CHAPTER VQUENCHLESS STARS ELOQUENT
O, who shall tell what deep inspirèd thingsThou speakest me, when, tranquil as the skies,O Night, I stand in shadow of thy wings,And with thy robe of suns fulfil mine eyes!—E. Sweetman(The Star-Gazer).
O, who shall tell what deep inspirèd thingsThou speakest me, when, tranquil as the skies,O Night, I stand in shadow of thy wings,And with thy robe of suns fulfil mine eyes!—E. Sweetman(The Star-Gazer).
O, who shall tell what deep inspirèd thingsThou speakest me, when, tranquil as the skies,O Night, I stand in shadow of thy wings,And with thy robe of suns fulfil mine eyes!—E. Sweetman(The Star-Gazer).
O, who shall tell what deep inspirèd things
Thou speakest me, when, tranquil as the skies,
O Night, I stand in shadow of thy wings,
And with thy robe of suns fulfil mine eyes!
—E. Sweetman(The Star-Gazer).
It is no unusual thing for a man whom human love has betrayed and left bare; whose life some violent human passion has robbed of all savour, to turn for consolation to the things of heaven. This is what, in course of time, had befallen Sir David Cheveral, when his youthful dream of happiness had fled before a bitter awakening. But the heaven to which he had turned was not that “Realm beyond the Stars” pictured by the faith of ages, but that actual region above and about our globe, as mysterious a world, perhaps, and as little heeded by the bulk of mankind; that immensity peopled by other suns and earths, ruled by a harmony so vast and grandiose that the thought of centuries is but beginning to grasp it; that universe of space and time, as unfathomable to our finite groping senses and as appealing to imagination and reason both as any realm of eternity pictured by the poets of any creed!
The worlds outside the earth, then, seemed for years to have given to his desolate spirit, gradually and absorbingly, all that the world of earth has in different ways to give to man.
The dome of heaven was David Cheveral’s mistress. To his phantasy, a mistress ever variable and ever loved; whether chastely remote, ridden by the fine silver crescent, emblem of virginity; or passionate, low-brooding, full-moonedand crimson, pregnant with autumn promise; or yet high and cold, in winter magnificence, sparkling with the jewels that are beyond dreams of splendour; or yet again veiled and indifferent; or stormy, cloud-wracked with the anger of the gods; condescending now with exquisite intimacy, anon passing as irrevocably as Diana from her shepherd. Who that had once loved such a mistress could ever turn back to one of earth again? So thought the star-dreamer of Bindon.
And this esthetic passion was at the same time his art and his life-work. It filled not only heart, but mind. Endless was the lesson to be learned, opening the road endlessly to others; untiring the labour to be expended; his own the genius to divine, to grasp, to translate; and his also every gratification, every reward! So thought the star-dreamer. He had drifted into a life of study and contemplation as solitary men drift into eccentricity; and if in its all absorbing tendency there lurked madness of a sort, there was a harmonious method in it; and to him, at least (precious boon!), it spelt peace of soul.
Every day’s work of such a study meant a fresh conquest of the mind, noble and peaceful. Mighty conceptions unfolded themselves to an ever-soaring intellect and thrust back more and more the pigmy doings of this small earth into their proper insignificance. Meanwhile his sight was rejoiced with beauty ever renewed. The music of the spheres played its great harmonies to his fastidious ear; the rhythm of a universal poetry, too exquisite to find expression in mere words, settled upon a mind ever attuned to vastness, till the drab miseries of humanity seemed well-nigh fallen away, and the petty fret of everyday life, the chafing, the disillusion, the smart of pride, the cry of the senses, were as forgotten things.—His soul was filled with visions.
Now on this evening, while Master Simon in his laboratory underground was being called by unexpected claimsfrom his own line of abstraction, something equally startling had occurred to Sir David Cheveral in his observatory.
He was pacing his airy platform on the top of the keep, under an exquisite and pensive sky of most benign charity. Never had he felt himself more uplifted to the empyrean, more detached from a sordid world, than at the beginning of this watch. Deep beyond deep spread the blue vasts above him. As the lover knows the soul of his beloved, so his vision, unaided, pierced into the heart of mysteries that even through the telescope would be veiled to the neophyte.
Upon her moonless brow this autumnal night wore a coronal of stars that might have shamed her later glories. The Heavenly Twins and Giant Orion beginning the southward ascent in splendid company; Aldebaran, fiery-red eye of the Bull; the tremulous pearly sheen of the Pleiades; the grand, upright cross of Cygnus, planted in the very stream of the Milky Way, and, slowly sinking towards the West, the gracious circlet of the Northern Crown—when had Night’s greater jewels shone with more entrancing lustre upon the diaper of her endless lesser gems!
