Chapter XI: Laying the Ghosts

Her eyes
Had such a star of morning in their blue
That all neglected places ...
Broke into music.
—TENNYSON (_Aylmer’s Field_).

Out of the warm library into the deserted, echoing round-vaulted hall, on the walls of which broad sheets of tapestry hung, dimly splendid, between fluted pilasters of marble. It seemed to Ellinor, when the swing door had fallen behind her with its soft thud, as if they had left the nave of some church; left a home-like refuge filled with living presences, benign spirits and warm incense; to enter the coldness of a crypt that spoke but of the tomb.

She shivered, and the gay smile faded on her lips. Their footsteps fell forlorn upon the stone floor. David now seemed to drift apart from her, to move unsubstantial in these forsaken haunts of grandeur. But it was her nature to re-act against such impressions. Her alert eye noted the moth in the tapestry, the rust on the armour, the dust lying thick on the white marble heads and limbs of statues that kept spectre company in the semi-darkness.

“Oh,” she cried suddenly, “what red fires we shall have on these cold hearths! How the village maids shall rub and scrub! How God’s good sunshine shall come pouring in through those dull windows! How rosy this Venus shall shine under the glow of the stained glass!”

He turned to her, as if called by the sound of the young voice back from the habitual grey dream that his own silent home had come to be for him.

“See, cousin David, poor Diana too! She has not felt on her breast a breath of sweet woodland air, I verily believe, since—since I left the place myself these ten years. She shall spring,” added Ellinor, after a moment’s abstraction, “from a grove of palms. And when the wind blows free, the shadow of the leaves shall fall to and fro upon her and cheat her forest heart. At least”—catching herself up as she noted his eye fixed upon her with a strange look—“at least, Sir David, if you will so permit.”

He still looked at her musingly. In reality he was going over the mere sound of her words in his mind, as a man might recall the sweetness of a strain of music.

“You shall have a free hand,” he said. “And, once more, what you do shall be well done.”

An odd sense of emotion took hold of her, she knew not why. More to conceal it than from any set intent, she moved forward and turned the handle of the door that, on the other side of the hall, led to the suite of drawing-rooms. He followed close and they looked in together. The vast abandoned apartment was full of a musty darkness.

“Heavens!” she cried, “do they never open a window?”

Narrow slits of light darting in from the divisions in the shutters cut through the heavy air and revealed, when their eyes had grown accustomed to this deeper gloom, the shapeless, huddled rows of linen-covered furniture.

“Ghosts—ghosts!” said David under his breath.

With quick hands she unbarred a shutter and, her impetuous strength making little of rusty resistance, flung open the casement before he had had time to divine her intention. He halted on his way to help her, arrested by the gush of blinding light and the blast of wild wind, that seemed to leap at his throat.

“Oh,” she exclaimed, standing in the full ray and breathing in—so it seemed to him—both the elements. “Oh, the warm light, the sweet air!”

A line of Shakespeare awoke in some corner of his memory: “A thing of fire and air.” ... How vividly it seemed to fit her then!

Without, the changeful day had turned to wind and sun. She stood in the very shaft of the light, in the flood of the breeze; he stood watching her from within, in the gloom and the stagnation. Her black gown fluttered and turned flame at the edges; alternately clung to, and waved away from her straight limbs, now revealing, now throwing into shadow the curves of a foot that, in its sandal, pressed the ground as lithely as ever a Diana’s arrested on the spring. The fresh airs engulfed themselves under her kerchief into her white bosom. It was as if he could watch them playing around her throat, even as if he could see them fluttering and flattering her hair.... Her hair! The sun’s sparkles had got into it! Now it rose, nimbus-like; now it danced, a spray of fire, back from her forehead; now again, under the flying touches, it fell back and rippled like a cornfield in the breeze.

This radiant creature! The more Sir David looked, the further apart he felt his fate from hers. She seemed to belong all to the dancing wind and the glad sun-light. From such an one as he, from his melancholy, his gloom, his fading life, she seemed as much cut off as ever the unattainable stars from his wondering night watch.

Thus they stood for the space of a minute. Then Ellinor turned. Light and freshness now filled the great room. The keen breath of the woods gaily drove into corners and chased away the mouldy vapours, the vague, shut-up breath of the old brocades, of the crumbling potpourris, of the sandal-wood and Indian rose; even as the light of Heaven drove the shadows back under the cabinets and behind the pillars, and awoke to life the gold moulding and the fleur-de-lis on the white walls, the delicate wreaths and tracery on the trellised ceilings.

