Chapter I: Midsummer Sunrise

... the blue
Bared its eternal bosom, and the dew
Of summer nights collected still to make
The morning precious: Beauty was awake.
—KEATS (_Sleep and Poetry_).

A dawn in June: the dawn of a night that has held no real blackness, but merged from a sky of sapphire to one of grey pearl—sapphire so starlit, that ever deeper deeps and ever bluer transparencies seemed to unveil themselves to the watchers eye; grey pearl pulsing into opal, shot with milky pinks, faint greens, ambers and primroses.

Into the dewy morning world came Ellinor; down through the long stone passages that still held night and silence; out into this awakening, this freshness, this lightsomeness.

The wonders of the summer dawn, day after day, bring to the old Earth, as it were, a new creation. She awakes and finds the forgotten paradise from which man, of his own sluggard choice, shuts himself out with gates of darkness and leaden bolts of sleep.

Ellinor, her fair face emerging from the folds of her dark, grey-hooded cloak, came pearl-like as the young day itself from the folds of the night. Her slender foot left its print on the dew-moist path. She passed between the stately flower-beds through the great formal pleasure-grounds where, under the sunrise radiance, the masses of geranium blooms were taking to themselves silvery colours unknown to the later day; between the ranks of cypress and box, whose grotesque and fantastic shapes were duskily cut out against the transparent sky one moment and the next seemed fringed with green flame as the level rays leaped at them; up the shrubbery walks, where the white syringa was breaking into odorous stars, scattering its scented dew upon her as she brushed the outstretched branches; under the black and solemn shades of the yew-trees, until she reached the gate that gave access to the Herb-Garden.

She walked slowly, drinking in the loveliness of the hour. The bees were humming loudly over the spicy beds. The whole garden was full of sweet growing hum and stir; of the flash of wet bird wings. Its strange blossoms swaying in the capricious little breeze seemed to hold private councils, then nod familiarly at her, welcoming and beckoning on.

Ellinor stood, her hand still on the gate, her brow towards the radiant east; the hood had slipped from her head and a sun-shaft pierced her hair. She never crossed the threshold of this garden without a curious sense of something impending. And now, as she paused to breathe its ever new fragrances, the happy humour in which she had started on her quest for herbs (to be gathered at the hour of sunrise, according to Master Gerard’s own prescription) gave place to the old childish sense of mysterious awe and attraction.

And as she stood, musing, the sound of a rapid step was heard on this garden space, so far consecrate to herself and to the wild things; a darker shadow detached itself from the heavy shade of the yew-tree. She turned round quickly to face it. Sir David was beside her.

“The purity of the morning,” he thought, “and the dawn still in her eyes!”

“David!” she cried, astonished; and a happy rose leapt into her cheek.

“I saw you,” he said, “from my tower.”

She glanced up to the frowning grey stone mass that was beginning to cast sharply its long shadow on the sunlit garden—then she looked back at his face, pallid and a little drawn. And if he had seen the dawn in her eyes she saw in his shadow of the night watch.

“Ah,” she cried and menaced him with her white finger. “No sleep again, David! And your promise?”

“The stars lured me,” he answered, smiling faintly. Ellinor, however, did not smile. The rose flush faded slowly from her face. The stars lured him! Would it then always be so? She gave a little sigh. Then, without speaking, she drew a key from her reticule and slipped it into the lock; it required the effort of both her strong hands to turn it, but she would do it herself.

“Nay, cousin, it is a fancy of mine. I alone am trusted with the keys of the sanctuary. It is I that shall open to you the gate of our Herb-Garden.”

It fell back, groaning on its hinges; and she stood inside, smiling again.

“Come in, David.”

“Do you know,” he said, still standing on the threshold, humouring her mood according to his wont, “that I have actually never trodden this rood of ground before.”

She clapped her hands with joy.

“Then it is indeed I who will have brought you here,” she cried. “That is right. Oh, cousin, don’t you know, this is the enchanted garden, my garden! Ah, you did not know that, lord of Bindon! You deemed it was yours perhaps, though you never bethought yourself even of visiting it. But it was given to me by a fairy, years and years ago. And it is full of spells and dreams and magic! I will tell you something: That night, when I came back last autumn ... the first thing I did when I went to my room was to open my window that gives on the garden—you see that window there—and I leant out over the whispering ivy leaves to greet my garden. And in the dark of the night I heard it speak to me. And it said: I am still yours—David, come in!”

With one of his unconsciously courtly gestures to mark that it was indeed on her invitation that he came upon her ground, he entered slowly, looking at her with a little wonder. For this fantastic Ellinor was as new to him as this day’s dawn. She guessed his thoughts.

“I vow,” she said and seemed to shake off her fancy as she might have brushed from before her face a floating gossamer—“I vow that I am becoming infected with some musing sickness! But between you, my cousin star-gazer, and my good alchemist father, it were odd if there were no such humour in the air. Hold my basket, dear David, I will be practical again.”