David Cheveral turned from one field of beauty to another; anon reckoning his treasures with a jealous eye, anon letting the vast beauty mirror itself in his soul as in a placid pool.
But rapture is ever tracked by fatigue: it seems to be an envious, miserly law of our finite nature that every spell of exaltation must be paid for by despondency. Melancholy is but the weariness either of mind or of body: often of both. The airs were variable and cold, and food had not passed his lips for many hours; yet he had no conscious hankering for the warm hearthstones beneath him; no conscious desire for the touch of a fellow hand or the sound of a human voice. But, by slow degrees there crept upon him an unwonted and profound sadness.
A familiar catch-phrase of Master Simon’s:—“And life’s so short! and life’s so short!”—had begun to haunt his thoughts, to whisper in his ear, lulled though it was by the voice of solitude. A sense of his own limitations before this illimitable began to oppress him. So much beauty and but one sense with which to possess it: but weak mortal eyes and an imperfect vision, inferior even to that of many an animal! To feel within oneself the intellect, the power to conceive the creations of a God, and to know that one’s ignorance was still as vast as the field of knowledge offered ... the pity of it! With every gracious night such as this to glean a little more of the rich harvest—and life so short that, were one to live a cycle beyond the allotted span, the truth garnered in the end would be but as motes glinting here and there in floods of light!
Such revolts give way to lassitude. The useless “Why?” is inevitably succeeded by the “Cui bono?”
The astronomer who was too much of a poet—the star-dreamer, as men called him—drew a deep sigh. He had been tempted from his self-allotted task of calculation as a lover may be tempted to dally in adoration of his beloved. He now turned to go back to his table, but as he did so was once more arrested in spite of himself by the fascination of the great dome.
As it is the desire of man to possess what he finds most beautiful, so is it the instinct of the poet, of the painter, of the musician, to express and give again to the world the captured ideal.—The pain of impotency clutched at the dreamer’s heart.
But of a sudden he started; his sad eyes became alert and fixed.—An event that happens but at rarest times in the history of human observation had taken place under his very gaze.
A new gem had been added to the splendours of the heavens!
His languid pulses beat quicker. He passed his hand across his brow; no, it was not the overworked student’shallucination! Did he not know every aspect of the constellation, of the evening, of the hour? Sooner might a woman miscount her jewels, a collector his treasures, than he misread the face of his idol! It was no fancy. There, above the Northern Crown, a new star—a fire of surpassing radiance had flashed out of his sky even at the moment of his looking.
He had seen it suddenly blossoming, as if it were into his own garden, like a magic flower from some hidden bud. An unknown light had pulsed into existence where darkness hitherto had reigned.
A new star had been born! His soul caught up the fire of its brilliance. It was as if his transient faithlessness had been beautifully rebuked; his faintness of heart driven forth by a glance of his beloved’s eyes. Nay, it was as if, in some fashion, his mystic espousal had brought forth life. To him had been given what is not given to man once in a cycle—to receive the first flash of a world!
Inexpressibly stirred, filled with enthusiasm, he hurried to his instruments and with eager hand turned the great lenses upon the apparition.
Out of the chasm of those inconceivable spaces—from the first contemplation of which, it is said, the neophyte recoils with something like terror—broke, swirling, the splendour of a star where certainly no star had ever been seen before.His star!Breaking from the darkness, it sailed across the field of his vision, radiant, sapphire, gorgeously, exquisitely blue!
To every man who lives more in the spirit than in the flesh there come moments when theafflatusof the gods seems to descend upon him; moments of intuition, inspiration or hallucination, when he sees things not revealed to the ordinary mortal. What, in his sudden exalted mood, David Cheveral saw that night was never vouchsafed to him again. It was beyond anything he could ever put into words; almost, in saner moments, he shrank from putting it into thought.
When at length he descended from his altitudes and touched earth again, though still as in a trance, he entered a record of the discovery on his chart. Every student of the heavens knows that a new star is oftener than not temporary and may fade away as mysteriously as it has blazed forth. His next care, although it was against his habits to invite the company of his fellow creature, was instinctively to seek another witness to the event.
However man may cut himself adrift from his kin, the impulses of his nature remain ever the same in critical moments. A joy is not complete until it is shared; a triumph is savourless until it is acclaimed.
He was still dazed from the strain of watching, from the gloom of the black tower stairs and of the long unlit passages when he reached the basement rooms that were Master Simon’s province at Bindon.
Pushing open the heavy oaken door, he stood a moment looking in.
