed as he spoke and looked questioningly at the other. But
David’s face became still more darkened.
“As I wrote to you,” he replied, after a little pause and with a sort of
repugnance, “I had Colonel Harcourt’s movements closely traced from the
moment of his leaving the ‘Cheveral Arms’ to the moment of our meeting
in Richmond Park, and afterwards. Ellinor and he——” He broke off then,
with a sudden irritation: “Great God,” he cried, “it was infamous to
suspect her of favour to that man.”
Dr. Tutterville shook his head.
“The best and the purest,” said he, “are often and naturally the most
easily deluded, David. I suspect her of nothing more than——”
But seeing Sir David wince he did not conclude his phrase. There fell
another silence, emphasised by the sucking sound of the horse’s hoofs on
the moist pathway and the dripping of the leaves over their heads. Then
the rector began again plaintively:
“The fair creature had grown into my old heart! Without her Bindon is
desolate! At any rate you are satisfied,” he repeated in a tone of the
most uncomfortable indecision, “and also as regards Mr. Herrick.”
Anger began to creep to the rider’s brow once more. But he mastered
himself and answered calmly enough:
“My dear doctor, I have written all this to you; do not bring me over
the weary ground again. Harcourt is now in bed, being nursed for his
second wound. I mentioned, did I not, that he had scarce recovered from
the ball I left in his shoulder—ah, doctor, I used to have a steadier
hand—before he had a second encounter, this time with Mr. Herrick.”
“I confess,” said the parson, with a melancholy shake of the head, “that
it is precisely this second meeting which reawakened all my doubts. You
know I had never been disposed to consider Colonel Harcourt seriously in
the matter, deeming it so much more probable that Ellinor should have
been attracted by the younger gentleman. And I had most earnestly
trusted that, the latter being (or I am no judge of character) an
honest-hearted youth, affairs were by no means past remedy.”
“You are right,” answered David, “Mr. Herrick is an honourable man. I
saw him the day before his meeting with Harcourt. What passed between us
is sacred to both. Suffice it: I am satisfied.”
The parson sighed and again shook his head.
“Satisfied!” he echoed. “Would I could feel satisfied about the welfare
of that poor child; nay, about any one detail of the whole incredible
business! At first I could have sworn.... You see, since her flight all
my theories are upset. There is only one thing clear, and that is the
emptiness of our lives without her!”
Thereupon the younger man’s passion burst forth. He struck the saddle
bow with his clenched hand:
“In Heaven’s name, spare me any more of this! My God, man, do you not
think I feel it at least as much as you? If she had grown into your
heart, how had it been with mine?”
“Forgive me,” interposed the other in alarm at his companion’s
vehemence. (Was this the old brain-sick David back again, was the old
story of Bindon House to begin once more?) “Forgive me,” he repeated. “I
had no idea....”
“No idea!” The rider looked down upon his companion with a bitter smile.
“And did I not hear you boast, but a moment ago, that you could read the
human countenance? No idea that I loved Ellinor! Why, man, have I not
loved her since the first instant these eyes beheld her, ah, me, nearly
a year ago! with the lamplight shining on her golden head! And her blue
eyes—her blue eyes!”
With the inexplicable shyness of the man for his fellow-human, the
parson almost recoiled from the vision of passion unexpectedly laid bare
before him. But like those mountain-chasms filled with mist to the
wayfarer’s eye, save when a rare and sudden gust of wind allows their
depth to be fathomed for a moment, the deeps of Sir David’s heart were
swiftly veiled again. He resumed the thread of his thought, in a
composed manner, though somewhat dreamily, as if speaking to himself
rather than to a listener:
“I came down that first night from my tower, I remember, eyes and mind
dazed by the glory of that new star which I was so inordinately elated
at having been the first to see, and I thought,” with a little laugh at
once tender and exceedingly melancholy, “that another miracle—I was in
the mood for miracles—had been wrought for me, and that the star in the
firmament had taken living shape on earth!”
“In the name of goodness, what prevented you from telling her so then!”
exclaimed the parson with sudden testiness. “Aye, David, and sparing us
all this sorrow? You could have won her easily enough.”
“Because I was mad, I suppose. Oh, my dear old friend, never protest! I
am sane again now, sane enough at least to know how mad I have been—call
it by what euphemistic name you like. I might have won her, but did not
know myself, could not trust myself. I believed I had done with human
love, you know. I had consecrated myself to worlds beyond this one. She
came to call me down from my unnatural life. She spoke to me, with sweet
human voice, of lovely human things; she laid her tender hand on mine.
It was my madness that I dulled my ears, that I made no answer to her
touch. And yet there was happiness, ah, God, what happiness, in it all!
Then came that last strange night! What happened to me I cannot recall.
But ever since then I have been so sane, that, before God, I could
almost wish the old folly back now that I have lost all. The curse of
common sense is on me: I can no longer lose myself in visions on my
tower. There stands Bindon, my house, my desolate house, an empty shell,
full of echoes. Before me lies a desolate, empty life, full of memories.
Everything, everything speaks of her, calls for her! Nothing can ever be
sweet to me for the want of her. Once she said to me: ‘David, David, why
is your heart empty, why are there no children round your knee!’ And I
made answer: ‘Never can such things be for me.’ And then she wept over
me.... You are right, sir, I might have won her. Sometimes, reason
notwithstanding, under the pulse of vague, elusive memories I cannot
fix, I think that in spite of all she loved me.”
The parson started again and flung an apprehensive glance at the
speaker. The latter noted it; and the cold desolation of his voice
changed for a light tone of irony that was somehow quite as melancholy:
“But never fear, dear sir, this is no return of madness. Who can fathom
a woman’s heart? All lies shrouded in mystery and, as you say, we know
but one thing:—that we have lost her!”
“Strange is it not?” began David once more, “that I should remember so
clearly every word she ever said to me, though my poor brain was so sick
at the time! But indeed it seems to me as if, until the moment when
first a mantle of gorgeous dream enwrapt me round and then a blank, a
blessed blank fell on me and in it I lost as in a great sea all the
miserable wreckage of my wasted life—it seems to me, I say, as if my
illness was that I remembered too much, too constantly, too vividly, for
mental health. And now I remember still, yet not as of old with torture
of shame and fury, but as if memories of her were all that life has left
of sweetness.” He reined in his horse, and, gazing straight before him
as at the rift of blue between the heavy clouds, went on still dreamily:
“Strange, does it not seem to you? Strange even to myself! And I who
could not trust her, when her every look and smile was for me, now I
trust her, although, standing before us all, she would not defend her
woman’s fame by one word.”