“See, cousin David, the ghosts are gone!”

But the man had withdrawn to the shadow. There was now no answering light in his eye. He had now no phrase, tardy in coming, yet quick in the sympathy of her thought, such as had before delighted her. What had come to him? She gave a little laugh; the vigour, the freedom from without had got so keenly into her veins that she was as though intoxicated.

“I vow,” she cried, “you are like a ghost yourself! Why, you look like a dim knight from the tapestry yonder in the hall, wandering ...”

She broke off. The words were barely out of her mouth before she had read upon his countenance that they had struck some chord which it should have been all her care to leave silent. It was not so much that his pale face had grown paler or his deep eye more brooding, it was more as if something that had been for a while restored to life had once more settled into death; as if an open door had been closed upon her.

“A ghost, indeed,” he said at last, after a silence, during which she thought the sunshine faded and the wind ceased to sing. “A ghost among ghosts!”

“David!” she cried and quickly came close to him in the shadow. The light passed from her face as the sun sparkled away from her hair: a pale woman in a black dress, she was now nothing more!

Imagination, that plant which wreathes with flowers the open life of man, grows to mere clinging, unwholesome luxuriance of stem and leaf in dark, secluded existences. Sir David’s fanciful mind, disordered by too long solitude, had become incapable of viewing in just perspective the small events and transient pictures of that every day world to which he had so persistently made himself a stranger.

The sudden difference in Ellinor’s appearance, following as it did upon a deeply melancholy impression, struck him as an evil portent.—This, then, was what would happen to her youth and brightness, were fate to link her life with one so unfortunate as he!

She stretched out her hand to touch him. The riddle of his attitude baffled her.

“David!” she repeated, pleadingly. He drew gently back from her touch.

“Cousin,” he said, and she heard a vibration as of some dark trouble in his voice, “keep to what sunshine this old house will admit. But in God’s name do not seek to explore its shadows.”

“But do you not see,” she cried, pointing to the open window, “that all shadows give way before my hand?”

He made no answer, unless a long look, inscrutable to her, but yet that seemed to search into her very soul, could be deemed an answer.

“Come,” she went on resolutely. “Let us go through this dim house of yours together, and see what can be done. Ghosts!” she repeated, “the ghosts of Bindon are rust and dust and emptiness and silence and neglect. God’s light, dear cousin, and the wood airs, the birds’ songs, soap and water, stout hearts and true, and good company—give me but these and I’ll warrant you I’ll lay your ghosts.”

Into his earnest gaze came a sort of tender indulgence, as for the prattle of a child.

“Come then,” said he, simply.

But she felt that now it was to humour her, and not because she had reached the seat of his melancholy.

However, with heart and spirit as determined as her step, she drew him with her through the long, desolate rooms, leaving everywhere light and freshness where she had found darkness and oppression. Then through the ball-room, where the silence and the weighted atmosphere, the shrouded splendour and the faded brilliancy made doubly sad a space designed all for mirth and music. This feeling struck her in spite of her resolution; and when, before passing out into the hall again, David paused to look back and said, as if to himself: “Sometimes darkness is best; at least it hides the void,” she had this time no answer for him.

Slowly they ascended the great oaken stairs that creaked beneath their tread as if too long unused to human steps. Slowly they paced the length of the picture gallery, just illumined enough through drawn blinds to show the little clouds of dust set astir by their feet and to draw the pale faces of pictured ancestors from the gloom of their canvas backgrounds. The shadowed eyes, divined rather than seen in the delusive light, seemed to follow Ellinor with wistful questioning: “What will this child of ours do for our sorrowful house?”

Slowly and silently they progressed through the long suites of empty guest-chambers, where four-posters stood like catafalques and unsuspected mirrors threw back at them sudden phantom-like images of their own passing countenances. At length Ellinor paused irresolute; then she arrested David as he once more mechanically advanced to unbar a shutter.

“Nay,” she said, “the rest shall sleep a few days more. I have seen enough of the enchanted castle.” She tried to laugh. “Not, mind you, that I doubt being able to break its spell!” she added. But her laugh rang muffled, even to herself, in an air that seemed too heavy to hold it. She caught David by the sleeve, and dragged him into the comparative cheerfulness of a corridor lit at either end by a blessed gleam of blue sky.

They had reached once more the keep wing of the house. There was stone beneath their feet, stone above their heads, stone walls, ochre-washed on either side.

