CHAPTER VII
NEW ROADS UNFOLDING
The stars at midnight shall be dear
To her; and she shall lean her ear
In many a secret place ...
And beauty born of murmuring sound
Shall pass into her face.
—Wordsworth (Lyrical Poems).
The first hour which Ellinor spent with David, uplifted from the gloomy earth into the bosom of the night—they were so unutterably alone, amid the sleeping world with the great, watchful company of the stars!—was one, she knew, that would alter the whole course of her life; the pearly colour of which would thenceforth tint her every emotion.
Not indeed that one word, one touch, one look even of his could lead her to believe she had made on the man anything approaching the impression that she herself had felt. On the contrary, the apartness which had been noticeable even under the genial circumstances of the meal shared together in the light and warmth of Master Simon’s room became intensified when they entered the solitude, the mystic atmosphere of his high, silent retreat.
And yet she knew that she would not by one hair’s breadth have him different! In the whirlpool of the fast existence into which, like a straw, her young life had been tossed, there was not one man—even during that early period when “pinks” and “bucks,” undeniable gentlemen, were her husband’s faithful companions—but would have regarded the situation as an opportunity that, “as you live,” should be gallantly taken advantage of. But he—through the long passages of the house, up the narrow, winding stairs of the tower, he conducted her, for all his absent-mindedness, as a courtier might conduct his queen! When they reached the platform of the keep, upon the threshold of the observatory she tripped up against some unnoticed step, and would have fallen had he not caught her in his arms. For an instant her bosom must have lain against his heart, the strands of her hair against his lips; and she honoured him for the simplicity with which he supported her and gave her his hand to lead her in.