They had reached the bridge that led across the moat to the yards. Here
David, having hailed a stableman from a distance, dismounted and
delivered over his horse.
“Give me your arm, doctor,” said he, “I am stiff from the saddle and
cold from my thoughts. I dread the going in; let us prolong our way
sufficiently to put my dull blood in movement again. Yes, my kind old
friend,” he went on, in answer to a shrewd look, “it is even so; I dread
the moment of crossing my threshold where there is nought to greet us
but whispers of the might-have-been.”
“Man was never meant to live alone,” said Tutterville sententiously.
“How often have I not told you so?”
Leaning on the parson’s arm, David impelled him towards the narrow path
that led to the fateful Herb-Garden. The wind had risen again; a
rainstorm was impending. Overhead the branches were shaken as by an
angry capricious hand; shreds of green foliage, and now and then an
isolated prematurely yellow leaf, fluttered athwart them as they went.
Sir David halted with a start as they came into the open space under the
yew-tree. Where the ancient gateway had, with delicate curvet and
strength of iron, guarded the forbidden close, was now a gap, ugly as a
wound, beyond which the stretch of devastated garden lay raw to the
gaze. Against the broken-down wall the useless unhinged doors lay
propped.
“I have had nothing done to this place since you left,” said the rector,
breaking the heavy pause. “I thought that perhaps your wish would
coincide with mine; that you would give orders to have these precincts
cleared and levelled, and thrown in with the rest of the grounds, so
that even its unhappy memory might die out among us. Over those new
graves in the churchyard the sod is growing green again; and in the
hearts of our poor ignorant village folk, resignation to the will of
Providence, and repentance and shame for their cowardly turbulence, has
taken the place of all angry feelings. I may tell you now, David, how
grateful they all are for your not pursuing them with punishment.”
“Pah!” interrupted Sir David with impatient contempt. “What were the
wretches to me—since I had heard she had escaped! What care I but to
find her again!”
The parson halted disconcerted. Sir David had abruptly left his side to
walk rapidly up to the gates and examine them. Then he turned. His look
and demeanour had something of the singularity of former days. And from
his distance:
“Rase these walls!” he cried. “Sweep these memories!... Have I not just
said to you that memory is all that I have left! This wall shall be
built up, these gates hung again; and no hand but mine shall touch what
remains of those beds that she tended and planted. No feet but mine
shall tread the paths her feet have pressed. Here shall all lie as
secret and desolate as my life without her.—Let us go!”
Worthy Dr. Tutterville walked on in silence. His warm heart was too
sincerely grieved for his eccentric companion to resent his present
attitude; at the same time he was conscious of a humanly-irritated
regret that the present form of eccentricity should not have manifested
itself a little earlier. Presently Sir David took up the thread of the
conversation where the rector had left it.
“So your good parishioners are grateful for my indulgence,” he said,
with something approaching a sneer. “Let them thank the Providence to
whom, as you tell me, they are beginning to be resigned, that He
protected the object of their hatred from them! Had I not received the
keeper’s word that she was safe and sound, I would have left no stone
unturned to make every scoundrel of them know the full penalties of the
law touching assault and housebreaking. They complained of poison ...
they would have learned something of gallows! But their offence to me
was not worth the trouble their punishment would entail. She escaped—let
them be!”
“These are hard words,” said the parson disturbed, and he was about to
add all the excuses he had already found for his flock in the trouble
they had themselves endured and in the evil influence of Margery among
them, when David interrupted again:
“I am a hard man, it seems! Well, I need be, to endure life.”
And Dr. Tutterville wisely held his peace.
The two friends proceeded towards Bindon House in silence. The reverend
Horatio was now pondering over certain phrases of David’s which seemed
ever and again, like the lightning that on a dark night flashes out upon
the bewildered wayfarer, one instant to show him the road, only to leave
him the next hopelessly groping in the mire.
“If she had grown into your heart, how had it been with mine!... Why,
man, I have loved her since the first instant! First I was wrapt in
gorgeous dreams, and then there came the blank. Then came the blank—then
came the _blank_.” The phrase recurred, with meaning insistence like the
burden of a catch. Presently he gave a kind of start. If he dared but
connect these flashes! If he but dared hazard his unsteady steps upon
the astonishing road they seemed to reveal! But he kept his peace.
In spirit David was back in the Herb-Garden, not the poor, dishonoured,
bruised place upon which he had just turned his back, but the garden of
that wondrous dawn where he and Ellinor had wandered into such a lovely
land. He yearned for the moment when the guardian gates should be erect
once more and the key of them within his hand.—Therein, as a man locks
up the casket that holds the faded flowers, the crushed letters, all
that fate has left him of his love, would he hold close for evermore the
tenderest memory of his life.
CHAPTER II
A MESSENGER OF GLAD TIDINGS
Oh, my love, my breath of life, where art thou!
—KEATS (_Endymion_).
Sir David turned into the library and flung himself into a chair with a
sigh that was almost a groan. And Dr. Tutterville could have echoed it
as he looked round:—the ghosts that Ellinor had chased had all returned
with the dust on the window-pane, with the dead flowers in the bowl,
with the stagnant atmosphere of a fireless unaired room. The very books
seemed to have lost their souls, to have become but matter, telling of
nought but the futility of all things. Dimness and desolation brooded
again over the house.
The parson tried to pump up some consoling phrase, stopped midway,
coughed, went to the window and began to tap aimlessly on the pane. A
selfish, elderly longing seemed to draw him back towards his own cosy
fireside, where no haunting regret had ever quite extinguished the light
of sunny Greek or philosophic Latin; where melancholy assumed no sterner
guise than the placid analytic countenance of old Burton. He glanced
again at the long figure in the chair, now bent in utter weariness, and
the inner voice asked anxiously in a whisper: “How long will the
new-found sanity last in such conditions as these?”
