BOOK II

THE STAR DREAMER

BOOK II

The nightHath been to me a more familiar faceThan that of man; and in her starry shadeOf dim and solitary lovelinessI learned the language of another world.—Tennyson.

The night

Hath been to me a more familiar face

Than that of man; and in her starry shade

Of dim and solitary loveliness

I learned the language of another world.

—Tennyson.

CHAPTER IMIDSUMMER SUNRISE

... the blueBared its eternal bosom, and the dewOf summer nights collected still to makeThe morning precious: Beauty was awake.—Keats(Sleep and Poetry).

... the blue

Bared its eternal bosom, and the dew

Of summer nights collected still to make

The morning precious: Beauty was awake.

—Keats(Sleep and Poetry).

A dawn in June: the dawn of a night that has held no real blackness, but merged from a sky of sapphire to one of grey pearl—sapphire so starlit, that ever deeper deeps and ever bluer transparencies seemed to unveil themselves to the watchers eye; grey pearl pulsing into opal, shot with milky pinks, faint greens, ambers and primroses.

Into the dewy morning world came Ellinor; down through the long stone passages that still held night and silence; out into this awakening, this freshness, this lightsomeness.

The wonders of the summer dawn, day after day, bring to the old Earth, as it were, a new creation. She awakes and finds the forgotten paradise from which man, of his own sluggard choice, shuts himself out with gates of darkness and leaden bolts of sleep.

Ellinor, her fair face emerging from the folds of her dark, grey-hooded cloak, came pearl-like as the young day itself from the folds of the night. Her slender foot left its print on the dew-moist path. She passed between the stately flower-beds through the great formal pleasure-grounds where, under the sunrise radiance, the masses of geranium blooms were taking to themselves silvery colours unknown to the later day; between the ranks ofcypress and box, whose grotesque and fantastic shapes were duskily cut out against the transparent sky one moment and the next seemed fringed with green flame as the level rays leaped at them; up the shrubbery walks, where the white syringa was breaking into odorous stars, scattering its scented dew upon her as she brushed the outstretched branches; under the black and solemn shades of the yew-trees, until she reached the gate that gave access to the Herb-Garden.

She walked slowly, drinking in the loveliness of the hour. The bees were humming loudly over the spicy beds. The whole garden was full of sweet growing hum and stir; of the flash of wet bird wings. Its strange blossoms swaying in the capricious little breeze seemed to hold private councils, then nod familiarly at her, welcoming and beckoning on.

Ellinor stood, her hand still on the gate, her brow towards the radiant east; the hood had slipped from her head and a sun-shaft pierced her hair. She never crossed the threshold of this garden without a curious sense of something impending. And now, as she paused to breathe its ever new fragrances, the happy humour in which she had started on her quest for herbs (to be gathered at the hour of sunrise, according to Master Gerard’s own prescription) gave place to the old childish sense of mysterious awe and attraction.

And as she stood, musing, the sound of a rapid step was heard on this garden space, so far consecrate to herself and to the wild things; a darker shadow detached itself from the heavy shade of the yew-tree. She turned round quickly to face it. Sir David was beside her.

“The purity of the morning,” he thought, “and the dawn still in her eyes!”

“David!” she cried, astonished; and a happy rose leapt into her cheek.

“I saw you,” he said, “from my tower.”

She glanced up to the frowning grey stone mass that was beginning to cast sharply its long shadow on thesunlit garden—then she looked back at his face, pallid and a little drawn. And if he had seen the dawn in her eyes she saw in his shadow of the night watch.

“Ah,” she cried and menaced him with her white finger. “No sleep again, David! And your promise?”

“The stars lured me,” he answered, smiling faintly. Ellinor, however, did not smile. The rose flush faded slowly from her face. The stars lured him! Would it then always be so? She gave a little sigh. Then, without speaking, she drew a key from her reticule and slipped it into the lock; it required the effort of both her strong hands to turn it, but she would do it herself.

“Nay, cousin, it is a fancy of mine. I alone am trusted with the keys of the sanctuary. It is I that shall open to you the gate of our Herb-Garden.”

It fell back, groaning on its hinges; and she stood inside, smiling again.

“Come in, David.”

“Do you know,” he said, still standing on the threshold, humouring her mood according to his wont, “that I have actually never trodden this rood of ground before.”

She clapped her hands with joy.

“Then it is indeed I who will have brought you here,” she cried. “That is right. Oh, cousin, don’t you know, this is the enchanted garden, my garden! Ah, you did not know that, lord of Bindon! You deemed it was yours perhaps, though you never bethought yourself even of visiting it. But it was given to me by a fairy, years and years ago. And it is full of spells and dreams and magic! I will tell you something: That night, when I came back last autumn ... the first thing I did when I went to my room was to open my window that gives on the garden—you see that window there—and I leant out over the whispering ivy leaves to greet my garden. And in the dark of the night I heard it speak to me. And it said: I am still yours—David, come in!”

With one of his unconsciously courtly gestures to mark that it was indeed on her invitation that he came uponher ground, he entered slowly, looking at her with a little wonder. For this fantastic Ellinor was as new to him as this day’s dawn. She guessed his thoughts.

“I vow,” she said and seemed to shake off her fancy as she might have brushed from before her face a floating gossamer—“I vow that I am becoming infected with some musing sickness! But between you, my cousin star-gazer, and my good alchemist father, it were odd if there were no such humour in the air. Hold my basket, dear David, I will be practical again.”

CHAPTER IIEUPHROSINE, STAR-OF-COMFORT

She still took note that, when the living smileDied from his lips, across him came a cloudOf melancholy severe; from which again,Whenever in her hovering to and fro,The lily-maid had striven to make him cheer,There brake a sudden beaming tenderness.—Tennyson(Elaine).

She still took note that, when the living smile

Died from his lips, across him came a cloud

Of melancholy severe; from which again,

Whenever in her hovering to and fro,

The lily-maid had striven to make him cheer,

There brake a sudden beaming tenderness.

—Tennyson(Elaine).

“And do you not wish to know,” asked Ellinor, “what has brought me with the dawn to these gardens?”