“Ah,” cried she, a sudden wave of memory breaking over her, called up by the vision through the deep hewn windows. “How well I recollect! I used to play here. This is the old nursery.”

She flung open a narrow door; the long, low-ceiled room within was flooded with whitest light, for its barred windows boasted no shutters. The shadows of the tall trees outside danced like waters on the walls. Cobwebs hung in festoons even in the yawning grate. Two little beds stood covered with a patchwork quilt; a headless rocking-horse was in one corner, a tiny wooden chair in another. An empty nursery! As sad to look on as an empty nest! Ellinor’s eyes brightened with tears; a hot tide of passion, sprung of an inexplicable mixture of feeling, rushed from her heart to her lips. She turned almost fiercely on David, who had remained in the doorway.

“Oh, why have you wasted your life?” she cried. “Why have you turned your back on all the good things God gives man? Why is your home desolate, your hearth vacant, your heart solitary? David, David, this house should never have been empty thus; there should be children round your knee! What have you done with your life?”

The tears brimmed over and ran down her cheeks. Then her strange passion fell away from her, and she stood ashamed. He had started first and put up his hand as if to thrust back her words. There was a long silence. When he broke it, it was as one who speaks upon the second thought, with the cold control that follows an unadmitted emotion.

“For me such things will never be.”

“Why, why?” The cry seemed forced from her.

He waved his hand with the gesture of the most complete renunciation.

“Never,” he repeated.

The word, she felt, was final. She gazed at him almost angrily; then tears, caused now by mortification and confusion, rose irresistibly again. To conceal them she turned to the window, pulled open the queer little casement and, leaning on her elbows, looked out in silence.

Below her lay the Herb-Garden, with its variegated autumn burden of berries, red or purple or sinister orange; its groups of fantastically shaped leaves, turning to tints not usually known in this sober clime; here a patch, violet, nearly black; and there a streak of tropical scarlet; elsewhere again mauve, verdigris-green—colours, indeed, that village folk said, “no Christian plants ought to produce.” The scents of them, as pungent yet different in decay as ever in their blossom time, rose to her nostrils mixed sweet and bitter, over-dulcet, poisonous or aromatic-wholesome.

The sight and the smell were full of subtle reminiscence. She felt her throbbing heart calm down, her hot cheeks grow cool. In some mysterious way, now as in her childhood, the Herb-Garden seemed to draw her and to speak to her; to promise and withhold some fairy secret, she knew not whether for joy or sorrow, but yet incomparably sweet. As she gazed forth she noticed the quaint figure of her father come into view from behind a clump of bushes. He was attended by Barnaby, who, under the direction of his master’s gesture, culled leaves and flowers. Circling round the pair, Belphegor, the black cat, could be seen gravely watching the proceedings. There was something peaceful and world-detached in the silent scene, and it brought back some of that sense of rest and home-return which she had found so blessed the previous night.

All at once she felt close to her the shadowing presence of her cousin, and the next moment his touch upon her shoulder sent her blood leaping.

“For five years,” said David, “your father has been looking for a certain plant. He says, Ellinor, that it is the ‘True-Grace,’ the _Euphrosinum_ of the ancients, called by the primitive simplers at home, ‘Star-of-Comfort.’ And its properties, as he believes, are to bring gladness to the sore heart and the drooping spirit. But all traces of it have been lost. If it still blooms, it blooms somewhere unknown. Never an autumn passes but your father plants fresh seeds, seeds that reach him from all parts of the world ... with fresh hope.” He stopped significantly.

She turned to him with wide eyes; he looked back at her. Both his glance and voice were full of kindness.

“That would be a precious plant, would it not?” he went on. “‘True-Grace’ ... ‘Star-of-Comfort.’ Is there such a thing in this world? To your father its discovery is what the quest of the Powder of Projection, of the Elixir of Life was to the alchemist of old; of Eldorado to the merchant-adventurer, of Truth to the philosopher—does it exist? Will he ever find it?” Then he added: “Who knows ... perhaps you will have brought him luck.”

And when he had said this his dark face was lit by his rare smile.

“What is it that could comfort you?” she cried, clasping her hands.

His very gentleness brought her some comprehension of a sadness illimitable as when the mists rise dimly above vast seas and fall again. His face set into gravity once more, his gaze wandered from her face out through the little window to the far-off amethyst hills on the horizon.

“To be able to forget ... perhaps,” he answered, as if in a dream.