Chapter II: Euphrosine, Star-Of-Comfort

She still took note that, when the living smile
Died from his lips, across him came a cloud
Of melancholy severe; from which again,
Whenever in her hovering to and fro,
The lily-maid had striven to make him cheer,
There brake a sudden beaming tenderness.
—TENNYSON (_Elaine_).

“And do you not wish to know,” asked Ellinor, “what has brought me with the dawn to these gardens?”

He had been watching silently by her side—watching her, as here she snipped a bundle of leaves and there a sheaf of blossoms, and mechanically extending the basket that she might lay them therein. Now, after a fashion of his, to which she had grown well accustomed, he let fall a glance upon her as one bringing himself back from a distance.

She repeated her question, with a little pretence of impatience.

“I do not think that I wondered to see you,” he answered slowly.—Fastidious as he was in his garb and every exterior detail that concerned him, it was all as nothing, Ellinor had learned to know, compared to his mental fastidiousness. A silent man he was, but when he spoke no words could serve him but such as could clothe the truth to the most exquisite nicety. Could anyone have been more ill equipped for the battle of life?

“I was standing on the tower,” he went on, “watching the withdrawal of the stars and the rise of another day. It is not often that I look to the earth. When the stars go, then, you see, the world is blank to me. But this morning, I know not why, when the skies grew faint I did look upon the earth and found it very fair. And so I stood and watched and saw the colours grow. Then you came forth into the midst of them; and somehow I thought it was as if you were part of the beauty of it all—part of the dawn; as if you were something that the earth and I myself had unconsciously been waiting for to complete the whole. Thus you see, Ellinor, it did not enter into my mind to ask why you had come. I sought you,” he smiled as he spoke, “also, indeed, I know not why.”

As Ellinor listened her white eyelids had fallen over her eyes, lower and lower, till the long lashes, black at the base, upturned and tipped with gold at their ends, cast shadows on her cheek. Her breast heaved with the quickening of her breath. But at the last word she looked up at him, and her eyes were sad.

“Ah, cousin, will you ever know?”

It was almost a cry; it had a ring of hidden bitterness in it. Then, after a slight pause, she resumed her snipping and became once more, as she had announced, practical.

“Well, now you shall be told why I am here. And first, please understand that I combine with my duties of housekeeper to the lord of Bindon, those of ’prentice or familiar to the alchemist—simpler—sorcerer; in short, to Master Simon, my father. Now, as you know,” she pursued, assuming a mock orating tone, “my said father spends now all his days and most of his night in extracting divers salts, distilling essences, elixirs, what not—remedies for which the village folk flock to him with enthusiasm, and which being, praise Heaven, harmless enough, are applied to their ills with varying success but entire satisfaction to themselves. These remedies are mostly grown in this garden.”

She began to move down the path which led from bed to bed and which no foot but that of the simpler himself, of the dumb boy Barnaby, or her own having hitherto trod, was so narrow and encroached upon by the wild luxuriance of the herbs and shrubs that she was fain to walk in front of him and to speak over her shoulder. And even then, beneath their feet, many a broken and crushed simple gave forth its spicy ghost.

Her face presented itself to him in different aspects every moment. Now he caught but a rim of pearly cheek; now a clear cut profile; now nearly the whole delicate oval narrowed as she turned it towards him over her shoulder, the white chin more pointed. Meanwhile she spoke on gaily, with only here and there a pause to consider, to select and cull.

“I need not tell you, who have known my father so many more years than I myself, that while he makes use of the good old simple writers, Master Gerard, Master Robert Turner, Master Parkinson and the rest, he scoffs at what he calls their superstition. But I, having relieved him from the task of gathering, find it my pleasure to follow the quaint old directions in their least particular. And when Master Gerard, for instance, says, ‘This herb loseth its power unless it be gathered under the rays of the moon in her first quarter’ why then, cousin David,” she laughed, “under the rays of the moon in her first quarter I gather it. Who knows if I do not please thereby some honest ghost? Who knows if there be not in very truth some hidden virtue in the hour? You will have divined that the hour of sunrise is, on the same authority, the only fit season for the culling of certain other precious plants. And so I am here to cull betony and ditander in the dew. (Betony, you must know, sir, is of all simples, except vervaine, the most excellent, so that it is an old say: ‘If you be ill, sell your coat and buy betony.’)”