He had been watching silently by her side—watching her, as here she snipped a bundle of leaves and there a sheaf of blossoms, and mechanically extending the basket that she might lay them therein. Now, after a fashion of his, to which she had grown well accustomed, he let fall a glance upon her as one bringing himself back from a distance.

She repeated her question, with a little pretence of impatience.

“I do not think that I wondered to see you,” he answered slowly.—Fastidious as he was in his garb and every exterior detail that concerned him, it was all as nothing, Ellinor had learned to know, compared to his mental fastidiousness. A silent man he was, but when he spoke no words could serve him but such as could clothe the truth to the most exquisite nicety. Could anyone have been more ill equipped for the battle of life?

“I was standing on the tower,” he went on, “watching the withdrawal of the stars and the rise of another day. It is not often that I look to the earth. When thestars go, then, you see, the world is blank to me. But this morning, I know not why, when the skies grew faint I did look upon the earth and found it very fair. And so I stood and watched and saw the colours grow. Then you came forth into the midst of them; and somehow I thought it was as if you were part of the beauty of it all—part of the dawn; as if you were something that the earth and I myself had unconsciously been waiting for to complete the whole. Thus you see, Ellinor, it did not enter into my mind to ask why you had come. I sought you,” he smiled as he spoke, “also, indeed, I know not why.”

As Ellinor listened her white eyelids had fallen over her eyes, lower and lower, till the long lashes, black at the base, upturned and tipped with gold at their ends, cast shadows on her cheek. Her breast heaved with the quickening of her breath. But at the last word she looked up at him, and her eyes were sad.

“Ah, cousin, will you ever know?”

It was almost a cry; it had a ring of hidden bitterness in it. Then, after a slight pause, she resumed her snipping and became once more, as she had announced, practical.

“Well, now you shall be told why I am here. And first, please understand that I combine with my duties of housekeeper to the lord of Bindon, those of ’prentice or familiar to the alchemist—simpler—sorcerer; in short, to Master Simon, my father. Now, as you know,” she pursued, assuming a mock orating tone, “my said father spends now all his days and most of his night in extracting divers salts, distilling essences, elixirs, what not—remedies for which the village folk flock to him with enthusiasm, and which being, praise Heaven, harmless enough, are applied to their ills with varying success but entire satisfaction to themselves. These remedies are mostly grown in this garden.”

She began to move down the path which led from bedto bed and which no foot but that of the simpler himself, of the dumb boy Barnaby, or her own having hitherto trod, was so narrow and encroached upon by the wild luxuriance of the herbs and shrubs that she was fain to walk in front of him and to speak over her shoulder. And even then, beneath their feet, many a broken and crushed simple gave forth its spicy ghost.

Her face presented itself to him in different aspects every moment. Now he caught but a rim of pearly cheek; now a clear cut profile; now nearly the whole delicate oval narrowed as she turned it towards him over her shoulder, the white chin more pointed. Meanwhile she spoke on gaily, with only here and there a pause to consider, to select and cull.

“I need not tell you, who have known my father so many more years than I myself, that while he makes use of the good old simple writers, Master Gerard, Master Robert Turner, Master Parkinson and the rest, he scoffs at what he calls their superstition. But I, having relieved him from the task of gathering, find it my pleasure to follow the quaint old directions in their least particular. And when Master Gerard, for instance, says, ‘This herb loseth its power unless it be gathered under the rays of the moon in her first quarter’ why then, cousin David,” she laughed, “under the rays of the moon in her first quarter I gather it. Who knows if I do not please thereby some honest ghost? Who knows if there be not in very truth some hidden virtue in the hour? You will have divined that the hour of sunrise is, on the same authority, the only fit season for the culling of certain other precious plants. And so I am here to cull betony and ditander in the dew. (Betony, you must know, sir, is of all simples, except vervaine, the most excellent, so that it is an old say: ‘If you be ill, sell your coat and buy betony.’)”

Here she pushed her way through a bed where thyme had grown breast high. She came back again presently,flushed and be-pearled, merry with the breath of the spices clinging to her garments, and with as much betony as one hand could hold together. This she added to the basket’s burden.

On ran her tongue the while:

“Ah,” catching herself up abruptly and retracing her way by a step, “the ditander is also blossoming, I see. Father will be glad to see it. It is sovereign against the wounds of arrows ‘shot from guns, and also for the healing of poisoned hurts.’ You would never guess,” she added, “that the juice of this modest little plant is so powerful that, Master Gerard avers, ‘the mere smell of it will drive away venomous beasts and doth astonish them!’” Her laugh rang out, clear as crystal. “You are not convinced, cousin. I would I could see more speculation in that eye! What if I were to tell you that the thing grows under the influence of Mars—would it awaken more interest?”

His grave lip was faintly lifted to a smile.

“It might account at least for its virtue against wounds of arrows,” said he.

“Nay, there’s sarcasm in that tone,” she said, shaking her head. “More respect, I beg of you, Sir David, for this little borage. Does it not look quaint and simple with its baby-blue flowers and its white downy stem? Ah, I warrant me you have had borage in your wine ere this—but you never knew why or how it came there! Oh, sir, it is no less—on authority, mark me—than one of the four great cordial flowers most deserving of esteem for cheering the spirits. The other three are the violet, the rose, and alkanet. And what the alkanet is I should much like to know!”

... “You know so much,” he said, “that I have no thought to spare for what you do not know.”

“Sarcastic again—take care, cousin! Do not mock at Jupiter’s own cordial. And I tell you more, sir: conjoined with hellebore—black hellebore—that dark and gloomy plant will, as one Robert Burton has it:

‘Purge the veinsOf Melancholy and cheer the HeartOf those black fumes that make it smart;And clear the brain of misty fogsWhich dull our senses, our souls’ clogs....

‘Purge the veins

Of Melancholy and cheer the Heart

Of those black fumes that make it smart;

And clear the brain of misty fogs

Which dull our senses, our souls’ clogs....

“It’s a favourite quotation of my father’s. Would you drink of it, if I brewed it for you?”

There fell a sudden silence—a something dividing their pleasant warmth of sympathy as of a chill breeze blowing between them. And she knew a thoughtless word had struck upon his hidden sore. She stood, as if convicted, with eyes averted from his face. Then he spoke:

“Every man in his youth brews the cup of his own life and spends his age in drinking of it, willy nilly. Sometimes, I think, it is blind fate that has gathered the ingredients to his hand. Sometimes I see they are but the choice of his own perversity. But once brewed, he must drink, be they bitter or sweet.”

