CHAPTER VIIITHE HERB EUPHROSINE
Had’st thou but shook thy head or made a pauseWhen I spake darkly ...Or turned an eye of doubt upon my faceAs bid me tell my tale in express words....—Shakespeare(King John).
Had’st thou but shook thy head or made a pauseWhen I spake darkly ...Or turned an eye of doubt upon my faceAs bid me tell my tale in express words....—Shakespeare(King John).
Had’st thou but shook thy head or made a pauseWhen I spake darkly ...Or turned an eye of doubt upon my faceAs bid me tell my tale in express words....—Shakespeare(King John).
Had’st thou but shook thy head or made a pause
When I spake darkly ...
Or turned an eye of doubt upon my face
As bid me tell my tale in express words....
—Shakespeare(King John).
Before her mirror the next morning Lady Lochore sat wrapt in sullen thoughts, thoughts of impotent anger, of failure, punctuated now and again by glances at her own ravaged countenance.
She had dwelt in Bindon well-nigh her allotted month, and she had accomplished nothing—unless an increase of David’s eccentricity and a marked accentuation of his antipathy towards herself could be reckoned a gain! The sands were running low. But it was not the span of the time that remained hers at Bindon (for she had no intention of leaving of her own accord and hardly believed the dreamer would find the energy to expel her, if, indeed, he were even aware of the consummation of time)—it was the span of her own life.
The sands were running very low. Meanwhile she had not conciliated David, nor had she ousted Ellinor. She had not even compromised her. Herrick was sighingpour le bon motif(young fool!) and in vain. Harcourtrouéand duellist, “he who ought to have rid me,” thought she, raging, “of one or the other in a week,” had made no more progress than might old Villars himself. “Lochore did his business better!” she said half-aloud, and broke into a solitary laugh of inexpressible bitterness.
There came a tap at the door and Margery entered. Lady Lochore wheeled round, but it was idle to try and read any tidings upon the housekeeper’s impassive face.
“Well,” cried she, imperiously waving away the usual morning inquiries. “Well, speak, woman! Have you something to tell me at last?”
“Indeed, my lady, very little. Everything is much as usual. I am sorry to see your ladyship looking so ill. There do seem to be sickness about the house this morning, to be sure! Master Rickart indeed took to drugging himself last night—though that’s nothing new—and Barnaby sat up with him and lies in a dead sleep on the mat this minute outside the laboratory door just like a dog.”
“Pshaw! Go on.”
“Sir David, he was not himself yesterday, so Mr. Giles tells me; and a bad night he had too. Eh! He paced that platform, my lady, right through from midnight to dawn. Not a wink of sleep did I have either with hearing through the window the sound of his steps and knowing him so tormented, poor gentleman! That was after Mrs. Marvel had left him!”
Lady Lochore struck the table with her beringed hand and started to her feet.
“Mrs. Marvel!”
Margery began to pleat a corner of her apron.
“Yes, my lady. She was up with him there on the tower till nigh midnight.”
“On the tower!”
“Oh, yes, my lady. Not that that’s anything new either. She used to be half the night with him sometimes. But that was before your ladyship came. She stopped going this last month. But last night—eh, my lady, they did talk! I could hear the sound of their voices—she has great power with Sir David—has Mrs. Marvel.”
Lady Lochore sat down again. Her fingers closed on the muslin of the dressing-table. Helplessly and hopelesslyher haggard eyes looked forth into a black prospective. Oh, she had failed—failed!
“’Tis indeed a sad day for Bindon,” said Margery after a pause, as if in answer to Lady Lochore. “No wonder your ladyship is anxious. There are times when I do think we’ll have some dreadful catastrophe here. If it’s nothing worse there’ll be an accident with them drugs, as sure as fate. Master Rickart will be poisoning some of the poor folk again, or himself, maybe, or, indeed, it might be Mrs. Marvel, she that’s always in with him.”
Lady Lochore started ever so slightly and turned round sharply. Never had Margery looked more benevolent, more virtuous.
“Yes, that’s what I do be saying to myself,” pursued the housekeeper. “Somebody will be found dead, and nobody to fix the blame on, with the way things are going on.” (The pupils of Lady Lochore’s eyes narrowed like a hawk’s.) “And when I see Mrs. Marvel going about, so young and fresh and strong, and sure of herself:—‘Maybe it will be you,’ thinks I.”
“Oh, get away with you!” cried Lady Lochore, and buried her head on her hands with a frenzied gesture.
“Shall we go and look through the bars into the little paradise of poisons?”
When Colonel Harcourt had suddenly made this suggestion to his friends, as they lay, in somewhat discontented mood, under the shade of the spreading cedar tree this oppressive summer day, he had cast a meaning glance towards Lady Lochore and she had risen with alacrity.