Into this brooding came a sudden clamour from without. It was the voice
of Madam Tutterville calling upon her spouse with every note of
impatience and exultation; and a moment later the lady herself appeared
in the doorway, panting but radiant.
“Horatio, my dear doctor! Good gracious, man, what are you doing here? I
have sought you everywhere as the spouse of the canticle sought the
goat. Oh, my goodness, let me sit down and find breath! I have news!”
News! On her entrance, David had drawn himself slowly together with
lustreless eye and turned vaguely to greet the new-comer, but her last
words brought him to her side with a spring that overtook even his
exclamation.
“News!” he echoed. And the two men looked at each other. What could news
mean to them but one thing?
Madam Tutterville tottered to a chair, untied her hat-strings, let her
hands drop upon her comfortable knees, and turned her eyes from one
eager face to the other. Her own full-moon countenance was irradiated
with a harvest-like glow. The infantile smile of her best moods was upon
her lips.
But woman will remain woman no matter how clothed with superfluous
flesh. Sophia positively coquetted with the moment, dallied with her own
consciousness of power as complacently as any slim chit of eighteen. She
vowed she was tired to death; pettishly requested Horatio not to hang
over her: she was hot, she was stifling. She then, in a tone of
promising importance, announced that she was back from Bath (for her
autumn shopping), and then broke off to stare at David as if she had but
just become aware of his presence, and to comment upon his unexpected
return with exasperating interest.
“And what news have you brought?” quoth she, with emphasis.
Bitter disappointment set its mark on David’s face.
“Have you found traces of Ellinor?” pursued the lady.
David drew back, shaking his head; but the parson found a different
meaning in his wife’s bantering tone. He caught her plump hand.
“Ah, excellent Sophia!” said he. “I might have known you would come to
the rescue, as ever! You have heard of the child!”
Madam Tutterville was no longer able to control the tide of her triumph:
“Heard of her? Traced—found her—seen her! But this hour come from her!
Have held her in these arms!”
Her voice rose with ever increasing flourish till it broke upon the
over-high note.
The next instant she was clasped in her lord’s embrace; and, as she
sobbed with joy upon his shoulder, it may be that even the worthy
gentleman’s own eyes grew wet. David stood quite still, in that
intensity of stillness which cloaks an intensity of emotion. When the
worthy couple had recovered from their effusiveness, Madam Tutterville,
now with full gusto, began to narrate her story:
“You see, dear Horatio, I could not but feel that you regarded me to
blame for poor Ellinor’s flight. And perhaps you are right, doctor, for
I fear, in my anxiety, I did indeed fail to observe the scriptural rule
that silence is a most excellent thing in woman: A melancholy breach of
my usual rule of life——”
“Yes, dear,” said the parson blandly, “and so it was in Bath, Sophia——”
“Pray, my dear doctor, allow me time to speak. I do not mind admitting
to you that the expedition to Bath was undertaken less with a view to
the store-room (though you did require the Spanish olives), than——” she
paused. “There has been a coldness in your eye this past month, Horatio.
Oh, yes, my dear doctor, there is no use in denying! And, well, well, I
grant you, it was a very sad thing, whatever we might have to reproach
her with, to think of that poor young thing cast upon the world. You
have always laughed at my presentiments; but, as the prophet says, there
are more things in Heaven and earth, Horatio——”
“For God’s sake,” interrupted David suddenly, “this is torture! Where
did you see Ellinor? How is she?”
Madam Tutterville started, less at the words than at the tone. She
stared a second blankly at the speaker, then meekly replied:
“I found her at Bath. She actually was no further than Bath! In a little
lodging. She has been ill, poor dear, but now is strong again. Oh, poor
child, she has suffered!”
David turned away. But the parson interposed eagerly:
“And was she alone? Has she told you all?”
Whereat Madam Tutterville was not a little irate.
“Alone, sir—what are you thinking of! I pray you remember, she is my own
niece.” She checked herself. “Alone, yes, indeed save for the two dumb
things, Belphegor and Barnaby. And as for telling me.... What do you
take me for? Do you suppose I should be plaguing her with questions at
such a moment? And it’s my belief,” asserted Aunt Sophia energetically,
“that she’ll never tell anyone anything. When I as much as hinted again
that she might confide in my bosom, she closed her lips and neither man
nor mortal could have drawn a word from her; no, not if they had put her
on the rack!”
“Singular,” mused the parson. But there was a latent illumination in his
eye.
After a while, which was a long while to the impatience of her two
hearers, Madam Tutterville had told all she had to tell:
She had traced Ellinor, “in a luminous fashion,” she averred; first by
the sight of the unmistakable Belphegor washing his face on the window
ledge of a quiet little grey house in a quiet little back street up
which Providence (as she piously expressed it), in the shape of a stupid
chairman, had inadvertently led her. So struck was she at the remarkable
resemblance to her old cat-acquaintance, she noted in the four-legged
philosopher seated among certain dead geraniums, that she had, upon an
impulse, arrested her progress. And here (as she took some trouble to
point to her spouse) her intelligence had given that effective aid to
the designs of Providence, without which the Heavenly Hints would have
been thrown away. No sooner had she called a halt than Barnaby himself
appeared on the doorstep with a basket on his arm. And after that it was
but a short way from the chair to the poor room: and Ellinor was
gathered to her arms!
But, to all their questioning, in which indeed it seemed the rector for
the most part voiced Sir David’s eagerness, beyond the capital fact of
the discovery of the truant, Madam Tutterville could give them but
little information concerning Ellinor herself; none as to her plans. She
had been ill. She was well again. She looked pale, but not sickly; was
very silent; refused to come back to the rectory; was in no want, and
had prospect of employment. What work and where, she avoided telling.
The utmost Madam Tutterville had been able to extract from her was the
solemn promise not to leave Bath without further communicating with her;
and this was on the understanding that Madam Tutterville would then take
Barnaby into the rectory—since it was now safe to do so.
“And did she ever speak of David?” asked the reverend Horatio, his eye
just blinking across to the latter’s white face.
“Oh, she asked me how he was ... just at the end. I was actually on the
doorstep when she caught me by the arm: ‘How is David, aunt?’” quoth
she.
Madam Tuttervile’s tone expressed the mystification which something
singular in her niece’s manner seemed to have evoked.