“Cousin—” she began timidly. Then, after her woman’s way, courage came to her on a sudden turn of passion: “I’ll not believe it!” she cried, flashing upon him. “Throw the poison away, David. There is glad wine yet in this beautiful world.”

His face relaxed as he looked upon her; the gloomy cloud passed from it. But the melancholy remained.

“Do you remember,” said he, “for I too can quote—what Lady Macbeth says: ‘All the perfumes of Araby cannot sweeten this little hand!’ My bright cousin, believe me, there is a bitterness which no sweetness that ever was distilled, nay, I fear, not even such as you could distil, can ever mitigate. Have you not learned,” he added, and a certain inner agitation made his lips twitch and the pupils of his eyes dilate and found a distant echo in his voice as of some roaring waters deeply hidden—“have you not learned, over your father’s crucibles and phials, that the sweetest essence does but lose its nature and become bitter too for ever, when mingledwith but a few drops of the acrid draught. Ellinor, I have warned you already.”

She felt as if some cold hand had been laid on her heart:—here spoke again the voice of the sick soul determined to renounce. And here was the one man in her whole world, to whom she would so fain give extravagantly. There are natures to which love means taking only; others to which it means giving all. How she would have given! The ache of the tide thrust back upon her heart rose to her very throat. She went white, even to her brave lips. But still they smiled, as women’s lips will smile in such straits.

“You mind me,” she said, “that I was after all forgetting to gather the hellebore. ’Tis a dark drug-plant, cousin and loves the shade; and, if the old simplers speak truth, it must be gathered before a ray of sun shall of a morning have opened its green petals. I see that I must hurry. Already the shadow of your grey tower is shortening across the beds.”

She took her basket from his arm, gave him a little nod as of dismissal and passed quickly from him. He let her go without a word or a gesture, standing still, wrapt in himself, with eyes downcast. Those deep waters in his soul, that for so many long years had lain black and stagnant—what was it that had so stirred them of late days, that they should rise in waves like the salt and bitter sea and dash against his laboriously built dykes of peace and renunciation?

Ellinor was long on her knees beside the hellebore, not indeed that she was busy picking it, for her hands lay idly before her. With eyes fixed unseeingly upon its dark, poisonous looking tufts, she was tasting the savour of a slow gathering tear. Suddenly she felt her cousin’s presence again close upon her and began feverishly to tear at the plant, every energy of her mind bent upon concealing her weakness. In another moment, with a sweetness that was almost overpowering, she knew thathe was kneeling beside her, his shoulder to her shoulder, his hands over hers.

“Dear Ellinor,” he said softly in her ear, “I do not like to see you touch this poisonous plant, let me——” And then, breaking off, when she turned her face, so close to his, as if irresistibly drawn to seek his glance: “Forgive me!” he cried, with more emotion than she had ever heard his measured tones express before. “By what right am I always thus casting upon your happy heart the shadow of my gloom!”

Her fingers closed passionately round his.

“David,” she said, almost in a whisper, “don’t forget I too have known suffering. David you were wrong just now. The sweet and the bitter work together make wholesome beverage. And see, for that do I gather hellebore that it may blend with the borage. Did I not tell you so? And—ah, forgive, but I must say it, sometimes the bitterness and the sorrow are not real, only fancied.... And then it may be that real adversity must come to make us see it. And even then, if we do see it, sweet are the uses of adversity!”

“Why, then, I could believe,” he answered her, and his deep voice still thrilled with that note of emotion that was so inexpressibly musical to her ear, “that if a man were to be comforted by such as you, he might find a sweetness even in adversity—that is,” he added on a yet deeper note, “did he dare let himself be comforted.”

She sighed and dropped her hands from his; took up her basket and rose to her feet. He also rose hastily, as if ashamed of his emotion, and once more wrapped reserve around him like a mantle. Presently he said, in that slightly jesting manner that never lost touch with melancholy:

“Your father has long been looking for the lost ‘Star-of-Comfort.’ Your father is an amiable materialist and believes that a right-chosen drug can minister to a mind diseased. I fear me it will prove to him as frail a questas that of the Fern Seed of invisibility and the Lotos of forgetfulness—and such like dreams of unattainable good!”

“You are wrong, wrong again!” Although the moisture she scorned to brush away was still in her eyes, the smile was on her lip once more; and the dimple by it—a triumphant dimple.

“How so?” he asked.

“Why, sir, you once were a truer prophet than now you wot of. Did you not foretell to me, on the first day of my return, that I might help him to find it? The lost plant was, according to Master Ralph Prynne (of fragrant memory) well-known at one time in the south of France where, says he, upon diligent search it may even now be discovered among ruins and rocks!” Here she resumed her mock didactic manner. “‘It is my belief,’ says he, ‘that the gay and singularly careless temper of these peoples is due in great part to the ancient custom of brewing it into the wine they did drink of—whereby their sons and daughters did inherit the happy tendencies engendered in themselves—and splenetic melancholy which sits so black on many of our country is never known among them.’”

“A wondrous drug!” said David.

“So I thought,” she retorted; and, with a mocking glance at him, went on: “And knowing how many indeed stand in need of it here, I who had recently come myself from the south of France, resolved to get him the seed or root, if such were to be obtained. Master Prynne gives a very detailed description and I have a good memory. There was one, a wise woman I knew of, who was learned in simples. In fine, sir, turn and behold!”

She twisted him round, led him a pace or two forward, and pointed.

On a shallow bed, sloping to due south, screened from the north and prepared with a kind of rockery clothed with mingled sand and heather soil, a hardy-lookingdwarf plant was growing in thick patches. And sundry small but vigorous off-shoots, darting here and there gave promise that they would soon cover the bed and overhang its rocky borders. The full sunshine blazed down upon it, and the minute bright and bold blossoms that gemmed it already in places looked like stars of bluish flame among the lustrous dark green leaves.

“Behold!” repeated Ellinor, with a dramatic gesture.