There was cheerful candle-gleam where he was wont to find dimness; a gay sound of laughter and words where silence used to reign; and instead of Master Simon’s bent grey head, there rose before his sight, haloed with light, so white and pure as almost to seem luminous itself, a young forehead set in a radiance of crisp, fiery-gold hair. His eyes encountered the beam of two unknown eyes, exquisitely blue. Blue as his star!
And he thought he still saw visions; thought that his star had as suddenly and sweetly taken living shape here below as above in the unattainable skies.
CHAPTER VIEYES, BLUE AS HIS STAR
——Dwelt on my heaven a faceMost starry-fair, but kindled from withinAs ’twere with dawn!—Tennyson(The Lover’s Tale).
——Dwelt on my heaven a faceMost starry-fair, but kindled from withinAs ’twere with dawn!—Tennyson(The Lover’s Tale).
——Dwelt on my heaven a faceMost starry-fair, but kindled from withinAs ’twere with dawn!—Tennyson(The Lover’s Tale).
——Dwelt on my heaven a face
Most starry-fair, but kindled from within
As ’twere with dawn!
—Tennyson(The Lover’s Tale).
On the new-comer’s entrance Ellinor looked up. The smile was arrested on her lips and her eyes grew grave with wonder: there was something curiously unsubstantial, something almost fantastic in the man that stood thus, framed in the gaping darkness of the doorway.
That pale head, refined to ætherealisation, with its masses of dense, black hair; that straight figure, unusually tall and seeming taller still by reason of its exceeding leanness, romantically draped in the folds of a sable-lined cloak; above all, those eyes, under penthouse brows, singularly light and luminous in spite of their deep-setting, gazing straight at her, through her and beyond her—the eyes of the dreamer, or rather of the seer! In her surprise she failed for the moment to connect with this apparition the forgotten identity of the “cousin David” she had known in her girl days; the smooth-cheeked lad—dandy, fox-hunter, poet, politician—but in every phase, image of assertive and satisfied youth.
Master Simon broke the spell of the singular moment.
“Ah, David,” quoth he, “dazed—moonstruck as usual? Awake, good dreamer, awake! There have been fine happenings here below while you were frittering God’s good time, blinking at your stars!”
He rose from his seat and shuffled round the table with quite unusual alertness. A glass of the vintage servedto him by his daughter had brought a transient fire into the sluggish veins. As he tapped David on the arm, the latter turned his abstracted gaze upon him with a new bewilderment: the bloodless simpler, with a pink glow upon his cheek, with skull-cap rakishly askew on his bald head, with a roguish gleam in his usually keenly-cold eye—unwonted spectacle!
“We’ve done great things to-night,” repeated the old gentleman excitedly. “That experiment, David, successfully carried through at last! It is exactly as I surmised—you remember? The Geranium of the Hottentot, Fabricius’ plant and our Ivy here—contain the same principle! Ah, that was worth finding out, if you like!”
His bony fingers beat a triumphant tattoo on David’s motionless arm.
“What do you say to that?” insisted Master Simon.
The astronomer was still silent. The light in his eyes had faded; but they brightened again when he brought them back upon Ellinor. This time, however, they were less distant, less dreamily amazed, more humanly curious.
“And I have drunk wine,” pursued Master Simon. An unctuous chuckle ran through his ancient pipe. “Ichor from the veins of a noble plant,Vitis Vinifera, David, compounded of dew and earth juices, sublimated by sunshine.... Beautiful cryptic processes!” He paused, closed his eyes over the inward vision, and then added with solemn simplicity: “It is chemically richer, that’s obvious, I may say it is altogether superior as a cerebral stimulant to table-ale. That was her opinion.” He jerked his thumb in the direction of Ellinor. “And I endorse it.... I endorse it. She——”
“She?” interrupted Sir David. His voice was deep and grave, and Ellinor then remembered vaguely that even as a child she had liked the sound of it. A new flood of old memories rushed back upon her; she rose to her feet and came forward quickly, stretching out both her hands:
“Cousin David, don’t you know me?”
“To be sure,” cried her father gaily, “I have been extremely remiss. This is Ellinor, our little Ellinor. Shake hands with Ellinor. She’s come to stay here. So she says.”
He stopped upon the phrase and pulled at his beard, flinging a quick, doubtful look at the master of the house. “I told her we, neither of us, are good company for women that—in fact, it is impossible for thinking men, such as we are, to have a high opinion of her sex, but”—he waved his arm with a magisterial gesture—“I have already discovered, and you know my diagnoses are habitually correct, that my daughter is an unusually intelligent, sensible person, and that we might no doubt both benefit by her company.”
“If cousin David will allow me to stay,” said Ellinor gently.