“Excellent!” she cried, when at the forbidden gate Harcourt produced the key with a flourish.
She knew of David’s difference with the colonel on the previous day; and though it had sunk into insignificance before the news of Ellinor’s return to the tower, she was now as the drowning creature that clutches at straws-ColonelHarcourt was a noted shot. And she clapped her hands when the gate rolled back on its hinges. She had no need to be told that the dangerous Mrs. Marvel was busy among the herbs within.
Herrick, moodily striding beside the Dishonourable Caroline, gave but the most perfunctory ear to a discourse upon the inductions to be drawn from a partner’s first play of trumps—with especial reference to certain crimes of his own committed the previous night. He started as he saw Harcourt’s action.
“No—no!” he exclaimed. “I understand that this would be an indiscretion.”
“You will perhaps allow me,” said Harcourt blandly, “to make use of a key delivered over by no less a person than our host himself.”
“Mr. Herrick thinks it more discreet to climb over the wall!” suggested Priscilla. She had a happy faculty for being spiteful with a rosebud look of innocence.
“What, Luke!” cried Lady Lochore, seizing the young man by the arm and dragging him towards the entrance, “so cast down! Was the fair widow then hard of approach to-day? Pluck up heart, lad. What! You a poet, you a little nephew of the original Herrick, and not know that when a woman assumes the defensive she is just considering the question of surrender? Why, what a lady this is! Eh, Priscilla, poor you and poor me must hide our diminished heads!”
She broke into a jeering laugh as the girl crimsoned and tossed her chin; her great hollow eyes danced, brighter even that those of the lover in his renewed confidence; her cheeks flamed a deeper scarlet than those of the mortified girl herself. She sketched a favorite gavotte step or two, as she gave her hand with a flourish to Colonel Harcourt that he might lead her across the forbidden threshold.
Ellinor, seated on the stone bench, with her empty basket before her, staring with unseeing eyes at the littlebluish stars that spread all over the bed where flourished the herb Euphrosine, was suddenly disturbed from her melancholy musing.
These loud voices, this trivial laughter! By what freak of irresponsible folly were these few roods of ground (which now she had as much interest to keep inviolate, as ever Vestal virgin to keep her flame alive) to be again invaded? The intruders were actually in the garden: and no spot of it was hidden from David’s tower! She had just been chiding herself for her thoughtlessness of the previous day in permitting for a moment Herrick’s uninvited presence; for her light-mindedness in having found transient amusement in his company. Had she now failed again in faithfulness, was it possible that she could have omitted to lock the gate behind her? She hurriedly felt for her key; it hung on the ribbon of her apron. Then she rose upon an impulse: David had made her guardian here, she would keep the trust.
With head held high and with determined step, she went to meet them. She lifted her voice boldly as she came within speaking distance.
“Lady Lochore, if you found the gate open, this garden is none the less forbidden to visitors, by your brother’s wish. I must beg you all to leave it!”
Lady Lochore, her white teeth gleaming between her parted lips, her deep eyes insolently fixed upon her cousin’s face, listened without a word. Then:
“Calmez-vous, ma chère,” said she, “the gate was opened for us.”
“Chide me!” Colonel Harcourt thrust his handsome presence to the front. “It would be sweet to be chidden by those rosy lips. The next best thing, I declare, to being——” He paused, let his eye finish the phrase with bold suggestion, and then concluded humourously, with an almost farcical hesitation and change of tone: “praised by them!”
There was a new freedom in his manner and Ellinor was prompt to feel it. She remembered as with a dimsense of nightmare those burning glances, unnoticed then, which had fixed her last night. What had she done to forfeit the respect even of this hitherto courteous and kindly gentleman? She stepped back as he approached and looked at him icily.
“Whether you opened the gate or found it opened, I must repeat, Colonel Harcourt, that your presence here is a breach of courtesy—to your host and to me.”
Smiling, Colonel Harcourt opened his mouth to speak. But Lady Lochore intervened.
“How well you know my brother’s mind, Mrs. Marvel!” she jeered. “But you see, even men change their minds sometimes. Colonel Harcourt, show the lady with whose key you opened the gate.”
“Sir David’s own key,” confirmed the colonel blandly, as he held it aloft. “We are not quite the trespassers you think.”
“David gave it to you?” Her eyes were dark with trouble as she said the words, less as a question than as if she were setting forth her own grief. Harcourt did not answer for a moment. Then, slipping the key into his pocket with a laugh:
“Gave?” he cried. “Gave is hardly the word. He abandoned it to me. People change their minds, as my lady says. Sir David may once have wished to keep this curious spot sacred to himself——”
“And to Mistress Marvel, but now you may all eat the forbidden fruit!” cried Lady Lochore, with a glance first at the three men and then at Ellinor. “Sir David has at last found that it is not worth keeping to himself.”