Here she pushed her way through a bed where thyme had grown breast high. She came back again presently, flushed and be-pearled, merry with the breath of the spices clinging to her garments, and with as much betony as one hand could hold together. This she added to the basket’s burden.

On ran her tongue the while:

“Ah,” catching herself up abruptly and retracing her way by a step, “the ditander is also blossoming, I see. Father will be glad to see it. It is sovereign against the wounds of arrows ‘shot from guns, and also for the healing of poisoned hurts.’ You would never guess,” she added, “that the juice of this modest little plant is so powerful that, Master Gerard avers, ‘the mere smell of it will drive away venomous beasts and doth astonish them!’” Her laugh rang out, clear as crystal. “You are not convinced, cousin. I would I could see more speculation in that eye! What if I were to tell you that the thing grows under the influence of Mars—would it awaken more interest?”

His grave lip was faintly lifted to a smile.

“It might account at least for its virtue against wounds of arrows,” said he.

“Nay, there’s sarcasm in that tone,” she said, shaking her head. “More respect, I beg of you, Sir David, for this little borage. Does it not look quaint and simple with its baby-blue flowers and its white downy stem? Ah, I warrant me you have had borage in your wine ere this—but you never knew why or how it came there! Oh, sir, it is no less—on authority, mark me—than one of the four great cordial flowers most deserving of esteem for cheering the spirits. The other three are the violet, the rose, and alkanet. And what the alkanet is I should much like to know!”

... “You know so much,” he said, “that I have no thought to spare for what you do not know.”

“Sarcastic again—take care, cousin! Do not mock at Jupiter’s own cordial. And I tell you more, sir: conjoined with hellebore—black hellebore—that dark and gloomy plant will, as one Robert Burton has it:

‘Purge the veins
Of Melancholy and cheer the Heart
Of those black fumes that make it smart;
And clear the brain of misty fogs
Which dull our senses, our souls’ clogs....

“It’s a favourite quotation of my father’s. Would you drink of it, if I brewed it for you?”

There fell a sudden silence—a something dividing their pleasant warmth of sympathy as of a chill breeze blowing between them. And she knew a thoughtless word had struck upon his hidden sore. She stood, as if convicted, with eyes averted from his face. Then he spoke:

“Every man in his youth brews the cup of his own life and spends his age in drinking of it, willy nilly. Sometimes, I think, it is blind fate that has gathered the ingredients to his hand. Sometimes I see they are but the choice of his own perversity. But once brewed, he must drink, be they bitter or sweet.”

“Cousin—” she began timidly. Then, after her woman’s way, courage came to her on a sudden turn of passion: “I’ll not believe it!” she cried, flashing upon him. “Throw the poison away, David. There is glad wine yet in this beautiful world.”

His face relaxed as he looked upon her; the gloomy cloud passed from it. But the melancholy remained.

“Do you remember,” said he, “for I too can quote—what Lady Macbeth says: ‘All the perfumes of Araby cannot sweeten this little hand!’ My bright cousin, believe me, there is a bitterness which no sweetness that ever was distilled, nay, I fear, not even such as you could distil, can ever mitigate. Have you not learned,” he added, and a certain inner agitation made his lips twitch and the pupils of his eyes dilate and found a distant echo in his voice as of some roaring waters deeply hidden—“have you not learned, over your father’s crucibles and phials, that the sweetest essence does but lose its nature and become bitter too for ever, when mingled with but a few drops of the acrid draught. Ellinor, I have warned you already.”

She felt as if some cold hand had been laid on her heart:—here spoke again the voice of the sick soul determined to renounce. And here was the one man in her whole world, to whom she would so fain give extravagantly. There are natures to which love means taking only; others to which it means giving all. How she would have given! The ache of the tide thrust back upon her heart rose to her very throat. She went white, even to her brave lips. But still they smiled, as women’s lips will smile in such straits.

