The night picture swam before his eyes. He gripped the stones on either side of him. When the mists cleared, he must look again. He looked and saw a white figure, all white even as he had held her to be—all white above the world—was it a minute, was it a lifetime ago? The white figure opened its arms, drew into its embrace the dark visitor. All the whiteness seemed to become lost in the blackness. Black, too, it grew before the eyes of the youthful poet—black the whole world and black his heart!
He let himself drop from his perch down into the herb-beds. And there he lay, crushing vervaine and balsam and sweet thyme into aromatic death. There he lay a long, long time.
Mistress Margery Nutmeg had tied her goffered nightcap under her decent chin and laid her respectable head upon a chaste pillow with all her usual expectation of that rest which is the reward of an excellent conscience. But (as she afterwards averred) the first strange thing in a night which was to prove one of the strangest at Bindon-Cheveral was that she could not sleep. She felt, she said, as if the Angel of Death was beating his wings about the House; and whenever she closed her eyes she saw rows of little phials before her; and, considering she was so much accustomed to poor dear Master Rickart’s odd ways, it was the most curious thing of all that she could not get the thought of Poison out of her head. At last she could almost have believed she was beginning to doze when there came sounds without her window as of a tapping, a scratching, a scraping, a rustling.
She listened; there was no mistake. Out of bed she got. Out of the window she looked!
In Lady Lochore’s boudoir, despite the midnight hour, the candles were still burning in goodly array, illuminating round the green board four tired faces, the play of eight hands, the flutter of cards and the flash of dice. Two of these faces showed greedy interest: the wax-like pale-orbed countenance, to wit, of the Dishonourable Caroline and the oriental visage of Villars. But the third, Lady Lochore’s, fever-spotted and haunted, beheld the capricious fortunes of chance ebb or flow with equal indifference. What cared she whether gold grew in a little pile beside her, or whether she had to jot down sums no banker would credit now to the name of Lochore? As little for the game, as little for loss or profit, as small Priscilla herself, whose black-rimmed eyes pleaded for bed, who took no pains to conceal her yawns and played her cards as if she were already in a dream.
Yet Lady Lochore was eager to keep company about her to-night. She was the first to insist on the fresh round; the first to press the willing elderly gamblers to another cast. It seemed as if she wanted to throw her heart into the excitement; to hear the rattle of the dice and her own loud laugh; to force herself to interest in her opponents’ wrangles; to pin her attention to the adding of points and the deduction of loss and gain—as if she welcomed anything that might drown the small insistent whisper at her ear. Anything to drive away the vision of the great four-post bed waiting for her in the night’s solitude.
Crouching at Ellinor’s feet, Barnaby was trying to tell her, to tell her something, to get her aid for something, with all the agonised effort of the human soul struggling to find expression through limitations worse than those of the brute animal. Deaf and dumb, and so vital a message to be conveyed!
With patience as pitiful as the creature was pitiable, Ellinor bent and tried in vain to understand.
How he had come to seek her in so perilous a fashion she had, however, no difficulty in divining. It was but too likely that Master Simon in his present condition had been oblivious of his prisoner, insensible of his cries and knocks. But, with his ape-like activity, the lad could escape easily enough through the window; and she was herself the only person from whom he could confidently seek help. All that she could understand readily enough. But why should he require this help?
As a first thought she endeavoured to discover if he were hungry; he vehemently shook his head. He almost struck from her hand the glass of water she, misled by his repeated gesture of one in the act of drinking, then held to his lips. He was obviously in sore need of restorative, but the mental distress overshadowed the physical. Now his plucking fingers began to urge her to the door: he pointed, dragged himself a little way on his hands and knees, like a dog, came back and again pulled her towards it.