“I told her he was away in London. Believing, of course, that you were
still there, David. And I told her how well you are. What wonderful
accounts we had to give of you. Quite, quite your old self, before—Ah!”
She broke off a little disconcerted at the allusions to which her tongue
was drifting.
“And Ellinor said?” inquired the parson gently, this time keeping his
gaze away from his friend’s face.
“Ellinor!” The lady’s visage became wrinkled into fresh lines of
perplexity. “Poor dear child! I fear she is very weak and nervous still.
‘I am so glad, so glad!’ she said, that was all.... But, do you know, I
verily believe that, as she closed the door on me, I heard her sob. I
had it in my heart to go back but, dear Horatio, she had pushed the
bolt!”
Madam Tutterville turned from her contemplation of the doctor’s
determinedly impassive features to stare at David. And whatever she then
saw, it seemed all at once to procure her the liveliest, yet the most
agreeable, surprise. On the verge of an outcry, she checked herself,
nodded, pursed her lips, rolled an eye of weighty meaning at her lord,
and rising, remarked with an air of abnormal detachment, that it was
getting late and she had had a vast of fatigue.
The parson, with a gesture of acquiescence, turned to David.
“Good evening, then,” said he.
And with a little burst of feeling which sat very well on his dignity,
he turned back to look admiringly at his wife.
“How beautiful over the hills,” he exclaimed, “are the feet of the
messenger of glad tidings!”
Madam Tutterville glanced down at her sandals and smiled with
whole-hearted delight and pride. But the rector, instead of following up
his leave-taking, halted on his way to the door, lost in profound
reflection. She respected the mood for an appreciable moment, then
called on him, first tenderly, then with a shade of impatience.
“My dear love,” said he, when roused at last, “I pray you, wait for me
in the parlour. There are now, I remember, a few words I must say to
David. I will not keep you above a minute, my beloved Sophia.”
As the door closed the parson stood a little while in silence beside
David’s motionless figure, regarding him gravely. Then said he:
“David! What is Bindon without Ellinor?”
David slowly turned his eyes.
“Why do you say that to me? Do I not know? Have I not felt it? Did you
not yourself see what the moment of crossing my desolate threshold was
to me! Did you not come with me into this empty room and hear its
emptiness howl for her like the emptiness of my heart? Oh, for the sound
of the rustle of her dress—of the least of her footfalls on the stairs!”
He broke off, and suddenly lost his concentrated composure in a cry:
“I’d give my soul to have her back!”
At this the parson was not shocked. Indeed he smiled more genially than
if his companion had expressed the most pious resignation.
“Fortunately,” said he, “the price need not be so great!”
For a moment, in the glimmering dusk, David stared. Then catching his
meaning, gave an inarticulate exclamation and sprang towards the door,
where laughing now, the elder man laid hands on him.
“What! Is it boot and saddle, and spur and away? A Lochinvar! A very
Lochinvar! Nay, nay, we are boys no longer, David. That is the right
spirit, man, but we must act more circumspectly. Remember, it is a
wounded bird, mysteriously wounded, and must be approached gently and
touched tenderly. Nay, never look like that! Lord, what weak children
this love doth make of men! See, David, leave me but one day to work for
you. Trust the older head. Age has its privileges: the old man can step
in where the lover must stand aloof. As for you, get you to your stars:
the clouds are driving off, ’tis like to be a clear night. Get you to
your stars and dream!”
And as the Star-Dreamer made a gesture of indignant denegation the other
broke again into a chuckling laugh.
“To your tower!” he insisted. “I never bade you dream only of heavenly
things—go dream, in your endless spaces, of the sweetest thing on
earth!”
“Horatio,” began Madam Tutterville with great solemnity. They had
reached the shade of the avenue and the lady, while leaning
affectionately on the rector’s arm, had maintained up to this an
unwonted silence—“Horatio,” said she, “you will no doubt scarcely credit
it, but, without vanity, I may say that this has been a day of special
revelation between myself and the Lord. I have observed. I have noted.
There are certain signs. A woman’s eye, my dear sir, is quick in these
matters. In fact, Horatio, I really believe David is in love with
Ellinor.”
“My dear Sophia, you do not say so!”
“Indeed, doctor, but I do. Ah, you smile, you shake your head! Well,
well, it would be strange, I grant, and something contradictious of fate
that this should come to pass at last, which we have both so much
desired, when one may say it would only seem now but an added
complication. But (pray let me finish, Horatio), who are we that we
should doubt the power of Providence? ‘He can make the wilderness
blossom like the rose.’”
“A beautiful text, Sophia, and quoted with commendable accuracy!
Nevertheless,” returned the parson, “I would most earnestly advise you
not to confide these very extraordinary suppositions of yours to any
other human being. I have so high an opinion of your acumen, Madam
Tutterville, and you have so brilliantly acquitted yourself to-day, that
it would be a thousand pities to spoil so bright a record by these
wild—these altogether feminine imaginings.”
The poor lady acquiesced with a chastened air. When her Horatio adopted
this decisive tone her submission was unqualified.
She did not speak again till they had reached the mellow mossy wall of
the rectory orchard. Then she hazarded, in a small voice, that she dared
say Dr. Tutterville would only laugh at her again, but she could not
rest easy in her conscience without telling him that the more she had
thought of the matter lately, and especially since her recent interview
with Ellinor, the more the conviction had grown in her mind that the
poor, pretty dear had been the victim of some base conspiracy. “That
Margery!... not to speak of Lady Lochore——”
The rector halted, seized his wife by both hands, and exclaimed in a
tone of genial admiration that brought back with a leap all her
self-esteem:
“Sophia, there speaks your wise head! And,” he added, pressing the hands
he held: “there speaks my Sophia’s kind heart.”
And arm-in-arm once more, and both smiling, they crossed the peaceful
threshold of their home.
CHAPTER III
NOT WORDS, BUT HANDS MEETING
... Indeed I love thee: come
Yield thyself up: my hopes and thine are one:
Accomplish thou my manhood and thyself;
Lay thy sweet hands in mine and trust to me.
—TENNYSON (_The Princess_).
The rector passed half the night in that solitude which was ever
respected by his wife as devoted to elegant study. But his energies were
occupied by subjects neither classic nor biblic, nor yet philosophic. It
was the diplomatic composition of one short letter that kept him
employed into the deep hours.