She was standing quite motionless in the same attitude, her hands outstretched, bending a little forward, her face slightly uplifted—for tall as she was she had to look up to meet her cousin’s eyes. Repose was so essentially one of her characteristics, that there was nothing suggestive either of awkwardness or of affectation in this arrested poise of impulsive gesture.
The heavy cloak fell from David as he unfolded his arms and, hardly conscious of what he was doing, slowly took both her hands. Her fingers closed upon his in a grasp that felt warm and firm.
“That’s right,” said Master Simon. “Why, you were big brother and little sister in the old days. Kiss her David.”
The magic Burgundy was still working wonders; for the moment this old fantastic being had gone back thirty years in geniality, in humanity. “Kiss her, David,” he repeated.
The dark and pale face of Sir David, severe yet gentle, bent over Ellinor.
Half-laughing, half-startled, yet with a feminine unwillingness to be the one to attach importance to a cousinlygreeting, she turned her cheek towards him. But the kiss of the recluse, was—she never knew whether by design or accident—laid slowly upon her half-opened, smiling lips.
Had anyone told Ellinor Marvel who, during four years had cried at love and during six years more had railed at it, that her heart would ever be stirred in the old, sweet mad way because of the touch of a man’s lips, she would, in superb security, have scorned the suggestion. Yet now, when she turned away, it was to hide a crimsoning face and a quickening breath.
Nay, such a flutter, as of wild birds’ wings, was in her breast, that she vaguely feared it could not escape the notice even of Master Simon’s happy abstractedness.
When she again looked at his kinsman, she found that he had been pressed into a chair beside hers; and that her father, with guileless hospitality, was forcing upon his host a glass of his own choice vintage.
But, as she looked, she thought she could note a flush, kindred to her own, slowly fading from David’s forehead, and, in the hand he extended passively for the glass, ever so slight a trembling. The next moment she was full of doubt: his reserve seemed complete, his presence almost austere. And she blushed again, for her own blushes.
As if to a silent toast, Sir David drained the goblet; then turning his eyes upon her:
“You are welcome, Ellinor,” he said.
The young widow started at the words, and her discomposure increased. There occurred to her for the first time a sense of the strange position in which she had placed herself; of her impertinence in thus coolly announcing her intention of taking up her residence at Bindon, without even the formality of asking its owner’s leave. But after listening a while to the disjointed conversation that now had become engaged between her father and David, the quaintness and sweetness of therelationship between the two men—the unconscious manner in which such whole-hearted hospitality was bestowed and received without any sense of obligation on one side, or of generosity on the other, struck her deeply, and brought at once a smile to her lips and a mist to her eyes.
“To every law there are special exceptions,” remarked Master Simon, sententiously. “David may be quite convinced that I should not have entertained the idea of permitting any ordinary young person of the opposite sex to take up her abode under our studious roof. But a few moments have convinced me, as I said before, that Ellinor may be classed among the abnormal—the abnormal which, as you know, David, can be typically represented as well by the double-hearted rose as by the double-headed calf.” He paused to enjoy the conceit, then insisted: “Represented, I say, by the beautiful no less than by the monstrous.”
“By the beautiful indeed,” echoed the astronomer.
Ellinor glanced at him quickly. But his gaze, though fixed upon her eyes, was so abstracted, that she could not take the words to herself.
Altogether her cousin’s personality baffled her. He had not been one minute beside her, before, in her woman’s way, she had noted every detail of his appearance; noted, approved, and wondered.
This recluse, indeed, seemed to bestow the most fastidious care on his person. At a glance she had marked the long, slender hands, white and shapely, the singularly fine linen, the fit and texture of the sombre clothes of a past mode that clung to his spare, but well-knit limbs. The contrast between this choiceness, which would not have misfitted a dandy of the Town, and his dreamer’s countenance offered a problem which was undoubtedly fascinating.
There was also something of pride of blood in her approval of his high-bred air; and, at the same time, a sufficient consciousness of the remoteness of their kinshipto make the memory of his lips upon hers a troubling one. Added to this, there was a baffling impression in the atmosphere of apartness from the world which enwrapped him. His eyes—what did they see as they looked at her so long, so straight? Not the living Ellinor: no man could so look on a woman, as man on woman, without passion or effrontery! Not once had he smiled. With all his courtesy—a courtesy that sat on him as becomingly as his garments—hardly had he noticed her ministration to plate or glass. The carelessness, also, with which he accepted her arrival, without an inquiry as to its cause, without the smallest show of interest in her past and present circumstances, stirred her imagination, whilst it vexed her vanity.
“I believe,” she thought, “he has even forgotten I have ever been married. Nay I vow,” thought she, a little amused, a good deal piqued, “it is a matter of serene indifference to cousin David whether I be maid, wife, or widow!”
“Ellinor, my girl,” said the old man, pushing his plate from him, “this sort of thing is well enough for once in a way, and more particularly as my work, thanks to your timely assistance, is concluded for the night. But I must not be tempted to such an abandonment to the appetites another evening!”
“Very well, father,” answered she demurely, while a dimple crept out, as she surveyed his unfinished slice of ham and the fragments of his bread.
“As to the wine,” pursued he, “it is another matter. I will not deny that wine, producing this pleasant exhilaration (were it not accompanied by the not disagreeable langour which I now feel, and which is the result of my own self-indulgence) might stimulate the brain to greater lucidity than does the usual liquor provided by Mrs. Nutmeg. It is quite possible,” he went on, leaning back in his chair while the lamplight played on the shrunken line of his figure, on the silver beard, and the diaphanous countenance. “It is quite possible that evenas the plant requires sun-rays to produce its designed colour, so the veins of man may require this distillation of sun-heat and sun-light to liberate to the utmost his potential forces. David, we may both be the better of this drinkable sunshine!”
As he spoke, he meditatively sipped and gazed at the glass which his daughter had unobtrusively refilled.
The astronomer had been crumbling the white bread and eating and drinking much in the same frugal and half unconscious manner as the simpler; it seemed as if spirits so attuned to secluded paths of thought could scarce condescend to notice the material needs.
But upon Master Simon’s last remark, Sir David put down his beaker.
“Drinkable sunshine!” he cried, the light of the enthusiast leaped into his eye. He rose from the table as he spoke. “Ah, cousin Simon, I have this night drunk into my soul its fill of creating light.”
“Pooh! With your cold stars,” scoffed the simpler, once more eyeing the gorgeous colour of the wine against the light.
“The sun that raises from the soil and vivifies your plants, that gives the soul to the wine you are drinking, is one of the lesser stars,” said the astronomer gravely. “The countless stars you deem so cold are suns—I have to-night watched the birth of a new distant world of fire.”
“Ah,” commented the other, calmly scientific. “A phenomenon, like Ellinor here, rare, but possible.”
“I came down to tell you, to bring you back with me to see it,” David continued, and Ellinor could detect the exaltation of his thoughts in manner and voice. “Come, master of the microscope and of the test-tube, come and see the new star. Come and witness such a wonder as those microscopes, those crucibles will never show you.”
“My good young friend,” exclaimed the aged student, “while you, through your astrolabes, watch the revolving,the fading and growing of systems which you can neither control nor make use of, I, through those second eyes and those regulated fires, not only learn for the great benefit of science at large, the workings of the atoms that absolutely rule, nay, compose all life here below, but I can direct and guide them in one direction, neutralise or stimulate them in another, make them in short bring good or evil to humanity. I delight my own brain, but I also benefit the vast, suffering body of my kind.”
“The body, the body!” repeated the other, at once sweetly and contemptuously but still with the fire in his eye.
On his side Master Simon chuckled and rubbed his hands over his irrefutable arguments.
Then Sir David said again, almost as if he had not before proffered the request:
“Come, cousin, I want you to look at my new star.”
“Not I,” laughed Master Simon, tossing down the last drop of his second glass with the quaintest air of “abandonment,” wrapping his faded gown about him and folding himself in it as in a mantle of luxurious egotism. “Not I? Shall I spoil all these excellent impressions and bring my poor old bones back to a sense of age and infirmity by dragging them up your cold stairs to the top of your tower, there to stand in your draughty box and let all the winds of heaven find out my weak points—for the pleasure of gaping at a speck of light than which this lamp here is not less handsome, while immeasurably more useful? No, Sir David!”
Ellinor laid her hand upon her cousin’s arm.
“May I come?”
She spoke upon the true feminine impulse which cannot bear to see the avoidable disappointment inflicted; a feeling which men, and wisely, cultivate not at all in their commerce with each other.
David, again back in spirit with the heavens, turned upon her much the same look he had given her upon his first entrance. Then, as he stood a second, to all outwardappearance impassive and detached, a curious feeling as of the realisation of some beautiful dream took possession of his senses. The fragrant breath of the distilled and sublimated herbs, “yielding up their little souls, good little souls!” in aromatic dissolution, filled his nostrils as with an extraordinary meaning. The sound of his kinswoman’s voice, the touch of her hand, the subtle, out-of-door freshness of her presence in this warm room—all these things struck chords that had long been silent in his being. And the glance of her eyes! It was as blue as his star!
He took her fingers with a certain grace of gesture, born it might be of the forgotten minuets of his adolescent days, and prepared to lead her forth. But at the door he paused.
“As your father says, it is cold upon my tower.”
So speaking, he placed upon her shoulders his own cloak of furs. And, as he drew the folds together under her chin, their eyes met again. She looked very young and very fair. For the first time that evening he smiled.
“Big brother and little sister!” he said.
Now, for some reason which at the moment Ellinor would stoutly have refused to define even to herself, the words were in no way such as it pleased her to hear from his lips. But the smile that lit up the darkness and austerity of his countenance like a ray of light, and altered its whole character into something indescribably gentle, went straight to her heart and lingered there as a memory sweet and rare.
Master Simon watched the door close upon them with an expression at once humourous and philosophically disapproving. Belphegor, sharpening his claws on the hearthrug, glanced up at his master with a soundless mew, as after all these distractions and disturbances the well-known quiet muttering fell again upon the air.
“I took her for therara avis,” said the old man to himself, “but, I fear me, what I thought at first was the black swan may prove but a little grey goose after all!handmaid to that poor loony, with his circles and degrees as to assist me—me! And after displaying such an intelligent interest, too ...! Alas, my cat, ’tis but a woman!”
CHAPTER VIINEW ROADS UNFOLDING
The stars at midnight shall be dearTo her; and she shall lean her earIn many a secret place ...And beauty born of murmuring soundShall pass into her face.—Wordsworth(Lyrical Poems).
The stars at midnight shall be dearTo her; and she shall lean her earIn many a secret place ...And beauty born of murmuring soundShall pass into her face.—Wordsworth(Lyrical Poems).
The stars at midnight shall be dearTo her; and she shall lean her earIn many a secret place ...And beauty born of murmuring soundShall pass into her face.—Wordsworth(Lyrical Poems).
The stars at midnight shall be dear
To her; and she shall lean her ear
In many a secret place ...
And beauty born of murmuring sound
Shall pass into her face.
—Wordsworth(Lyrical Poems).
The first hour which Ellinor spent with David, uplifted from the gloomy earth into the bosom of the night—they were so unutterably alone, amid the sleeping world with the great, watchful company of the stars!—was one, she knew, that would alter the whole course of her life; the pearly colour of which would thenceforth tint her every emotion.
Not indeed that one word, one touch, one look even of his could lead her to believe she had made on the man anything approaching the impression that she herself had felt. On the contrary, the apartness which had been noticeable even under the genial circumstances of the meal shared together in the light and warmth of Master Simon’s room became intensified when they entered the solitude, the mystic atmosphere of his high, silent retreat.
And yet she knew that she would not by one hair’s breadth have him different! In the whirlpool of the fast existence into which, like a straw, her young life had been tossed, there was not one man—even during that early period when “pinks” and “bucks,” undeniable gentlemen, were her husband’s faithful companions—but would have regarded the situation as an opportunity that, “as you live,” should be gallantly taken advantage of. But he—through the long passages of the house, up thenarrow, winding stairs of the tower, he conducted her, for all his absent-mindedness, as a courtier might conduct his queen! When they reached the platform of the keep, upon the threshold of the observatory she tripped up against some unnoticed step, and would have fallen had he not caught her in his arms. For an instant her bosom must have lain against his heart, the strands of her hair against his lips; and she honoured him for the simplicity with which he supported her and gave her his hand to lead her in.
A strange apartment, the like of which she had never dreamed, this chosen haunt of her strange kinsman! Wrapt in the sables that encompassed her so warmly, her eye wandered, from the dome with its triangular slit through which a slice of sky looked ineffably remote, to the fantastic instruments (or so they seemed to her) just visible in the diffuse light, with gleams here and there of brass or silver, or milky polish of ivory.
She watched him move about, now a shadow in the shadow, now with a white flicker from the lamp upon the pale beauty of his face. She listened in the deep night’s silence, now to the inexorable dry beat of the astronomer’s clock, now to the grave music of his voice, as he spoke words which, for all her comprehension of their meaning, might have been in an unknown tongue, and yet delighted her ear.
“There is the mural circle, and yonder my altazimuth. But what I wanted to show you is to be best seen in this, the equatorial.”
Under his manipulation the machine moved with a magic softness of action—the domed roof turning with roll of wheels to let in upon them a new aspect of space. She reclined, as he bade her, on a couch. He adjusted the pointing of the mighty lens, and then she made her initiating plunge into the wonders of the skies.
First there came as it were upon her the great, black chasm before which the soul is seized with trembling, the infinitude of which the mind refuses to grasp—then apoint of light or two—little fingers it seemed pointing to the gulphs—then more and more, a medley of brilliancy, of colours, torch-red, flaming orange, diamond white, sailing slowly across the black field; then, dropping straight into her brain, like the fall of a glorious gem into a pool, carrying its own light as it comes—the blue glory of Sir David’s new-born star.
Ellinor told herself, with a mingling of regret and pride, that since her soul had received the message of his star she understood David’s vocation. And, however much she might wish in the coming days to draw him back to the homely things of earth, she could never be of those now who mocked or pitied.
A little later they stood upon the open platform together, and he pointed out to her the exact place of the marvel that had just been revealed to her. Again he spoke words of little meaning to her, yet fraught it seemed in their strangeness with deeper significance than those of a familiar language; but as she listened it was upon his transfigured countenance that all her wonder hung.
“See you, there, by Alphecca. Nay, you are looking at Vega of the Lyre-Vega the beautiful she is called: no wonder she draws your eyes! But lower them, Ellinor, and look a shade to the right. Turn to Corona, the Northern Crown.”
With the abstraction of the enthusiast, he was quite unconscious that to her uninitiated ear the names could convey no sense, that to her uninitiated eye the aspect of the sky could show nothing abnormal.
“See, there, just to the right of Alphecca—oh, you see, surely, the most beautiful—my star, virgin to man, to the sight of this earth until to-night!”
Still as he looked upward, she looked at him.
The wind was blustering. The breath of the northwest had swept the heavens clear before bringing up itsown phalanx of cloud and rain. The complaint of the great woods, far below their feet, rose about them; the thousand small voices of moving leaf and branch swelling like the murmur of a crowd into one pervading sound. Ellinor felt as if these voices of the earth were claiming her while the astronomer’s ears were deaf.
Whilst they had remained within the observatory she had shared for a moment some of his own exaltation, heard the mysteries speaking to him, felt as if each star that struck her vision was in direct and personal communication with herself. But, once in the open air, as she leant over the parapet, this sense fell away from her. The heavens were chillingly remote, and remote was the spirit of their high priest and worshipper. Indeed he was gradually becoming oblivious of her presence.
After a prolonged silence she slipped out of his cloak and quietly placed it upon his own shoulders. He gathered the folds around him, crossed his arms with the gesture of the man who suffices to himself—all unconsciously, without even turning his eyes from their far-off contemplation.
And so she stole away from him—and sought her father once more. But finding him peacefully asleep in his high armchair, by a well-heaped fire and with the dumbfamulusin attendance, she made her way through the deserted, silent house towards her own quarters, a little saddened in her heart, and yet happy.
A home-coming strange indeed, but strangely sweet.
With the quiet authority that so far had obtained for her all she wanted this evening, she had, on her arrival, bidden the only servant she could find prepare the chambers that had been hers in the old days. To these little gable-rooms, high perched in that wing of the house that connected it with the ancient keep, she now at last retired. Candle in hand, she stood still a moment, holding the light above her head, and dreamily surveyed the place thathad known the joyous hopes of her childhood. There was an odd feeling in her throat akin to a rising sob of tenderness.
Then she walked slowly round. It was like stepping back into the past; like awakening from a fever sleep of pain and toil.
Home—the reality! The rest was gone—over—of no more consequence than a nightmare! And yet, interwoven with this quiet sense of comfort and shelter, was an eager little thread of hope in the new, unknown life opening before her.
From her windows she could look up to the faint light of the observatory at the top of the black mass of the tower; and below it, she knew, the sheer depth of wall ran down into the dim spaces of the Herb-Garden. She gazed forth at the heavens. Never before this hour had she seen in its depths anything but the skies of night or the skies of day; now they were peopled with marvels. Never could they seem empty or commonplace again.
She watched for a moment, musingly, the rounded dome on the distant platform where to-night she had beheld so much in so short a time; where even now he was, no doubt still working at his lofty schemes. Then she tried to peer down through the darkness into her favourite haunt of old, the Herb-Garden—the garden of healing and poisons, where she had so disastrously plighted her young troth.
Shivering a little, for she was wearied with the long journey and the emotions of the day, and it was late, she drew back, closed the casements and sat down by the fire. The place was all strange, yet familiar. The little narrow, carved oak bed, the billowing feather quilt covered with Indian chintz by Miss Sophia’s own hands, nothing had changed in this virginal room after so many years but the occupant herself. There was the armchair with the faded cushions, and there her own writing table with the pigeon-holes; aye, and the secret drawer where herlover’s scrawling protestations had been deposited with trembling fingers....
