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
- Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in spelling.
- Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.