Herrick, quick to perceive that Ellinor was being baited yet unable to gather the clue to the purpose which seemed to underlie her tormentor’s words, now came forward.
“But surely,” he urged, blushing ingenuously, “it is enough for us if Mrs. Marvel does not wish our presence.”
Almost before Lady Lochore’s hard laugh had time to ring out, Ellinor answered:
“Oh, no,” she said. The exceeding bitterness of herhumiliation drew down the lips that tried to smile. “Pray, what can it be to me? I was only guardian. I am relieved of my trust.”
She made a sort of little curtsey, half-ironic. And then moved away from them.
But she was not destined to carry her bursting heart to solitude this morning.—Master Simon, his white hair fluttering, the tassel of his velvet cap swinging, the skirts of his dressing-gown flapping as he advanced with a high jerky step quite unlike his usual slow shuffling gait, emerged from the shade of the yew-tree, even as she stood on the threshold of the gate.
One glance at his wildly-lighted eye and the flush on his cheek bones, sufficed to convince Ellinor of the cause of this extraordinary infraction of his rule of life. He was still under the influence of the last night’s drug; or, worse still perhaps, of some new one. He waved his arm at her and at the group beyond.
“Admit me among you, ladies!” he cried, in a high thin tone. “I will tell you all great news! Daughter, child, this hour strikes a new era in the world’s history! The herb Euphrosine has given me back my youth!”
And, to complete the fantastic scene, Belphegor, every hair bristling, tail erect, eyes aflame with green phosphorescence, sprang from the bushes and performed a wild saraband around his master, uttering uncouth little cries.
Master Simon broke into shrill laughter.
“Ask Belphegor if we have not found the secret of youth restored!”
CHAPTER IXAN OMINOUS JINGLE
Within the infant rind of this weak flowerPoison hath residence, and medicine power.—Shakespeare(Romeo and Juliet).
Within the infant rind of this weak flowerPoison hath residence, and medicine power.—Shakespeare(Romeo and Juliet).
Within the infant rind of this weak flowerPoison hath residence, and medicine power.—Shakespeare(Romeo and Juliet).
Within the infant rind of this weak flower
Poison hath residence, and medicine power.
—Shakespeare(Romeo and Juliet).
The old man good-humouredly, but firmly, resisted his daughter’s anxious endeavours to lead him back to his room. He entered the garden, established himself on the bench, and, waving a branch of the beloved herb to emphasise his words, embarked upon a profuse discourse upon its properties. The others gathered round him in curiosity and amusement.
Ellinor could not leave him a prey to the freakish humours of the company at such a moment. His brain seemed to work with an extraordinary clarity and vigour, his worn frame seemed to have regained an energy and elasticity it could not have known these twenty years. And the contrast between his aspect of æthereal age and the youthful exuberance of joy now written on his features struck her as alarming in the extreme.
Her anxiety was not lessened when Master Simon now wound up his first oration by proclaiming that, after various long hours of work, he had at last extracted so pure an essence of theEuphrosinethat one drop had sufficed to produce this result upon himself.
“Then, surely, father,” she cried, “you have prepared a dangerous drug! Out of its beneficence you must have drawn a deadly poison——”
Lady Lochore had seated herself on the bench on the other side of the old student. She evinced a great interestin his remarks; encouraged him by exclamation, laughter and question to further garrulity. At Ellinor’s words she lifted her head with a sudden quick movement, like that of a stag on the alert. And into her eyes flashed a look so eager, and so evil, that she herself, in consciousness of it, instantly dropped the lids over them. She felt Harcourt’s glance upon her.
“Poison,” said she, feigning to yawn. “Oh, fie! then I’ll have none of your remedy.”
Priscilla, idly turning the pages of the “Gerard” which Ellinor had left out of her hand on the sundial, stood silent, shooting glances by turns at Harcourt and Herrick. The former, standing with folded arms behind Ellinor, the latter, lying stretched on the hot soil at her feet, seemed too thoroughly content with their posts to be lured from them. But at Ellinor’s exclamation, the little circle had been stirred.
“Poison?” echoed Master Simon in his turn. “Tush! Ellinor, I am ashamed of you! By this time you should know better. Is not every medicine, nay, every distilled spirit, poison in certain degrees? And how about Opium? How about Digitalis, Aconite and Laurel, Mercury and Antimony? Pooh! What need of names?”
“Even in love a poison lies!” murmured Herrick, and looked up languishingly at Ellinor’s unseeing face.
“No doubt,” said Harcourt, in a most indifferent voice, “so wise a philosopher as Master Simon always locks up his poisons!”
