Chapter VII: Nods and Wreathéd Smiles

... Half light, half shade,
She stood, a sight to make an old man young.
—TENNYSON (_Gardener’s Daughter_).

Within Bindon house the next ten days were as uneventful as those that had preceded this night of emotional trouble; days similar in routine, in outward tranquillity. But how unlike in colour, in atmosphere! It was as if thunder-clouds had chased all the summer peace; as if brooding skies had taken the place of radiance and laughing blue; as if close mists enshrouded the earth, robbing the woods of living light and shade, dulling the tints of flower and turf, contracting the horizon. The former days had been days of many-hued hope; these now were days of drab suspense. And ever and anon, in the listening stillness, there came upon Ellinor’s inner senses, as from behind hiding hills, the far-off mutter of a gathering storm.

But in the outer world the summer still kept its glory, the sky its undisturbed azure, the flowers their jewel hues. Never had Bindon looked fairer, more nobly itself. Preparations went on apace for the reception of the visitor. Ellinor personally saw to every detail—she piqued herself that no one could reproach her with not carrying out to the finest line of conscientiousness her duties as housekeeper of Sir David’s home. A little paler, a little colder, more silently and with just a note of sternness, she moved about her tasks. Nothing was made easy for her: the household, scenting a possible change, became more openly inclined to mutiny.

Master Simon, also, seemed to become more exacting in his demands upon her time. Sir David, on the other hand, had withdrawn almost as completely as had been his wont before her arrival. And her woman’s pride and tact alike kept her from those raids upon his tower privacy, which but a little time ago had caused him so much pleasure, it seemed, and herself such infinite sweetness.

It was hard, too, to have to meet Margery’s paroxysm of astonishment; Margery’s ostentatious outburst of joy at the thought of “her dear young lady coming back to her rightful place at last”; Margery’s insolence of triumph as regarded “the interloper,” astutely conveyed in such humble garments that to notice it would have been but a crowning humiliation.

“Eh, to think, ma’am,” the ex-housekeeper would say in her innocent voice, “that it should have been that very letter I handed you myself, never dreaming, that’s brought this blessed reconciliation about! It do seem like the finger of the Lord. Ah, ma’am, but you must be glad in your heart, to feel yourself the instrument of peace. Who knows, if the master would have taken it from any hand but yours, he that used to return them as regular and just as fast as they came!”

And then came parson and Madam Tutterville: he, as beseemed the God-chosen and state-appointed minister of the gospel of charity, most duly (and unconvincingly) approving the proposed reconciliation; and, as man of the world, most humanly and convincingly dubious of its results: she, openly bewailing, with all her store of texts and feminine logic, so inconvenient a hitch in her secret plans.

Ellinor had to receive them both. For the lower door of Sir David’s turret stairs was bolted, and Master Simon on his side had stoutly refused any manner of interview with anyone so sturdily healthy as the rector, or so disdainful of his remedies as the rector’s lady.

“Under every law,” said Doctor Tutterville, “the Jewish, the Pagan, the Philosophic and the Christian in its many variations, it has been enjoined upon our human weakness that it is advisable to forgive: _Æquum est peccatis veniam poscentem reddere rursus_.

So the rector, acknowledging his share of frailty—a share so pleasant to himself and so inoffensive to others that it was no wonder he showed little desire to repudiate it.

“One may forgive,” said Madam Tutterville sententiously. “Heaven knows I should be the last to deny that!”—this with the air of making a valuable concession to the decrees of Providence—“But there is another law: that chastisement shall follow misdoing. Was not David punished through Jonathan’s hair?”

The parson’s waistcoat rippled over his gentle laughter. He was seated in one of the deep-winged library armchairs, and while he spoke his eyes roamed with ever renewed satisfaction over the appointments of the room—the silver bowl of roses, fresh filled, the artistic neatness of writing table, the high polish of oak and gilt leather. His fine appreciation for the fitness of things was tickled; his glance finally rested with complacency upon the figure of the young woman herself—the capable young woman who had wrought so many pleasing changes. And as he looked he smiled: Ellinor was the culminating point of agreeable contemplation amid exceedingly agreeable surroundings.

She toned in so well with the scene! The sober golds and russets of the walls repeated their highest note in her burnished hair. Her outline, as she sat, exactly corresponded to the rector’s theory of what the female line of beauty should be. He liked the close, fine texture of her skin and the hues upon her cheeks, which fluctuated from geranium-white to glorious rose. The proud curl of her lip appealed to him; so did the sudden dimple. He liked the direct gaze of her honest blue eyes, and he was not unaware of the thickness and length of eyelashes that seemed to have little points of fire on their tips.

That scholarly gentleman’s admiration was of so lofty, so philosophic a nature, that even his Sophia could have found no fault with it. But as he yielded himself to it, the conviction was ever more strongly borne in upon him that his wife, in her impetuosity, had reached to a juster conclusion concerning Ellinor than he in his own ripe wisdom. He had treated her repeated remark that “Here was just the wife for David, here the proper mistress of Bindon,” with his usual good-natured contempt. But to-day he saw Ellinor with new eyes. Yes, this was a gem worthy of Bindon setting. This would be a noble wife for any man; an ideal one for David—for fastidious David, to whom the old epicure felt especially drawn, although he recognised that one may make of fastidiousness a fine art and not push the cult to the point of David’s eccentricity.

Here, then, was a woman fair enough to bring the Star-Dreamer, the soaring idealist back to earth; wholesomely human enough to keep him there in sanity and content, once Love had clipped his wing.

Meanwhile Madam Tutterville was bringing a long dissertation to an end. In it, by the help of the scriptures, old and new, she had proved that while it was indubitably David’s duty to forgive his sister up to a certain point, it was likewise indubitably incumbent upon him to continue to keep her in wholesome remembrance of her offences by excluding her from Bindon, until——. Here the lady became exceedingly mysterious and addressed herself with nods and becks solely to her husband, ignoring Ellinor’s presence, much after the fashion of nurses over the heads of their charges.

“At least until that happy consummation of affairs, Horatio, which you and I have so much discussed.”

“My dear Ellinor,” she pursued, turning blandly to her niece, who with a suddenly scarlet face was trying in vain to look as if she had not understood, “be guided by my advice, by my advice. It is extremely desirable, I might say imperative, that things should remain at present at Bindon House in what your good uncle would term the state of quo, a Greek word, my dear, signifying that it is best to leave well alone.”

“What is it you would have me do?”

“Well, my dear, seeing that everything has been going on so nicely these months, and that Bindon has become no longer like a family lunatic asylum, but quite a respectable, clean house, and that Nutmeg thing reduced to proper order, and David almost human, coming down to meals just as if he were in his right mind (though I’ve given up your father, my dear), I’m afraid that in his case that clear cohesion of intellect which is so necessary (is it not, Horatio?) is irrevocably affected.”

She tapped her forehead and shook her head, murmured something about the instance of John Cantrip, hesitated for a moment, as if on the point of gliding off in another direction, but saved herself with a heroic jerk.

“I would be glad,” she went on, “to have had speech of David myself; but since you tell me that is impossible, Ellinor, I must be content with laying my injunctions upon you. And indeed (is it not so, Horatio?) you are perhaps the most fitted for this delicate task. The voice of the turtle, my dear, is more likely to reach his heart than the dictates of wisdom.”

“The voice of the turtle, aunt?”

“Yes, my dear,” said Madam Tutterville, putting her head on one side with a languishing air. “In the beautiful imagery of Solomon the turtle—the bird, my love, not the shell-fish—is always brought forward as the emblem of female devotion.”

“I don’t see how that can refer to me!”

Ellinor sprang to her feet as she spoke: the rector’s gurgle of amusement was the last straw to her patience. Angry humiliation dyed her face, her blue eyes shot flames.

“Oh, don’t explain, I can’t bear it! But please, dear aunt, please, don’t call me a turtle again! It’s the last thing I am, or want to be!”

She broke, in spite of herself, into laughter; laughter with a lump in her throat.

Parson Tutterville had been highly entertained. Mrs. Marvel was quite as agreeable to watch in wrath as in repose. But he was a man of feeling.

“I think, Sophia,” he said, in the tone she never resisted, “we will pursue the subject no further. However we may regret any interruption to the present satisfactory state of affairs, regret for David a visit that is likely to prove distressing, we cannot but agree with Mrs. Marvel that it is not her place to interfere.”

He rose as he spoke. The morning visit was at an end.

Even an encounter with Mrs. Nutmeg could not have left Ellinor in a more irritated condition.

“What do they all think of me?” she asked herself, and pride forbade her to shed a single one of the hot tears that rose to her lids.

“What have I done?” was the question that next forced itself upon a mind that was singularly truthful. She had placed herself indeed in a position open to comment and misinterpretation. And then and there she had given herself up so wholly, so unrestrainedly to love that she had actually come to measure the strength of her attraction for her unconsenting lover against the strength, or the weakness, of his will.

As she faced the thought, a sense of shame overcame her. Had she not known how helpless both her father and David would be without her, especially at this juncture, she would have been sorely tempted to be gone as she had come. It was not in her nature to contemplate anything ungenerous, even for the gratification of that strongest of passions in woman, self respect. But in her present mood, even the rector’s well-meant, kindly words recurred to sting—“It was not her place to interfere!” Well, she would keep her place, as David’s servant, and not presume again beyond her duty!

Yes, and she would take that other place, too—the woman’s place, the queen’s place, not to be won without being wooed. If David wanted her now he must seek her!