“You mind me,” she said, “that I was after all forgetting to gather the hellebore. ’Tis a dark drug-plant, cousin and loves the shade; and, if the old simplers speak truth, it must be gathered before a ray of sun shall of a morning have opened its green petals. I see that I must hurry. Already the shadow of your grey tower is shortening across the beds.”

She took her basket from his arm, gave him a little nod as of dismissal and passed quickly from him. He let her go without a word or a gesture, standing still, wrapt in himself, with eyes downcast. Those deep waters in his soul, that for so many long years had lain black and stagnant—what was it that had so stirred them of late days, that they should rise in waves like the salt and bitter sea and dash against his laboriously built dykes of peace and renunciation?

Ellinor was long on her knees beside the hellebore, not indeed that she was busy picking it, for her hands lay idly before her. With eyes fixed unseeingly upon its dark, poisonous looking tufts, she was tasting the savour of a slow gathering tear. Suddenly she felt her cousin’s presence again close upon her and began feverishly to tear at the plant, every energy of her mind bent upon concealing her weakness. In another moment, with a sweetness that was almost overpowering, she knew that he was kneeling beside her, his shoulder to her shoulder, his hands over hers.

“Dear Ellinor,” he said softly in her ear, “I do not like to see you touch this poisonous plant, let me——” And then, breaking off, when she turned her face, so close to his, as if irresistibly drawn to seek his glance: “Forgive me!” he cried, with more emotion than she had ever heard his measured tones express before. “By what right am I always thus casting upon your happy heart the shadow of my gloom!”

Her fingers closed passionately round his.

“David,” she said, almost in a whisper, “don’t forget I too have known suffering. David you were wrong just now. The sweet and the bitter work together make wholesome beverage. And see, for that do I gather hellebore that it may blend with the borage. Did I not tell you so? And—ah, forgive, but I must say it, sometimes the bitterness and the sorrow are not real, only fancied.... And then it may be that real adversity must come to make us see it. And even then, if we do see it, sweet are the uses of adversity!”

“Why, then, I could believe,” he answered her, and his deep voice still thrilled with that note of emotion that was so inexpressibly musical to her ear, “that if a man were to be comforted by such as you, he might find a sweetness even in adversity—that is,” he added on a yet deeper note, “did he dare let himself be comforted.”

She sighed and dropped her hands from his; took up her basket and rose to her feet. He also rose hastily, as if ashamed of his emotion, and once more wrapped reserve around him like a mantle. Presently he said, in that slightly jesting manner that never lost touch with melancholy:

“Your father has long been looking for the lost ‘Star-of-Comfort.’ Your father is an amiable materialist and believes that a right-chosen drug can minister to a mind diseased. I fear me it will prove to him as frail a quest as that of the Fern Seed of invisibility and the Lotos of forgetfulness—and such like dreams of unattainable good!”

“You are wrong, wrong again!” Although the moisture she scorned to brush away was still in her eyes, the smile was on her lip once more; and the dimple by it—a triumphant dimple.

“How so?” he asked.

“Why, sir, you once were a truer prophet than now you wot of. Did you not foretell to me, on the first day of my return, that I might help him to find it? The lost plant was, according to Master Ralph Prynne (of fragrant memory) well-known at one time in the south of France where, says he, upon diligent search it may even now be discovered among ruins and rocks!” Here she resumed her mock didactic manner. “‘It is my belief,’ says he, ‘that the gay and singularly careless temper of these peoples is due in great part to the ancient custom of brewing it into the wine they did drink of—whereby their sons and daughters did inherit the happy tendencies engendered in themselves—and splenetic melancholy which sits so black on many of our country is never known among them.’”

“A wondrous drug!” said David.

“So I thought,” she retorted; and, with a mocking glance at him, went on: “And knowing how many indeed stand in need of it here, I who had recently come myself from the south of France, resolved to get him the seed or root, if such were to be obtained. Master Prynne gives a very detailed description and I have a good memory. There was one, a wise woman I knew of, who was learned in simples. In fine, sir, turn and behold!”

She twisted him round, led him a pace or two forward, and pointed.

On a shallow bed, sloping to due south, screened from the north and prepared with a kind of rockery clothed with mingled sand and heather soil, a hardy-looking dwarf plant was growing in thick patches. And sundry small but vigorous off-shoots, darting here and there gave promise that they would soon cover the bed and overhang its rocky borders. The full sunshine blazed down upon it, and the minute bright and bold blossoms that gemmed it already in places looked like stars of bluish flame among the lustrous dark green leaves.

“Behold!” repeated Ellinor, with a dramatic gesture.

There was a stimulating aromatic fragrance in the air. The morning sun which had just emerged from the edge of the keep bore down upon them with an effulgence as yet merely grateful. A band of puzzled bees was hovering musically above the last attractive new-comer in the herbary. David looked from the flourishing bed to the straight, strong figure, the brave countenance of his cousin.

“And so you have succeeded,” he said with a look of smiling wonder. “Succeeded where Master Simon has sought in vain so many years! Everything you touch seems to prosper.”

Some realisation of that spirit of gay perseverance which had been so beneficently active in his neglected house all these months, beneath whose influence flowers of order and brightness seemed to have sprung up, magic and fragrant as the lost “Star-of-Comfort” itself, kindled a new light in the eye he now kept fixed upon her. It was a realisation, a sense of admiration, distinct from the ever-present, albeit hardly-conscious attraction. He looked back at the flame-starred creeping shrub.

“So there blooms Master Simon’s True-Grace, this _Euphrosinum_, his Star-of-Comfort, after all these years,” he went on musingly.

And the sense of her presence was intermingled with the penetrating fragrance of the strange flower, the music of bees and bird call, the fanning of the breeze, and the warmth of the sun.

“In Persian,” she resumed, “they call it _Rustian-al-Misrour_—the ‘Plant-of-Heart’s-Joy’ is the meaning of it, so Prynne tells us. It was brought to Europe by the Crusaders, but lost in the destruction of monastery gardens in England, and fell into disuse elsewhere—and thus came to be regarded as a myth. But things are not myths because we lose them,” she added wistfully. “Who knows, sometimes the joy we deem lost is under our hand.” She picked off a branchlet and absently nibbled it. And her light breath, already sweet as of clover or lavender, came wafted across spiced with this new fragrance.

“Well,” said he then slowly, “according to the bygone simplers, there it lies. Ellinor, when you brew me a cordial of the Star-of-Comfort, I shall drink it.”

“I may mind you of that promise one day,” said she.

Then, upon the little pause that ensued, she looked at the shortening shadows and the skies and said, in her womanly, careful manner, that it was time for her to be in the dairy. At the garden gate, however, he paused.

“And under the influence of what star,” he asked, “is the wondrous plant supposed to bloom?”

She could not guess from his manner whether he spoke in jest or in earnest, but she answered him mischievously, as she turned the key in the lock: “Master Prynne was silent on this point; and nowhere could I find news of it. But we are quite safe, cousin David, for I planted the first cutting myself under your new star.”

He started ever so slightly.

“Did you indeed?” he murmured dreamily.

“But I don’t know its name yet. Tell me, you must have given your new star a name by now—for I think it grows brighter night by night.”

In silence he let his deep gaze rest for a moment upon her, then answered:

“To me it is still nameless, though meaning things beyond words.”

He paused, and went on, still compassing her with his absorbed look. “You and the star came to me together—shall I not call it also,” with a gesture at the flowering bed, “Euphrosine—Star-of-Comfort?”

These words, accompanied by the glance that seemed to give them so earnest a significance, troubled Ellinor strangely. She could find no response. She drew the key from the lock and was moving forward with downcast eyes when he laid his touch lightly upon her arm.

“Thank you,” said he, “for admitting me into your enchanted garden! Some morning when the dawn birds are calling, or some evening before the stars come out, may I knock at this gate again?”

“Nay, David,” cried she, with swift uplifted eyes, holding out to him the key on the impulse of her leaping heart, “this gate must never be locked for you! My father has another—take this one!”

His fingers closed upon her hand and then he took the brown key and looked at it.

“For you and me alone,” he said.

She knew then that this hour they had spent together in the dew-besprinkled closes was to him as sacred and as sweet as it would ever be to her. But now he had folded his lips together and went beside her in silence.