“Child,” pursued the old man, “I tell you, this herb which was lost to the world, but which you yourself found again, planted and nurtured, is destined to be the greatest boon mankind has yet known! The older students had some hints of its powers, some glimmering of its uses. But it wanted the resources of modern methods of modern chemistry to develop them. I have now reduced its essence to the most convenient form. A drop, one drop a day—ah, ladies and gentlemen, farewell to all your miseries!”
“Is it not wonderful!” cried Lady Lochore. She clasped her hands and looked keenly at the old man; and he, anxious to improve the occasion upon so earnest a believer and so interesting a case for experiment, now gave her his undivided attention.
Ellinor, with a sigh of impatience, rose, and, taking up her basket, proceeded to her neglected work of plant gathering, here and there consulting a pencilled list that was pinned to the handle. Herrick was promptly at her side.
“What are you going to make of those?” he asked, plucking in his turn a leaf from every plant that her scissors had visited.
“A febrifuge for an old woman in the village. It is promised for to-night.”
“And if I do—I have half a mind to come into your den and let you give it to me yourself—what effect could one drop have on me?” Lady Lochore was saying. And the old man answered:
“It would arrest the disease that is ravaging your strength and at the same time stimulate your nerves; so that, waste ceasing, all the energies of your body would unite in building up strength and health again.”
“How truly delightful!”
“Your restlessness would vanish. This morbid mental condition, which is so apparent, would become replaced by a calm, cheerful, contented frame of mind—like mine!”
“My dear Sir! How my friends would bless you!”
“In the course of a few months——”
“Months? La! I can’t wait months. I’ll have five drops a day.”
“God forbid! That would defeat its own end. To stimulate is one thing, but to over-excite——”
“Would five drops over-excite me?”
“Indubitably. If one has already so potently invigoratingan effect, five drops would produce a most undesirable condition of mental super-excitement—most undesirable!”
“Then ten drops?”
“Colonel Harcourt,” cried Priscilla pettishly, “pray come to my rescue: there’s a wasp on my book!”
The colonel obeyed the summons, but without any extraordinary alacrity; Lady Lochore’s conversation with Master Simon was unexpectedly interesting.
“Ten drops?” Master Simon was explaining. “Madness probably. More than ten, paralysis, no doubt. Twenty? Oh, twenty would be stillness for evermore—Death!”
Having duly murdered the wasp, Colonel Harcourt was chagrined to find that the new student of pharmacopœia seemed to have already had enough of her lesson. She had risen to her feet and was standing deeply reflective. Her great eyes were roaming from side to side, yet unseeing. Her lips were moving noiselessly. He went up to her. An unusual gravity was upon his smooth countenance. He bent to her ear:
“What are you saying to yourself?” he whispered.
She started, flashed round half in anger, half in mockery; then their glances met and her face grew hard.
“I was merely conning over to myself,” answered she, “our dear old necromancer’s last pregnant utterance; it sounds like a popular rhyme:
One drop gladness,Ten drops madness,Twice ten a living deathAfter that no more breath.
One drop gladness,Ten drops madness,Twice ten a living deathAfter that no more breath.
One drop gladness,Ten drops madness,Twice ten a living deathAfter that no more breath.
One drop gladness,
Ten drops madness,
Twice ten a living death
After that no more breath.
Have I not put it into a useful jingle for you?” she cried, interpellating the old man.
But Master Simon, deeply absorbed in watching Belphegor, as the beast stretched and yawned and rolled restlessly in the sun, never turned his head. ColonelHarcourt laid a finger on her wrist, and drew her away from the others.
“What are you planning now?” he asked, in the same repressed undertone as before.
“Planning?” she echoed, and crossed his searching gaze with one of stormy defiance. “Oh, my dear confidant, do you not know all my inmost secrets?Dieu, how you stare! Two drops gladness, ten drops madness. Let me give you some of the stimulant—say three drops—’twould stir your sluggish wits. Do, I pray you, accompany me to the laboratory, and with these fair hands I will measure you a dose from the magic phial. Oh, how Master Simon will love me if I bring him a new patient! Believe me, it will do you a vast service, my dear sir, you have grown dull and slow of late—very slow.”
Out of her laughing face her eyes looked fiercely. He walked away from her; paused, with his back upon them all, to ponder. Then he frowned, and after that shrugged his shoulders.
“What a fool you are, Antony Harcourt,” said he to himself, “to have let yourself be mixed up with this woman’s business! I vow you’ll pack!”