The purpose of this missive was so close to his heart, the matter was so
delicate; so necessary was it to display some guile, that the erudite
gentleman had seldom set his wits a more difficult task.
The finished draft was of a masterpiece of its kind, though one could
hardly say that the impression it conveyed to the reader adhered closely
to actual fact. But, as it certainly conveyed the impression desired by
the reverend Horatio, he read it over with great complacency before
folding and sealing it. And when he retired at last to his couch, his
conscience was more placid than altogether became a divine of the
Anglican church, who had just been guilty of dealing in Jesuitical
casuistry.
About six o’clock the next evening, as the rector sipped his
after-dinner cup of bohea, he made casually the following announcement
to his spouse:
“My love, I despatched a messenger to Bath by the coach this morning.”
Madam Tutterville put down her spoon and looked up eagerly.
“Indeed, doctor?”
“Yes, Sophia. I discovered that there was positively not another pinch
of macabaw in my _tabatière_.”
The lady examined him sharply. Then before his impassive countenance her
own fell considerably.
“It is a pity,” she remarked with some dryness, “that you did not make
that discovery before I started yesterday.”
“It is, perhaps,” said the rector.
There was a slight pause; then the gentleman rose. “A lovely evening,”
said he. “I think, Sophia, I will stroll down the park and meet the
coach on its return.”
“My dear doctor, after dinner rest awhile.”
“I am pining, Sophia, for that _rapee_—or did I say macabaw? There’s not
a pinch, not a pinch.”
As he passed out into the little garden, he said to himself:
“I am growing positively Machiavelian!” And thereat the abandoned rector
breathed in the soft air, luxuriously.
It was a lovely evening, as he had said. September had been drifting on,
in peace and suavity; and, this day, summer seemed to pause and watch
the coming of inevitable autumn as a beautiful woman pauses and looks
down the hill of life with a sweet resignation that lends her a new
pathetic charm, unknown to the pride of her June or even to the
exquisite promise of her April. The light was golden-yellow over the
grass, where the shadows of the elms lay long. Now and then an
early-withered leaf crackled under the parson’s foot. The rooks were
cawing for their last muster of the day; the kine were lowing towards
far-off byres. There was a tramp of feet along the road without the
walls and the distant sound of voices. The whole air was full of the
music of evening home-comings. A sense of peace descended on the good
man’s soul, he bared his grey-crowned head and looked up at the placid
sky, and felt a kind of faith in happiness.
It was to him as if the striving, the heat and the burden of the day had
passed from their lives, and God’s best gift, rest, was about to be
bestowed at last.
Even as he was drawing near the gates, Ellinor was alighting from the
coach, pale, tired, anxious-eyed, followed by a dusty Barnaby, who
carried under his arm a cross Belphegor. They hurried through the wicket
into the green arms of the park. Obedient to his mistress’s gesture, the
dumb boy with his burden struck immediately across the grass towards the
rectory, while she paused to draw a deep breath and taste for a spell
the sad delight of being once more in that beloved enclosure, which had
been, and was still, all the world to her.
Presently she was startled to find the reverend Horatio at her side.
“Thrice welcome!” cried he, and there was unwonted emotion in his rich
kind voice. She was folded in a paternal embrace. But, with both hands
upon his shoulders, she drew back, to scan his countenance; and her eyes
shot mingled joy and reproach upon him for that he looked so hale and
placid. The while his gaze pitied the narrower oval of her flower face,
the paled cheek that had been so warm-tinted, the shadowed eyes that had
been so bright.
“My dear, my dear,” he said, “you look very ill!”
“And you, Uncle Horatio, singularly well!” She drew still further from
him as she spoke. And suddenly a rush of indignant blood dyed her
pallor. “Why have you brought me here?” she cried. “If—oh, sir, this is
not right or kind!” With agitated gesture she sought a letter in her
reticule. “Indeed, sir, you must have deceived me!”
But the rector smiled on unperturbed. There was no guilt, but rather an
expression of self-approval, writ upon his every line. Ellinor unfolded
a letter:
“My child, will you come and help nurse back to health a sick and
weary man? I would not summon you, but that I know your kind heart,
and that you give us love for love. I think the sight of you will go
far towards making a cure. I shall expect you to-morrow.—Your old
UNCLE HORATIO.”
“P. S.—You will think that the sickness is sudden—not so sudden,
perhaps! I will not say that it may not be dangerous, if your help is
withheld.”
In resentful tones Mrs. Marvel read out this artful billet. The rector
showed no sign of confusion.
“Oh, uncle!” said she, when she had finished.
“Well, child,” he returned, and tucked her rebellious arm under his own,
“well, here has Bindon got you again, and here shall Bindon hold you!”
She went a little way by his side in silence. Bindon grass was tender to
her feet and Bindon airs balmy to her face. Bindon woods, gathering
close about her, seemed to fold her round with a sense of security and
faithful guardianship—David’s Bindon, full of him, though empty just
now, as she thought, of his dear presence. God, was it not all too
sweet? Was not her mad heart too insensately throbbing with that
poisoned sweetness of it—and to what end? She wrenched her hand from the
close pressure of his elbow:
“Why have you played me this cruel trick? Why have you lured me here on
a pretence?” she asked again, resentfully.
Before the passion of her distress, parson Tutterville dropped the
amiable banter of speech and manner and became grave.
“My dear child,” he answered, taking both her hands in his— “there was
no pretence. There is a sick man here who needs you very much, sorely
indeed!”
His meaning flashed into her soul almost before the words had left his
lips. She formed the word: “David!” And he felt her tremble violently.
“I understood David was away,” she said. “He is ill?”
He was shocked at himself for the anxiety he had unwittingly caused;
and, moved to the very core by this depth of feeling he had hitherto
barely guessed at:
“Forgive me, child,” he said gently. “David returned yesterday. He is
not sick in body—no,” hastily reading yet whiter terror on her face,
“nor yet in mind, thank God! But he is sick at heart.”
“Sick at heart!”
“Aye, for want of you!”
Once more Ellinor crimsoned, but this time it was the “lovely banner of
love” that flaunted on her poor white face.
“Did David send for me?”
The cry smote the good man now with its sound of irrepressible joy.
