Chapter V: Silent Night the Refuge

My life has crept so long on a broken wing
Thro’ cells of madness, haunts of horror and fear,
That I come to be grateful at last for a little thing:
My mood is changed, for it fell at a time of year
When the face of night is fair on the dewy downs
... and the Charioteer
And starry Gemini hang like glorious crowns
Over Orion’s grave low down in the west.
—TENNYSON.

Ellinor had had, perforce, so busy an afternoon (to make up for time lost in the morning) that, marshalled by Lady Lochore, all the guests were already at table when she came in that night.

She stood a moment framed in the doorway, a brilliant apparition. Despite its many candelabras and the soft light that still poured into it through open windows, the great room—oak-panelled and oak-ceiled—was of its essence richly dark. Nearly black were those panels, polished by centuries to inimitable gloss and reflecting the flames of the candles like so many little yellow crocuses.—Such walls are the best background for fair women and fine clothes; for roses and silver and gold.

This evening Ellinor had been moved—though she hardly knew why—to discard her severely simple gowns for a relic of the early days of her married life, a garment of a fashion already passed. In the embroidered fabric she was clothed as a flower is clothed by its sheath. A narrow white satin train with a heavy border of little golden roses fell from her shoulders in folds that accentuated her height. The classic cut, that laid bare a sweep of neck and arm that not another woman in the county could boast, became her as simplicity does royalty. The mingling of the white and gold was repeated by her skin and hair. As she cast a last look at herself, in the mirror before leaving her room, a smile of innocent delight had parted her lips. She had seen herself beautiful—how beautiful she was, she herself indeed did not know. She had thought of David and had been glad. The ever more open admiration with which both Herrick and Colonel Harcourt had surrounded her throughout the day had stimulated her in some strange, but very feminine and quite pure, manner, to make better use of these gifts of hers to pleasure the eyes of the man she loved.

Now Lady Lochore was the first to see her on her entrance. She put up her eyeglasses and stared, and then dropped them with a pale convulsion which turned the next moment to a vindictive smile.

Colonel Harcourt followed the direction of her eyes and positively started with a frank stare of delight. He wheeled boldly round to feast his eyes at ease; the action and the attitude were almost equivalent to applause. Then it seemed to Ellinor that every head was turned, that every eye was upon her; and her innocent assurance suddenly failed her. Timidly she shot a glance towards the head of the table. Alas! everyone was looking at her, except him whose gaze alone meant anything. All her childish pleasure fell from her.

She advanced composedly enough, however, and took the only vacant seat, which was between the colonel and young Herrick, vaguely responding to their advance. After a while a sort of invincible attraction made her look up. She met David’s eyes—met the chill of death where she had expected the warmth of life!

What had happened? Her heart seemed to wither away, the smile was paralysed on her lips; the flowers, the lights, the flashes of silver and colour, the babel of talk about her—it all became nightmare, an unreal world of mocking shadows, in which one thing only was horribly and intensely alive, the pain of her sudden misery. After a moment, however, some kind of self-possession returned. The pressing exigency that weighs upon us all, of preserving our bearing in company, no matter whether soul or body be at torture, forced her to answer the running fire of remarks that seemed to be levelled at her with diabolical persistency.

Even the kind, friendly presence of the rectory pair seemed destined that night to add to her difficulty; for while uncle Horatio was quoting Greek at her across the table, Madam Tutterville was assuring her neighbors that if Mrs. Marvel was unpunctual for once she was nevertheless the faithful virgin with lamp in excellent condition, who knew how to trim her wicks; and was, in fact, the strong woman of Proverbs who got up early.

“One rose in the fair garden was missing, and I missed her!” said the rector, poetically, while he turned an affectionate glance upon his niece.

“Dear uncle Horatio,” said she, “I had rather be greeted by you than acclaimed by a court.”

“Horrible, horrible cruel to poor adoring courtiers!” murmured Colonel Harcourt in her ear.

At any moment, that confidential lowering of the voice, that bold intimacy of the gaze would have excited Ellinor’s swiftest rebuke; but now she only laughed nervously as she endeavoured to rally in reply to Herrick’s equally low-pitched, but quite guileless show of interest.