Lady Lochore had returned to the bench and was again sitting beside Master Simon, and once more brooding. Tragedy was writ in large letters all over her wasted, death-stricken figure. Above all things the colonel hated tragedy. Violent emotions were so ill-bred, tiresome. What could not be accomplished with a gentlemanly ease, that, by the Lord, was not for him! A love intrigue, well and good. And if there were tears at the end of it, so long as they were not shed upon his waistcoat—and none knew better how to avoid that—here was your man. But when it came to—“By Gad!” thought Colonel Harcourt, with fresh emphasis, “the place is getting too hot for me.”
And back again he came to his resolution; this time fixed.
“I will take my leave of all this to-night. But, faith! I’ll part friends with the pretty widow.”
After her spasmodic fashion Lady Lochore now suddenly resumed her wild humours. She smiled as she saw how the two cavaliers were now again in close attendance upon Ellinor; smiled at the deserted Priscilla; and finally, at the sight of two figures approaching from the direction of the entrance, broke into open laughter.
David in the strange comradeship of Villars!
David, jealous and wrathful, coming to rescue his invaded garden, suspicious of Ellinor’s faithlessness—a possible quarrel! For the mere mischief of it, it was enough to make Lady Lochore laugh. And laugh she did.
CHAPTER XA VAGUE DESPERATE SCHEME
Now let it work: mischief thou art afoot!Take thou what course thou wilt.—Shakespeare(Julius Cæsar).
Now let it work: mischief thou art afoot!Take thou what course thou wilt.—Shakespeare(Julius Cæsar).
Now let it work: mischief thou art afoot!Take thou what course thou wilt.—Shakespeare(Julius Cæsar).
Now let it work: mischief thou art afoot!
Take thou what course thou wilt.
—Shakespeare(Julius Cæsar).
“Ah, David,” cried Master Simon, in excited greeting, “you come very well to complete our pleasant party—you come well! ’Tis the red-letter day in the calendar of my life. See that flourishing growth?” He waved his spray in the direction of the parent bed. “It is bearing fruit, lad! Seed of health, for the future generation! My long life has borne its fruit at last! Euphrosine ... Gladsome Wort ... Etoile-de-Bon-Secours ... Star-of-Comfort indeed! Behold a more useful constellation than any of yours, aha! I can cryEureka! I can singNunc dimittis. ’Tis the Elixir of Genius!”
Sir David threw a wondering glance at his old friend, but was arrested before he could speak in reply. Miss Priscilla put out her hand in shy greeting. (Sir David and she had never exchanged but a bow before; but it was quite evident that retiring people could not get on in this world.) David, taking off his wide-brimmed hat, bowed mechanically over the little hand, and Priscilla looked quickly up as he bent over her. But as she looked, she shrunk back. She could not have believed that any one should be so pale and yet be alive and walk abroad and smile. She flew to Herrick’s side and caught his arm upon the impulse of the moment.
“Why, Miss Pris?” said the young poet. If his eyes were not lover-like, they were kind; his cheek was ruddy-brown,his lip was red. Priscilla clung to the sturdy arm she had captured.
“It’s never you, my brother?” cried Lady Lochore. “What brings you among us frivolous humans at this unwonted hour? Have you come to turn us out of paradise with a flaming sword?”
Ellinor, who had been anxiously gazing at David, thrust herself forward in a manner quite unlike her usual reserve.
“David,” she cried, “you are ill!” She laid her hand a second upon his. “Father,” she went on, turning round appealingly, “do you not see? Cousin David is ill.” And as Master Simon took no heed, but rambled on in fresh rhapsodies, she and David remained a moment as if alone.
“They had your key, David,” she said, speaking rapidly, “and forced their way in. I have never opened the gate of our garden to a human being since you and I were here together.”
He turned to her, and seemed to bring, from a great distance, his mind to bear upon her words. Then his eyes softened, became almost tender as they rested upon her face. After a little pause, during which he was quite oblivious of the curious looks cast from all sides upon him, he answered in a low voice:
“Thank you. I think I understand now.”
Then he turned—bracing himself in mind and body—and swept the company with the gaze of the master and the host.
“I forgot my key in the gate, it seems, and you all took advantage of the circumstance—Oh, pray, not a word, Colonel Harcourt! Indeed, Mr. Herrick, do not misunderstand me. I should be infringing the most elementary tenets of hospitality did I wish to deny such honoured guests when it seems they had set their hearts on so trifling a pleasure. Pray remain in the garden, pray use it as much as you wish—to-day. I have no doubt,” he went on with a sarcastic smile, “that youwill all be heartily sick of it before nightfall. Meanwhile, since to-morrow sees the end of your visit to my house, I am the more glad to gratify you in this instance.”
There was a slight pause. Harcourt exchanged a look with Herrick and shrugged his shoulders; then he turned his glance towards Lady Lochore. Her face was livid, but for the hectic patch on either cheek.