There was a stimulating aromatic fragrance in the air. The morning sun which had just emerged from the edge of the keep bore down upon them with an effulgence as yet merely grateful. A band of puzzled bees was hovering musically above the last attractive new-comer in the herbary. David looked from the flourishing bed to the straight, strong figure, the brave countenance of his cousin.

“And so you have succeeded,” he said with a look of smiling wonder. “Succeeded where Master Simon has sought in vain so many years! Everything you touch seems to prosper.”

Some realisation of that spirit of gay perseverance which had been so beneficently active in his neglected house all these months, beneath whose influence flowers of order and brightness seemed to have sprung up, magic and fragrant as the lost “Star-of-Comfort” itself, kindled a new light in the eye he now kept fixed upon her. It was a realisation, a sense of admiration, distinct from the ever-present, albeit hardly-conscious attraction. He looked back at the flame-starred creeping shrub.

“So there blooms Master Simon’s True-Grace, thisEuphrosinum, his Star-of-Comfort, after all these years,” he went on musingly.

And the sense of her presence was intermingled with the penetrating fragrance of the strange flower, the music of bees and bird call, the fanning of the breeze, and the warmth of the sun.

“In Persian,” she resumed, “they call itRustian-al-Misrour—the ‘Plant-of-Heart’s-Joy’ is the meaning ofit, so Prynne tells us. It was brought to Europe by the Crusaders, but lost in the destruction of monastery gardens in England, and fell into disuse elsewhere—and thus came to be regarded as a myth. But things are not myths because we lose them,” she added wistfully. “Who knows, sometimes the joy we deem lost is under our hand.” She picked off a branchlet and absently nibbled it. And her light breath, already sweet as of clover or lavender, came wafted across spiced with this new fragrance.

“Well,” said he then slowly, “according to the bygone simplers, there it lies. Ellinor, when you brew me a cordial of the Star-of-Comfort, I shall drink it.”

“I may mind you of that promise one day,” said she.

Then, upon the little pause that ensued, she looked at the shortening shadows and the skies and said, in her womanly, careful manner, that it was time for her to be in the dairy. At the garden gate, however, he paused.

“And under the influence of what star,” he asked, “is the wondrous plant supposed to bloom?”

She could not guess from his manner whether he spoke in jest or in earnest, but she answered him mischievously, as she turned the key in the lock: “Master Prynne was silent on this point; and nowhere could I find news of it. But we are quite safe, cousin David, for I planted the first cutting myself under your new star.”

He started ever so slightly.

“Did you indeed?” he murmured dreamily.

“But I don’t know its name yet. Tell me, you must have given your new star a name by now—for I think it grows brighter night by night.”

In silence he let his deep gaze rest for a moment upon her, then answered:

“To me it is still nameless, though meaning things beyond words.”

He paused, and went on, still compassing her with his absorbed look. “You and the star came to me together—shallI not call it also,” with a gesture at the flowering bed, “Euphrosine—Star-of-Comfort?”

These words, accompanied by the glance that seemed to give them so earnest a significance, troubled Ellinor strangely. She could find no response. She drew the key from the lock and was moving forward with downcast eyes when he laid his touch lightly upon her arm.

“Thank you,” said he, “for admitting me into your enchanted garden! Some morning when the dawn birds are calling, or some evening before the stars come out, may I knock at this gate again?”

“Nay, David,” cried she, with swift uplifted eyes, holding out to him the key on the impulse of her leaping heart, “this gate must never be locked for you! My father has another—take this one!”

His fingers closed upon her hand and then he took the brown key and looked at it.

“For you and me alone,” he said.

She knew then that this hour they had spent together in the dew-besprinkled closes was to him as sacred and as sweet as it would ever be to her. But now he had folded his lips together and went beside her in silence.

CHAPTER IIIA QUEEN OF CURDS AND CREAM

And Enid brought sweet cakes to make them cheer,· · · · ·And stood behind and waited ...And seeing her so sweet and serviceable,Geraint had longing in him evermoreTo stoop and kiss the tender little thumbThat crost the trencher as she laid it down.—Tennyson(Idylls).

And Enid brought sweet cakes to make them cheer,

· · · · ·

And stood behind and waited ...

And seeing her so sweet and serviceable,

Geraint had longing in him evermore

To stoop and kiss the tender little thumb

That crost the trencher as she laid it down.

—Tennyson(Idylls).

At the end of the lane, Ellinor took the path which branched off to the courtyards; and, as she made no movement of farewell or dismissal, the master of the place, with great simplicity, followed her. These courtyards were located in the most ancient part of Bindon, where in mediæval days had been the inner bailey. What remained of the lowered towers and curtains had been utilised for the peaceful purposes of spences, bakehouses and dairies.

As in the case of all buildings, the life of which has gradually dwindled, these precincts had gathered to themselves a mellow and placid picturesqueness. Long tranquil years had clothed them with luxuriance. It was as if the green tide of surrounding nature had taken delight in reconquering the whilom bare array of stone and mortar. Rampant ivies and wild creeping plants had long ago stormed the half-razed ramparts from the outside, and unchecked in their assault now pounced into the yards over the roofs. On the inside the blush roses were foaming up the grey walls; the square of grass in this shaded spot was deeply green.

In the early light and the silence it was a scene of singular placidity and fitted well with David’s unwontedlypleasant mood; mood of tired body and vaguely happy mind. A few pigeons from the high-reared cot came fluttering down and walked about, curtseying expectantly.

Presently two milk-maids, in print frocks, sun bonnets and clogs, clattered down some stairs and went in quickly through the dairy door, agitated at perceiving the task-mistress up before them. Their entrance broke the musing spell of the two unavowed lovers. As they drew near the open door of the house, the cool breath of the dairy—a sort of cowslip breath, of much cleanliness, mingled with the faintly acrid sweetness of the milk—came to their nostrils. A row of shining pails were ranged upon the low stone bench just outside the door. A lad and maid hurried past, each carrying two more foaming buckets.

Ellinor now became the decided, almost stern, mistress of household matters. She counted the milk pails and gave an order to each maid, who curtseyed and stood at attention, but could not keep a roving, awestruck eye from the unwonted spectacle of their master.

