THE STAR DREAMER
THE STAR DREAMER
THE STAR DREAMER
THE STAR DREAMER
BOOK III
Come down ... from yonder mountain heights.And come, for Love is of the valley, come,For Love is of the valley, come thou down!Tennyson(The Princess.)
Come down ... from yonder mountain heights.And come, for Love is of the valley, come,For Love is of the valley, come thou down!Tennyson(The Princess.)
Come down ... from yonder mountain heights.And come, for Love is of the valley, come,For Love is of the valley, come thou down!Tennyson(The Princess.)
Come down ... from yonder mountain heights.
And come, for Love is of the valley, come,
For Love is of the valley, come thou down!
Tennyson(The Princess.)
CHAPTER ITHE LITTLE MASTER OF BINDON
She played about with slight and sprightly talk,And vivid smiles, and faintly venom’d pointsOf slander, glancing here and grazing there.—Tennyson(Merlin and Vivien).
She played about with slight and sprightly talk,And vivid smiles, and faintly venom’d pointsOf slander, glancing here and grazing there.—Tennyson(Merlin and Vivien).
She played about with slight and sprightly talk,And vivid smiles, and faintly venom’d pointsOf slander, glancing here and grazing there.—Tennyson(Merlin and Vivien).
She played about with slight and sprightly talk,
And vivid smiles, and faintly venom’d points
Of slander, glancing here and grazing there.
—Tennyson(Merlin and Vivien).
In the terraced gardens, under the spreading shadows of the cedar trees, was gathered a motley group. Beyond that patch of shade the sun blazed down on stone steps and balusters, on green turf and scarlet geranium, with a fervour the eye could scarce endure. The air was full of hot scents. On a day such as this, Bindon of old was wont to seem asleep: lulled by the rhythmic, rocking dream-note of the wild pigeons, deep in its encircling woods. On a day such as this, the wise rooks would put off conclave and it would be but some irrepressible younger member of the ancient community that would take a wild flight away from leafy shade and, wheeling over the tree tops, drop between the blue and the green a drowsy caw. But things were changed this July at Bindon: these very rooks held noisy counsel in mid air and discussed what flock of strange bright birds it was that had alighted in their quiet corner of the world, to startle its greens and greys, to out-flaunt its flower-beds with outlandish parrot plumage, to break the humming summer silence with unknown clamours.
“The Deyvil take my soul!” said Thomas Villars reflectively.
He was sitting on the grass at Lady Lochore’s feet; his long legs in the last cut of trousers strapped overpositively the latest boots. The slimness of his waist, the juvenility of his manner, the black curls that hung luxuriantly over his clean-shaven face, all this conspired to give Mr. Villars quite an illusive air of youth, even from a very short distance. Only a close examination revealed the lines on the rouged cheek and the wrinkled fall of chin that the highest and finest stock could not quite conceal. The latest pedigree gave the year of his birth as some lost fifty years ago—it also described the lady who had presided at that event as belonging to the illustrious Castillian house of Lara. But ill-natured friends persisted, averred that this lady had belonged to no more foreign regions than the Minories, and thus they accounted for Tom’s black ringlets, for his bold arch of nose, for his slightly thick consonants and his unconquerable fondness for personal jewellery.
Mr. Villars was, however, almost universally accepted by society: his knowledge of the share market was only second to his astounding acquaintance with everyone’s exact financial situation.
“Deyvil take my soul!” he insisted. Tom Villars was fond of an oath as of a fine genteel habit.
“I defy even the Devil to do that,” said Lady Lochore, stopping the languidly pettish flap of her fan to shoot an angry look at him over its edge.
“Why so, fairest Queen of the Roses?”
“Tom Villars sold his soul to the Devil long ago,” put in Colonel Harcourt. “It is no longer an asset.”
Frankly fifty, with a handsome ruddy face under a sweep of grey hair that almost gave the impression of the forgotten becomingness of the powdered peruke, Colonel Harcourt, of the Grenadiers, erect, broad-chested, pleasantly swaggering, good humoured and yet haughty, proclaimed the guardsman to the first glance, even in his easy country garb.
“Sold his soul to the Devil?” echoed Luke Herrick, lifting his handsome young face from the daisies he was piling in pretty Priscilla Geary’s pink silk lap. “Soldhis soul, did he? Uncommon bargain for Beelzebub and Co.! I thought the firm did better business.”
“You are quite wrong,” said Lady Lochore, looking down with disfavour upon the countenance of her victim, who feigned excessive enjoyment of the ambient wit and humour. “The Devil cannot take Tom Villars’ soul, nor could Tom Villars sell it to the Devil, for the very good reason that Tom Villars never had a soul to be disposed of.”
A shout of laughter went round the glowing idle group.
“Cruel, cruel, lady mine!” murmured the oriental Villars, striving to throw a fire of pleading devotion into his close-set shallow eyes as he looked up at Lady Lochore and at the same time to turn a dignified deaf ear upon his less important tormentors. “In how have I offended that you thus make a pincushion of my heart?”