“Acongé, as neatly given as ever I heard!” whispered Herrick to Priscilla, while his cheek reddened.
“Very courteous, very courteous indeed!” cried Villars in his cracked voice, making two or three quick bows in Sir David’s direction.
“My sister,” said David, taking up his unfinished thread of speech, in the same decided tone, “was good enough to promise me a month out of her gay existence. I should be indeed ungrateful if I did not appreciate the manner in which she has brought so much life and animation into our seclusion, and I must be deeply indebted to her for the well-chosen company she has collected for this purpose under my roof.” Here he made a grave inclination in which his astonished guests were all included. “But all good things come to an end; and to-morrow will see Bindon deserted of its lively guests, see us resuming the former quiet tenor of our lives with what heart we may.”
He smiled again as he concluded.
Herrick, in boyish huff, walked abruptly off with Priscilla still on his arm. Villars followed in their wake, anxious to discuss so extraordinary a situation. Lady Lochore wheeled round and caught Harcourt by the arm.
“Tony, will you submit to such treatment?” she whispered fiercely.
For a moment Harcourt looked at her, with a curious green gleam in his eye:—the affablerouéwas also “something of a tiger,” as David’s sister had not forgotten. But the next instant he shrugged his shoulders and detached himself from her grasp with some show of annoyance. Ellinor stood beside her cousin, face uplifted,pride of him, joy for herself exulting within her. But David suddenly put his hands to his forehead:
“If I do not get some sleep at last,” he murmured with a distraught air, “I shall go mad!”
“Father,” she cried sharply once more alarmed. “Look to David, he is ill!”
Master Simon woke up this time like the hound to the sound of the horn, and came forward with quite a new expression of acuteness and gravity on his face.
“And, by my faith!” exclaimed Lady Lochore, in fury, “this passes endurance! With your leave, Mrs. Marvel, if David is unwell, he has his sister to see to him.”
She pushed past Master Simon, who, however, put her back with a decided hand.
“One minute, Madam, this good lad will be seen to by him who has done so these many years—and in much graver circumstances, as you may remember.”
Abashed, yet still raging, she stood back.
“A trifle of fever,” said the simpler, shooting scrutiny at his patient’s face from under his drawn bushy eyebrows. “Hot and cold, flame and shiver? Eh, eh. I can read you like a book. Never has my insight been clearer. We’ll make you a draught, we’ll have you a new man. Ellinor shall brew you an anodyne. Eh, what? Come now, you’ll have to drink it. What’s that?”
David was speaking, but not to Master Simon.
“I will drink it if she gives it to me,” he said dreamily. It was to Ellinor he turned.
“And perhaps a drop—eh, child?—just one drop of the Elixir!” continued the old man, ruminating and chuckling again.
“Not one,” said Ellinor to herself. “Vervaine and violet, and perhaps one poppy head.” “David,” she pursued aloud, “no hand but mine shall mix this cup.”
And, with a swift foot she departed.
“The Elixir?” exclaimed Lady Lochore, taking up Master Simon’s word; and seizing a fold of his gownpulled at it like a spoiled child to force his attention. “Don’t forget you have promised me first some of that marvellous remedy. Look at me! Don’t you think I want a new lease of life? The present one is pretty well run out anyhow.”
She tried to smile, but her lips only twitched convulsively. There was desperation in her eye. Master Simon, instantly bestowing upon her the concentrated, almost loving, attention which a willing patient never failed to arouse in him, noted these symptoms, those of a soul well nigh as mortally sick as the body; noted them with joyous confidence. The greater the need the greater the triumph. What a subject for the grand panacea!
“Ah, you’ll give me a little bottle. You’ll give me some, now, into my hands—now—dear cousin!”
“I will myself measure you what is required, myself watch!” replied Simon. “Then, after I——”
She broke in upon his complacent speech.
“Don’t you know that we are turned out to-morrow!” she screamed. “Have you not heard David dismissing his dying sister from her father’s door!”
But Sir David, slowly moving in Ellinor’s wake, never even turned his head at this wild cry. Lady Lochore caught herself back with surprising strength of will.
“Supposing you were to take me to your mysterious room now—old Rickart?” she wheedled. “Since we have so little time, the sooner the better to begin this magic treatment. I’ve never been in that room of yours, you know, since I was a brat—I do want my little bottle!” she reiterated.
The simpler was flattered by her words to the choicest fibre of his soul. The mental intoxication had got hold of him once more. She was right, a thousand times right! She knew better than that lunatic brother of hers. The first maxim of all intelligent existence was to take the good that came, and without delay. Delay, delay! More lives lost, more discoveries lost, empires lost, souls lost by hesitation than by any other crime.
She hooked her arm in his gaily.
“To your cavern we will go!”