“Rosemary, three pails for the dairy, as usual. Two for the house: up with them, Kate! Sally, back to your skimming as soon as you have filled the steward’s can and carried in the pail for the parish dole out of the sunshine. Stay a moment,” her tone and manner altered, “leave one of those here—Cousin David, have you broken your fast? Of course not! Then you and I, shall we not do so now together? Nay, I shall be disappointed if you refuse. You have made me queen of these realms—the ‘queen of curds and cream,’ as Doctor Tutterville calls me—and all must obey me here!”

There was a stone porch jutting forth over the side door that led into the passage. Within this refuge, on either side, was set a stone bench under an unglazed ogee window. Honeysuckle had intermingled its growth with that of the climbing roses, and made there a parlour of perfume. Hither Ellinor conducted the lord of Bindon, and here he allowed himself to be installed,obeying her as one who walks in dreams and is glad to dream on.

The maids had parted in noisy flight, each on her different errand, starched gowns crackling, clogs clacking, pails clinking as they went. Ellinor threw down her cloak and her basket and disappeared, light as the lapwing, rejoicing with all a woman’s joy to minister to the beloved. She returned with a little wooden table, which, smiling, she set before him and was gone again. This time it was out into the yard and into the dairy, and her head flashed in a sun-shaft. When she reappeared, she was walking more slowly, and between her hands was a yellow glazed bowl brimming with new-drawn milk.

“For you, Sir David,” she said.

It was foaming and fragrant of clover blossom as he lifted it to his lips.

“And now,” she went on, “you shall taste of my baking. I had a batch set last night and the rolls ought to be crisp to a touch.”

The following minute brought her back, flushed and triumphant, bearing on a tray a smoking brown loaflet, a ray of amber honey and a rustic basket full of strawberries. She paused a second reflectively, and cried:

“A pat of fresh-churned butter!”

And again his eyes watched her cross the shaft of sunshine and come back, and they were the eyes of a man gazing on a dear and lovely picture.

“Now, David, is this not a breakfast fit for a king?”

He looked at the table and then at her; and then put down the loaf his long fingers had been absently crushing.

“And you?” he asked and rose. “You—the queen?”

“I? Oh, I think I forgot myself. Oh, don’t get up, David. Don’t, please! You cannot imagine how much refreshed I shall feel when you have eaten. There, then, I will sit beside you. But as there is no pleasure in waiting upon oneself, I must call up a court menial.Katy! A bowl of milk for me. Rosemary, another roll from the oven!”

This was to remain a memory of gold in Ellinor’s life. Poets may sing as they will of the joys of mutual love confessed. But there is an hour more exquisite yet in man and woman’s life: the hour of love still untold. The hour of trembling hopes and uncertainties; of ecstasies hidden away in the inmost sanctuary of the being; of dreams so much more beautiful than reality; of thoughts that no words can clothe and music that no instrument can render. Hour of doubt which is to certainty as the dawn is to the day, as mystery is to revelation: as much more enthralling, as much more exquisite.

Even as the soul is constrained by the body, so must the ideal thought lose of its fragrance when limited to the spoken word. But the very condition of life’s tenure urges us to hasten ever onwards towards the success of attainment. We may not sit and taste the full sweetness of the present because our foreseeing nature and old Time are spurring us on, on! This present of ours is fleeting enough, God knows. Yet the miserable restlessness within us robs us of the minute even while it is ours. Thus the most perfect things in our lives will ever be a memory. But when the golden hours have all tolled for us, when the flowers are all withered, at least we can look back and say: “That was my sunrise hour. ... That was my perfect rose!”

They spoke little to each other, but Ellinor saw the lines of melancholy fade out of his face and become replaced by soft restfulness. Tired he looked, the watcher of the night, in the broad radiance of the day, but happy. It was as if the fatigue itself brought a sense of peace, lulling him to dreaminess and depriving him of the energy to fight against the sweetness of the moment.

Suddenly, with the light tread of a cat, the squat figure of Mrs. Nutmeg, in her decent widow’s black and her snowy mutch, came upon them from the house. She paused with a start of such extreme surprise that it was in itself an impertinence, and the more galling because it could not be resented. Ignoring the scarlet-cheeked Ellinor, the housekeeper dropped her curtsey and offered ostentatious excuses to Sir David.

“I humbly ask your pardon, sir. Indeed, sir, I had no idea, or I would not have made so bold as to intrude. I hope, sir, you’ll forgive me for disturbing you at such a moment!”

Her eye roved as she spoke over the disordered table, aside to Ellinor’s cloak and the basket of withering herbs; then back to Ellinor herself, where it deliberately measured every detail—the dusty shoe, the green stains on the gown, the flushed brow, the disordered hair.

Her unconscious master waved his hand a little impatiently with his formal “Good morrow,” that was more a dismissal than a greeting. Mrs. Nutmeg returned Sir David’s brief salutation with another unctuous curtsey. Withdrawing her glance from Ellinor, she fixed it upon his face, with a vain attempt to throw an expression of tender solicitude into the opaque white and the meaningless black of her eye.

“Excuse the liberty, sir,” she began again, “but do you feel quite yourself this morning? It do go to my heart to see how drawn and ill you be looking! I fear these last months, sir, you haven’t been as usual. Not at all. More has remarked it than myself.”

Ellinor rose.

“It’s getting late, Margery,” she said, “and the cream is not skimmed yet. Ring the bell for the girls.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Margery curtseyed, her eyes still clinging unwaveringly to her master’s face. This was now turned upon her with a sudden frown.

“Do you not hear?” said Sir David.

They robbed him freely in his absence, this household of his, but none could forget in his presence that he was master.

“Yes, sir, yes ma’am. I ask your pardon,” said Mrs. Nutmeg.

And this time there was flurry in her step as she moved away, her list slippers padding on the flags. She cast not another glance behind her; yet Ellinor felt chilled, she knew not why. Upon the dial that had marked her warm-tinted hour a grey shadow had fallen. She took up her basket of herbs. Most of the perishable things were already withering, but the dry vivacious stems of the Star-of-Comfort flaunted their glossy leaves and their tiny brilliant blossom undimmed. She noticed this, and was superstitiously glad.

“I must go, cousin,” she said, “but later, if you will, I shall come and help on with the new chart.”

She nodded and left him. As she moved across the courtyard towards her father’s den, the maids, hustling each other as they clacked into the dairy, looked after her with inimical stare. Then one whispered to the other, and the other nudged back, while the third surreptitiously shook her mottled fist. And as Ellinor walked on with steady step she knew it all. She knew that “the Queen of curds and cream” sat on an insecure throne; and that, were the power that had placed her there to be withdrawn from her, many eager hands would be stretched out to pull her into the mire.

But upon the first step leading down to the laboratory, she turned and cast a glance back: in the deep shadow of the porch David was still standing. Out of the dark face the light eyes were watching her; when she turned, he smiled and waved his hand. And her spirits rose again as she ran down the stairs, to begin her long round of various work. She had stuck a sprig of the Euphrosinum in her kerchief; and during the whole day, whether over crucible or household book, in linen closetor still-room, each time the scent of it was wafted to her nostrils there came and went upon her lips a little secret smile, as if the fragrant thing on her bosom were but the symbol of some inner fragrance rising in little fitful storms from her heart.

CHAPTER IVOPEN-EYED CONSPIRACY

Let me loose thy tongue with wine:No, I love not what is new:She is of the ancient house,And I think we know the hueOf that cap upon her brows!—Tennyson(Vision of Sin).

Let me loose thy tongue with wine:

No, I love not what is new:She is of the ancient house,And I think we know the hueOf that cap upon her brows!—Tennyson(Vision of Sin).

No, I love not what is new:

She is of the ancient house,

And I think we know the hue

Of that cap upon her brows!

—Tennyson(Vision of Sin).

Old Giles, in the plate-room! Old Giles, butler of Bindon and confidential servant to Sir David, sunk in his wooden armchair and his head inclined till his double chin rested on his greasy stock, surveying with distasteful eye the mug of small-ale on the table before him.

A stout old man with a reddening nose may be no unpleasant picture if superabundance of flesh and misplacement of carmine bear witness to jollity and good cheer; but oh lamentable spectacle if melancholy droop that ruby nose; if fat cheeks hang disconsolate! Then for every added ounce of avoirdupois is added a pound of misery. Your melancholy thin man is fitted by nature to bear his burden, but the sad fat man seems to deliquesce, to collapse—so much in his case is affliction against the obvious design of nature!

From the inner pantry door Margery stood a moment and contemplated her fellow servant awhile, with an air of deeper commiseration than her usually set visage was wont to express. Then she carefully closed the door and advanced to the table. In her rolled up apron she was clasping something with both hands.

“Eh,” she said, in a long drawn note, “it do go to my heart, Mister Giles, to see you so cast down!”

The butler rolled his lack-lustre eye from the mug of beer to the housekeeper’s countenance; then his underlip began to tremble.

“Ah,” he answered, “that stuff is killing me, Mrs. Nutmeg. The cold of it on my stomach! It’ll creep up to my heart some of these nights, it will! And that will be the end of poor old faithful Giles!”

A tear twinkled on his vast cheek. He stretched out his hand for the glass, gulped a mouthful of it and replaced it on the table, drawing down the corners of his mouth into a grimace not unlike that which in an infant heralds a burst of wailing.

“Cold, cruel, poisonous stuff, that lies as heavy as heavy! Half a caskful, ma’am will not stimulate a man as much as half a wineglassful of port-wine or sherry-wine. It’s murder—that’s what it is!”

“Murder it is,” assented Margery. She took the glass and threw its contents into the grate: sympathy personified. Then she began to move about the room with an air of so much mystery that Giles’ attention was faintly roused in something external to himself and to the odiousness of small-ale.

Mrs. Nutmeg went to the pantry door, listened a moment with stooped head, then released her right hand from the enfolded object and turned the key in the lock. Stepping to the high-set window, she next squinted east and west, as if to make sure that no watchers were about; then returned to the table, slowly unrolled her apron and displayed to the butler’s astonished gaze a black bottle, cobwebbed, dust-crusted, red-sealed—a bottle of venerable appearance and, to the initiated, of Olympian promise. With infinite precaution she tilted it into a vertical position and placed it on the table, displaying in so doing the dusty streak of whitewash which had marked the upper side of its repose these twenty years.Into old Giles’ expressionless stare leaped a light of rapturous recognition.

“The Comet port, by gum! The port from the fifth bin!”

He raised himself in his chair and, as if sight were not enough for conviction, began with trembling hands to caress the bottle, and smacking his lips as if the taste were already upon them. Margery surveyed him with her head slightly on one side.

“How—how did you get it?” he babbled, now sniffing at the seal, his red nose laid fondly first on one side then on the other.

“Never you mind,” said she, “I’m not the one to stand by and see old service drove to death by stinginess nor yet by interference. There’s more where it came from.”

“The last bottle we drank together,” interrupted he, “was the first to break in upon the sixth dozen. Six dozen, minus one, seventy-one bottles. That makes——”

“Seventy bottles still,” said she. “Enough to warm your heart again for many a long day.” She stooped, and whipped out a corkscrew from one of her capacious pockets.

“Give me that bottle, Mister Giles.”

She lifted it from his grasp. He raised his hands, protesting, quivering.

“For Heaven’s sake, don’t shake it, ma’am! Don’t shake it! It’s thirty year old, if it’s a day. Oh, Lord, Mrs. Nutmeg, give it to me, ma’am!”

She cast one swift, contemptuous glance upon him.

“I think my wrist is steadier than yours,” she remarked drily, while with the neatest precision she inserted the point of the corkscrew into the middle of the seal.

“’Tis the yale,” he palpitated.

“Oh, aye,” said she, “the ale, of course.” She smiled in her sleek way while she turned the corkscrew. “Here,” she added, “is what will steady them for a while at any rate.”

The cork came forth with a chirp that once more brought the fire to the toper’s eye.

“Ho, ho!” he cried, every crease in his face that had before spelt despondency now wreathing rapture.

“Wait a bit,” she bade him, still keeping her strong hand on the bottle neck. She dived into the left pocket and brought forth a short cut-glass beaker. “You’re not going,” said she, “to drink Sir David’s Comet port out of a mug!”

She poured it out, gently tilting the venerable bottle. He could hardly wait till the gorgeous liquid garnet had brimmed to the edge, before grasping the glass. But palsied as his hands were not a drop did they spill. A mouthful first, to let the taste of it lie on his palate; another to roll round his tongue; then unctuously, as slowly as was compatible with the act of swallowing, the ichor of the grape destined to warm a high-born heart and to illumine the workings of a noble mind, was sent to kindle the base fires of Sir David’s thieving old servant.

“Ah!”

He took a deep-drawn breath of utter satisfaction, reached for the bottle, boldly poured himself forth another glass and drank again. Motionless, the woman watched.

“As good a bottle,” said he garrulously, “as ever came out of the bin! ’Twas of the laying of the good Sir Everard—Sir David’s grandfather, you mark, Mrs. Nutmeg. You wasn’t in these parts then. Ah, a judge of wine he was. I tell ye I could pick every drop he had bottled blindfold this minute, at the first taste. He and Master Rickart, Lord, what wild times they had together! Ah, he was a blade in those days, was old Rickart. Now——’Tis well there’s someone left at Bindon that knows the valley of precious liquor, for it’s been disgusting, I assure you, ma’am. There’s master had nothing but the light clary—French stuff—and not known the differ these five years! Well, well, ’twould have broken Sir Everard’s heart, but”—piously, “there’s one left asremembers him and his tastes. May I offer you a thimbleful, Mrs. Nutmeg? ’Tis as good as a cordial!”

He was once more the man of importance: the steward dispensing his master’s goods with a fine air of hospitality.

“No, Mister Giles, I thank you kindly,” said the lady. Then she measured him again with one of her deep looks, marked the hand which he was stretching out for the port and suddenly whipped the desired object from its reach. Her calculated moment had come.—The butler’s limbs had lost their palsied trembling and there was some kind of speculation in his eye.

“No, Mister Giles,” she said, as he gaped at her. “I came here for a little chat, if you please. You’re feeling more yourself again?”

The memory of his injuries, forgotten for the brief span of ecstasy, returned in full force. His lip drooped.

“Aye, ma’am, a little, a little. But I am sadly weak.”

He pushed his glass tentatively forward, but she ignored the hint.

“I thought you was a-dying by inches before my eyes,” she announced deliberately.

The red face opposite to her grew mottled grey and purple. Mr. Giles began to whimper:

“So I was, ma’am. So I be!”

Margery sat down and, clasping the bottle with both her determined hands, leaned her head on one side of it.

“Another month of small-ale,” she said, “would bring you to your grave, Mister Giles. Aye, you may groan. How many bottles be left of this old port? Seventy ye said. And there be as good besides.”

“The East India sherry,” said he, the light of his one remaining interest flickering up again in the aged sockets. “Oh, it’s a beauty, that wine is! As dry, ma’am, and as mellow!” He smacked his tongue. “And there’s the Madeiry, got at the Dook of Sussex’s sale. ‘Royal wine,’ says Sir Everard to me. And Royal wine it is! But you know the taste of it yourself. Then there are the Burgundy bins. Women folk,” said Mr. Giles, “have thatinferiority, they can’t appreciate red wine. But there’s Burgundy down in my cellars that I’d rather go to bed on a bottle of as even of the Comet port.”

Margery broke in with a short laugh.

“Yes, yes,” said she; “I’ll warrant there is good stuff in your cellars. But who’s got the key of them now, if I may make so bold?”

Once again the toper was brought up to the sense of present limitations as by the tug of a merciless bit cunningly handled. With open mouth and starting eyes he paused, and the dark, senile blood rushed up to his face. Then he struck the table with his hand:

“That vixen of old Rickart’s, blast her!”

“And he—the daft old gentleman,” Margery’s voice dropped soft, as oil trickling down to fire, “eating the bread of charity, one may say, without so much as doing a stroke of work to save the shame of it!”

“Blast him!” cried Giles, with another thump.

“Oh, yes, when I brought you that bottle, I told you there was more where it came from. But the question is, who’s to have it, Mr. Giles! Is it all to be for that clever young lady and her crazy old father—that’s come like cuckoos to settle at Bindon, and bamfoozle that poor innocent gentleman, Sir David, and oust us as has served him so faithful and so long?”

“No, no, no!” cried old Giles, “blast ’em, blast ’em!”

Margery put her finger to her lip with a long drawn “Hush!” and glanced warningly round the room, though indeed, stronghold as it was, there was little fear of the sound escaping to the outer world. She then poured out a measured half glass and pushed it towards the butler, corked the bottle, placed it on the top of the safe; and betaking herself once again to her inexhaustible pockets, drew forth one after another and set in their turn upon the table a small unopened bottle of ink, a goose quill pen, of which she tested the nib, and a large sheet of paper, which she unfolded and smoothed.

“Now, Mr. Giles,” said she sharply.

He was absently sucking his empty glass and started to look upon her preparations uncomprehendingly.

“You write a fine hand,” said she, picking the stopper out of the inkpot with the point of the corkscrew.

“Ah,” said he, “my cellar book was a sight to see! It’s lain useless these six months. But so long,” he said, proudly but sadly, “as I kept the keys no one can say but as I kept the book.”

So he had indeed, with a quaint fidelity; and amazing reading it would have proved to the casual inspector, who would have founded wild opinions of Sir David’s and his cousin’s prowesses in the matter of toping.

“Do you want the keys back?” asked Margery, in a quiet whisper, “or is this to be the last bottle of port you’ll ever taste?”

He stared at her, his moist lip working. She seemed to find the answer sufficient, for she motioned him into his seat.

“Then you sit down and write,” said she, “and I promise you Bindon shall get his rights again, and our good master’s quiet, comfortable house be rid of her that brings no good to it.”

Giles sat down submissively, dipped the quill into the ink, manipulated it with the flourish of the proud penman; then, squaring his wrists flat on the sheet, prepared to start.

“I’d never have troubled you,” explained Margery, apologetically, “had I had your grand education, Mr. Giles.”

“Who be I to write to?” said Giles, with the stern air of the male mind controlling the female one, as it would wander from the point.

Again Margery whispered, not for fear of listeners, but to give the allurement of mystery to her purpose:

“To the Lady Lochore,” said she.

The pen dropped from Giles’ fingers, making a great blot at the top of the sheet, which Margery, with clacking tongue, deftly mopped up with a corner of her apron.Consternation and awe wrote themselves on the butler’s face. Faithless old ingrate as he was, robbing with remorseless system the hand that fed him, something of family spirit, some sense of clanship, still existed in his muddled mind. Enough of their master’s secrets had filtered to the household for everyone to know that his only sister had wedded the man who, under the pretending cloak of friendship, had done him mortal injury; and that from the moment she had thus given herself to his enemy, the lord of Bindon had cut her off from his life. But there were things beside, which old Giles alone knew; which he had kept to himself, even after his long devotion to the Bindon cellars had wreaked havoc upon the intelligence of his conscience.

It was but ten years back when a mounted messenger had brought the tidings to Sir David of the birth of an heir to the house of Lochore: heir also, as matters now stood, to the childless house of Bindon. Giles had conducted this messenger to Sir David’s presence. Giles had stood by and watched his master’s pale face grow death livid as he listened to the envoy’s tale, had seen him recoil from even the touch of his kinsman’s letter. It was Giles who had received the curt instructions: “Take the messenger away, give him food, rest and drink, and let him ride and bear back to Lord Lochore that letter he has sent me.” And now old Giles looked up into Margery’s inscrutable face, and cried with echoes of forgotten loyalty in his husky voice:

“Write to Miss Maud?—to my Lady, I mean. Nay, nay, Mrs. Nutmeg, I’ll not do that!”

“Ah,” said Mrs. Nutmeg.

She had been standing over his shoulder, showing more eagerness than her wont, and licking her lips over the words she was about to dictate to him, while a light shone in her eyes that was never kindled so long as she was under observation. At the check of his words the old sleek change came over her. The curtain of impassiveness fell over her countenance. The gleam went out inher eyes. She came quietly round, sat down, opposite him and, folding her hands, let them rest on the table before her.

“Ah,” said she, “it do go again the grain, don’t it, Mr. Giles? And if it was not for Sir David——”

Giles meanwhile, having pushed the writing materials on one side, had risen and helped himself freely again to the Comet port, drinking courage to his own half-repented resolution, a babble of disjointed phrases escaping from him in the intervals of his gulps. “No, he could not go against Sir David—poor old man, not many years to live—served his father’s father. Eh, and Sir Edmund had put him into these arms; and he but a babe—the greatest toper in the house, says Sir Edmund...” Here there was a chuckle and a tear, and a fresh glass poured out.

Margery never blinked towards the bottle. Unfolding her hands, she presently began to smooth out the writing paper, and by-and-bye began to speak. At first it was a merely soothing trickle of talk. No one knew Mr. Giles’ high-mindedness and nobility of character better than she did; though, indeed, she herself was but a new-comer at Bindon, compared to him—the third of his generation in the service of the house, and himself the servant of three Cheveral masters. By-and-bye, from this primrose path of flattery she turned aside into less smooth ground. Something she said of the real duties of old service, of the mistaken duty of blind submission. There was a dark hint of Sir David’s helplessness, a prey to designing intruders—“and him as easy to cheat as a child!” A tear here welled to Mistress Margery’s eyelid; there was no doubt she spoke as one whose knowledge was first hand.

Mister Giles knew best, of course; but, in her humble opinion, it was an old servitor’s bounden duty to let their master’s nearest relative know. Here Margery became very dark again; things are so much more terrible when merely hinted at. The butler’s hand halted with thesixth glass on the way to his lips; he put it down again untasted.

“Who’s to look after Master, I should like to know?” asked Margery boldly, “when you and I and all the old faithful folk is turned out of Bindon, and that deep young lady and Master Rickart reign alone, with their poisons and their powders?”

“By gum!” cried Giles, with a shout, thumping the table, so that the precious wine this time slopped over its barrier. “By gum! hand me that paper, and say your say, ma’am, and I’ll write it!”

The man was just tipsy enough already to be easily worked up, and unable to analyse the means by which his passion was roused; not too tipsy to be a perfectly capable instrument in the housekeeper’s hands.

The following was the letter that Giles, the butler of Bindon, wrote to “the Lady Lochore,” at her house in London:

My Lady.—Trusting you will excuse the liberty and in the hopes this finds your Ladyship well, as is the humble wish of the writer. My Lady, I have not been the servant of your Ladyship’s brother, my most honoured master, Sir David Cheveral of Bindon, without knowing the sad facts of family divisions between yourself and Sir David. But, my Lady, wishing to do my duty by my master, as has always been my humble endeavour, I should consider myself deaf to the Voice of Conscience, did I not take the pen this day to let you know the state of affairs at Bindon at this present time.

Master Rickart’s daughter, Mistress Marvel, has come back to Bindon, to live, and my Lady, she and her father is now master and mistress here. Sir David being such as my Lady knows he is, different from other people, is no match for such.

My Lady, what the end of it will be no one can tell. None of us like to think of it. What is said in the village and all over the country already, is what I must excuse myself from writing, not being fit for your Ladyship’s eyes. But as your Ladyship’s father’s old and trusted servant, I am doing no less than my bounden duty, in warning your Ladyship.

Here Margery had halted, and flouted several eager suggestions on the part of the faithful butler, who was anxious to mention poisons and phials and black practises, who, moreover, had wished to introduce after every sentence a detailed account of the unmerited cruelty practised upon himself in forcing him to give up the keys of the family cellar, and express his intimate persuasion of the restlessness thereby caused to the good Sir Everard’s bones in their honoured grave. But Margery was firm; and now, after due reflection, sternly commanded Mr. Giles’ respects and signature. When this flourishing signature at length adorned the page, Margery laid a flat finger below it.

“Write: Post-Scriptum,” ordered she. “I humbly trust your Ladyship’s little son is well. There was great joy among us when we heard of his honoured birth. We was, up to now, all used to think of him as the heir to Bindon.”

Here she hesitated again; but finally, true to her instinct that suggestion is more potent than explanation, demanded the folding of the letter, its addressing and sealing. The latter duty she undertook herself, with the help of the inexhaustible bag. And as she laid her thumb on the hot wax, she smiled, well content, and allowed Giles to finish the bottle and drown any possible misgivings.

As she left the room to watch for the post-boy, and herself place the fruit of her morning labour in the bag, Giles, with tipsy gravity and mechanical neatness, was posting his too long disused cellar book up to date:

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