Chapter VII: New Roads Unfolding

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 the narrow, 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 a point 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 its own 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 dumb _famulus_ in 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 that had 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 her lover’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.