Half ways towards the house, Colonel Harcourt suddenly drew alongside with Sir David. They were separated from the rest of the company by the turn of the path. The guest spoke twice before he could awaken his host’s attention to his proximity. But the second interpellation was so peremptory that David started from his fevered abstraction and came to a halt, with an angry look and very much alive to the occasion.
“Well, Colonel Harcourt?”
The colonel was, on the instant, his urbane self once more.
“Forgive my interrupting you in the midst of your lofty cogitations; but, as it is my purpose to leave your hospitable house to-day, and not to-morrow, I will even say farewell to my genial entertainer, and proffer my thanks for a hearty welcome and a no less hearty speeding.”
“Farewell, then, sir,” said David coldly. “Yet one word more, before we part,” he added, with sternness: “If hosts have duties toward their guests, Colonel Harcourt—you have reminded me of it—do not yourself forget again that guests have a duty toward their hosts. That key, of which you unwarrantably——”
“A lesson, sir? By Heaven!——”
“May you take it so, Colonel Harcourt.”
The colonel’s face became purple, but Sir David was angry too: and the white heat is even more deadly than the red. The guardsman, actor in endless honourable encounters, had learned to know his match when he met him; and, as the beast passion within him cooled to merely human pitch, he was seized with a kind of grudging admiration. Here he could no longer sneer and contend. Nay, here, as a gentleman, he must show himself worthy of his antagonist.
Bowing his still crimson face with as good a grace as he could assume:
“Then, no farewell yet, Sir David; to our next meeting,” he said.
The lord of Bindon raised his hat and passed on whilst his guest remained standing.
CHAPTER XIA PARLOUR OF PERFUME
O magic sleep! O comfortable birdThat broodest o’er the troubled sea of the mind,Till it is hushed and smooth!...—Keats(Endymion).
O magic sleep! O comfortable birdThat broodest o’er the troubled sea of the mind,Till it is hushed and smooth!...—Keats(Endymion).
O magic sleep! O comfortable birdThat broodest o’er the troubled sea of the mind,Till it is hushed and smooth!...—Keats(Endymion).
O magic sleep! O comfortable bird
That broodest o’er the troubled sea of the mind,
Till it is hushed and smooth!...
—Keats(Endymion).
The atmosphere of Master Simon’s laboratory was much the same, winter or summer. No extreme of heat or cold could penetrate this crypt, deep set as it was in the foundations of the keep; and, though against the long narrow windows, cut into the wall on the level of the moat, one could see the slender spikes of reed and rushy grass perpetually trembling in the airs, there was but little direct sunshine. Sometimes, however, downward thrusts, like spears, when Sol was high; or again when he was about to sink a level shaft, rose-red in winter, amber glowing in summer, would come driving in through the vaulted spaces, high above Master Simon’s head and show to the eye that cared to notice, how dim and vapour-heavy was all the room below.
The two fires then came not amiss. Despite the flame on the open hearth and the glow of the little furnace, Lady Lochore, as she entered, shivered after the hot sunshine.
“How dark it is with you!” she cried. “And what strange odours! Ha! It smells of poison here!”
“To treat the unknown as unwholesome is the animal instinct,” said the chemist, didactically, with a glance of contempt. “How differently does it affect the intellectual being! Fortunately it is in man’s power to extract good or bad from everything. Listen! Every one of thoselittle apparatus simmering over yonder is yielding up juices for healing. Did I choose, child—there might indeed be death in those retorts; just as there is death in fire and water, in air and in sun. These things are our servants, and we use them. Poison! How you women prate of poison! Timorous souls!”
“I, prate of poison?” exclaimed Lady Lochore. “I, timorous! Where is my phial, sir? Oh, I’ll show you if I am afraid!”
She advanced upon him swiftly through the half light to which her eyes had not yet become accustomed, and instantly belied her own words by a violent start and scream. Out of the recess where murmured the furnace fires, Barnaby illumined by the lurid glow, with elf locks hanging and face and hands blackened, suddenly emerged in his peculiar noiseless fashion; on his shoulder was Belphegor still all a-bristle and with phosphorescent eyes.
“Do you keep devils here, too?” she screeched.
The dumb boy made an inarticulate sound and stared at the lady. Who shall say the thoughts that revolved in that brain relentlessly shut off from communion with the rest of the world? In those beings who are deprived of certain senses the remaining wits seem often to become proportionately acute! Nobody could walk so softly, touch so gently as Barnaby; and nobody could see so swiftly, so deeply. He started back in his turn and glowered. This was the first time he had looked into the visitor’s face; her hectic cheek, her roving eyes, her eager teeth glimmering between ever parted lips—they liked him not. Or, perhaps, who can say, it was the soul behind those eyes that liked him not.