Mr. Villars knew right well that with Lady Lochore, as with the other fair of his acquaintance, his favour fell with the barometer of certain little negotiations. But it was a characteristic—no doubt maternally inherited—that soft as he was upon the pleasure side of nature, when it came to business, he was invulnerable.
At this point Mr. Herrick burst into song. He had a pretty tenor voice:
Come, bring your sampler, and with artDraw in’t a wounded heartAnd dropping here and there!Not that I think that any dartCan make yours bleed a tearOr pierce it anywhere——
Come, bring your sampler, and with artDraw in’t a wounded heartAnd dropping here and there!Not that I think that any dartCan make yours bleed a tearOr pierce it anywhere——
Come, bring your sampler, and with artDraw in’t a wounded heartAnd dropping here and there!Not that I think that any dartCan make yours bleed a tearOr pierce it anywhere——
Come, bring your sampler, and with art
Draw in’t a wounded heart
And dropping here and there!
Not that I think that any dart
Can make yours bleed a tear
Or pierce it anywhere——
This youth was proud of tracing a collateral relationship with the genial Cavalier singer, whom he was fond of quoting in season and out of season. He was a poet himself, or fancied so; cultivated loose locks, open collars and flying ties—something also of poetic license in other matters besides verse. But as his spirits were as inexhaustibleas his purse—and he was at heart a guileless boy—there were not many who would hold him in rigour.
Lady Lochore looked at him with approval, as he lay stretched at her feet, just then pleasantly occupied in sticking his decapitated daisies into Miss Priscilla’s uncovered curls—a process to which that damsel submitted without so much as a blink of her demure eyelid.
“Heart!” echoed Lady Lochore. She had received that morning a postal application for overdue interest, and Tom Villars had been so detachedly sympathetic that there were no tortures she would not now cheerfully have inflicted upon him. “Heart!” she cried again, “why don’t you know what is going to happen, when the poor old machine that is Tom Villars comes to a standstill at last——”
“There will be a great concourse of physicians,” broke in Colonel Harcourt, whose wit was not equal to his humour, “and when they’ve taken off his wig and his stays and cut him open——”
“Out will fall,” interrupted Herrick, “the portrait of his dear cousin Rebecca—whom he loved in the days of George II.
‘Be she likewise one of thoseThat an acre hath of nose——’”
‘Be she likewise one of thoseThat an acre hath of nose——’”
‘Be she likewise one of thoseThat an acre hath of nose——’”
‘Be she likewise one of those
That an acre hath of nose——’”
“The physician will find a dreadful little withered fungus,” pursued Lady Lochore, unheeding.
“Which,” lisped Priscilla, suddenly raising the most innocent eyes in all the world, “which they will send to Master Rickart to find a grand name for, as the deadliest kind of poison that ever set doctors wondering. And sure, ’tisn’t poison at all! Master Rickart will say, but just a poor kind of snuff that wouldn’t even make a cat sneeze.”
Mr. Villars had met Miss Priscilla Geary upon the great oak stair this morning; and, examining her through his single eyeglass, had vowed she was a rosebud, and pinched her chin—all in a very condescending manner.
“I think you’re all talking very great nonsense,” remarked the Dishonourable Caroline.
Mrs. Geary was comfortably ensconced in a deep garden chair. Now raising her large pale face and protuberant pale eye from a note-book upon which she had been making calculations, she seemed to become aware for the first time of the irresponsible clatter around her.
“Mr. Villars,” she proceeded, in soft gurgling notes not unlike those of the ringdove’s, “I have been just going over last night’s calculations and I think there’s a little error—on your side, dear Mr. Villars.”
Mr. Villars scrambled to his feet, more discomfited by this polite observation than by the broad insolence of the others’ banter.
“My dear Madam, I really think, ah—pray allow me—we went thoroughly into the matter last night.”
The little pupils in Mrs. Geary’s goggling eyes narrowed to pins’ points.
“I do not think anyone can ever accuse me of inaccuracy,” she cooed with emphasis. “Come and look for yourself, Mr. Villars. You owe me still three pounds nine and eightpence—and three farthings.”
“Bianca letMe pay the debtI owe thee, for a kiss!”
“Bianca letMe pay the debtI owe thee, for a kiss!”
“Bianca letMe pay the debtI owe thee, for a kiss!”
“Bianca let
Me pay the debt
I owe thee, for a kiss!”
sang the irrepressible Herrick—stretching his arms dramatically to Priscilla, and advancing his impudent comely face as if to substantiate the words—upon which she slapped him with little angry fingers outspread; and Lady Lochore first frowned, then laughed; then suddenly sighed.
“Peep-bo, mamma!” cried a high baby voice.
Every line of Lady Lochore’s face became softened, at the same time intensified with that wonderful change that her child’s presence always brought to her. But her heavy frown instantly came back as she beheld Ellinor, hatless, bearing a glass of milk upon a tray, while, frombehind the crisp folds of her skirt, the heir-presumptive of Lochore (and Bindon) peeped roguishly at his mother.