“What is the matter with you?” he was whispering; “you went as white as a sheet just now. Has anyone annoyed you? Do tell me!”

“I, white—what nonsense!” she cried; and her voice rang a little louder and harder than usual in her effort, while the rush of blood that had succeeded her momentary faintness left an unusual scarlet on both cheeks. “Why, I am burning! And so would you be if you had spent the day between the alembic stove and the kitchen!”

“Perhaps,” said Miss Priscilla, lifting her innocent eyes to shoot baby-anger across at the neglectful Herrick, “perhaps,” she said, in her small soft voice, “it also was sitting so long in the sun in the Herb-Garden, that’s given you that colour. There’s Mister Luke has got the match of it himself.”

Lady Lochore gave a loud laugh.

“Mrs. Marvel has so many irons in the fire!” she suggested.

Ellinor looked round the table. She seemed to remain the centre of notice: on the part of the women (with the exception of aunt Sophia) an inimical, almost vindictive notice; while, where the men were concerned, she could not turn her gaze without meeting glances of undisguised hot admiration. Instinctively, as if for help, she again sought David’s gaze, and again was thrown back into indescribable terror and bewilderment by his countenance. Only once through all the phases of gloom, discouragement, renunciation that his soul had passed through in her company, had she seen his features wear that deathlike mask—it was when he had battled with himself before reading his sister’s letter. And now this repudiation, nay, this contempt of things, was directed—she felt it with a nightmare sense of inevitableness—towards herself. Herself!

Oh, the torture of that long elaborate repast, the nauseating weariness of the ceaseless round of dishes, the inane ceremonies of wine-taking, the glass clinking, the jokes, the laughter, the compliments, the struggle to parry the spiteful or the too ardent innuendo, to laugh with the rest at Aunt Sophia’s happy inaccuracy, to respond to her proud congratulations over the success of each remove! Ellinor’s life had not been an easy one; but no harder hour had it ever meted out to her than this.

Parson Tutterville had suddenly become grave and silent. His kind, shrewd gaze had wandered several times from the gloom of David’s countenance to the flush upon Ellinor’s cheek. Then, with fixed eyes, fell into a reflection so profound that—most unusual occurrence in the amiable epicure’s existence—the superb wine before him waited in vain to whisper its fragrant secret, and the most artistic succulence was left untasted upon his plate.

When the party at length broke up, he himself, in a coign of vantage, caught Ellinor’s arm as she passed him.

“My dear child,” he said under his voice, “something must have happened! I have not seen David look like this since the old evil days—the Black Dog is sitting on his shoulder with a vengeance! What is it?”

Ellinor’s lip quivered. She shook her head, words failed her. A shade of severity crept into the rector’s face.

“Have you quarrelled?”

Again the mute reply.

“Have you nothing to tell me? Ah, child, take care; David is not like other men! His mind is a complicated piece of machinery—and the common tools, Ellinor, will only work havoc here!”

Ellinor’s sore heart was stabbed again. She understood the veiled rebuke; and the injustice of it so hurt her that to hide her tears, she broke from the kind hand and rushed from the room in the wake of the disdainful petticoats that had just swept by her.

Parson Tutterville looked after her with puzzled air; then, sighing, returned to the table. Here David was dispensing the hospitality of Bindon’s matchless cellar, discoursing to his guests in a mood of irony so bitter yet so intangible as to fill the rector with fresh alarm.

The reverend Horatio took his seat at the right of the master; and, without a spark of interest, watched the pale hand busy among the decanters fill his beaker. He would, indeed, have preferred not to put his lips to it, had the exigencies of the social moment but permitted it, so utterly had that smile of David’s turned its flavour for him.

“By George!” exclaimed the colonel, flinging himself luxuriously back in his chair and speaking with the enthusiasm of an experienced sensualist, “by George, a glorious tipple! Enough to turn the whitest-livered cur into a hero! Come, come, gentlemen, we must not let such grape juice run down our throats unconsecrate, as if we were beasts. Let us dedicate every drop of it.—A toast, a toast!”

He had reached that agreeable state which should be the aim of the expert diner at this crucial moment of the repast. He had eaten well and had drunk wisely; and was now on the fine border line where the utmost enjoyment of the sober man merges into the first elevation of spirit of the slightly intoxicated.

“I propose our amiable host,” he went on, just as Herrick, springing to his feet and raising his glass exclaimed:

“There can be here but one worthy toast—the fair ones of Bindon.”

“Our Queens, our Goddesses, our Nymphs, our Angels!” interrupted Villars, with his usual inspiration.

“Our fair ones!” echoed David, rising also; “indeed nothing could be more just than that we should devote the blood wrung from the grape that makes, as Colonel Harcourt truly says, heroes of mankind, to woman, that other spring of all our noble actions. Is it not so, my gallant Colonel?”

“Hear him, hear!” cried innocent Herrick, beating the table with an excited hand.

David’s glacial eye fell for a moment on the hot boy-face, and there flickered in it a kind of faint pity. So, one might fantastically fancy, would a spirit recently rent from the body by an agonising death, look from its own corpse upon those who had yet to die.

“Let us drink,” said David, and raised his glass, “to Woman! Without her what should we know of ourselves, of our friends, of the treasures of the human heart and the nobility of the human mind, of honour, of purity, of faithfulness!”

Dr. Tutterville looked up at the speaker, resting his hand on the table in the attitude of one prepared to spring forward in an emergency. As David’s voice rang out ever more incisive he was reminded of the breaking of sheets of ice under the stress of dark waters below.

“A moment, please,” here intervened Colonel Harcourt’s mellow note. “Friend Herrick’s excellent suggestion, and our host’s most eloquent adoption of it, can yet (craving your pardon, gentlemen) be amended. Let us not dilute the enjoyment of this excellent moment—let us concentrate it, as good Master Simon would say. Gentlemen, this glass not to women, but to the one woman! Come, parson, up with you! Fie—what would Madam Tutterville say? And he has but given half his heart who fears to proclaim its mistress. Hoy! Gone away! And out on you if you shy at the fence! I drink to Mistress Marvel—to the marvel of Marvels, aha!”

He tossed down his glass, looking coolly at David, while Herrick, leaning forward with the furious eyes of the young lover stung, glared across the table and balanced his own glass in his hand with an intent which another second had seen carried out, had not the parson’s fingers quietly closed upon his; had not the parson’s voice murmured in his ear:

“Remember, my young friend, that the imprudent champion is a lady’s greatest enemy.”

This while Villars, on his side, sputtering into silly laughter, protested that fair play was a jewel and that if Harcourt had stolen a march upon him, he Villars might yet be in “at the death!”

David stood still, glass in hand, dangerously still, while his eyes first wandered round the table, from face to face, and then beyond out to the midsummer twilight sky that shone through the parted folds of the curtains. And then the parson, who was watching him, saw a marvellous change come over the bitter passion of his face. It was as if the mask had fallen away. The rigid composure, the tense lines relaxed, the sombre eye was lit with a new light; and ethereal peace touched the troubled forehead.

Wondering, the divine turned to the window also; followed the direction of David’s abstracted gaze and saw how, in the placid primrose space, the first evening star had lit her tender little lamp.

There was a moment’s curious silence in the great room. Then, from David’s hand the glass fell, breaking on the mahogany; and the ruby wine was spilled in a great splash and ran stealthily, looking like blood. And the host, the lord of Bindon, with head erect and eyes fixed upon visions that none could even guess at, turned and left them all—without a word.

Re-acting against the unusual sensation that had almost paralysed them, Bindon’s guests raised a shout of protest, and Harcourt sprang angrily towards the closing door. But the parson again interposed.

“I pray you,” he said, with a dignity that imposed obedience, “I pray you let Sir David depart. He has gone back to his tower, and there no one must disturb him. He leaves you to your own more congenial company.”

Colonel Harcourt broke into a boisterous laugh as he sank back into his chair, and reached for the bottle.

“Pity for the good wine spilt—that’s all,” he cried. “But ’twas wasted anyhow upon such a dreamy lunatic!”

Unceremoniously he filled himself another brimmer, and reflecting a moment—

“Now to my Lady Lochore!” said he at length slowly, “and to the wish of her heart!”

Doctor Tutterville looked at him askance. Then, after a moment, he too rose, and with an old-fashioned bow all round, left the room.