The hand that wrote them—it had since been raised to strike her! And the precious missives themselves? All that was dust and ashes now; dust and ashes its memory to Ellinor. Yet it was not all a dream after all; and yonder stood the little cabinet, lest she forgot! It had a secret look, she thought, of slyness and mockery.
She pulled her seat nearer the hearth. A wood fire was sinking into red embers between the iron dogs. Leaning her elbows on her knees, she gazed at it, and mused, until the red faded to grey and the grey blanched into cold lifelessness.
It was not of the child, of the girl, of the unhappy wife that she now thought, but of the new roads that opened before the free woman—roads more alluring, more fantastic in their promise than even the ways in which her early fancy had loved to roam.
It was a change indeed from the sordid grey and drab atmosphere of her recent experiences, to be dwelling once more in this ancient mansion, the majestic interest of which she had before been too young to realise; to find herself adopted, with a simplicity that savoured more of the fairy tale than of these workaday times, accepted as their future companion by those two unworldly beings, the star-gazing lord of Bindon and his quaint guardian of old, the distiller of simples.
Yet it was not the thought of her father’s odd figure and his venerable head and his droll sallies that occupied her mind with such absorbing interest as to make her forget the hour, the cold, and her fatigue; in truth it was the memory of the tall, fur-clad figure, of the white hand, and the luminous eyes, and the single moment of that smile. Again she felt upon her lips the touch that had made her heart leap, and again at the mere thought flushed and shook.
CHAPTER VIIIWARM HEART, SUPERFLUOUS WISDOM
Of simples in these groves that growHe’ll learn the perfect skill;The nature of each herb to knowWhich cures and which can kill.—Dryden.
Of simples in these groves that growHe’ll learn the perfect skill;The nature of each herb to knowWhich cures and which can kill.—Dryden.
Of simples in these groves that growHe’ll learn the perfect skill;The nature of each herb to knowWhich cures and which can kill.—Dryden.
Of simples in these groves that grow
He’ll learn the perfect skill;
The nature of each herb to know
Which cures and which can kill.
—Dryden.
When the fame of her housekeeperly prowesses had gained for comely Miss Sophia Rickart the unexpected offer of parson Tutterville’s hand and heart—the divine had taken this wise step after many years of bachelorhood and varied, but always intolerable slavery to “sluts, minxes, and hags”—like the dauntless woman she was, she resolved to prove herself worthy of the promotion.
Although her horizon had hitherto been bounded by duck-pond to the north and dairy to the south, still-room to the east and linen-cupboard to the west, she argued that one so admittedly passed mistress in the arts of providing for her neighbour’s body need have little fear about dealing with the comparatively simple requirements of his soul! It was, therefore, after but a short course of study that she claimed to have graduated from the status of scholar to that of qualified expounder. Indeed, she was as pungently and comfortably stuffed with undigested texts and parables as her plumpest roast ducks with sage and onions.
Before long she began to consider herself, entitled by special grace of state, to interpretin partibusthe will of the Almighty to less privileged individuals; and, in course of time, the enthusiastic spouse succeeded in takingthe more trivial parish cares almost as completely off the parson’s hands as those of his household. What if, her flow of ideas being in excess of memory and understanding, the language of the Bindon prophetess were on occasions the cause of much secret amusement to the scholarly gentleman—one sip of her exquisite coffee was sufficient to re-establish the balance of things!
“Sophia’s texts will do the villagers quite as much good as mine,” he used to say, philosophically, and allow himself an extra spell with his Horace or hisSpectator, whilst his wife sallied forth upon the path of war and mission.
With a large garden hat tied somewhat askew under the most amenable of her chins, with exuberant ringlets bobbing excitedly round her face, Madam Tutterville, as old-fashioned Bindon invariably called the parson’s lady—burst in upon Ellinor’s breakfast the morning after the latter’s arrival.
It was a day of alternate moods, now with loud wind voice and storm-tears lamenting, like Shylock, the loss of its treasures; now, like prodigal Jessica, tossing the gold shekels into space, making mock in sunshine of age and sorrow, recklessly hurrying on the inevitable ruin.
That Madam Tutterville had on her way been pelted with rain and buffeted with wind, her curls testified. But Ellinor, as she rose from behind her table by the open window, had the glory of a fresh sunburst on her hair and in her eyes.
She had left her bed early, full of brisk plans which concerned the greater comfort of her father’s life and were also to reach as far as her cousin’s tower. But even as she fastened the crisp ’kerchief round a throat that shamed the cambric with its living white, she had been handed a note from Master Rickart himself.
This was pencilled on a slip of paper, one half of which had obviously been devoted to some fugitive calculations, and which ran therefore in a curious strain: