Chapter VIII: Warm Heart, Superfluous Wisdom

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 interpret _in partibus_ the will of the Almighty to less privileged individuals; and, in course of time, the enthusiastic spouse succeeded in taking the 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 his _Spectator_, 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:

MY DEAR GIRL,—Do not Ash: salts (50) : (20.1722...)
attempt I beg of you, to disturb traces of sulphur but not
me this morning. I shall be gaugeable Calcium as before in
engaged on important work re- the ratio 7.171 5.32
quiring the undivided attention 7027.001
which solitude alone can secure. Mem. try in Val. foetida.

Ellinor read and was dashed, read again and laughed aloud.—Gracious powers what a pair of eccentrics had her relatives grown into!

But she was in high spirits, and hope rose in her heart. She was free from her chains; she was back from her exile, home in England, home in the dearest spot of that dear island! Her first outlook upon the world had been into the closes of the Garden of Herbs; and it had been to her as if the familiar face of a friend had looked back at her unchanged, yet full of promise. The beauty of the freshly-washed woods (still in their autumn coats of many colours: from russet to lemon-yellow, from the vermilion of the turning ash-leaf to the grey-white of the fir needle), she drew it all into her long-starved soul, even as she breathed in the wild purity of the air.

Therefore, as she had sat down to breakfast alone in the gay Chinese parlour where once Miss Sophia had reigned, the refrain of the song in her heart was an undismayed, nay, joyous: “Wait, my masters, wait!”

And therefore, also, as Madam Tutterville walked on to the scene of her past dominion she found a merry, hungry niece; and she was scandalised, for she had come armed with texts wherewith to console the widow.

“‘Him whom he loveth, he blasteth’!” she cried enthusiastically from the threshold, “‘aye, even to the third and fourth generation’—my afflicted Ellinor...!”

She stopped, stared, her manner changed with comical suddenness.

“Mercy on us, child, I must have been misinformed!”

“Misinformed, dear aunt!”

“They told me your husband was dead!”

Ellinor came forward, kissed the lady on either wholesome cheek, divested her of her wet shawl and exclaimed at its condition.

“Tush, child, that is nought. ‘The sun shineth on the evil and the rain raineth on the just.’ Matthew, my dear.”—Madam Tutterville was on sufficiently good terms with her authorities to justify a pleasant familiarity. “They told me,” she repeated, “your husband was dead. I shall chide cook Rachael for unfounded gossip. What saith Solomon: ‘The tongue of the wise woman is far above rubies.’”

Ellinor laughed, then became grave.

“Oliver is dead,” she said.

“Dead!”

The rector’s lady fell into a chair, tossed her hat-strings over her shoulders, and fixed her light, prominent eyes upon her niece.

“Your weeds?” she gasped.

“I do not intend to wear any mourning but this black gown.”

“Ellinor!”

“Please, aunt, not another word upon the subject!”

For yet another outraged, scandalised moment, the spiritual autocrat of Bindon glared. But the very placidity of Ellinor’s determination was more baffling than any other attitude could have been to one who, after all ruled more by opportunity than capacity.

“‘All flesh is hay,’” she remarked at length, in plaintive tones. “We shall speak further of this anon. Now tell me what are your intentions for the future?”

Ellinor’s eyes and dimples betrayed mischievous amusement.

“Do you not think, aunt,” she asked, “that Bindon would be the better for some one who could look after it? The place seems to be going to rack and ruin!”

“Alas, my niece, since to a higher sphere I was called forth from this house, ‘the roaring lion who walketh about has entered in with seven lions worse than himself.’”

Ellinor crossed the floor and suddenly surprised her aunt’s dignity by falling on her knees beside her and hugging her. And, hiding her sunny head on the capacious shoulder, she made vain efforts to conceal the inextinguishable laughter that shook her.

“Why, aunt, why, dear aunt! Oh! Oh! Oh! What has happened since we parted? You’ve grown so—so learned, so eloquent!”

Despite the strength of Madam Tutterville’s brain, her heart was never proof against attack. The clinging, young arms awoke memories and tender instincts. And while the comments upon her new attainments called a smile upon her countenance (which made it resemble that of a huge, complacent baby) she responded to the embrace with the utmost warmth.

“Eh, Ellinor, poor little girl!”

“Oh, Aunt Sophia, it’s good to be home again!”

Once more they hugged; then Ellinor sat back on her heels and Madam Tutterville resumed, as best she could, the mantle of the prophetess.

“You see, my dear, it having pleased the Lord to call me into a place or state of spiritual supererogation, it hath become necessary for me to frame the tongue according to its vocation.”

Ellinor nodded, compressing her dimples.

“My brother Simon and your cousin David—God knows I have done my best for them! But it is casting pearls before—you know the scriptural allusion, my dear—to endeavour to raise them to any sense of duty. The place is indeed going to wrack and ruin. They are no better than Amalakites and Ephesians. Between David’s star-worshipping on the one side, like the Muezzin on his Marinet, and your father’s black arts and other incomprehensible doings in his cave of Adullam, my heart is nearly broken. And yet, my dear child, I have not failed, as Paul enjoins, with the word in reason and out of reason. I fear for you, child in this Topheepot!”

“Do not fear for me,” cried Ellinor; her voice was caught up by little titters. “Perhaps,” she added insinuatingly, “if you advise me things may alter for the better.”

“Advice shall not fail you.”

“I shall coax cousin David to let me manage for him.”

Ellinor was still sitting on her heels. She now looked up innocently at Madam Tutterville. And Madam Tutterville looked down at her with a suddenly appraising eye and was struck by a brilliant inspiration over which, in her determination to keep to herself, she buttoned up her mouth with much mystery.

Ellinor had grown—there could be no doubt of that—into a remarkably handsome woman. There was so much gold in her hair, there were so many twists and little misty tendrils, that one could hardly find it in one’s heart to regret that it should so closely verge on the red. It grew in three peaks and wantoned upon a luminously white forehead.

“She has the Cheveral eyebrows,” thought the parson’s wife, absently tracing her own with a plump, approving finger.

Of the charm of the little straight nose, of the pointed chin, of the curves of the wide, eager mouth, there could be no two opinions. Nothing but admiration likewise for the lines of throat and shoulder and all the rest of the lithe figure on the eve of perfection. It was the beauty of the rose the day before it ought to be gathered. Madam Tutterville gave a small laugh, fraught with secret meaning.

“Amen, child,” said she irrelevantly at last. “Yes, I will have some corporal refreshment; you may give me a cup of tea. But you will have your hands full, I can tell you, with that Nutmeg—Oh, what a house of squanderings and malversations has Bindon become since my days!”

“I saw something of the state of affairs last night,” said Ellinor, as she lifted the kettle from the hob on to the fire to boil again and emptied the contents of the squat teapot into the basin.

Madam Tutterville watched her with approval.

“Another girl would have given me cold slop,” she commented internally. “That husband of hers must have been a brute!”

“Lord, Lord! I never see brother Simon and cousin David, but what I think of Jacob’s dream of the lean kine devoured by the fat ones.” Madam Tutterville, contentedly sipping her tea, had settled herself for a comfortable gossip. “But, there, so long as David is clothed in purple and fine linen (I speak fictitiously, child, as regards colour, for I do not think, indeed, I ever saw David in purple) the servants may rob him as they please. A strange man—never sees a soul, and yet clothes himself like a prince. That old sinner Giles goes to London twice a year and brings back trunks full, all in the fashion of ten years ago. He’ll never use a napkin twice, Ellinor—he don’t care if he never eats but a bit of bread or drinks but water, but it must be from the most polished crystal, the finest porcelain.”

Ellinor listened without manifesting either amusement or impatience. When her aunt paused she herself remained silent for a while; then, in a low voice, she asked:

“And what then occurred to change his whole life in this manner?”

Madam Tutterville’s eyes became rounder than ever. She shook her head with an air of the deepest gravity and importance.

“Do not ask me, my dear—do not ask me, for I may not reveal it,” she said. And the next instant the truth leapt from her guileless lips: “There are only three people here that know the whole secret, and they never would tell me, no matter how I tried. David himself, your father and my Horatio.”

The lady’s countenance assumed a pensive cast, as she reflected upon this want of conjugal confidence.

