Chapter V: Evil Prompter, Jealousy

Great bliss was with them and great happiness
Grew, like a lusty flower, in June’s caress.
—KEATS (_Pot of Basil_).

July over the meadows, sweeter in death than in life, where the long grass lay in swathes and the bared earth split and crumbled under the fierce sun. July in the great woods, with leaves at their deepest green, nobly still against the noble still azure, throwing blocks of green shade in the mossy aisles and wondrous grey designs of leaf and branch on the hardened ground. July in the drowsy hum of the laden bee; in the birds’ silence and the insects’ orchestra—those undertones of sounds—everywhere; July in the sweet hearted rose, in the plenitude of summer fulfilment. July over garden and cornfield and purple moor....

So it had been all day, a long, gorgeous day, busy and yet lazy, full to the brim of nature’s slow, ripe work. And now the evening had come; the fires of the sunset had cooled and a deep-bosomed sky had begun to brood over the teeming earth, lit only by the sickle of a young moon that had hung, ghost-like, in the airs the whole afternoon.

The fields of heaven were yet nearly as bare of stars as the meadows of their murdered flowers; but here and there, with a sudden little leap like a kindling lamp, some distant sun—white Vega or ruddy Arcturus—began to send its gold or silver messages across the firmament where the summer sun of our world held lingering monarchy.

Ellinor had spent a long hot day in the parsonage, helping that pearl of housewives, Madam Tutterville, with the potting of cherry jam. She had come home across the fields with lagging step, drawing in the luxury of the evening silence, the cool fragrance of the woods, the beauties of the advancing night. She bore, as an offering, a handsome basketful of rectory peaches, over which her soul was grateful: a proper dish to set before him in whose service she took her joy.

On re-entering the house, according to her usual wont, she at first sought her father, but found the laboratory empty of any presence save that of the herb-spirits singing in the throat of the retort. She made no doubt then but that the simpler had sought the star-gazer’s high seat.

One result of her presence at Bindon had been the gradual drawing together of the two men, with herself as a centring link. David was more prone to come down from his tower and her father to come up from his vault. And she took a sweet and secret pleasure in the quite unconscious sense of grievance they would both display when her duty or her mood took her for any length of time away from either of them.

As she reached the foot of the tower stairs a hand was placed upon her arm. She turned with that irrepressible inner revulsion which always heralded to her Margery’s presence.

“Asking your pardon, ma’am,” came the usual silky formula, “may I inquire if you are going up to see my master?”

“To be sure,” answered Ellinor quietly, though she blushed in the dark. “Do you not see that I am going up to the tower?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Mrs. Nutmeg, humbly. “I made so bold as to trouble you, ma’am, not wishing to intrude upon my master myself. The postman left a letter, ma’am.”

Mrs. Nutmeg drew the object in question from under her black silk apron. Very white it shone in the gloom:—a large, oblong folded sheet, with a black blotch in the centre where sprawled an enormous seal.

“This letter, ma’am,” she repeated, “came this evening. Would you be good enough to hand it yourself to my master?”

Ellinor had a superstitious feeling that Margery Nutmeg was one day, somehow, destined to bring misfortune upon her; and it was this perhaps which always left her discomfited after even the most trivial interview with the housekeeper. But determinedly shaking off the sensation, she slipped the letter in her basket and began the ascent of the rugged stairs. No matter how tired she might be, her foot was always light when it led her to the tower, because her impatient heart went on before.

Leaving the basket in the observatory, she retained the letter in her hand, instinctively avoiding any scrutiny of its superscription, although seen here in the lamplight the thought did strike her that it looked like a woman’s writing. Sir David’s correspondence, as she knew, was so scanty that the sealed missive might indeed mean an event in their lives; and now the present was too full of delicate happiness for her to welcome anything that might portend change.

She stood for a moment on the threshold of the platform, looking out on the two figures silhouetted against the sky. Her father, as usual in his gown, seated on the stone ledge of the parapet, was speaking. David, leaning against the wall with folded arms, was looking down at him. Master Simon’s chuckle, followed by the rare low note of the star-gazer’s laughter, fell upon her ear.

“I do assure you,” the old man was saying, “it was the very surliest fellow in the whole of Bindon village. A complete misanthropist, a perfect curmudgeon! The poor woman would come to me in tears, with sometime a black eye, sometime a swollen lip—I have known her actually cut about the occiput. ‘My poor creature,’ I would say to her, ‘plaster your wound I can, but alter your husband’s humours is at present beyond my power.’”

“Not having yet re-discovered the ‘Star-of-Comfort,’” interrupted David.

