CHAPTER XVIITREACHERIES OF SILENCE
——Slander, meanest spawn of Hell,And woman’s slander is the worst...!—Tennyson(The Letters).
——Slander, meanest spawn of Hell,And woman’s slander is the worst...!—Tennyson(The Letters).
——Slander, meanest spawn of Hell,And woman’s slander is the worst...!—Tennyson(The Letters).
——Slander, meanest spawn of Hell,
And woman’s slander is the worst...!
—Tennyson(The Letters).
On the following morning Margery drew the curtains of Lady Lochore’s bed and looked down upon her.
It was ten o’clock, and not even the barred shutters, not even the heavy hangings, could keep shafts of sunshine from piercing through. Lady Lochore wanted to shut out the light and the day and the world: whatever the news might be that the morning was to bring, whether of life or of death, they were fearful to her. And now, though she knew well enough whose eyes were fixed upon her, she feigned sleep. Margery, on her side, perfectly aware of the pretence, drew a stool with ostentatious precautions to the bedside, sat down and waited. But the feeling of being watched became quickly intolerable. Lady Lochore rolled petulantly over on her pillows.
“What in God’s name do you want? Great heavens, one would imagine that you at least would know better than to disturb me!”
“My lady,” cooed Margery, “Sir David is awake.”
Lady Lochore sat bolt upright and, under the thin cambric and lace that fell in such empty folds over her bosom, the sudden leaping of her heart was visible.
“Awake!”
“Yes, my lady—awake and up. I thought it my duty to let your ladyship know.”
“You have seen him! You——?”
A horrible hope danced like a flame in her eyes; buteven to Margery she dared not speak the question that would make it patent.
“Quite himself, yes, my lady,” went on the steady tones, answering as usual the unspoken thought. There was a lengthy silence. Then Margery began again: “Whatever drug Mrs. Marvel gave Sir David, it has done him good, my lady. I’ve not known Sir David look so well, nor speak so dear and sensible since before his—his great illness.”
Mrs. Nutmeg had respectfully shifted her gaze from her ladyship’s countenance to a knot of ribbons at her ladyship’s breast. But, nevertheless, Maud Lochore felt that her criminal soul was being mercilessly laid bare.
“Leave me alone,” she said faintly, leaning back on her pillow and turning her head away.
“I think your ladyship had better get up,” said Margery Nutmeg, and stood her ground.
By the time Maud Lochore, robed and tired, had sailed from her apartments, with head set high and determined step, to seek her brother, the housekeeper was able to retreat to her own room with the feeling that the morning’s eloquence of insinuation had not been altogether wasted. What though Fortune still seemed to favour Mrs. Marvel, the path of that would-be mistress of Bindon might yet, after all, be made rough enough to trip her.
Sir David turned his head as the door of the library opened, and Lady Lochore was involuntarily brought to a halt in her indignant entry. Those clear eyes! The steady, peaceful gaze was that of a man looking upon health returned after long sickness. Margery was right. She was right! Sir David was himself again; and the coiling, twisting serpents within her seemed to nip at her heart in their thwarted fury. Hers had been thehand to fill this magic cup! She could have laughed aloud for the irony at it. Then there came a second thought, lashing her with an unknown terror! Was God himself against her, that the poison which had uselessly brought death and madness to so many besides old Simon, should here have turned to a healing remedy?
Sir David and the rector had been engaged in earnest converse for the last hour. The matter of the challenge had first demanded their attention. Sir David had, with a contemptuous smile, perused the letter left on his table, had listened to Dr. Tutterville’s account of the interview without comment and briefly dismissed the subject with the announcement of his intention to send a messenger to Bath that day. His whole treatment of the affair was such as vastly pleased the old-fashioned spirit of the parson—a duly shaven parson, this morning, who could not keep the beam of satisfaction from his glance every time it rested upon his companion.
And yet it was a rare complication of troubles they had to face. Three deaths in the village, besides that of the poor old alchemist himself; a case of madness, and one or two of minor brain disturbance. And a general threatening resentment throughout the parish. Good cause indeed had the spiritual and the secular masters of Bindon for consultation together; little cause had they to welcome interruption. But both gentlemen rose with due courtesy; and while the parson placed a chair, Sir David took his sister’s hand and led her to it, inquiring upon her health.
She looked up at him without speaking, an exceedingly bitter smile on her lips. Yes, there was no doubt about it: her brother stood before her, master of himself, master of his fate once more.
In the silence, the two men exchanged a glance as upon some pre-decided arrangement. Then the rector spoke:
“These sad events have necessarily postponed your departure; but, believe me, my dear Maud, you will dowell, and it is also David’s opinion, to delay it no longer than this afternoon.”
Lady Lochore clutched the arms of her chair.
“We anticipate some excitement among the villagers,” pursued the parson. “Then there is the ceremony to-morrow. You are unfortunately in no state of health to risk painful emotions. And, in fact, David would not be doing his duty did he not insist upon your being safely out of the way.”
Lady Lochore rose stiffly.
“And Mrs. Marvel?”
The rector fell back a pace; the hissing word had struck him like a stone. But Sir David stepped forward, a light flame mounting to his brow.
“Does David consider it his duty to have Mistress Marvel also removed from this dangerous house?” she inquired, and her voice broke on a shrill laugh.
“Maud,” said her brother, almost under his breath, “have a care!”
But Lady Lochore had let herself go; the serpents were hissing, ready to strike. Glib words of venom fell from her lips:
“His duty! Touching solicitude all at once for my humble self! ’Tis vastly flattering, my God! What a model host, so preoccupied about his guests! Excellent Rector, is this your work? A conversion you may well be proud of: but is it not a little abrupt for security?” A hard cough here cut the thread of her tirade. And the acrid taste of blood, loathsome reminder of doom, brought her suddenly from irony to open rage: “Yes, turn your sister out of the house! Turn your flesh and blood from your doors! But house the wanton, cherish the abandoned wretch that dares to call herself our kin, that brought under Bindon’s roof practices that would disgrace Cremorne! Keep Mrs. Marvel, Sir David Cheveral, put her tarnished honour in our mother’s place and you—and you—you sanctimonious old man, give the blessing of the church upon that degrading union! Oh, MistressMarvel is a young, comely woman, and David is indeed converted! This time, I am glad to see, he has been more practical than with his other—lady!”
“Silence!”
It was not that the word rang very loud, or that Sir David’s mien was threatening; but, as she herself had grasped the truth a little while ago, that he was master. It seemed to her now as if she must wither before him. Her voice, her laugh sank into the silence bidden. Then Sir David turned:
“She is mad!” he said, addressing the rector, and made a gesture with his hand as if dismissing a subject painful in the abstract, but unimportant to himself.
His sister’s glance followed his movement to alight upon Dr. Tutterville. Then the cowering snakes reared their crests again. If he had to be slain for it, the parson could not have kept a look of perturbation, almost of guilt from his countenance; and the woman was quick to see it. She pointed her finger at him:
“Ask the reverend gentleman if I am so mad. Ask him if some account of the virtues of his niece has not already reached his consecrated ears! Oh, brother David, the mere stretching of a cloak is not quite sufficient to hide scandal.”
Scandal!—that evil word again! The more burningly it stung the parson, the more gallantly he resisted the doubt.
“Maud,” said he firmly; “hearing is one thing, believing, thank Heaven, is another. Those who would assail Ellinor Marvel’s honour, I should be inclined to rebuke much more severely than David has done. Madness? No, Lady Lochore, but deliberate falsehood, the fruit of Envy, Malice and all uncharitableness.”
“Ellinor Marvel’s honour!” said Sir David. He repeated the words steadily, then threw up his head and slightly uplifted his eyes and looked away as if fixing some entrancing vision.
Health of body and health of mind had, it seemed, been restored to him by the cup of strange mixing. The morbid doubt, the fever, the long oppression—all were gone. He had faith where he loved. The expression of his face drove the furious woman nigh to the madness he had proclaimed.
“Ellinor Marvel’s honour!” she repeated in her turn, “the honour of a woman, who receives her lover in her room at midnight!”
The rector gave a short groan; it might have been horror or indignation. Sir David merely turned to stare at his sister; then he smiled in contemptuous pity.
“Oh, David, David!” cried Lady Lochore, shaking in an agony of laughter and rage, “whom do you think to take in with these hypocritical airs, this ostrich concealment? It is, of course, your interest to hush things up. Naturally! But—”
He would not permit her to finish:
“Naturally it is my interest,” he said, hotly, “to defend a woman whom I know to be as innocent of what you accuse her as I am myself; in whose honour I believe as in my own.”
In the diplomacy of life, how often does the course of fate turn to unexpected channels upon the mere speaking of one word. At the strenuous instant of the conflict of purpose, how far-reaching may be the consequence of one phrase, perhaps pronounced too soon, or left unsaid too long!
Had David not thus cut short the speech on his sister’s lips, her very next word would have rendered the object of her hatred the best service that at such a strange juncture could have been devised; and she would at the same time have dashed for ever the success of her last desperate scheme. The revealing accusation that still hung on her tongue was barely arrested in time. With her familiar gesture, she had to clap her hand to her mouth.
“Why, great God! He knows nothing! he remembersnothing! First madness, then long, long sleep! Old man, I thank thee for that fantastic drug!”
Over her gagging hand Lady Lochore’s eyes danced with a flame so fierce and unholy that the bewildered and unhappy parson shuddered. He felt instinctively as if the meshes of the web which seemed to have been skilfully flung round Ellinor were tightening in remorseless hands. The very deliberation, the sudden calmness which presently came over Lady Lochore filled him with a yet deeper foreboding. She dropped her hand, stood a moment, tall and straight and dignified, as if wrapt in thought, her countenance composed: a noble looking woman, in spite of the ravages of disease, now that the unlovely mask of fury had fallen from her. Then she turned to Sir David, who had deliberately seated himself at his papers as if for him the discussion were ended, and said:
“Since neither brother nor kinsman believe my word worthy of credit, I am forced to bring other testimony—much as I should wish to spare myself and this house the humiliation.”
She stretched her hand to the bell-rope, and the parson upon an impulse of weakness for which he immediately chided himself, stretched out his own to arrest her. But David, without looking up from his writing, said gently: “Let her call up whom she will.” And Lady Lochore demanded Mrs. Nutmeg’s appearance.
“My friends,” she added, after a spell of brooding silence, once more addressing her brother, “have been so summarily turned out of this house that their immediate evidence is unobtainable. A letter to Bath, however, would produce their attendance or their answer by writing if——”
But at this point Margery knocked at the door. Slowly Sir David looked up:
“I may as well tell you at once,” said he, “that were you to fetch witnesses from the four corners of the globe,there is but one person’s word which I would be willing to take in this matter—and hers I do not intend to ask for.”
The rector gazed in astonishment upon the determined speaker. This confidence, he thought, showed almost like a new phase of eccentricity; it was as exaggerated in its way as the previous universal distrust of humanity and more likely to be followed by a reaction. Sir David had but shortly before informed him that since the moment when he had received the sleeping draught from Ellinor’s hand, he had not met her. His attitude seemed the more inexplicable. But Dr. Tutterville was now all anxious to clear up this strange matter; for, since Lady Lochore’s excited entrance upon the scene, he had become convinced that Ellinor was the victim of some cunning conspiracy, and was increasingly ashamed of his own previous misgivings.
“Nay, David,” he cried, interposing sudden authority, “that is not fair to Mrs. Marvel. She must have the opportunity of self-vindication; she must be urged to speak that word which we indeed do not need, but without which, slanderous tongues will continue to wag. See, yonder she goes,” he added, pointing through the window.
David then, without a word, rose and went to the open casement; he beckoned and called:
“Ellinor! Can you come to me?”
Margery Nutmeg took a few humble steps aside and remained in a shadowy corner.
CHAPTER XVIIIGONE LIKE A DREAM
... My sweet dreamFell into nothing.Ah, my sighs, my tears,My clenched hands;—for, lo! the poppies hungDew-dabbled on their stalk, the ousel sungA heavy ditty, and the sullen dayHad chidden herald Hesperus awayWith leaden looks.—Keats(Endymion).
... My sweet dreamFell into nothing.Ah, my sighs, my tears,My clenched hands;—for, lo! the poppies hungDew-dabbled on their stalk, the ousel sungA heavy ditty, and the sullen dayHad chidden herald Hesperus awayWith leaden looks.—Keats(Endymion).
... My sweet dreamFell into nothing.Ah, my sighs, my tears,My clenched hands;—for, lo! the poppies hungDew-dabbled on their stalk, the ousel sungA heavy ditty, and the sullen dayHad chidden herald Hesperus awayWith leaden looks.—Keats(Endymion).
... My sweet dream
Fell into nothing.
Ah, my sighs, my tears,
My clenched hands;—for, lo! the poppies hung
Dew-dabbled on their stalk, the ousel sung
A heavy ditty, and the sullen day
Had chidden herald Hesperus away
With leaden looks.
—Keats(Endymion).
Ellinor entered the room.
“The heartless wretch!” thought Lady Lochore, with the marvellous inconsequence of hatred, “her old father lying dead and she in all these colours!”
But the next glance showed her that the only colours Ellinor wore were those that cannot be doffed at will—gold of hair, rose of cheek, blue of eye and dazzling white of throat. The flower had opened wide to the sun of great love! The presence of death itself cannot rob the living thing of the beauty of its destined hour.
Ellinor’s arms, moreover, were full of branching leaves and strange blossoms. She had had the womanly thought to lay upon her father’s body a wreath made of the plants he had loved. Purple and mauve, crimson and orange, with foliage of many greens, it was a sheaf of rich hues she held against her black dress; and she seemed to bring with her into the room all the breath of the Herb-Garden and all its imprisoned sunshine.
She had walked straight in, seeking and seeing no one but David. He was still standing and, as she halted he moved nearer to her. For a while they were silent,gazing on each other. And her beauty seemed to grow into brighter and brighter radiance.—Every woman is a goddess once at least in her life. But Ellinor stood upon her Olympian height but for a short moment.
“Mrs. Marvel!”
At the first sound of Lady Lochore’s voice, at the sight of Margery’s face, she fell from her pinnacle, suddenly and piteously. Why were these, her enemies, here, and why had she been convened into their presence? Why did the rector sit there like a judge and wear that uneasy countenance? Her brain whirled. It could fasten on no settled thought. But in the great crisis of life what woman trusts to thought when she can feel! Ellinor felt:—this bodes evil! Yet David had looked at her with beautiful eyes of faith and gladness. Her fate was in his hands, what then had she to fear? She turned her glance again upon him. In spite of her boding heart she trusted.
“Mrs. Marvel,” said Lady Lochore. “I have considered it my duty to speak to my brother on the subject of the painful episode of the other night.”
Ellinor crimsoned to the roots of her hair, to the tips of her fingers. She dropped her eyes. Yet in the midst of all the agony of woman’s modesty outraged before the man she loved, there remained a deep sweetness of anticipation in her heart. She waited, motionless, for the touch of his hand, the sound of his voice that should proclaim her his bride. She waited. The silence enveloped her like a pall. Lady Lochore laughed and the blood rushed back to Ellinor’s heart.
“David!”
There was everything in that cry, everything in the look she cast upon him, to appeal to a man’s chivalry, to his honour, to his love: the pride of the innocent woman, the reproach of the wronged woman, the trust of the loving woman. And David spoke:
“You need say nothing, Ellinor, need not condescend to answer.”
Alas, what vindication was this!
“Does Mrs. Marvel deny then,” resumed Lady Lochore, “that she was discovered two nights ago——”
David lifted his hand and his voice in a superb unison of anger:
“Be silent. It is I who deny it! And let that suffice!” Then he went on rapidly, with more self-control yet still vibrating with indignation: “I know this to be a base lie, an iniquitous conspiracy. Your motives, my poor sister, are but too obvious! Your treatment of our kinswoman who has brought comfort and gladness to my house, has been odious from the first moment of your uninvited presence here. This is the climax! Now hear my last word:—not only is Mrs. Marvel, as I know her, incapable of desecrating the hospitality she honours me by accepting, but she is incapable of harbouring an unworthy thought.”
David’s countenance was lit by every generous impulse. Yet each vindicating word fell upon Ellinor’s ear like the sounds of her death sentence—death to both honour and happiness! A chasm was opening before her feet, the depths of which she could not yet fathom. One thing alone was dawning upon her moment by moment, with more inexorable light—David did not know! All this had been but a dream to him.And even as a dream he remembered nothing.He did not remember!Unconsciously she repeated to herself, even as Lady Lochore awhile before:Madness and then sleep!He knew nothing of his own vows of love to her, he knew nothing of his own words of passion!He did not know; and her lips were sealed!
At first Lady Lochore wondered whether David were playing a deep and subtle game; whether the two were in collusion. But a glance from his transfigured countenance to Ellinor’s stricken look, the sight of the rector’s evident perturbation, her own knowledge of the crystal truth of her brother’s character, promptly dispelled the doubt. The game was hers!
“All well and good,” said she. “Your cavalier attitude, most romantic David, is fit to grace the pages of the latest Scotch novel! But allow me to point out that it will not pass current in the every day world. Besides the fact that these eyes of mine and those of my friends beheld a scene in Mrs. Marvel’s room the like of which our honourable house never sheltered before, Margery Nutmeg can tell you how she heard an adventurous climber mount to Mrs. Marvel’s window. How Joyce, your head-keeper, met Colonel Harcourt, skulking through the park at midnight—”
Dr. Tutterville started. David made no movement, but something in his very stillness showed that the words had struck him.
“Mr. Villars, again, could have informed you, how he came upon Mr. Herrick and Colonel Harcourt brawling on the bridge an hour later, both in torn garments and as highly incensed one against the other, as only rivals——”
“Needless, all this,” said Ellinor, in a low clear voice. She had flung back her head and stood, white as death, but composed, holding herself as proudly as a queen. “I deny nothing. It would be useless to deny, did I wish it, what Lady Lochore and her friends and Mrs. Nutmeg have seen for themselves.” She paused, then resumed, gaining firmness in voice and manner: “I give you the truth, in so far as I am myself concerned. Judge of me as you will. Barnaby escaped from his room after my father had locked him up, climbed up to my window, where I let him in—”
“Barnaby,” exclaimed the parson with a loud burst of relieved laughter. “’Pon my word, a pretty storm in a tea-cup, Maud Lochore!”
Lady Lochore grew grey, save for the bloody fingerprint of death upon either cheek.
“And was it Barnaby,” she hissed, “whom you covered with your cloak, to hide him from our eyes?”
Ellinor flung a glance of a sad, yet lovely self-abnegation upon David before she answered:
“No, it was not Barnaby.”
For all its melancholy ring of renunciation the word could not have fallen from her lips in a tone of more exquisite sweetness had it been an avowal of love in the ear of the only one who had a right to demand it. The love that makes the willing martyr, as well as the pride that can face ignominy, had enabled her to surmount the failing of her heart over this bitterness. Was she not bound to silence by a thousand shackles of loyalty, of woman’s reticence, of elementary delicacy, of love for him? The sacrifice was for him. He must never know that it was his madness that had wronged her in the world’s eyes. Her hand could not deal this blow to his fastidious honour.Moreover, had it not been all a dream?How did she know that, waking, he could love her as he had loved her in his dream? Nay, his very defence of her, his calmness and freedom from jealousy seemed to her aching heart to argue a mere friendliness incompatible with passion. Thus for herself, too, her pride could endure to stand with tarnished fame before him, but could not stoop to demand the reparation she knew he would so quickly have offered. She went on, steadily ignoring alike the rector’s shocked distress, Lady Lochore’s triumph and Margery’s insolent silence.
“After Barnaby had taken refuge with me—some one, a man, entered my room. He did not know what he was doing. And because of that I shall never tell his name.”
Lady Lochore quailed before the high soul and generous heart of the woman she was ruining; and quailing, abashed, shamed in her own tempest-tossed desperate nature, hated her but the more.
The poor rector clacked his tongue aloud in dismay, chiding himself for his over-zeal. He had meant to straighten matters, and, lo, they were more inextricably knotted than ever! Here was a mystery to which he hadnot the beginning of a clue. No man of his mind and heart could look upon Ellinor and deem her a wanton as she now stood; and yet both her self-accusation and her reticence proclaimed how deeply she must love the unknown man she could thus shield with her own honour. Was this the end of all their fond secret hopes for Bindon!
Now David gazed at Ellinor almost as if the old dream-palsy had returned upon him. As in a dream, too, he seemed to see again some past picture which had foretold this hour. Thus on the first day of her return to Bindon had he seen her pass from sunshine and colour and brilliancy into darkness; seen the goddess turn to a pale woman in a black dress. Was this what his house had brought upon her!
His eyes dilated with pity, his whole being seemed to become broken by pity, given over to pity, till, for the moment, there was no room for any other feeling. Pity of the man for the woman, of the strong for the weak. He sank back into his seat and shaded his eyes with his hand. He could not look upon that high golden head abased.
But Ellinor had lost little of her proud bearing. Love is royalty, and royalty can walk to the scaffold as if to the throne.
“I cannot think,” she said with a pale smile, “that Lady Lochore can have any further need of my testimony.”
“Stay, stay!” cried Dr. Tutterville. “There is more in this than meets the eye. Ellinor, you have let yourself be caught in some cunning trap!”
“Uncle Horatio,” answered she, “you are right. Yes, things are not as you think.”
And upon this enigmatic phrase she left them.
Lady Lochore went straight up to her child. She told herself she was extraordinarily happy. She had beenprovidentially saved from fratricide and yet had encompassed her end:—Ellinor’s position at Bindon had at last been rendered untenable. And her boy’s inheritance was safe! She hugged him, teased him, rollicked with him till he shrieked with joy. But for all that her heart was well-nigh as heavy within her as it had been upon her awakening; if she had not her brother’s death on her conscience, it could not acquit her of all share in Master Simon’s sudden end. David and he had shared the same cup—that was servant’s talk all through the house. And how much did Margery know? That inscrutable woman was now at her elbow; and the sleek and meaning words that fell from her lips, the very feeling of her shadowy presence irritated the guilty woman almost beyond bounds. Yet she could not, dared not, dismiss this Margery.
David lifted a grave face from his shielding hands, looked at Dr. Tutterville and then, arrested by a gesture the words brimming on the elder man’s lips:
“Hush! Do not let us discuss this now.”
The parson, wondering, saw him sort his papers and lay them aside, then ring the bell, and again send for Margery. Sir David looked at her for a brief moment as she stood before him apparently wrapt in her usual smug composure, but, by the twitching of her hands and the furtive working of her lips, betraying some hidden agitation.
“Margery Nutmeg,” said her master then, “in an hour you leave my house and my service.” A sudden livid fury came over the woman’s face. But David’s gesture, his determined speech bore down the inarticulate protest that broke from her. “It is useless to attempt to make me alter my decision. I know how you have considered me bound by promise to your husband, and how you have traded upon it. That promise, in so far as I consider it binding, I shall keep till you die. You shall receivefit and sufficient maintenance from me. But in my house or upon my estate you shall dwell no more.” He dismissed her with a wave of the hand, merely adding: “If you present yourself at the bailiffs office in an hour, you will receive your money. Go!”
And Margery went, without another word.
“Ah, David,” said the reverend Horatio admiringly, “had you but done this earlier!” And in his heart was the thought, based upon too unsubstantial ground to put it into words: “Then things would surely not stand now at this pass!”
Sir David made no reply. He did not even seem to hear. He was seated at his writing table, inditing a letter of reply to Colonel Harcourt’s friend. As he wrote, the crimson of a deep, slow-burning resentment mounted to his face.
Lady Lochore’s enforced departure fitted in well enough in her mind with the new turn of events. Now that Master Simon was dead, Ellinor’s residence at Bindon became an impossibility so soon as she herself had gone. To be sure Madam Tutterville might give her niece harbourage; but Lady Lochore was quite satisfied that if she had failed to convince the rector of Mrs. Marvel’s frailty the rector’s wife had been more easy to deal with. Therefore she hurried on her preparations with a sick desire to escape from surroundings charged with such ugly memories. Even as the four horses drew the travelling chaise up to the door she stood ready in the hall, feverishly hustling her servants.
Sir David was there too, attentive to speed his sister’s parting, but certes, with even less warmth than he had welcomed her arrival. She spoke her bitterly sarcastic word of thanks. He answered by the cold wish that her health might have been benefited, according to her hopes, by her visit to her home of old. This time even the kiss upon the hand was omitted. But as he was leadingher across the threshold, her mood changed hysterically:
“David,” said she, in a panting whisper, “oh, no, you cannot let me go like this! Some day you’ll thank me for having saved you ... for you are saved a second time.” She could not keep the taunt out of her mouth. “After all, I am your only sister, and this is the last time we shall ever meet. I am dying!”
“My only sister died to me ten years ago,” said David. His tone was quite unmoved; and he added, almost in the same breath: “There is a high wind rising, you had better wrap your cloak over your mouth.”
She struck away in fury the hand that held hers, ran down the steps alone, and sprang into the carriage, where, seizing the child, she held him up at the window in a sort of vengeful mute defiance that, louder than any shriek, spoke her secret meaning: “Fool, you shall not keep this hated flesh and blood from ruling in your place some day!”
As the wheels began to crunch round in the gravel, she suddenly became aware of a dull grey face and black eyes looking upon her out of the shade of the opposite seat. It was not her maid! A shudder ran through her frame. She stared without speaking.
But Margery’s voice was silky as ever:
“Asking your pardon, my lady, I made so bold. Mamselle Josephine is in the other coach. Sir David has dismissed me. But I knew your ladyship would offer me a home and welcome, seeing that it is my devotion to your ladyship that’s lost me my bread and my station in my old age. I made so bold,” repeated Mrs. Nutmeg, and the veiled threat was all the more awful to the listener because of the unemotional tone, “knowing your ladyship’s heart as I know it.”
“Mamma,” cried the spoilt child, “let me go! I don’t like your cold hands!”
And thus, with Nemesis by her side, Lady Lochore left Bindon-Cheveral for the last time, and drove throughthe gathering storm on her speedy way to die Valley of the Shadows.
Ellinor took her last look at her father’s face and laid the wreath of herbs at his feet and a sprig of his Euphrosinum, fatal plant! upon his breast.
Madam Tutterville, in wifely solicitude for her Horatio’s unphilosophic depression, had insisted on his returning with her to the rectory. Without her, Ellinor could not remain at Bindon. But even had it not been so, to abide as David’s guest would have been the one thing to render her trouble unbearable. And there was nothing in the last cruel details that precede the returning of earth to earth to make her desire to linger in the death-chamber. She, therefore, accepted her aunt Sophia’s offer of hospitality. Had she not been all absorbed in her own troubles the lady’s altered manner, and the rebuffingly Christian spirit in which the invitation was offered, might have struck her painfully. But she was past noticing such things.
The falling dusk of that miserable day found her at the door of the tower-wing, Barnaby at her side loaded with her modest baggage, Belphegor ruffled and protesting under her arm. She was dry-eyed: there is an arid misery the desolation of which no well-spring can relieve. In this silent company she sallied out.
A dumb boy, and a cat! After these months of full life, after her gorgeous dream of happiness—this was all that was left her. The road that had opened before her, alluring, fantastic almost in its promise, had led to this desolation.
The Star-Dreamer sat by the open coffin in the laboratory, his head bent, his hands clasped upon his knees, holding between them the sprig of the Euphrosinum which he had absently taken from the heap of wildflowers that lay on his old friend’s breast. He was absorbed in thought.
A great silence was in the room erstwhile so filled with a thousand minute sounds of restless energy. Extinct the hearth; extinct the furnace which for over twenty years had glowed night and day; mute all the little voices, cold the matras and crucibles, all as silent and as cold, as extinguished as the once eager brain of their master. But the watcher’s mind was seething with keen thoughts, busy sorrows. He had lost her—she was gone! She who had come like a lovely vision to this house when it was held as under a spell of twilight dreaming; who had reanimated it with her own life; who had brought, as she had promised, sunshine into its dusk, fresh air into its stagnation, sweetness where the must had lain; she was gone from his sweet hopes, gone in sorrow and shame! Her bright head dimmed as even now was his star under the clouds that were gathering thick and thicker with the brooding storm.
And he, the Star-Dreamer? He had been called back from his unnatural life of solitude, step by step had been brought down from his height, had been taught once more to see the fairness of earth, had been made to feel the desire of the eyes, to hear the cry of his forgotten manhood: all to the end of this vault, this chamber of death, this knowledge of loss. Yet, no! She had once said to him in an unforgettable hour: “Sometimes a harboured sorrow is only fancied, not real; and it may be that real adversity must come to make us see it.” And now he felt that she had been right. His reawakened virility was strong within him. True, he had for a second time, and in middle life, been struck to the heart; yet, strange working of Fate! the new sorrow seemed not only to drive away the last remnant of the old, but actually to strengthen and arm him again for the fight of life. Although from his long sleep he had carried forth no conscious memory of a dream, that hour spent in Ellinor’s room when, in the body’s weakness, his spirithad come so close to hers, had left an ineffaceable stamp upon his mind. He had asked her, in trouble: “Can I trust you?” She had answered him: “To the death,” and he had believed. And now, though he had seen her stand self-accused before him, he believed still.
The crisis often heralds the cure. He was cured of his strange palsy of mind, of his infirmity of purpose, of his sick melancholy. He was a fighting man again in a world where everything must be fought for, above all things happiness. Cured—aye, but too late! She, the joy he might but a few weeks before have taken for his own, she had passed from his gates.
Cured, made strong again.... How? By what? In that soothing draught, of whose nature he had known nothing, but which her own hand had prepared, had she steeped a branch of that wondrous plant which held so many unknown properties? Had that given him a new life and sanity while it had brought death or madness to others? Ah, no! The transformation was her own doing. She had found him weak and ignorant of the one beauty of life, and left him strong, awakened. Awakened, but desolate.
CHAPTER XIXGREY DEPARTURE
Here then she comes.—I’ll have a bout with thee:Devil, or devil’s dam!...Blood will I draw on thee—thou art a witch!And straightway give thy soul to him thou serv’st!—Shakespeare(Henry VI.)
Here then she comes.—I’ll have a bout with thee:Devil, or devil’s dam!...Blood will I draw on thee—thou art a witch!And straightway give thy soul to him thou serv’st!—Shakespeare(Henry VI.)
Here then she comes.—I’ll have a bout with thee:Devil, or devil’s dam!...Blood will I draw on thee—thou art a witch!And straightway give thy soul to him thou serv’st!—Shakespeare(Henry VI.)
Here then she comes.—I’ll have a bout with thee:
Devil, or devil’s dam!...
Blood will I draw on thee—thou art a witch!
And straightway give thy soul to him thou serv’st!
—Shakespeare(Henry VI.)
The next morning, at an hour unwontedly early for such a ceremony, they laid Master Simon’s remains to rest in the family vault. The discontent in the village, aroused by the series of mishaps attendant on the simpler’s last experiments and fostered of late by Margery’s subtle calumnies, had been fanned to fury by her last round of farewell visits. The death of the warlock himself had little effect in assuaging the new-risen hatred which now was aimed at his living daughter.
It was a morning of weeping skies; a fine rain-shroud enveloped the land; Bindon looked desolate enough to be mourning a mightier scion than this poor eccentric old child. The creepers clung to the tower and the ruins, like sodden garments. The blurred panes looked like tear-dimmed eyes. The dripping flag of Bindon-Cheveral hung at half-mast, so limp and darkened with wet that it might have been a funeral scarf.
The ceremonial was performed before a congregation pitiable in its tenuity. Beyond the sexton, the clerk, old Giles and sobbing Barnaby, not another human being escorted the dead student to his last home, save the narrow circle of his own kinsfolk. Not one of the many he had helped in life, or of the many he had healed, could rememberhis debt of gratitude, so little did the many lives he had saved weigh against those few he had lost.
Good Doctor Tutterville officiated with something less than his usual dignity. He was painfully distracted. There were two or three raw graves yawning, without, in the little wet churchyard, that felt to his kind heart as if they had been dug into it. He was anxious too; his ear was strained for the dreaded sound of angry voices breaking in upon the sanctity of his dead. The words of the solemn service escaped his lips in haste, and he breathed a sigh of relief when at last the great stone was rolled back into its place and, the keys being returned to his own possession, he knew his old friend’s remains were safe from desecration.
When he emerged from the vestry with David beside him, both instinctively looked round for Ellinor. But she was gone, and Madam Tutterville, her round face for once the image of dissatisfaction, could or would give them no information on the subject. Her high nostril and short answer quite sufficiently indicated that she regarded Ellinor’s departure and their curiosity concerning it as equally unbecoming.
“No doubt you will find her at the rectory, if you wish,” she remarked with a snort.
But here old Giles, who had betaken his way back to the House—the thought of his restored keys and the comfort of a glowing glass on such a morning luring him to a sort of shuffling trot—returned hastily to the church, emotion of a very different kind lending speed to his clogged limbs:
“They were up at the house,” he explained, panting, “a score of them, and even more on the way! They were in the Herb-Garden; they had sworn to leave standing neither stick nor leaf! They had broken into Master Simon’s laboratory, laying about them like mad! They meant to leave no bottle or powders of the sorcerer to poison any more of them!”
Sir David and the rector looked at each other as the same thought flashed into each brain: Ellinor!
Then they started off running. It was a fearful possibility that the daughter might have returned to either of her father’s haunts; and the thought of the danger to which she was exposed amid an angry, ignorant rabble was hardly to be framed in words.
But Ellinor had had but little time to bestow on the sensibility of grief.
An interview which her aunt had inflicted upon her the previous night had taught her that the last day’s events had left her poorer even than she had reckoned. Her hope had been to find a few days’ harbourage in the rectory and the counsel of friends, before sailing further on the bitter waters of life. She had hoped—God knows what a woman will hope, so long as she is in the neighbourhood of her beloved! But Madam Tutterville’s very first words had called her pride in arms.
The lady had gathered good store of awful texts and apposite instances wherewith to lace her discourse; and before a tithe of them had been delivered, Ellinor, scarlet-faced and writhing, had felt herself sullied in all her chastest instincts by the mere fact of listening.
Madam Tutterville looked upon this case as well within her competence: she had not consulted with her lord. But her self-sufficiency overreached her purpose. It was little likely that her pragmatic methods should have extracted the humble and full confession from her niece which seemed to be demanded by every authority, old or new, even had the young widow’s steadfastness been less complete than it was.
Above the turmoil of Ellinor’s emotions one thing soon became clear: not an hour longer than possible could she remain under this roof. The bread of Madam Tutterville would stick in her throat. The cold charity of strangers would be sweet compared with the bounty of one that could think so meanly of her own kin. Ellinorwas indignant, Madam Tutterville severe; so true it is that where most the human of all feelings is concerned, the best and most tender-hearted woman seems suddenly merciless. They parted in anger.
Early then, on this most gloomy day, had Ellinor taken all her measures. Her available funds were small, but she had saved enough from those limited stores which her father had handed over to her to provide for the immediate future. She had, besides, the capital of splendid health, of indomitable will and energy; so that, for her modest material needs Ellinor Marvel, though now a poor woman once more, had no anxiety. But, oh, for the needs of her heart—that passionate awakened heart that had learned to want so much! It was worse than death to have to tear herself from Bindon.
Nevertheless, unfalteringly, with the secrecy of one who will not be prevented, she considered and carried out her plans. A place was privately retained on the Bath and Devizes coach which passed every morning before the gates of Bindon. Her few garments were gathered and packed. A letter to the rector was left to be delivered after her departure. It briefly stated that she felt it impossible to remain at Bindon, and promised to communicate with him later on.
Unnoticed, she slipped away through the shadows of the little church; and after consigning her small effects to Barnaby (and picking up, on a sudden tender thought of her father, the anxious Belphegor) she struck across the wet grass towards the park entrance, followed by the dismal tolling of the Bindon church bell.
The hood of her cloak pulled over her face, its folds wrapped round her, she sped through the misting rain, so plunged in thought as scarcely to notice, until within a few paces, the knot of village folk advancing up the avenue.
Then she halted, unpleasantly struck by something strange and threatening in their demeanour. They were coming along at a great rate, like people belated, talkingeagerly among themselves, and with fierce gesture. There were some eight or ten of them: an elderly man with a long draggled streamer of black crape tied to a bludgeon, a couple of lanky lads fighting over the possession of a pitchfork, and the rest women, one of whom dragged a child by the hand.
Upon the instant that Ellinor and Barnaby halted they were recognised, and a shout went up that made her blood run cold. The next moment she was surrounded, and the words of execration hurled at her fell with almost as stunning effect as the blows they seemed to presage.
“Witch! Poisoner! Murderer of poor people! She’s trying to run away! It was she planted the poison bush: burn her with a faggot of it! She’s in league with the Devil, and that’s the Devil’s imp. The witch and her boy! Seize her, duck her!”
Angry hands were outstretched, and Ellinor, with energies suddenly restored by the realisation of danger, stepped back against one of the mighty beeches, holding out the wide cloak to shield Barnaby. A new howl broke out at the sight of her burden.
“The witch and her cat! Burn her! Burn them!”
“Give me back my wife!” cried the man with the bludgeon.
“And where’s good Mrs. Nutmeg?” shrieked an old hag.
“See, Jamesie,” exclaimed the woman with the child, “spit upon her! It is she who bewitched your poor daddy!”
The child hurled a stone which fell short of its aim. This was the signal for the passage from anger to frenzy; and it would have fared ill with Master Simon’s three innocent associates, had not it been for an unexpected aid. Barnaby’s face was already streaming with blood, and Ellinor had received on her arm a vicious blow—which Jamesie’s mother, armed with a flint, had levelled at Belphegor—when the sound of an authoritative shout produceda sudden halt. The sight of the keeper, advancing at full run from his gate-lodge and significantly handling his gun, immediately altered the complexion of affairs. Yet he had not come a moment too soon, nor was there one to be lost; for already a few stragglers, drunk with the triumph of destruction, were running down the avenue towards them from the Herb-Garden.
“Stand back!” cried the keeper. “Stand back, John Mossmason, or I’ll plug you! And you, Joe Barnwall, if you don’t drop that pitchfork you’ll never dig a turnip again, or my name is not keeper!”
The broad cord-clad back was now between Ellinor and her foes. Keeping his barrels levelled at the rioters, he whispered to her over his shoulder:
“Run, ma’am, run and get into the lodge!”
At that instant the note of the post-horn rang out upon the air; the Bath and Devizes coach was passing through the village.
The younger of the two discontented gentlemen who occupied damp outside seats on the coach that day and had been looking forth in dudgeon upon a world of dudgeon, never ceased in after years to recall the tale of that ride as one fit for walnuts and wine.
“It was raining cats and dogs, and by ill-luck (as I thought then), I and an elderly old buck had to put up with outsides: it was packed inside. Well, sir, I was cursing pretty freely by the time we were drawing Devizes. And when the coachman said he had to pick up a passenger at the gates of Bindon-Cheveral, I was getting a curse out of that, for an irregularity—when, gad, the words died on my tongue!
“A woman, sir, the loveliest woman these eyes were ever laid upon (my good lady is not here, I can say it in your ear), running, running for her life, bare-headed in the rain! By George, that was hair worth gazing at! She held a cat in her arms, like a baby, her cloak, half-tornfrom her back, flying behind. She was making for our coach. After her, an overgrown gawk of a lad, with a bloody sconce, lugging her bundles anyhow, the most frightened hare of a fellow it has ever been my lot to see—turned out afterwards, to be a kind of natural, deaf and dumb. But she, gad! she was brave for both! A grand creature, ’pon my word! Inside the park there was a prodigious deal of shouting and scuffling, and two or three big devils with pitchforks yelling something about a witch.
“‘Pray, gentlemen,’ says she, looking up at us, her eyes as blue as forget-me-nots, her face as white as this napkin, but as calm as you or I, ‘help me up,’ says she, ‘or they will kill me.’ And would you believe, it, she hands the cat up first before she’d let any one extend a hand to her? And the boy, he must come too! ‘I can’t leave him behind,’ says she, ‘they would tear him to pieces.’ And, zounds, sir, if it had not been for a keeper fellow with a gun who ran up and locked the wicket gate in their very faces, some of those lads meant murder or I never saw it written on a human face. Then it was: ‘On with you John!’ Off went the horn. Off went we, the inside females screeching like mad, and the devils at the gate bellowing like wild beasts after their prey....
“‘Well, this is a rum go!’ says the coachman, as he tucks the cat between his boots. ‘I always thought this here place of the Cheverals was asleep; dang me if it hasn’t wakened up with a vengeance!’
“A witch, sir, they’d called her. Not so far wrong there! Between you and me and the bottle I’ve never been able to forget her. A strange creature—all the women I’ve known would have gone off in a screaming fit or a swoon. Not she. The first thing she does is to whip open one of her little bundles and out with her handkerchief, and wipe and bind the boy’s broken head as he squatted beside her; and then she turns to me on the other side and hands me a scarf, and says she: ‘WouldI be so kind as to tie it round her arm, as tight as might be.’ And then I saw an ugly gash in the pretty white flesh. ‘A hit with a stone,’ she says. And not another word could I get, nor the other old boy (who was green with jealousy at her speaking with me), nor John the coachman, though he called her ‘my dear,’ and was as round as round with her, a fatherly sort of man that any young female might confide in.
“She just pulled her hood over her face and lay back folding her arms, the sound one over the hurt one, and sat staring at the gray wet walls of Cheveral park as we skirted them. Her face looked like a white rose in the black shadow, and by and by, I saw the great tears begin to gather and roll down her cheeks one by one. I tell you, sir, my heart’s not a particularly soft one, but it made it ache.
“Well, we set her down and her cat and her boy at York House. She paid the boy’s fare and thanked us. I thought she was going in at the York—but she went up without another word by Bartlett street. And I never saw her again, nor heard more of her story.—Pass the bottle.”