Herrick sprang to his feet. Colonel Harcourt turned his brown face to measure the new-comer with his frank eye and then rose also.
“Hebe,” said he, looking down with admiration at the fresh, sun-kissed cheek and the sun-illumined head, “Hebe, with the nectar of the God!”
He took the tray from her hand.
“Give me my milk,” said Lady Lochore. “Edmund, come here! Come here, darling. Are you thirsty? You shall drink out of mother’s glass. Come here, sir, this minute! Really, Mrs. Marvel, you should not take him from his nurse like this!”
With a shrill cry the child rushed back to Ellinor and clutched her skirt again, announcing in his wilful way that he would have no nasty milk, and that he loved the pretty lady. Ellinor had some little ado to restore him to his mother. Then, seeing him firmly captured at last by the end of his tartan sash, she stood a moment facing Lady Lochore’s vindictive eyes with scornful placidity.
“My father hopes you will drink the milk, cousin Maud,” said she, “and if you would add to it the little packet of powder that lies beside it on the tray, he bids me say that it would be most beneficial to your cough.”
For all response Lady Lochore drank off the glass; then handed back the tray to Ellinor as if she had been a servant, the little powder conspicuously untouched. Ellinor looked from one to the other of the two men; then with a fine careless gesture passed her burden to Herrick, and, without another word, walked away up the terrace steps.
Herrick glanced after her, glanced at the tray in his hand, and breaking into a quick laugh, promptly thrust it into Colonel Harcourt’s hands and scurried off in pursuit. Colonel Harcourt good-humouredly echoed the laugh, as he finally deposited the object on the grass, then stood in his turn, gazing philosophically after the tworetreating figures that were now progressing side by side, while Lady Lochore and her son out-wrangled Mrs. Geary and Mr. Villars.
“’Pon my soul,” said Colonel Harcourt, “vera incessu patuit Dea. That woman walks as well as any I’ve ever seen!”
Lady Lochore caught the words, and they added to the irritation with which she was endeavouring to stifle her son’s protestation that he hated mamma.
“I’ll have you know who’s master, sir!” she cried, pinning down the struggling arms with sudden anger.
“I’m master. I am the little Master of Lochore—and Margery says I’m to be the little master here!”
The mother suddenly relaxed her grasp of him and sat stonily gazing at him while he rubbed his chubby arm and stared back at her with pouting lips. The next moment she went down on her knees beside him, and took him up in her arms, smothering him with kisses.
“Darling, so he shall be, darling, darling!”
A panting nurse here rushed upon the scene.
“Wretch!” exclaimed my lady, “you are not worth your salt! How dare you let the child escape you. Yes, take him, take him!—the weight of him!”
She caught Harcourt’s eye fixed reflectively upon her.
“Come and walk with me,” she commanded.
“I was two by honours, you remember,” cooed Mrs. Geary.
“I am positive, the Deyvil take my soul, Madam! But ’tis my score you are marking instead of your own!”
Deserted Priscilla sat making reflective bunches of daisies. She had not once looked up since Herrick so unceremoniously left her.
The sky was still as blue, the grass as green, the flowers as bright, the whole summer’s day as lovely; but fret and discord had crept in among them.
CHAPTER IITOTTERING LIFE AND FORTUNE
... Loathsome sight,How from the rosy lips of life and loveFlashed the bare grinning skeleton of death!White was her cheek; sharp breaths of anger puff’dHer nostrils....—Tennyson(Merlin and Vivien).
... Loathsome sight,How from the rosy lips of life and loveFlashed the bare grinning skeleton of death!White was her cheek; sharp breaths of anger puff’dHer nostrils....—Tennyson(Merlin and Vivien).
... Loathsome sight,How from the rosy lips of life and loveFlashed the bare grinning skeleton of death!White was her cheek; sharp breaths of anger puff’dHer nostrils....—Tennyson(Merlin and Vivien).
... Loathsome sight,
How from the rosy lips of life and love
Flashed the bare grinning skeleton of death!
White was her cheek; sharp breaths of anger puff’d
Her nostrils....
—Tennyson(Merlin and Vivien).
With head erect, Lady Lochore walked on between the borders of lilies. The path was so narrow and the lilies had grown to such height and luxuriance that they struck heavily against her; and each time, like swinging censers, sent gushes of perfume up towards the hot blue sky.
Colonel Harcourt went perforce a step behind her, just avoiding to tread on her garments as they trailed, dragging the little pebbles on the hot grey soil. Now and again he mopped his brow. He liked neither the sun on his back nor the strong breath of the flowers, nor this aimless promenade. But, in his dealings with women, he had kept an invariable rule of almost exaggerated deference in little things, and he had found that he could go further in great ones than most men who disdained such nicety.
Suddenly Lady Lochore stopped and began to cough. Then she wheeled round and looked at Harcourt with irate eyes over the folds of her handkerchief she was pressing to her lips.
Anthony Harcourt possessed a breast as hard as granite, withal an easy superficial gentlemanly benevolence which did very well for the world in lieu of deeper feeling; and a great deal better for himself. He was quiteshocked at the sound of that cough; still more so when Lady Lochore flung out the handkerchief towards him with the inimitable gesture of the living tragedy and showed it to him stained with blood.
“Look at that, Tony,” said she, “and tell me how long do you think it will be before I bark myself to death?”
Her cheek was scarlet and her eyes shone with unnatural brilliance in their wasted sockets. She swayed a little as she stood, like the lilies about her; and indeed she herself looked like some passionate southern flower wasting life and essence even as one looked at her.
“Come out of this heat,” said Harcourt. He took her left arm and placed it within his; led her to a stone bench in the shade. She sat down with an impatient sigh, passed the back of the hand he had held impatiently over her wet forehead and closed her eyes. In her right hand, crushed upon her lap, the stained cambric lay hidden.
“Is not this better,” said her companion, as if he were speaking to a child, “out of that sunshine and the sickly smell of those flowers? Here we get the breeze from the woods and the scent of the hay. A sort of little heaven after a successful imitation of the infernal regions.”
“If you mean Hell, why don’t you say Hell?” said Lady Lochore. She laughed in that bitterness of soul that can find no expression but in irony. “Bah!” she went on, half to herself. “It’s no use trying not to believe in Hell, my friend; you have to, when you’ve got it in you! Look here,” she suddenly blazed her unhappy eyes upon him. “Look here, Tony—honour, now! How long do you give me?”
All the man’s superficial benevolence looked sadly at her from his handsome face.
“I am no doctor.”
“Faugh! Subterfuge!”
“Why, then, at the rate going, not three months,” said he. “But, with rational care, I’ve no doubt, as long as most.”
“Not three months!” She clenched her right handconvulsively and glanced down at the white folds escaping from her fingers as if they contained her death warrant. “Thank, you, Tony. You’re a beast at heart, like the rest of us, but you’re a gentleman. I am going at a rapid rate, am I not? Oh, God! I shouldn’t care—what’s beyond can’t be worse than what’s here. But it’s the child!”
The man made no answer. He had the tact of all situations. Here silence spoke the sympathy that was deeper than words. There was a pause, Lady Lochore drew her breath in gasps.
“It’s a pretty state of affairs here,” she said, at last, with her hard laugh.
“You mean——?”
“I mean my sanctimonious brother and his prudish lady!”
“Surely——?” He raised his eyebrows in expressive query.
“Not she!” cried Lady Lochore in passionate disgust. “I would think the better of her if she did. No, she’s none of those who deem the world well lost for love. Oh, she’ll calculate! She’ll give nothing for nothing! She’s laid her plans.” Lady Lochore began reckoning on three angry fingers uplifted. “There’s the equivocal position—one; my brother’s diseased notions of honour—two; her own bread-and-butter comeliness—three. She’ll hook him, Tony. She’ll hook him, and my boy will go a beggar! Lochore has pretty well ruined us as it is.”
“I should not regard Sir David as a marrying man, myself,” said the colonel soothingly.
“No,” said she, “the last man in the world to marry, but the first to be married on some preposterous claim! Look here, Tony, we are old friends. I have not walked you off here to waste your time. You know that my fortunes are in even more rapid decline than myself. There’s the child; he is the heir to this place. Before God, what is it to me, but the child and his rights! I’ll fight for them till I die. Not much of a boast, you say, but when a woman’s pushed to it, as I am”—her voice failed her.There was something awful in the contrast between the energy of her passion and the frailness of her body and in the way they reacted one upon another.
“Poor soul!” said Colonel Harcourt to himself—and his kind eyes were almost suffused.
“Tony, Tony!” she panted in a whisper of frantic intensity, “you can help. Oh, don’t look like that! I know I’m boring you, but I’ll not bore anyone for long. Think what it means to me! Fool! As if any man could understand! Don’t be afraid, I won’t ask anything hard of you. Only to make love to the rosy dairymaid, to the prim housekeeper, to the pretty widow. Why, man, you can’t keep your wicked eyes off her as it is!”
He leaned back against the bench, crossed one shapely leg over the other, closed his eyes and laughed gently to himself. Lady Lochore, bending forward, measured him with a swift glance, and her lips parted in a sneer.
“You’re but a lazy fellow. You like your peach growing at your elbow. You’ve been afraid of hurting my feelings ... you have been so long regarded as my possession! Oh, Tony, that’s all over now. Listen—if you don’t know the ways of woman, who does? The case is very plain: that creature is planning to compromise David. I know how you can make love when you choose, and I know my fool of a brother. I’ll have her compromised first! And then——”
She pressed her hands to her heart, then to her throat; for a moment or two the poor body had struck work. Only her eyes pleaded, threatened.
“And then? Before the Lord, you ladies!”
For all hisbonhommie de viveur, Colonel Harcourt, of the First Guards, was known about Town to be a good deal of “a tiger,” as the cant of the day had it; and he held a justified reputation as an expert with the “saw-handle and hair-trigger.” Conscious of this, he went on:
“Truly, Maud, it may well be said there’s never a man sent below but a woman showed the way! But is there not something a little crude in your plan?”
“Crude! Have I time to be mealy-mouthed? I’m not asking you anything very hard, God knows! Merely to follow your own bent, Tony Harcourt; you have had your way with me, but that is over now, and you know it. I want you to devote yourself to that piece of country bloom instead. In three months you know what I shall be!...”
“My dear Maud.... And then?” He was amused no longer: Lady Lochore was undeniably crude. “A regular conspiracy!” he went on. But, after a moment’s musing, a gleam came into his eye. “What of it!” he cried, “all’s fair in love and war—a soldier’s motto, and it has been mine! And as for you, why, your spirits would keep twenty alive!”
She laughed scornfully.
“It sounds better to say so, anyhow,” she retorted. “I don’t want any mewing over me. So it’s a bargain, Tony? For old sake’s sake you’ll go against all your principles and make love to a pretty woman? And we’ll have this new Pamela out of the citadel. We’ll have this scheming dairy-wench shown up in her true colours! My precious brother, as you know, or you don’t know, has got some rather freakish notions about women. He’s had a slap in the face once already, and it turned him silly. Disgust him of this second love affair, he’ll never have a third and I shall die in peace. You have marked the affectionate, fraternal way in which he treats me! I had to force my way back into this house. He’ll never forgive me for marrying Lochore—and as for Lochore himself, to the trump of doom David will never forgive him for.... Bah! for doing him the best turn one man ever did another!”
“And what was that?” asked the colonel, with a slight yawn.
“What you and I are going to do now,” said my Lady. She smoothed her ruffled hair, folded her stained kerchief and slipped it into her bag; rose, and looked down smiling once more at the man, her fine nostrils fluttering withher quick breath in a way that gave a singular expression of mocking cruelty to her face. “Lochore saved Sir David from marrying beneath him.”
“And how did he accomplish that?” asked the colonel, rising too.
There was now a faint flutter of curiosity in his breast The reasons for Sir David’s eccentricity had once been much discussed. Lady Lochore took two steps down the path, then looked back over her shoulder.
“In the simplest way in the world,” she answered. “He gave a greedy child an apple, while my simpleton of a brother was solemnly forging a wedding ring.”
“Why”—the colonel stared, then laughed—“my Lady,” said he “these are strange counsels! Why—absurd! How could I think the plump, pretty Phyllis would as much as blink at an old fogey like me. And, as for me——”
Again Lady Lochore turned her head and looked long and fully at the speaker.
“Oh, Tony!” she said slowly at last. “Tony, Tony!”
Colonel Harcourt tried in vain to present a set face of innocence; the self-conscious smile of the gratifiedrouéquivered on his lips. He broke into a sudden loud laugh and wagged his head at her. She dropped her eyelids for a second to shut out the sight.
“And she bit into the apple?” asked the colonel, presently.
“With all her teeth, my dear friend. Heavens! isn’t the world’s history but one long monotonous repetition? With us Eves, everything depends upon the way the fruit is offered. And that is why, I suppose, it is seldom Adam and his legitimate orchard that tempts us. Reflect on that, Tony.”
With this fleer, and a careless forbidding motion of her hand, she left him standing and looking after her.
There was a mixture of admiration and distrust in his eyes.
“By George, what a woman!” said he. “Gad, I’m glad I am not her Adam, anyhow!”
Then his glance grew veiled, as it fixed itself upon an inward thought, and a slow complacent smile crept upon his face.
CHAPTER IIISTRAWS ON THE WIND
... I feel my genial spirits droop,My hopes all flat....—Milton(Samson Agonistes).
... I feel my genial spirits droop,My hopes all flat....—Milton(Samson Agonistes).
... I feel my genial spirits droop,My hopes all flat....—Milton(Samson Agonistes).
... I feel my genial spirits droop,
My hopes all flat....
—Milton(Samson Agonistes).
“I never heard you, my dear Doctor, preach better!” said Madam Tutterville.
But the worthy lady’s countenance was overcast as she spoke; and the hands which were smoothing and folding the surplice that the parson had just laid aside were shaking. The reverend Horatio turned upon his spouse with a philosophic smile. The lady did not use to seek him thus in the sacristy after service unless something in the Sunday congregation seemed to call for her immediate comment. On this particular morning he well knew where the thorn pricked; for he himself, mounting to the pulpit with the consciousness of an extra-polished discourse awaiting that choice Oxford delivery which had so rare a chance of being appreciated, had not seen without a pang of vexation that the Bindon House pew was empty save for its usual occupant—Mrs. Marvel. Having promptly overcome his small weakness and proceeded with his sermon with all the eloquence he would have bestowed on the expected cultivated, or at least fashionable, audience, he was now all the more ready to banter his wife upon her distress.
“What is the matter, dear Sophia?”
“An ungrateful and reprobate generation! He that will not hear the church, let him be to thee as the heathen and the publican!” cried Madam, suddenly rolling the surplice into a tight bundle and indignantly gesticulating with it.
“How now! has Joe Mossmason been snoring under your very nose, or has Barbara——”
“Tush, tush, Doctor! You know right well what I mean. Was not that empty pew a scandal and a disgrace? Bindon House full of guests and not one to come and bend the knee to their Lord!”
“And admire my rolling periods, is it not so, my faithful spouse?” quoth the parson good-naturedly.
“I took special care to remind them of the hour of service last night; not, indeed, that I ever expected anything of Maud; although she might well be thinking that in every cough she gives she can find the hand-writing on the wall. Amen, amen, I come like a thief in the night!”
The parson’s eyelids contracted slightly, but he made no reply. Seating himself in the wooden armchair, he began with some labour to encircle his unimpeachable legs with the light summer gaiters that their unprotected, silk-stocking state demanded for out-door walking.
“My dear Horatio, what are you doing? Allow me!” She was down on her knees in a second; and while, with her amazing activity of body, she wielded the button-hook, her tongue never ceased to wag under the stress of her equally amazing activity of mind.
“But that card-playing woman—that Jezebel—one would have thought she’d have had the decency to open a prayer-book on the day when the commandments of the Lord forbid her to shuffle a pack; she’s old enough to know better!”
“I’m not so sure,” said the reverend Horatio, complacently stretching out the other leg, “that she interprets the Sabbath ordinance in that spirit.”
“Horatio!” ejaculated the outraged churchwoman, “you do not mean to insinuate that such simony could take place within our diocese as card-playing on the Sunday?”
“I think, from what I have seen from the Honourable Mrs. Geary, that she is likely to show more interest in the card-tables than in the tables of Moses.”
He laughed gently.
“Talking of Moses,” cried Madam Tutterville, feverishly buttoning, “there’s that Mr. Villars—one would have thought he would come, if only to show himself a Christian.”
But she was careful, even in her righteous exasperation, not to nip her parson’s tender flesh.
“Thank you, Sophia!”
He rose and reached for his broad-brimmed hat; then suddenly perceiving from his wife’s empurpled cheek and trembling lip that the slight had gone deeper than he thought, he patted her on the shoulder and said in an altered manner:
“Come, come, Sophia, let us remember that fortunately we are not responsible for the shortcomings of Lady Lochore’s guests. Indeed, from what I saw last night, it is a matter of far deeper moment to consider the effect of their presence upon those two who are dear to us at Bindon.”
“You mean, Doctor?”
“I did not like David’s looks, my dear. I fear the strain and the disgust, and the effort to repress himself, are too much for him. And besides”—he paused a moment—“I don’t know that I altogether liked Ellinor’s looks either.”
“My dear Horatio! I thought I had never seen her so gay and so handsome.”
“Too gay, Sophia, and too handsome. So Mr. Herrick and Colonel Harcourt not to speak of that pitiable person, Mr. Villars, seem to find her. She appears to me to take their admiration with rather more ease than is perhaps altogether wise in a young woman in her position. I do not say,” he went on, bearing down the lady’s horrified exclamation—“I do not go so far as yourself in surmising that David had formed any serious attachment in that quarter; but then, you see, it might have ripened into one. There is no doubt there was a singular air of peace and happiness about Bindon before this most undesirableinflux. But last night David’s eyes——” He broke off, readied for his cane and moved towards the porch.
“My dear sir,” panted Madam Tutterville after him, “you have plunged me in very deep anxiety! We seem indeed, as Paul says, to be going from Scyllis to Charybda! Pray proceed with your sentence—David’s eyes?”
But the parson had already repented.
“Nay, it is after all but a small matter. All I mean is that this noise, this wrangling, this frivolity, this trivial mirth, which is, after all, but the crackling of thorns, is peculiarly distasteful to such a man as David, and I was only sorry that your niece should seem to countenance it.”
“I will speak to her,” announced Madam Tutterville. “I will instantly seek her.”
“Nay,” said her lord, “my dear Sophia, here we have no right to interfere. Ellinor has sufficient experience of the world to be left to her own devices. I understand that Colonel Harcourt and Mr. Herrick are neither of them a meanparti, and, unless I am seriously mistaken, the younger man at least is genuinely enamoured. By what right can we permit our own secret wishes, our own rather wild match-making plans, to step in here?”
“Oh, dear!” sighed Sophia. “And we were so comfortable!”
The two stood arm-in-arm at the lych-gate and absently watched the last of their parishioners straggling homeward in groups through the avenue trees. Suddenly Madam Tutterville touched her husband’s arm and pointed with a dramatic gesture in the direction of the House.
Two tall slight figures were moving side by side across the sunlit green. Even as the rector looked a third, emerging from the shadows of the beeches, joined them with sweeping gestures of greeting.
“They have been, I declare, lying in wait for Ellinor ... and there she goes off between them, Sunday morning and all!”
Deeply shocked and annoyed was Madam Tutterville.
“I think,” said the parson, “that I will take an hour’s rest in the garden. I would, my dear Sophia, you had as soothing an acquaintance, on such an occasion as Ovid.”
CHAPTER IVA SHOCK AND A REVELATION
Into these sacred shades (quoth she)How dar’st thou be so boldTo enter, consecrate to me,Or touch this hallowed mould?—Michael Drayton(Quest of Cynthia).
Into these sacred shades (quoth she)How dar’st thou be so boldTo enter, consecrate to me,Or touch this hallowed mould?—Michael Drayton(Quest of Cynthia).
Into these sacred shades (quoth she)How dar’st thou be so boldTo enter, consecrate to me,Or touch this hallowed mould?—Michael Drayton(Quest of Cynthia).
Into these sacred shades (quoth she)
How dar’st thou be so bold
To enter, consecrate to me,
Or touch this hallowed mould?
—Michael Drayton(Quest of Cynthia).
Ellinor sat on the stone bench in the Herb-Garden, gazing disconsolately at the flourishing bed ofEuphrosinum—at the Star-of-Comfort—and reviewing the events of the past days with a heavy and discomforted heart.
It is but seldom now that she could find a few minutes of solitude, so many were the claims upon her time. For, besides the household duties and Master Simon’s unconscious tyranny, she was subjected to a kind of persecution of admiration on the part of Bindon’s male guests. There were times, indeed, when Colonel Harcourt’s shadowing attendance became so embarrassing that she was glad to turn to the protection which the boyish worship of Luke Herrick afforded.
With the former she felt instinctively that under an almost exaggerated gentleness and deference there lurked a gathering danger; whereas the youthful poet, however exuberant in his devotion, was not only a harmless, but a sympathetic companion.
While she was far from realising the peril in which she stood where her dearest hopes were concerned, she felt the difficulty of her position increase at every turn. Forced by David’s wish into the society of his visitors, she was there completely ostracised by the ladies after an art only known to the feminine community. Thus she was thrownupon the mercies of the gentlemen, and they were extended to her with but too ready charity. It would not have been in human nature not to talk and laugh with Luke Herrick when Miss Priscilla was going by, her little nose in the air. It was impossible not to accept with a smiling grace the chair, the footstool, the greeting offered to her with a mixture of paternal and courtierlike solicitude, amid the icy silence and the drawing away of skirts whenever she entered upon the circle.
Now and again, perhaps, her laugh may have been a little too loud, her smile a shade too sweet; but she would not have been a woman had the insulting attitude of the other women not led her to some reprisals. Moreover there was a deep sore place in her soul which cried out that he who should by rights be her protector held himself too scornfully aloof; nay, that he actually included her now and again in the cold glance which he swept round the table upon his unwelcome guests. To the end of the chapter a woman will always seize the obvious weapon wherewith to fight the indifference of the man she loves, and nine times out of ten it is herself she wounds therewith.
The basket that was to hold the health of the village was still empty by her side. Absently she fingered a sprig of wormwood—meet emblem, she thought, of her present mood. Indeed, Ellinor’s thoughts were not often so bitter. Not often was her brave spirit so dashed.
There came a light rapid step behind her, a burst of laughter; and, as she turned, the triumphant face of Herrick met her glance at so slight a distance from her own that she drew back in double indignation.
“Why have you followed me?” she exclaimed indignantly. “You know that no one is allowed here!”
“How can I choose but love and follow herWhose shadow smells like mild pomander?How can I choose but——”
“How can I choose but love and follow herWhose shadow smells like mild pomander?How can I choose but——”
“How can I choose but love and follow herWhose shadow smells like mild pomander?How can I choose but——”
“How can I choose but love and follow her
Whose shadow smells like mild pomander?
How can I choose but——”
The gay voice broke off suddenly, and a flush—fellowto that of Ellinor, yet one of engaging embarrassment, overspread the singer’s face.
“Well, sir?” she asked.
How stern, how stiff, how unapproachable, this woman whom nature had made of such soft lovely stuff! Luke Herrick stooped, lifted a corner of her muslin apron, and carried it humbly to his lips.
“How could I choose but kiss her! Whence does comeThe storax, spikenard, myrrh and labdanum?”
“How could I choose but kiss her! Whence does comeThe storax, spikenard, myrrh and labdanum?”
“How could I choose but kiss her! Whence does comeThe storax, spikenard, myrrh and labdanum?”
“How could I choose but kiss her! Whence does come
The storax, spikenard, myrrh and labdanum?”
he went on, dropping his recitative note for what was almost a whisper. From his suppliant posture he looked up with eyes in which the man pleaded, yet where the boy’s irrepressible, irresponsible mischievousness still lurked. It was impossible not to feel that anger was an absurd weapon against so frivolous a foe. Moreover she liked him. There was something infectious in his mercurial humour, something attractive in the honest boy nature that lay open for all to read. There was something of a relief, also, to be obliged to jest and to laugh. To be near him was like meeting a breeze from some lost, careless youth.
Why, after all, should she not try and forget her own troubles? What was the Herb-Garden to him, to David, that, with a fond faithfulness she should insist on keeping it consecrate to the memory of one dawn! He who had begged for the key of it—what use had he made of the gift? How many a golden morning, how many a pearly day-break, how many an amethyst evening, had she haunted the scented enclosure—always alone!
“I’ll not say a single little word,” he urged. “I’ll be as mute as a sundial, if you’ll only let me bask in your radiance! I’ll just hold your basket and your scissors, and I’ll chew every single herb and tell you whether its taste be sweet, sour or bitter, if you’ll only give me a leaf between your white fingers. And then if I die——”
He thumped his ruffled shirt and languished.
“How did you get in?” she asked.
But though her tone was still rebuking, he laughed back into her blue eyes. He made a gesture: she saw the traces of moss, of lichen and crumbling mortar upon his kerseymere, the rent in his lace ruffle, the tiny broken twig that had caught his crisp curl.
“Ah,” she cried, “you have found my old secret scaling place.... Did you land in the balm bed?” she asked, laughing.
Colonel Harcourt, in search of Ellinor, looked in through the locked gate and knocked once or twice, then called gently. But, though he could hear bursts of laughter and the intermingling sounds of voices in gay conversation, he could see nothing but the strange herb-beds and bushes, intersected by narrow paths, overhung by swarmlets of humming bees and other honey-seeking insects; and no one seemed to hear him.
As he stood, smiling to himself in good humoured cynicism, the tall figure of his host, with bare head, came slowly out of the laurel walk that led to the open plot before the gate. Sir David seemed absorbed in thought. And it was not until he was within a pace or two of the other man that he suddenly looked up.
“Good morning!” said the colonel genially. “A lovely day, is it not? Queer place, that old garden of weeds—our friend, Master Simon’s herbary, as I understand. The gate is locked, I find.”
As he spoke, Colonel Harcourt scanned the set, pallid face with a keen curiosity. It required all a sick woman’s disordered fancy (he told himself) to imagine that this cold-blooded student, this walking symbol of abstractedness should be in danger of being led away into romantic folly. The soldier’s full smiling lips parted still more broadly, as he went on to reflect that, whatever designs the pretty widow might have upon her cousin’s fortune, her warm splendid personality was scarce likely to be attracted by “this long, thin, icy, fish of a fellow!”
Sir David had inclined his head gravely on the other’sgreeting. When the hearty voice had rattled off its speech, he answered that he regretted that it was the rule to admit no visitors to the Herb-Garden. And then drew a key from his pocket and slipped it into the lock, so completely ignoring his guest’s persistent proximity, that the colonel, as a man of breeding would have felt it incumbent upon him to retire, had he not special reasons for standing his ground.
“Indeed!” said he. “Forbidden ground?”
“Yes, the plants are many of them deadly poison. It is a necessary precaution.”
“No doubt—quite right. Very prudent. But—what about the charming Mrs. Ellinor Marvel, the beauteous widow, the bewitching and amiable cousin, whom you are fortunate to have as companion in this romantic house?”
David dropped his hand from the key, turned and fixed his grave eyes on the speaker. Their expression was merely one of waiting for the next remark. The colonel hardly felt quite as assured of his ground as before, but he resumed in the same tone of banter:
“I saw her going there just now. Is it quite safe to let so precious a being into such dangerous precincts?”
The remark ended with that laugh upon the hearty note of which so much of his popularity rested. Most people found it impossible not to respond to this breezy way of Colonel Harcourt’s. But there was not a flicker of change upon Sir David’s countenance.
Yet, when he spoke, after coldly pausing till the other’s mirth should have utterly ceased, and remarked that his cousin, Mrs. Marvel, was associated with her father’s scientific investigations and therefore was the only person, besides the speaker himself, whom he allowed to make use of the garden, the colonel felt that his insinuation had been understood and rebuked by a courtesy severer than anger. His resentment suddenly rose. The easy contempt with which he had hitherto regarded the uncongenial personality of his host, flamed on the instant into active dislike; and he was glad to have a weapon in hishand which might find a joint in this irritatingly impenetrable armour.
“Indeed!” cried he, ruffled out of his usual commanding urbanity.—Trying to smile he found himself sneering. “Indeed? Aha, very good, I declare! It is worth while living on a tower to be able to retain those confiding views of life! It has never struck you, I suppose—the stars are doubtless never in the least irregular in their courses, but young and charming widows have little ways of their own—it has never struck you that this forbidden wilderness might be an ideal spot for rendezvous?”
Sir David shot at the speaker a look very unlike that far-off indifferent glance which was all he had hitherto vouchsafed him. This sudden, steel-bright, concentrated gaze was like the baring of a blade. Dim stories of the recluse’s romantic and violent youth began to stir in Harcourt’s memory. He straightened his own sturdy figure and the instinctive hot defiance of the fighter at the first hint of an opposing spirit ran tingling to his stiffening muscles.
So, for a quick-breathing moment, they fixed each other. Then, through the drowsy humming summer stillness rang from within the Herb-Garden the note of Herrick’s singing voice: