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.