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?”
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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_.