The sound of that voice, gently sarcastic and indulgently mocking, had become so dear to Ellinor that she lingered yet for the mere chance of indulging her ear again unobserved.

“Not having then re-discovered the _Euphrosinum_,” corrected Master Simon, with emphasis on the word “then.” “But that excellent young woman, my daughter, has been of service to me there.”

“She has been of service everywhere.”

This tribute brought joy to the listener. Forced by the turn the conversation was taking to disclose her presence, she emerged upon the platform, but took a seat beside her father’s in silence, the letter for the moment quite forgotten in her pocket.

“Ah, there is Ellinor!”

Sir David had seen her coming first and was the first to greet her. She thought, she hoped, there was gladness in the exclamation.

“Eh, eh!” said Master Simon. “Back from the prophetess’s jam-pots?” He fondled the hand she had laid on his knee. “Did the virtuous woman open her mouth with wisdom, while you, my girl, girded your loins with strength? We were talking of you, my girl. Ah, David, did I not do well for both you and me, when I craved house-room at Bindon for this Exception-to-her-Sex?”

David did not answer. But in the gloom she felt his eye upon her, and her heart throbbed. Master Simon, after a little pause, resumed the thread of his discourse.

“Ha, I am a mass of selfishness, a mass of selfishness! And the plant of True Grace is found; the _Euphrosinum_ is found, Sir David Cheveral. Found, planted, culled and tested.” The utmost triumph was in his accents. “Aye, my dear young man, you will be rejoiced to hear that the effects of this most precious of simples have in no wise been overrated by the writers of old. They have far exceeded my most sanguine expectation. Why, sir, I said to myself: this fellow, this John Cantrip with his evil spleen, he has been marked by destiny for the first experiment. I prepared a decoction, making it duly palatable (for if you will remember your natural history, even bears like honey), I bade the poor, much-tried wife—he had just deprived her of both her front teeth—place a spoonful daily in his morning draught. That was a week ago. She came here this morning ... you will hardly credit it——”

The speaker paused, became absorbed in a delightful memory and began to laugh softly to himself. And the infection again gained the listener.

“Well, sir, has the bear turned to lamb? And is the dame content with the metamorphosis?”

“You will hardly credit it,” repeated the simpler, rubbing his hands, “the silly woman was beside herself with the most intemperate passion. There was no sort of abuse she did not heap upon me. She swears I have bewitched her husband and that she will have the law of me. He, he! You must know, David, the fellow is a carpenter; and, although his tempers were objectionable, he was a good worker. Indeed, I gather that the exasperated condition of his system found relief in the constant hammering of nails, punching of holes, sawing and planing of hard substance. But now——” Again delighted chuckle and mental review took the place of speech.

“Well?” asked Sir David. His tone was broken with an undercurrent of laughter. Ellinor smiled in her dark corner. She compared this David, interested and amused in human matters, pleasant of intercourse himself and appreciative of another’s company, to the man of taciturn moods and melancholy, who fed on his own morbid thought and fled from his fellow men—to the David of but a few months ago. She knew it was her woman’s presence that had, as if unconsciously, wrought the change.

“Well?” said Sir David again.

“My dear fellow,” cried Master Simon, breaking into a louder cackle. “John Cantrip, as you say, has changed from a bear into a lamb; at least from a sullen, dangerous animal into an exceedingly pleasant, light-hearted one. He sings, he whistles, he laughs—all that cerebral congestion, that nervous irritation, has been soothed away under the balmy influence of this valuable plant. The excellent creature is able to take delight in his life, in the beautiful objects of Nature around him. He admires the blue sky, he rejoices in the seasonable heat, he embraces his spouse—he will hang over his infant’s cradle and express a tender, paternal desire to rock him to slumber. Every happy instinct has been wakened, every morose one lulled. Would I could induce the government of this land to enforce in each parish the cultivation of _Euphrosinum_. My good sir, we should have no more need of prisons, or stocks, or gallows!”

“And yet you say,” quoth David, “that Mrs. Cantrip is dissatisfied.”

“Most excellent David, from early days of the earth downwards, the woman was ever the most unreasonable of all God’s creatures. She wants the impossible, she wants the perfection of things, which is not of this world. Instead of rejoicing, this foolish person complains.”

“Complains?”

“Oh, well, it seems the carpenter is now disinclined for work. I endeavoured to explain to her that the morbid reason for his love of hammering no longer exists. The good fellow is placid and content and an agreeable companion. But the absurd female is tearing her hair! ‘What,’ said I, ‘he has not struck you once since Saturday week, and you do not rejoice?’ ‘Rejoice!’ she screams. ‘And he’s not struck a nail either.’ ‘If this happy effect continues,’ I assured her, ‘you will be able to keep the remainder of your teeth.’ ‘I’ll have nothing to put between them if it does,’ she responds. In vain I represented to her, _mulier_—in short, that I, having done my part, it was now hers to utilise these new dispositions for her own ends. She must beguile him back to his everyday duties with tender smiles and womanly wiles—the female’s place in nature being to play this part towards the ruder male. But it was absolutely impossible to get her so much as to listen to me! She vowed that she had lost all patience—which was indeed very patent—that she had even clouted him (as she expressed it), without producing any other result than a smile at her. ‘Grins,’ says she, ‘like a zany!’ and with the want of logic of her sex, utterly fails to perceive what a triumphant attestation she is making to the efficacy of my plant.”

“It is extremely droll,” said David.

“Of course it will at once strike you,” pursued the old student, “that the obvious course was to induce the dissatisfied lady to partake of the soothing lotion herself. But, would you believe it? She became more violently abusive than ever at the bare suggestion!”

“Indeed,” said Ellinor, interrupting, “not only did she decline to make any acquaintance herself with the remedy, but she brought back the jar, with all that was left of our infusion, and vowed that she was well punished for dealing with the Devil and his daughter. You know, cousin David, I fear that I am rapidly gaining something of a reputation for black art! I do not mind, of course. Only,” she faltered a little, “a child ran from me in the village this morning. I was sorry for that.”

David’s face grew scornful. Popularity was so poor a thing in his eyes, that popular hate was not, he deemed, worth even a passing thought. But Ellinor, who could not look upon the world from a tower and whose self-allotted tasks lay, of necessity, much among the humble many, had not this lofty indifference. She knew she had already more enemies than friends. And she knew also to what she owed the sowing of this hostility—not to her association with her father, whose eccentric experiments in pharmacy on the whole worked to the benefit, and gave an extraordinary zest to the lives, of the village community—not to Madam Tutterville’s texts; for, indeed, that good lady was so subjugated by her niece’s housekeeperly qualifications that she elected for the nonce to be blind to the daughter’s abetting of the father’s pursuits. Well did Ellinor know to whom it was she owed her growing ill-repute.

Yet the cloud in her sky, no bigger at first than a woman’s hand, was growing, she felt, and was sufficient already to cast a shadow. And now, as she sat in such perfect content this summer night between her father and her cousin, her duty and her love, and felt herself a centre of peace and harmony, the mere passing remembrance of Margery sufficed to make her heart contract.

With the thought of Margery, the recollection of her commission leaped up in her mind. She laid the letter on her knee, gazing down at its whiteness a moment or two before she could overcome her extraordinary repugnance to deliver it.

Meanwhile Master Simon was flowing happily on again, quite oblivious of the fact that neither David, whose gaze had once more turned starward, nor his daughter, absorbed in inner reflection, were paying the least heed to his discourse.

“Naturally, poor Cantrip will relapse. And he will hammer wife and nails once more, and as energetically as ever. But this is immaterial. The principle, my good young people, you are both intelligent enough to see at once, is firmly established. In another year the face of Bindon will have changed. Beldam will scold no more nor maiden mope. You yourself, David—we should have no more of these heavy sighs, if——”

Here Ellinor broke in, rising and holding out the letter.

“Cousin David, I quite forgot—the post brought this for you and I promised to give it.”

“A letter,” said Sir David. He took it from her hand and placed it on the stone parapet. “It is too dark to read it now.” She fancied his voice was troubled, and immediately there grew upon her an inexplicable jealous desire that the letter should be opened in her presence, that she might gain some hint of its contents.

“I will bring out a light,” she said and flew upon her errand, returning presently with a little silver lantern from the observatory. She placed it on the ledge; and from the three glass sides its light threw cross shaped beams, one uselessly into the dark space, one upon the rough stone and the letter, one upon her own bending face, pale and eager, with aureole of disordered hair.

From the darkness Sir David looked at her face first: and it was as if the revealing light had shot into the mists of his own heart.

The passion of love comes to men from so many different paths that to each individual it may be said to come in a new guise. To no one does it come as an invited guest. It may be the chance meeting, the love at first sight—“she never loved at all who loved not at first sight.” But Shakespeare knew better than to advance this as an axiom. ’Tis but the insolent phrase on the lover’s mouth who deems his own passion the only true one, the model for the world. Some, on the other hand, find with amazement that long, long already, in some sweet and familiar shape, love has been with them and they knew it not. They have entertained an angel unawares; and suddenly, it may be on a trivial occasion, the veil has been lifted and the heavenly countenance revealed. Others, like the poor man in the fable, take the treacherous thing to the warmth of their bosom in all trustfulness and only by the sting of it as it uncoils know that they have been struck to the heart. Others, again, as unfortunate, bolt their inhospitable doors upon the wayfarer and perhaps, as they sit by a lonely hearth, never know that it was love that knocked and went its way, to pass the desolate house no more.

To Sir David Cheveral, whose hot and hopeful youth had been betrayed by life, this sudden apprehension of love in his set manhood came, not in sweetness nor yet in pain, but in a bewildering upheaval of all things ordered—as an earthquake flinging up new heights and baring unknown depths in the staid familiar landscape; as a flash of light—“the light that never was on sea or land,” after which nothing ever could look the same again.

It may, in one sense, be true that the man of pleasure is an easier prey to his feelings than he who in asceticism spends his days feeding the spirit at the expense of the flesh; but it is true only because the former man is weak, not because his passion is strong. By so much as the deep river that has been driven to course between its own silent banks is more mighty than the shallow waters that expand themselves in a hundred noisy channels, by so much is the passion of the recluse a thing more irresistible, more terrible to reckon with than the bubble obsession of the self indulgent.

But he who outrages Nature by excess in other direction, by Nature herself is punished. The recluse of Bindon was now to grapple with the avenging strength of his denied manhood. By the leaping of his blood and the tremor of his being, by the joy of his heart, which his instinctive sudden resistance turned into as fierce an anguish, by the heat that rushed to his brow, he knew at last that love was upon him; and he knew that, were he to resist love in obedience to so many unspoken vows, victory would be more bitter than death.

As he looked with a haggard eye at the lovely transfigured face, it was suddenly lost in the shadows again; only a hand flashed forth into the light and this hand held a letter, persisting. He passed his fingers over his eyes and brushed the damp masses of hair from his forehead.

“Will you not read your letter, cousin David?” asked Ellinor.

Mechanically he took the paper held out towards him. She lifted the lantern, that its light might serve him: it trembled a little in her grasp. And now his glance dropped upon the seal. He stared, started, turned the letter over and stared again. Then his warm emotion fell from him.

“You,” said he, “you to bring me this!”

She bent forward, the pale oval of her face coming within the radius of the light again.

“I have no wish to read this letter,” he went on.

There was a deep, a contained emotion in his air. All was fuel to Ellinor’s suddenly risen unreasoning flame of jealousy. That he should take the letter into his solitude, maybe, that she should not know, never know—it was not to be borne!

“Read, read!” she cried, unconsciously imperative by right of her passion.

Their gaze met. His was gloomy and startled, then suddenly became ardent. She saw such a flame leap into his eyes that her own fell before them; then her bold heart sank.

“I would not have opened it. But it shall be as you wish,” he answered. And as David broke the seal, Master Simon’s curious, wrinkled face peered over his shoulder.

“Ha,” said the old man, wonderingly, “The Lochore arms.”

Sir David turned the letter in his hand.

“From your sister?” asked the simpler, with amazed emphasis.

“Once I called her so,” answered the astronomer, with an effort that told of his inner repugnance.

As one wakes from a fevered dream Ellinor awoke from her brief madness. Her father’s placid tones, the everyday obvious explanation fell upon her heart like drops of cold water. But the reaction was scarcely one of relief. How was it possible that she, Ellinor Marvel, the woman of many experiences, of the cool brain and the strong heart, should have yielded to this degrading folly, this futile jealousy? What had she done! She shivered as a rapid sequence of thought forced its logic upon her unwilling mind. She had feared that the touch of some woman out of his past should reach David now, at the very moment when a lover’s heart was opening to her in his bosom. Behold! she had herself delivered him over to the one woman of all others she had most reason to dread—the woman who, out of her own outrage upon him had acquired the most influence over his life. It seemed to Ellinor as if she herself who had so laboured to call him to the present and lure him with hopes of a brighter future, had now handed him back to the slavery of the past.

The seal cracked under his fingers.

“Ah, no,” she cried, now springing forward on the new impulse. “No, no, David, do not read it! Send it back, like the others!”

He flung on her a single glance.

“It is too late,” he said, “the seal is broken.”

“Ah, me,” cried Ellinor. “And we were so happy!”

She remembered Margery’s sleek face as it had peered at her in the shadows of the passage: “Will you be good enough to hand this letter yourself to my master?”

Margery had known that from her hand he would take it. Margery had a devil’s instinct of the folly of men and women.