Chapter X: A Vague Desperate Scheme

Now let it work: mischief thou art afoot!
Take thou what course thou wilt.
—SHAKESPEARE (_Julius Cæsar_).

“Ah, David,” cried Master Simon, in excited greeting, “you come very well to complete our pleasant party—you come well! ’Tis the red-letter day in the calendar of my life. See that flourishing growth?” He waved his spray in the direction of the parent bed. “It is bearing fruit, lad! Seed of health, for the future generation! My long life has borne its fruit at last! Euphrosine ... Gladsome Wort ... Etoile-de-Bon-Secours ... Star-of-Comfort indeed! Behold a more useful constellation than any of yours, aha! I can cry _Eureka_! I can sing _Nunc dimittis_. ’Tis the Elixir of Genius!”

Sir David threw a wondering glance at his old friend, but was arrested before he could speak in reply. Miss Priscilla put out her hand in shy greeting. (Sir David and she had never exchanged but a bow before; but it was quite evident that retiring people could not get on in this world.) David, taking off his wide-brimmed hat, bowed mechanically over the little hand, and Priscilla looked quickly up as he bent over her. But as she looked, she shrunk back. She could not have believed that any one should be so pale and yet be alive and walk abroad and smile. She flew to Herrick’s side and caught his arm upon the impulse of the moment.

“Why, Miss Pris?” said the young poet. If his eyes were not lover-like, they were kind; his cheek was ruddy-brown, his lip was red. Priscilla clung to the sturdy arm she had captured.

“It’s never you, my brother?” cried Lady Lochore. “What brings you among us frivolous humans at this unwonted hour? Have you come to turn us out of paradise with a flaming sword?”

Ellinor, who had been anxiously gazing at David, thrust herself forward in a manner quite unlike her usual reserve.

“David,” she cried, “you are ill!” She laid her hand a second upon his. “Father,” she went on, turning round appealingly, “do you not see? Cousin David is ill.” And as Master Simon took no heed, but rambled on in fresh rhapsodies, she and David remained a moment as if alone.

“They had your key, David,” she said, speaking rapidly, “and forced their way in. I have never opened the gate of our garden to a human being since you and I were here together.”

He turned to her, and seemed to bring, from a great distance, his mind to bear upon her words. Then his eyes softened, became almost tender as they rested upon her face. After a little pause, during which he was quite oblivious of the curious looks cast from all sides upon him, he answered in a low voice:

“Thank you. I think I understand now.”

Then he turned—bracing himself in mind and body—and swept the company with the gaze of the master and the host.

“I forgot my key in the gate, it seems, and you all took advantage of the circumstance—Oh, pray, not a word, Colonel Harcourt! Indeed, Mr. Herrick, do not misunderstand me. I should be infringing the most elementary tenets of hospitality did I wish to deny such honoured guests when it seems they had set their hearts on so trifling a pleasure. Pray remain in the garden, pray use it as much as you wish—to-day. I have no doubt,” he went on with a sarcastic smile, “that you will all be heartily sick of it before nightfall. Meanwhile, since to-morrow sees the end of your visit to my house, I am the more glad to gratify you in this instance.”

There was a slight pause. Harcourt exchanged a look with Herrick and shrugged his shoulders; then he turned his glance towards Lady Lochore. Her face was livid, but for the hectic patch on either cheek.

“A _congé_, as neatly given as ever I heard!” whispered Herrick to Priscilla, while his cheek reddened.

“Very courteous, very courteous indeed!” cried Villars in his cracked voice, making two or three quick bows in Sir David’s direction.

“My sister,” said David, taking up his unfinished thread of speech, in the same decided tone, “was good enough to promise me a month out of her gay existence. I should be indeed ungrateful if I did not appreciate the manner in which she has brought so much life and animation into our seclusion, and I must be deeply indebted to her for the well-chosen company she has collected for this purpose under my roof.” Here he made a grave inclination in which his astonished guests were all included. “But all good things come to an end; and to-morrow will see Bindon deserted of its lively guests, see us resuming the former quiet tenor of our lives with what heart we may.”

He smiled again as he concluded.

Herrick, in boyish huff, walked abruptly off with Priscilla still on his arm. Villars followed in their wake, anxious to discuss so extraordinary a situation. Lady Lochore wheeled round and caught Harcourt by the arm.

“Tony, will you submit to such treatment?” she whispered fiercely.

For a moment Harcourt looked at her, with a curious green gleam in his eye:—the affable _roué_ was also “something of a tiger,” as David’s sister had not forgotten. But the next instant he shrugged his shoulders and detached himself from her grasp with some show of annoyance. Ellinor stood beside her cousin, face uplifted, pride of him, joy for herself exulting within her. But David suddenly put his hands to his forehead:

“If I do not get some sleep at last,” he murmured with a distraught air, “I shall go mad!”

“Father,” she cried sharply once more alarmed. “Look to David, he is ill!”

Master Simon woke up this time like the hound to the sound of the horn, and came forward with quite a new expression of acuteness and gravity on his face.

“And, by my faith!” exclaimed Lady Lochore, in fury, “this passes endurance! With your leave, Mrs. Marvel, if David is unwell, he has his sister to see to him.”

She pushed past Master Simon, who, however, put her back with a decided hand.

“One minute, Madam, this good lad will be seen to by him who has done so these many years—and in much graver circumstances, as you may remember.”

Abashed, yet still raging, she stood back.

“A trifle of fever,” said the simpler, shooting scrutiny at his patient’s face from under his drawn bushy eyebrows. “Hot and cold, flame and shiver? Eh, eh. I can read you like a book. Never has my insight been clearer. We’ll make you a draught, we’ll have you a new man. Ellinor shall brew you an anodyne. Eh, what? Come now, you’ll have to drink it. What’s that?”

David was speaking, but not to Master Simon.

“I will drink it if she gives it to me,” he said dreamily. It was to Ellinor he turned.

“And perhaps a drop—eh, child?—just one drop of the Elixir!” continued the old man, ruminating and chuckling again.

“Not one,” said Ellinor to herself. “Vervaine and violet, and perhaps one poppy head.” “David,” she pursued aloud, “no hand but mine shall mix this cup.”

And, with a swift foot she departed.

“The Elixir?” exclaimed Lady Lochore, taking up Master Simon’s word; and seizing a fold of his gown pulled at it like a spoiled child to force his attention. “Don’t forget you have promised me first some of that marvellous remedy. Look at me! Don’t you think I want a new lease of life? The present one is pretty well run out anyhow.”

She tried to smile, but her lips only twitched convulsively. There was desperation in her eye. Master Simon, instantly bestowing upon her the concentrated, almost loving, attention which a willing patient never failed to arouse in him, noted these symptoms, those of a soul well nigh as mortally sick as the body; noted them with joyous confidence. The greater the need the greater the triumph. What a subject for the grand panacea!

“Ah, you’ll give me a little bottle. You’ll give me some, now, into my hands—now—dear cousin!”

“I will myself measure you what is required, myself watch!” replied Simon. “Then, after I——”

She broke in upon his complacent speech.

“Don’t you know that we are turned out to-morrow!” she screamed. “Have you not heard David dismissing his dying sister from her father’s door!”

But Sir David, slowly moving in Ellinor’s wake, never even turned his head at this wild cry. Lady Lochore caught herself back with surprising strength of will.

“Supposing you were to take me to your mysterious room now—old Rickart?” she wheedled. “Since we have so little time, the sooner the better to begin this magic treatment. I’ve never been in that room of yours, you know, since I was a brat—I do want my little bottle!” she reiterated.

The simpler was flattered by her words to the choicest fibre of his soul. The mental intoxication had got hold of him once more. She was right, a thousand times right! She knew better than that lunatic brother of hers. The first maxim of all intelligent existence was to take the good that came, and without delay. Delay, delay! More lives lost, more discoveries lost, empires lost, souls lost by hesitation than by any other crime.

She hooked her arm in his gaily.

“To your cavern we will go!”

Half ways towards the house, Colonel Harcourt suddenly drew alongside with Sir David. They were separated from the rest of the company by the turn of the path. The guest spoke twice before he could awaken his host’s attention to his proximity. But the second interpellation was so peremptory that David started from his fevered abstraction and came to a halt, with an angry look and very much alive to the occasion.

“Well, Colonel Harcourt?”

The colonel was, on the instant, his urbane self once more.

“Forgive my interrupting you in the midst of your lofty cogitations; but, as it is my purpose to leave your hospitable house to-day, and not to-morrow, I will even say farewell to my genial entertainer, and proffer my thanks for a hearty welcome and a no less hearty speeding.”

“Farewell, then, sir,” said David coldly. “Yet one word more, before we part,” he added, with sternness: “If hosts have duties toward their guests, Colonel Harcourt—you have reminded me of it—do not yourself forget again that guests have a duty toward their hosts. That key, of which you unwarrantably——”

“A lesson, sir? By Heaven!——”

“May you take it so, Colonel Harcourt.”

The colonel’s face became purple, but Sir David was angry too: and the white heat is even more deadly than the red. The guardsman, actor in endless honourable encounters, had learned to know his match when he met him; and, as the beast passion within him cooled to merely human pitch, he was seized with a kind of grudging admiration. Here he could no longer sneer and contend. Nay, here, as a gentleman, he must show himself worthy of his antagonist.

Bowing his still crimson face with as good a grace as he could assume:

“Then, no farewell yet, Sir David; to our next meeting,” he said.

The lord of Bindon raised his hat and passed on whilst his guest remained standing.