“His marriage was to have been soon after ours,” observed Ellinor musingly.

“Aye, child, so it was. But the girl David loved and that Lochore man—well, well, I can only surmise. But in the end there was devil’s work, fighting and duelling! David was brought home wounded, mad, and like to die; and for days and nights, my dear, Simon and Horatio nursed him between them and would not let any one near him while his ravings lasted—not even me, think of that! Of course, my love,” she added comfortably, “it is not that my Horatio has not the highest opinion of my discretion; but he had to humour David, and he would die rather than break his word even to a——” She paused, and significantly tapped her forehead. “Well, well, the poor lad got better at last, and then——Oh, if it were not true no one could have believed it! Maud, his sister (I never could endure her, with her bold black eyes and her proud ways), nothing would serve her but she must marry the very man who all but murdered her own brother! She became Lady Lochore—that was all she cared for! Pride was always eating into her! ‘Proud and haughty scorner is her name, and her proud heart stirreth up strife.’—Proverbs, dear.”

“And David?”

“David, when he heard the news, fell into the fever again; worse than ever. Many was the night Horatio never came home at all, expecting each morning to be the last! It was a terrible time, but, thank the Lord, he got well, if well it can be called. And then this kind of thing began. He withdrew himself completely, no one was ever admitted. Bindon became a waste and a desert. He cannot forgive, child, and he cannot forget—and that is the long and the short of it! Horatio has secured an honest bailiff for the estate, ’twas all he could avail—but, inside, that rogue Margery Nutmeg reigns supreme! And, upon my soul, if something’s not done, brother Simon and cousin David will be both fit for bedlam before the end of the chapter!”

Here the flow of Madam Tutterville’s eloquence was suddenly checked. She sniffed, she snorted; there was a rattle of buckram skirts as of the clank of armour resumed. With finger sternly extended she pointed in the direction of the window—all the gossip in her again sunk in the apostle.

Ellinor’s eyes followed the direction of the finger.

The casement gave upon a green-hedged path that led from one of the moat-bridges to the courtyards behind the keep. By this path the villagers were admitted to Bindon House.

The head of a lame man bobbed fantastically across Ellinor’s line of vision. This apparition was succeeded immediately by that of a fiery shock of hair over which met, in upstanding donkey’s ears, the ends of a red handkerchief folded round an almost equally red expanse of swollen cheek. The silhouette of a girl holding her apron to one eye next flitted past.

“In the name of Heaven,” exclaimed Ellinor, “is the whole of Bindon sick this morning? And what brings them to the house?”

“The evil one is still busy among them,” quoth the parson’s wife oracularly, “and I grieve to say it is your father who is his minister!”

There was something so irresistibly comic in the angry disorder noticeable on the face, heretofore so kindly placid, of Madam Tutterville, that her niece was again overcome by laughter.

“Do not laugh!” said the lady severely; “‘The mirth of fools is as the cackle of thorns’—Ecclesiastes—We may all have to laugh one day at the wrong side of our mouths. I live in fear of a great calamity. There have been mistakes already!” she added, lowering her voice to a mysterious whisper, “as Horatio and I know.”

Ellinor had grown grave again.

“Even doctors are not infallible,” said she reproachfully. “Is poor father the minister of evil because he may have made a mistake?”

“Ah, child, that’s just it! Brother Simon is not a doctor, he is—I don’t know what he is. He tries his herbs and plants upon the village folk. They flock to him and swallow his drugs because he bribes them, my love, by playing on their heathen superstitions about spells and fairies and bogles and what not. They believe themselves cured because they believe him to be in league with the powers of darkness—a warlock, Ellinor! Bred in the bone, alas! Horatio may joke about it, but so long as I have life I will combat that back-sliding influence. God knows, it is ill and hard work. I am as the voice of one crying in the wilderness to the locusts and wild honey, but I’ll not lift my finger from the plough now!”

She rose. “Come child,” she commanded; and followed by Ellinor, led the way downstairs and through long passages to a small dairy room, the window of which gave upon the outer entrance to Master Simon’s laboratory.

Here, with tragic gesture, she halted, and bade her niece look forth.