Short as their interview had been, he felt ever more strongly how clumsy
were even his well-meaning fingers upon this delicate thing—a woman’s
heart. “One man only,” he said to himself, “has the right to play on
that lute—that is the man she loves.” And aloud:
“No, David does not know,” he replied.
“Then why am I here-what will he think?”
She looked wildly round, almost as if she would have started running
back all those miles to her hiding-place. The rector laid a restraining
hand upon her shoulder. She turned on him fiercely.
“You should not have brought me here!”
“My child, you should never have left us!”
When there was that tone in Horatio Tutterville’s voice and that look in
his kind eye, his rarely exercised authority made itself irresistibly
felt. Ellinor’s reproachful anger was turned to a filial pleading:
“Dear uncle, how could I remain, how can I remain?... after ... after——”
Her lips trembled: they could not frame the words of the odious charge
which still lay against her fair fame.
“And have we been so wanting towards you, Ellinor, all this time, that
you feel there is not one of us to whom you could give your confidence?”
She gave a little cry as if the reproach had stabbed her.
“Ah, no! Tis not like that! Oh, Uncle Horatio, it is because I cannot
speak. If you knew, you would be the first to see that I cannot speak.”
Then all the shrewd surmises that had been floating in Dr. Tutterville’s
brains ever since David’s own confession assumed the complexion of
certainty. No need for him to pry further. He knew. At least he knew
quite enough. His first triumph at his own sagacity was succeeded by a
gush of admiration for the steadfast self-abnegation of the woman.
“Keep your secret, child,” he said tenderly. “We are all, mark me, all,
quite ready to trust you.”
But Ellinor no longer heard him. She was looking past him, towards the
house. Her eyes had become fixed—then dilated. She shivered again
slightly, and then she stood quite still. David, with long, quick
strides, was coming across the chequered shade and light of the avenue.
Horatio Tutterville caught his breath slightly and stepped back against
the bole of a vast-girthed elm so as to sink his noticeable personality
almost out of sight. The crisis had come sooner than he expected. He had
planned it to be under Bindon’s roof—well, it was fated to be under the
arches of Bindon’s trees! Now were the matters passing out of his
muddling hands. Now was the crucial moment of the two lives on which he
hung all his own hopes, the lives of those who were to him son and
daughter, to whom he looked to be the crown of his old age. Good man,
his ambition was selfless enough: all he asked of these two was to be
happy! From behind the springing twigs he watched, with a beating heart.
When her lover was within a few paces of her, Ellinor, moved by some
uncontrollable impulse, went forward to meet him. She took a hasty step
or two and then stood, hands outstretched. And David saw her, with a
shaft of yellow light striking her white forehead and flaming in her
enaureoled hair, poised in lovely waiting for his welcome—even as, now
nearly a year ago, he had first seen her and deemed that his beauteous
star-vision had taken human shape.
There were no words—their hands met. There was no surprise in his eyes:
only a great joy.
“Something drove me hither,” he said presently, “and it was you! The
whole day I could not rest, and you were coming home, coming back to me!
Oh, Ellinor, never leave us again! We are dead without you, Bindon and
I!”
She looked up at him with brimming eyes, eyes as blue as his star.
“Never again,” she returned, “if you and Bindon want me!”
Then David bent and laid his lips upon hers. And hand-in-hand, gravely
they walked together through the trees.
The parson looked after them, a broad smile upon his lips. Then he wiped
his forehead and then he wiped his eyes. Then he came out from his
discreet place and blew deep a puffing breath of relief. How he had
plotted and planned; how cautiously and tortuously he had worked for
this; how many convincing speeches he had rehearsed; how many intricate
scenes, tearful or passionate, through which his tact alone was to pilot
the sensitive lovers.... And behold! It was so simple! Oh, simple. Not a
word of explanation, no start, no cry, no inquiry, no tears!—They met
and clasped hands and kissed. And yet how natural it all was! The
inevitable coming together of two who could not live without each other.
“I will allow them a couple of hours of paradise,” said the rector
importantly to himself, as, quite forgotten, he turned in the opposite
direction, “before calling them to earth again. I will even bring the
news to Sophia and bid her prepare the guest-chamber.”
“A special licence,” thought the reverend gentleman, professionally, as
he reached his garden gate. “Only a special licence, I believe, will
meet the requirements of the case.” His hand on the latch he began to
laugh softly: “I have certainly been on the verge of wiliness. It is
fortunate that Sophia will have a vast deal to occupy her mind before
the nuptials, for I am not going to spoil these wondrous results by one
word. Poor Sophia, I fear there are certain explanations which are
destined to be for ever withheld from thee!”
He could afford to feel superior over the thought of her unsatisfied
curiosity, his superior acumen having put him out of reach of any such
mortifying situation. The reverend Horatio knew Ellinor’s secret, and
was content that she should keep it. He would not even allow himself to
speculate upon whether she would reveal it to David; and if so, in what
manner. That was part of the sacredness of their future life. It
belonged to the sanctuary which every lover keeps for the beloved, and
into which, not even with uncovered feet or bowed head, might the most
reverent stranger dare to enter.
CHAPTER IV
A DREAM OF WOODS AND OF LOVE
Has our whole earth gone nearer to the glow
Of your soft splendours, that you look so bright?
_I_ have climbed nearer out of lonely Hell.
Beat, happy stars, timing with things below,
Beat with my heart more blest than heart can tell.
—TENNYSON (_Maud_).
Five days went like a dream over Ellinor’s head. And when she woke up
upon the sixth and saw the daylight grow upon the panelled wall of her
room at the rectory, and knew it was the day that would see her David’s
wife, she still felt as if she were in a dream. But it was a dream of
great peace. All conflict, all violent emotion, all sense even of having
to decide for herself, had gone from her. She was being guided and
willingly went, without a single anxious thought for the future.
As in a dream she allowed Madam Tutterville, who fluttered between
smiles and tears, to robe her in her wedding garment. “Wear your grey
gown,” David had once said to her. And so she was clothed this day in
the colour he had liked.
Dream-like still was the simple ceremony in Bindon’s mossy little
church, where a very solemn and reverent rector gave their union the
blessing of God from the depth of his fatherly heart.