Master Simon chuckled.
“Poisons and devils!... my good Herbs! My faithful Barnaby! A deaf and dumb lad, my dear, nothing more! But we shall have these nerves of yours in vastly different trim, even before the day is out. Come here to the table and sit you down. Nay, now, if youlaugh like that, how can we discuss in reason, how can I trust you with this precious stuff?”
Lady Lochore made a violent effort to repress the nervous tremor that still shook her.
“When I’ve had my first dose,” she said, artfully, “I shall be so much better that you will trust me with anything.”
This betokened so excellent a spirit that Master Simon could not be expected to show further disapproval. How could he, indeed, feeling in his own veins a new ichor of life, in his own brain an increased lucidity, in his temper so grand a mood of confidence and decision? He had seated the lady in his own chair and was seeking in the press for the new essence, when Barnaby arrested his attention by a timid hand. The lad pointed significantly to the cat which he was now nursing against his breast. Master Simon glanced at the animal’s staring coat, its protruding eye, noted the quick breathing and touched the hot ear. Belphegor growled fiercely.
The old man’s countenance became clouded for a moment; a shade as of misgiving crept into his eye.
“Come, come cousin,” rose the complaining note of his new patient’s voice; and Master Simon waved Barnaby away with peremptory gesture.
The boy slunk back with his burden and the simpler lifted the precious phial from its shelf.
“Here,” said he, bearing it over to the table with infinite care, and admiring its orange colour against the light, “here is the Elixir.”
When Ellinor came down the steps into the laboratory, she found her father still holding forth in the highest good humour, and Lady Lochore listening with bent head in an attitude of profound attention. At the sound of her step he broke off with an excited laugh.
“Aha, Ellinor, the cure has begun! She’s better, she’s better already. Look at her. Ah, you doubted, you,my daughter, you who worked with me side by side! Out on you, you of little faith! This is to be my best case. In a month’s time you will see what you will see.”
Lady Lochore had risen from her chair and, fixing Ellinor with unfathomable looks, in the same measure as she drew nearer drew slowly back herself.
“By the lord, to see her come, in her hateful youth and strength, in her pride—and I, I to have failed!” These were the words of the interior voice. With a convulsive movement she lifted her hand, pressed the little phial where it lay against the wasted bosom. And the pain of that pressure was, of a sudden, fierce joy. Failed? Not yet! Her glorious boy was not to go a beggar whilst such creatures as that rode!
Like a tingling fire the exultation of that single drop of magic cordial began to course through her. She had hated Ellinor before she knew her, with the instinctive hatred of the destined enemy. The instant she had set eyes upon the fresh face, the placid brow, the serious quiet eyes, this instinctive hatred had surged into a living passion that was like a wild beast ever ready to spring. And if now she were to slip the leash and let the leopard go, who could punish her, dying woman as she was? What evil would it bring upon her, were it ever known? Aye, who would ever be the wiser (as Margery said) in this house of craziness where people dabbled with unknown poisons at their own fantasy?
Thus the muttering voice within. Then it was hushed upon the silence of a resolution.
“Lady Lochore,” said Ellinor, “I must warn you, that drug is not safe!”
“Be silent!” exclaimed Master Simon, angrily.
Lady Lochore did not answer, for she was seized with laughter.
“Dear father,” insisted Ellinor. She had come round to the old man and had laid her hand caressingly upon his shoulder, “I have nothing but mistrust for your new Elixir. You have taught me too much for me not torealise its danger. If you were not now under its influence yourself, I know you would see it too. Even a mere infusion of the leaves has so strange an effect, that I have ceased—forgive me, dear—to let the villagers have it.”
The simpler threw off her touch in high displeasure.
“A woman all over!” he muttered. “Fool indeed that I was to think there could be an exception to the ineptitude of the sex! A pretty helpmate for a man of science! But I went myself to the village to-day. Aye!” the fanatic light once more shone under the white eyebrows. “There were many who needed it. Wait, Ellinor, wait! My discovery shall speak for itself—shall refute——”
“Good God!” cried Mrs. Marvel, aghast, and turned instinctively to Lady Lochore, “what will be the outcome of this?”
Lady Lochore laughed again.
“Mrs. Marvel,” she gibed, “has developed all of a sudden a mighty dread of scientific investigation. Out upon such paltry spirit! She should take a lesson by my valour, should she not, most wise and excellent alchemist? And if a little mistake does occur now and again, ’tis but the more instructive, all in the interest of mankind. Now, Mistress Marvel, would not that console you?”
Still clasping her hand over the phial in her breast, Lady Lochore now moved towards the door—slowly, for the little voice within was beginning to speak again, and she had to listen as she went. There was a new jingle rustling in her brain: