Chapter XVI: The Time Is Out of Joint

“Thou Ghost,” I said, “and is thy name To-day?—
Yesterday’s son, with such an abject brow!—
And can To-morrow be more pale than thou?”
While yet I spoke, the silence answered: Yea,
Henceforth our issue is all grieved and grey....
—ROSSETTI (_The House of Life_).

The morning after Master Simon’s death was filled for Parson Tutterville with sadder and more responsible duties than any in his experience. Before a stormy scarlet sun had well cleared the eastern line of the hill he was standing with Mr. Webb (the country practitioner) by the body of his life-long friend, and listening to the professional verdict on the obvious fact.

The medical man, a not particularly sagacious specimen of his order, who had for many years treated Master Rickart’s pursuits with the contempt of prejudice, discovered no specific symptoms of any known toxic, declared the death to be perfectly natural and announced his intention of so certifying it. This decision was, in the circumstances, too desirable not to be accepted with alacrity.

Leaving Ellinor at the head of the truckle-bed whereon lay the shrunken figure with the waxen, silver-bearded face—the one so pitiably small under the white sheet, the other so startlingly great with the peace of the striving thinker who has attained Truth at last—the Doctor of Divinity led the Doctor of Medicine away, and hurried him from the side of the dead to that of the living patient. As he mounted the weary stairs, his mind was uncomfortably haunted by the remembrance of Ellinor’s haggard and wistful eyes, of her unnatural composure. She had not shed a tear, though the rector’s own eyes had overflowed at the sound of Barnaby’s sobs. With dry lips she had told him a brief, bald story:

“My father was making experiments all day with his new extract. I divided the sleeping draught between him and David. Barnaby called me in the night. I found my father dead. When I tried to rouse David, I could not. He lies in a deep sleep in the observatory.”

His insistent questions could draw no further detail from her. It was almost like a lesson learnt off by heart; each time she replied in exactly the same words.

Mr. Webb, who had been almost brutally superficial upon the cause of his old antagonist’s death, became extremely learned and involved over Sir David’s case. But the parson, accustomed by his calling to the sight of the sick, was happily able to see for himself that David’s sleep, though abnormally profound, was restful; he promptly took it upon himself to interfere when the doctor offered to proceed to blistering and blood-letting as a rousing treatment.

Somewhat unceremoniously he insisted on his withdrawal; and, returning himself to the observatory, stood gazing at his friend for some time before determining on the step of sending a post-boy into Bath for a more noted physician. As the divine was thus pondering, David suddenly opened his eyes, saw and recognised him, without surprise; smiled and fell asleep again. And Dr. Tutterville felt greatly reassured. Whatever the cup may have contained that Ellinor had divided between the star-dreamer and the simpler, here it was evident that nature was working her own cure and that no other physician was needed.

Upon this the parson carefully piloted Dr. Webb out of the tower-wing and delivered him to Giles to be ministered unto as the hour required. Then he sent a note to his good lady, bidding her come and take up her post by David’s couch until he could himself relieve her watch. His heart was much eased.

He was on his way to bring his consoling report to Ellinor, when, at a corner of the passage, he heard his name called in a hoarse whisper, and, looking round, beheld Lady Lochore, ghastly-faced, in her flaming brocade dressing-gown.

“How is it with——” she cried. Something seemed to click in her throat, she could not pronounce the name. But Dr. Tutterville thought that her twitching hand pointed towards the laboratory door. He shook his head.

“Alas, I fear there is nothing to be done!”

Her lips framed the word:

“Dead!”

Then she swayed and he had to uphold her.

“Come, come!” said he soothingly, yet shuddering all over his comfortable flesh to feel what skeleton attenuation lay between his hands. “My dear child, do not give way to this. There is nothing, there can be really nothing alarming about the passing away of one who has attained the allotted span. Poor Simon!”

She reared herself with extraordinary energy to fix eyes full of fierce questioning upon him. He went on:

“Thank God, I can quite reassure you about David—”

“David!”

She echoed the name with what was almost a shriek; then caught the end of her hanging sleeve and thrust it to her mouth, as if to keep any further sound from escaping.

“Did you not know?” asked the rector. “We were in much anxiety, but whatever noxious drug was——” he stopped unwilling to raise the question.

He saw a terror come into those strange fixed eyes. Quite bewildered himself, he proceeded again, trying to reassure the woman:

“David’s in no danger, thank Heaven!”

Dropping her hand, Lady Lochore turned upon the astonished rector a countenance of such fury that he stepped back hastily as from a madwoman.

“Thank Heaven!” she repeated with a laugh, that made his blood run cold. The next instant she turned and fled from him, once more stopping her mouth with her sleeve; in spite of which the sound of her hysterical mirth continued to echo back to him down the vaulted passage after she had turned the corner. The rector remained lost in thought.

“She is very ill—dying!” he told himself. “Lord, thy hand is heavy on this house!”

Even in the secrecy of his soul he was loth to search into the weird feeling now encompassing him, that there was more than illness in Lady Lochore’s face.

The parson hoped that, under the reaction of the good news he brought her, Ellinor might obtain the relief of tears. But in this he was disappointed.

“Thank you,” she said, in a whisper; and sat down again upon the bench from which, upon his entrance, she had risen rigidly and as if bracing herself for a final blow. Her clenched hands relaxed; while the left lay passive on her knee, she began with the right absently to pat and fondle the folds of sheet that lay over her father’s cold breast.

Dr. Tutterville looked at her in puzzled silence. The action was full of a woman’s tenderness, yet he intuitively felt that the thoughts behind the faintly drawn brow, under the marble composure, were not occupied with a daughter’s sorrow. He felt he had been denied a confidence of vital importance. Strange things had taken place in the house, of which he had yet no explanation. Gently he laid the warm comfort of his clasp upon the woman’s hand and stayed its futile caress.

“Dear child, what is it? Can I not help?”

She started, and flung a swift look at his wise and grave face. There came a sort of fear also in her eyes. Fear into the true eyes of Ellinor! Then she fell back into her abstraction.

“Thank you,” she repeated in a slow dreamy tone. “I can wait.”

He was pondering over the inexplicable word, when a new call drew him to other cares. “Two gentlemen,” a servant informed him, “had driven over from Bath and were demanding to see Sir David. They had not seemed satisfied on being told that Sir David was not well enough to receive visitors.” Visitors for Sir David! So unwonted an event these ten years that even the rector was moved to curiosity as he hastened to wait on the callers.

Pacing the library were found an elderly man of military bearing and haughty countenance, in befrogged coat and smart Hessians, and a slight, fair youth—in the extreme of the fashion, with an eyeglass on a black ribband, miraculous kerseymeres, a velvet waistcoat embroidered with gold and silver roses, and a fob with more seals and watches than any one person could require. The elder stranger turned to the younger with a sarcastic smile as the door opened; and then, with a slight bow, addressed the new-comer.

“Sir David Cheveral, I presume,” he began, and stopped short.

His eyes rested in amaze upon the clerical silk hose; ran swiftly up to the long clerical waistcoat, over its gentle undulation across the unmistakable neckband, to stop at last with angry insolent stare upon the clerical countenance, handsome, dignified and self-possessed despite a fasting morning and unshaven chin. Then he flung another quizzical look at the younger man and shrugged his shoulders; whereat the latter gave vent to a shrill titter and vowed with a lisp that in all his life, by gad, he had never come across anything so rich!

“To whom have I the honour—?” asked Dr. Tutterville.

“Before we waste our breath, sir, and take you away from the thoughts of your next sermon, one word.” Thus the military gentleman, with the tone of one in superior form of courtesy mockingly addressing an inferior species. “Do you represent here Sir David Cheveral?” he asked.

“Sir David,” said the parson, with that serene ignoring of impertinence which is its best rebuke, “is unable this morning, either to receive visitors himself or to instruct a delegate.”

For a third time the visitors exchanged looks.

“A curious indisposition, evidently,” remarked the elder, slapping his Hessians with his cane. “Cursed curious!”

“Deuced opportune, by gad!” added the younger.

“No, sir,” said Dr. Tutterville, turning so suddenly and severely upon the youth that he started back a couple of paces. “No, young man, not opportune. There is death in this house, and the master of it is wanted for more important matters than either you or your friend can possibly have to communicate—I wish you good morning.” And he wheeled upon his heel with an elastic bounce.

Before he had reached the door, however, the strident voice of the well-booted visitor arrested him:

“Tis, of course, your trade, sir, to preach the peace. But the mere gentleman is prejudiced in favour of honour being considered first. However, if Sir David Cheveral, who cannot but have been prepared for our visit, has deputed you in the interest of holy peace, perhaps you will kindly bestow upon us now sufficient of your reverend time to enable us to gather what form of apology Sir David——”

The reverend Horatio again turned round, this time slowly, and showed to this trivial sneering pair a Jove-like countenance, which the wrath of natural humanity and the reprobation of the church combined to empurple.

He allowed the weight of his silent rebuke to press upon them sufficiently long for their grins to give place to looks of anger. Then he spoke. And although under the silk meshes of his stockings the very muscles were quivering with the intensity of his feelings, never in hall or pulpit had the parson delivered himself to better effect. Yet his discourse was extremely brief:

“Gentlemen—forgive me if, not having the advantage of your acquaintance, I am forced to address you thus indeterminedly—as regards the honour of Sir David Cheveral, my kinsman:

_Falsus Honor juvat et mendax infamia terret
Quem nisi mendosum et mendacem?_

You may possibly fail to follow me. I will translate liberally: The dog—aye, and the puppy—may bark at the moon, it will not affect her brightness.... As regards an apology, I will take upon myself to allow you to convey this one to your principal, whoever he may be, convinced from what I know of Sir David that he will not repudiate the form of it:—If, as I gather, he is called upon to give a lesson in honourable dealing to some friend of yours, he regrets having to postpone that duty for a short while. The delay, allow me to assure you, will but the better enable him to fulfil his part when the time comes. You will find paper and all that is necessary upon yonder table. You can write your communication to Sir David, and I will undertake to see that it is delivered at a fitting moment.”

“’Pon my soul,” said the elder ambassador, turning to his satellite as the door closed upon the clergyman’s dignified exit—“that’s a game old cock!”

“Dog! by Jove—aye, and puppy!” growled the younger man.

On the other side of the oak the rector had halted, rubbing his unusually bristly chin, and uncomfortably mindful of certain remarks from the still small voice within concerning next Sunday’s sermon that was to be upon the beatitude: “Blessed are the peacemakers.”

“I will change my text,” thought the rector. “It were a sorry thing for a scholar and a clergyman if there were no issues from such accidental straits! ‘Ye shall smite them hip and thigh!’ Yes, that will do. That will meet the case.”

The excellent gentleman had scarcely settled this delicate point with his conscience when he was intercepted by Mrs. Geary. The lady was in a high state of indignation, first at a death having actually been allowed to take place in a house where she was guest, secondly and especially at Lady Lochore having locked herself up in her own apartments and rudely denied her admittance. She now demanded instant means of departure for herself and her daughter; for her man and her maid. This the rector, with joy, promised to provide forthwith; and even suggested that the remaining gentlemen of the party might make use of the same conveyance with both pleasure and profit to all concerned. But even as he was congratulating himself upon an easy riddance of at least one difficulty, he was plunged into a far deeper state of perturbation by a most unexpected word:

“Mr. Herrick has already gone,” sniffed Priscilla, who stood at her mother’s elbow. Her face was swollen with crying; she spoke in a small vindictive voice which drew the parson’s attention to her in mild surprise.

Mrs. Geary tossed her head:

“I am glad to hear it,” she remarked icily, “and I am surprised you should have suggested his accompanying us.”

“My dear madam,” protested the rector, who found the look of meaning in the lady’s protuberant eye exceedingly discomforting. “My dear madam?”

“After last night’s scandal,” said she in her deepest bass.

“Last night’s scandal!” he echoed.

“Hush!” she cried, “I will not have the innocence of my child further contaminated——”

“Contaminated, madam!”

“Contaminated, sir! Ask Mrs. Marvel, Dr. Tutterville! Ask your niece!”

She brushed past, hustling Priscilla before her.

“A most unpleasant female,” thought the parson, endeavouring to dismiss Mrs. Geary from his mind. But she had left a disturbing impression, which was presently to be heightened. In response to a message, courteous, but firm, informing him at what hour the chaise would await him, Mr. Villars next presented himself before the rector and interrupted him in the midst of some of his sad business details.

“Sir?” said the parson, at the same time arresting by a gesture the withdrawing of the bailiff with whom he was then in consultation. “In what can I be of service?”

“My dear Dr. Tutterville, I came to offer my services to you.”

“You are vastly obliging, Mr. Villars. The best service friends can render a house of mourning is to leave it to itself.”

“Sad business—sad business this! Deyvilish!”

“Good-bye, sir, I trust you may have a pleasant journey. Good-bye.”

“One word, dear and reverend sir. How is—how is Mrs. Marvel?”

“Bearing up fairly well, I thank you.”

“I am rejoiced. Rejoiced. After so many emotions! Ah, I was going to suggest that it might perhaps be of some advantage, some advantage, perhaps, to Mrs. Marvel, were I to defer my departure for a day or two. I would gladly do so if——”

“I cannot conceive,” interrupted Dr. Tutterville, “any circumstance that would make this probable.”

Mr. Villars hemmed meaningly, looked at the bailiff’s stolid countenance, and winked importantly at the rector. But as the latter remained unresponsive, Mr. Villars proceeded with a point of acrimony in his tone:

“No doubt Mrs. Marvel has already given satisfactory explanation of last night’s——”

“Sir,” interposed Dr. Tutterville, opening the study door, “you force me to remark that my time is valuable.”

“Your wife’s niece, sir, I understand.”

“Mr. Villars, the chaise will be ready in half an hour.”

“Dr. Tutterville, you are making a mistake. I might have been of some use. Of use, sir, as a witness, in this unfortunate scandal——”

“Mr. Villars, I am a clergyman, and this is a house of mourning. But——”

Mr. Villars slipped suddenly like an eel through the half-open door; for there was something ominously unclerical both in the parson’s eye and in the twitching of his right hand. But as Horatio Tutterville sat down to his table and beckoned once more to the bailiff, the word scandal weighed heavily on his heart.

Half an hour later, the comforting vision of Madam Tutterville’s round countenance rose upon his cold distress like a ruddy sunrise over a winter scene. But, though she brought him upon a fair tray, crowned with a most fragrant aroma, restoratives for the inner man as well as excellent tidings of her patient in his tower, she had a further budget of news which was to add considerably to the burden of his day.

“My dear doctor,” she said with effusion, and for once unscripturally, “I came the instant I received your note. David is sleeping like a lamb. You need have no anxiety there. I shall instantly return to him. But there is no use in the world in your making yourself ill too. You were off without bite or sup this morning, and not one has thought of making you so much as a cup of tea! The world is a vastly selfish place, and I am surprised at Ellinor. Drink this coffee, my dear doctor. I have prepared some likewise for David—’tis a sovereign restorative. Nay, and you must eat too.”

The rector smiled faintly. The prospect was in sooth not ungrateful. And now that his attention was drawn to it, the unusual vacuity within became painfully obvious.

“Excellent Sophia!” he murmured.

Her coffee was always incomparable. It may be a moot point whether, in moments of man’s trouble, the woman who ministers to the creature-comforts is not the truer helpmate than the transcendental consoler.

Madam Tutterville watched her lord partake in silence. That in itself was a notable thing. She showed little of her usual satisfaction in his appetite; and that was ominous. Her whole person was clouded over with an anxiety which could not be attributed to her brother’s death; a trial indeed she had promptly dismissed with two tears and one text. As soon as the rector appeared sufficiently fortified, Madam Tutterville drew a deep breath; no more odious task could be assigned to her than that of having to bring trouble to her Horatio.

“It is my duty to tell you, doctor, that there have been several calls for you this morning. I went through the village to ascertain for myself and I found indeed some cases of serious illness. The widow Green died suddenly last night. Joe (the hedger) has gone raving mad; it took four men to bind him with ropes and lock him in a barn. I heard his screams myself. Mossmason seems struck with a kind of palsy. Penelope Jones and old——”

“In God’s name,” cried the reverend Horatio, springing to his feet, “stop, woman, or I shall go crazy myself! What can have happened? How have we all sinned against Heaven to be thus stricken upon the same day!”

Madam Tutterville pursed her mouth for an awful whisper:

“They say,” she breathed, “that poor Simon went all round the place yesterday with some of his dreadful little bottles.”

The rector clapped his hands on his knees:

“Then have we indeed been mad to let him have his way so long!” For an instant the learned man looked helplessly at his wife: “What is to be done?”

“A doctor,” she murmured.

“A doctor—Sophia, you’re a woman in a thousand. Not that noodle we’ve had here just now, but the best opinion from Bath. I shall despatch a post-boy. My poor simple flock!”

He had reached the door when she caught him by the skirts of his coat.

“They are raging against poor Simon in the village, and against Ellinor. It might well end in a riot. Had you not better warn constables and the headborough?”

He turned upon his heel in fresh dismay. Then resuming courage:

“Nay, nay, I must see what I can do myself first!”

But Madam Tutterville looked unconvinced.

“I believe they would tear Ellinor in pieces, were she to go out among them to-day. I have had to warn her. Horatio—Horatio, have you seen Ellinor?”

Dr. Tutterville nodded. For some undefined reasons he would have given worlds not to be obliged to discuss Ellinor just now. He tried to slip his portly person through the door, but the hand of his spouse was still restraining.

“Do you think she could have been given any of that dreadful stuff too? She is so strange in her manner. And the servants are saying such extraordinary things—not that I would allow them to do so before me—but I could not help hearing.”

With one mute look of reproach the rector wrenched himself away.

“Lord, Lord,” he was saying to himself in a grim spirit of prophecy, as he hurried towards the stables: “There will be but too much time I fear by and by, for the drawing to light of poor Ellinor’s affairs whatever they may be.”

Love is the crown of life: a life without love is a life wasted. Not necessarily must the love that crowns be that of lovers: love of saint for God, of soldier for captain, of comrade for comrade, of student for master, of partisan for King; or, again, love for the abstract object, of artist for art; of patriot for country, of philanthropist for the cause, of seekers for science—one such great love in a life is sufficient to fill it to the brim, to absorb all its energy. But how few are capable of the passion that shall crown them heroes or saints, leaders of thought or of men! Though every man and every woman avidly claim to possess in the full the power of natural love, _the real lover is a genius_. And genius, of its essence, is rare. To nearly all it is given to strum the tune, to how few is it given to bring forth the full harmony!

Ellinor had one of those rare natures especially designed for the heights and the deeps of love. It had been for many years her curse that some indefinable charm, quite apart from her beauty and strength, should, wherever she went, make her the desire of men’s eyes. But she herself had passed as untouched by the flame, through her too early marriage and the ordeals to which she had been recklessly exposed, as true gold through the test-furnace.

Now, like a wave that has been gathering from the fulness of the ocean’s bosom, the great waters had broken over her and were sweeping her on.

As she sat by her father’s body she tried to force the image of her loss upon her mind—in vain. One single idea absorbed her; the whole energy of her being was with David. Anon she recalled every instant of his fantastic wooing of the previous night. Anon she would be seized with an agony of terror about his present condition. Again she would float away in a vague warm dream of the moment when he should awaken.... Awaken and remember! People addressed her, and she answered mechanically; but, even while answering, forgot the speaker’s presence.

When Madam Tutterville came to conduct her to her room that night, Ellinor was aware that she had walked through a group of whispering and pointing servants; and she was indifferent. She felt that the good lady herself was looking at her with strange, anxious gaze; and she merely smiled vaguely back. Her soul was in the tower.

Madam Tutterville wore a grave countenance.

“Have you nothing to say to me, Ellinor?” she asked at length.

Ellinor hesitated a second; she wanted to beg for a share in the watch by David’s side; wanted to hear repeated once more the last reassuring news. But the deeper the passion the more closely the woman draws the veil about her; she could not even speak his name.

“Nothing, dear aunt,” she answered.

Madam Tutterville shook her head in troubled fashion, sighed and withdrew.