Coming down the aisle she noted with a vague smile what a monstrous
white tie, what a cauliflower of a button-hole, adorned the figure of
old Giles; how sheepishly some village notabilities were peeping at the
new lady of Bindon as she paused to lay her wedding flowers on the stone
that had but so lately been shifted for the laying to rest of Bindon’s
sorcerer; how deeply these same good people curtsied—deepest those who
had been most anxious to bring faggots for a witch’s pyre; how loud a
cheer gave Joe Barnwall, whose pitchfork thrust had nearly ended all
weal and woe for her but a month ago; with what strenuous childish
importance the chubby hand that had flung stones at her, now helped to
strew flowers before her bridal foot!
Then a golden day at the rectory—long and yet strangely short. There was
a wonderful wedding feast of four—which the rector vastly commended.
They had the first pears from the rector’s pear-tree. And the rector and
his lady quoted, after their special fashion, to their heart’s content.
The rector gave a toast and made a little speech, with as much gusto, as
felicitous a turn of phrase and as elegant a delivery as if he had been
presiding at the most select gathering Oxford dignity could produce.
At sunset, however, the moment fixed by herself for walking forth with
her husband to her home, Ellinor suddenly awoke—awoke to the fact that
she was married to her beloved, that she was his and he was hers, for
ever; that they were starting on their new life together—and yet that
there still was something between them!
Her secret was still untold; that secret once so heavy, now so glad;
that secret which once she had guarded with so anxious watch upon
herself, which now the minutes were all too slow till she could set it
free!
He had not asked for it: he never would. Better than all, he was content
to believe in her. He, whom a diseased mistrust of his fellow-creatures
had driven from the world for the best part of his life, could show to
her, now in circumstances so extraordinary, this beautiful blind
confidence. Oh, how she loved him for it! How rich, since he loved her
thus, should be his reward! How happy was she in this planning of the
supreme moment of his joy! So, with the touch of the rector’s fatherly
hand upon her brow, and aunt Sophia’s last tear-bedewed kiss upon her
cheek; with her familiar old grey cloak wrapped round her wedding
finery, and the little bunch from the Herb-Garden (Barnaby’s quaint
offering) sweet upon her breast, she passed forth from the little
autumnal orchard into the vast green spaces of the park. Close against
David she pressed, leaning upon him, walking in thought-laden silence.
In silence too he went, respecting her mood; but each time he turned his
face upon her under the yellow light, she marked its radiance; and in
the quivering trouble of her joy all the web of her pretty schemes
seemed shaken apart, so that she was fain to begin to weave afresh.
It was a lemon and orange sunset reflected round the sky—the sunset that
presages storm—and the wind was already high and tore with swelling
organ-chant through the trees of the avenue; a great mild west wind,
booming up from the woods, hurling past them with a beat as of wide soft
wings and rushing on with its song of triumph.
“Let us go by the wood,” said Ellinor. He turned to her quickly, the
glory of the sinking day in his eyes.
“To you too, then,” he said, “this is a good hour! Listen to our wedding
choral that the wind now sings in the arches of these trees.”
They turned across the turf towards where elm and ash, oak and scented
pine made a night of their own already, though at the top of many a
swaying bough the thrush and the blackbird still piped to the gleaming
west; though the rooks were still circling and the first star shone no
brighter than a small white daisy in a strip of eastward sky, faintly
green like a fairy field. In the woody depths they drew yet closer
together. Here, though the wind-voices were never hushed at all, but
kept up their chant continuously overhead, the lower spaces seemed so
still, that the lovers almost thought to go in silence beneath a canopy
of sound. They heard the faintest leaf whisper as they passed it, and
the tiniest twig snap beneath their tread. Suddenly David halted.
“Strange,” said he, passing his hand across his brow. “How often there
has come upon me of late a memory as of a dream—a dream of woods and of
you. A dream of woods and of love! And yet you were not with me. Nay,
now it comes back; you were not with me, but I was going to you; and the
trees were all speaking of you and bidding me haste to you. A mad dream,
but sweet!”
He would have clasped her to him but she, who had listened with her
heart beating so happy-fast that it would scarce let her draw breath,
held him away with soft hands:
“Oh, David,” she panted, “think back on that dream again!”
“It is gone,” he answered, smiling, “the reality is so much sweeter!”
She stood still holding him from her and yet to her, with a delicate
touch. His words had suddenly cleared before her a golden path: the
heart that loves has its own flashes of genius.—Yes, it should be so,
she resolved.
She drew a long breath. Without another word she passed her arm within
his again and led him on. He allowed himself to be guided whither she
would in glad obedience; all she did this hour was well done for him.
It was full night when they left the dim aisles of trees and the high
sighing choirs, and emerged into the windswept fields. Ellinor looked up
at the sky:
“It will be a night of stars,” she said. “Thank God!”
“Ah, love,” he answered her, “my heaven is on earth to-night!”
She nodded her head, with a flickering enigmatic smile; and in another
spell of silence she brought him, through the shrubbery tangle, to that
spot where, across the ivied ruined walls and the spaces of the
Herb-Garden, the light from her gable-window had been wont to shine out
through the summer nights.
“David,” she whispered—he could feel how she trembled beside him as she
spoke, could almost hear the flutter of her heart through her
voice—“will you do all I bid you to-night?”
“Surely,” he made answer with infinite gentleness.
“Then, David, will you wait till from here you can see my light, the
light in the window of my old room! And then, David, when the light
shines, will you come to me there?”
Close though they stood together in the gloom, neither could see the
other’s face but as a dim whiteness. Yet, at these words, Ellinor felt
how the serenity that her husband’s countenance had worn all the evening
was broken up and swept away by a storm of passion—a passion as wide in
its strength and yet as tender as the wild west gale that now in its
rush embraced them and passed on, hymning.
He bowed his head, because he could not trust himself in words, and
because the other answer he would have given her, the answer of
straining arms and eager silent lips, she once again eluded.
The next instant he was alone with the choir of the elements, the great
gathering company of the stars, and his own tumultuous thoughts.
Ellinor was back in the little room that had held her as child and
widow; that now received her, a bride trembling on the verge of joy.
No one had expected the lady of Bindon to go back to this humble nest.
There was a great belighted and beflowered apartment awaiting her in
state, somewhere in the house; whereas here, shutters were barred and
all was in darkness, spiced of lavender and dried roses. She laid down
the lamp she had culled from a wall on her secret way, and set about her
preparations with the haste that will not stay to think.
Off with the grey satin robes that she had trailed across the dew-sprent
grass and the brown wood paths; down with the curls and twists and the
high-jewelled combs wherewith Madam Tutterville had so lovingly adorned
her bridal head.... All her glorious hair in one loose unbound coil;
thus——! Now, from the recesses of yonder press the white loose
long-folded wrapper which, in her mourning flight, she had deemed
unsuitable for the small trunk of the working woman. And now, over all,
the great grey cloak once more!
This done, she lifted the lamp again and held it while she stood a
second before the mirror. Yes! so must she have looked, upon that night
of false joy—that night of delusions and terrors. But truly, not with
that fire of expectancy in her eye, those chasing blushes and pallors on
her cheeks, that flock of rosy smiles that no effort of will could keep
away for long!
Now was the moment come to unbar the shutters and set the casement wide,
to let in the breath of the late honeysuckle, the exotic fragrances of
poor Master Simon’s ravaged garden—to let out, across the wide spaces,
the summoning beams of her lamp!
She held it aloft a moment, then lit a rushlight: for in not one detail
must she omit anything of that Lammas-night’s dream-scene to be
re-enacted, this time with awakened senses, to the assuring of their
great comfort. And then, between the inner and the outer rooms she
stood, bare-footed, waiting, listening—the one anguished moment of that
happy day!
And yet not long had she to wait. With incredible speed came the sounds
for which her heart yearned so fiercely; light, unfaltering steps,
approaching along the echoing stone passage; the door of the outer room
opening, it seemed, at the same instant ... and David stood before her,
out of the darkness! David, with shining eyes, the heavy hair tossed
back from his forehead, with the pungent breath of the night woods
hanging about his garments.
“Come in, David,” said she and strove to make her tones as placid in her
tremulous expectancy as, on that other night, they had been in her
desperate courage.
She stepped back into the inner room as she spoke, and he followed. Ah,
here the parallel ceased! Followed her, not with the dilated gaze of the
sleep-walker, unknowing, unconscious; but as the strong man crosses the
threshold of his beloved’s chamber, in passionate reverent realisation.
From her taper she lit all the candles, and then turned to him with a
smile that quivered upon thrust-down tears.
“Sit down, dear cousin, and we can talk a little; but not for long”—here
the smile, emboldened, became tender, faintly mischievous— “but not
long, for we both must sleep!”
A second he had watched her unexpected ways with amazement: but at her
words, arrested on his impulse towards her, he stood and again clasped
his forehead. His eye ran over her figure from loosened hair to bare
feet.
“The dream again!” he said in a whisper. A sort of bewilderment, a
trouble gathered upon his splendour of happiness.
Ellinor broke in quickly: she must not keep her beloved in perplexity.
Every word of what she wanted to say was imprinted on her memory; no
need here to hesitate. She leaned towards him, a lovely Sibyl, finger on
lip, and poured her mysterious message into his soul.
“Remember,” said she, “remember, David, the blessed cup I gave you and
how it set you free. It ran like fire through your veins, it drove you
out into the wood, under the singing trees. Those trees took voices: ‘Go
to her,’ they sang, and waved their arms. They ran with you, and you
came, leaping over the mountains. Love, you have come, and you are free,
free to love me!”
“Ellinor!” he cried, and caught her hands in his. Ever nearer she bent
to him, ever more tenderly. Oh, surely never man heard words so sweet,
so sweetly spoken on his bridal night!
“You knew I was waiting for you, in my white garments, with my light
burning. You knew that, because of my faithful heart.”
When she said this, even as before on that Lammas-tide, he kissed both
her hands. But he had no word for her. Yet she saw how the radiance of
her dawn strove with the clouds of his doubt and darkness.
“Always, since first we met,” she went on, “have our hearts been singing
to each other. I have stood beside you on your tower ... perhaps you did
not know it always,” the tears brimmed to her lashes, but the dimple by
her smile was arch as she paraphrased his unforgettable words to suit
her woman’s lips: “In the dawn you sought me in the garden....”
She was halting now, stammering a little. He had dropped her hand.
“What trial is this!” he cried. “What test do you put me to? Your words
bring me back to the past and sweet, though they are, there is trouble
mingled with them. Ellinor, why drive me back to dreams when I am at
last awake! Ellinor, Ellinor, the past is gone but the present I will
hold!”
He caught her in his arms, strong arms of love. This in sooth was no
dream-wooer!
“But, David,” she said, “it is because of the present that I want you to
go back to the past. Oh, David, for love of me, go back to that night
when you took the cup from my hand and you had a long, long sleep! Did
you not dream?”
The tide of crimson that rushed into her face at these words was
reflected in flame upon his. He would soon know now. The gossamer veil
which still divided him from the truth was being rift. Yet a last
diffidence kept down the cry of understanding on his lips. And still
they were seeking hers in passionate silence. But that kiss which he
would fain have had; that kiss which might have been the kiss of
revelation, Ellinor held in reserve to be the seal of their acknowledged
joy. She turned her head to glance out of the window.
The great moment of her life had struck at last. The very harmony of the
heavens seemed to be working for its record. The stars, in their
passionless courses, had had strange influence over the life of that
poor child of earth; and now it was as if they that had mocked her were
making gracious atonement. Serene and aloof, the stately measure that
had held at midnight the new-gemmed Northern Crown over the lovers’ mad
meeting on that past Lammas-tide, was now unfolding at the ninth hour
the self-same aspect of glory over their bridal joy. Against the line of
David’s tower, just emerging out of blackness, the light of the new
star, even as she looked, glided forth upon them.
“See, love,” she called, and gently turned his face towards the
casement: “See, our Star—”
And, as he looked, he saw. Deep into his soul dropped the tender beam;
and with it a revelation that seemed to fire where it struck. He gave a
loud cry: “The dream, the dream!” then fell at her feet. “So strong, so
chaste, so silent!... Oh, my wife!”
The tears streamed down her face as she stooped to raise him to her
lips.
“The dream-life is over, David. We stand upon the threshold of the
golden chamber. Shall we not enter?”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in
spelling.
2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
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