Chapter XVIII: Gone Like a Dream

... My sweet dream
Fell into nothing.
Ah, my sighs, my tears,
My clenched hands;—for, lo! the poppies hung
Dew-dabbled on their stalk, the ousel sung
A heavy ditty, and the sullen day
Had chidden herald Hesperus away
With leaden looks.
—KEATS (_Endymion_).

Ellinor entered the room.

“The heartless wretch!” thought Lady Lochore, with the marvellous inconsequence of hatred, “her old father lying dead and she in all these colours!”

But the next glance showed her that the only colours Ellinor wore were those that cannot be doffed at will—gold of hair, rose of cheek, blue of eye and dazzling white of throat. The flower had opened wide to the sun of great love! The presence of death itself cannot rob the living thing of the beauty of its destined hour.

Ellinor’s arms, moreover, were full of branching leaves and strange blossoms. She had had the womanly thought to lay upon her father’s body a wreath made of the plants he had loved. Purple and mauve, crimson and orange, with foliage of many greens, it was a sheaf of rich hues she held against her black dress; and she seemed to bring with her into the room all the breath of the Herb-Garden and all its imprisoned sunshine.

She had walked straight in, seeking and seeing no one but David. He was still standing and, as she halted he moved nearer to her. For a while they were silent, gazing on each other. And her beauty seemed to grow into brighter and brighter radiance.—Every woman is a goddess once at least in her life. But Ellinor stood upon her Olympian height but for a short moment.

“Mrs. Marvel!”

At the first sound of Lady Lochore’s voice, at the sight of Margery’s face, she fell from her pinnacle, suddenly and piteously. Why were these, her enemies, here, and why had she been convened into their presence? Why did the rector sit there like a judge and wear that uneasy countenance? Her brain whirled. It could fasten on no settled thought. But in the great crisis of life what woman trusts to thought when she can feel! Ellinor felt:—this bodes evil! Yet David had looked at her with beautiful eyes of faith and gladness. Her fate was in his hands, what then had she to fear? She turned her glance again upon him. In spite of her boding heart she trusted.

“Mrs. Marvel,” said Lady Lochore. “I have considered it my duty to speak to my brother on the subject of the painful episode of the other night.”

Ellinor crimsoned to the roots of her hair, to the tips of her fingers. She dropped her eyes. Yet in the midst of all the agony of woman’s modesty outraged before the man she loved, there remained a deep sweetness of anticipation in her heart. She waited, motionless, for the touch of his hand, the sound of his voice that should proclaim her his bride. She waited. The silence enveloped her like a pall. Lady Lochore laughed and the blood rushed back to Ellinor’s heart.

“David!”

There was everything in that cry, everything in the look she cast upon him, to appeal to a man’s chivalry, to his honour, to his love: the pride of the innocent woman, the reproach of the wronged woman, the trust of the loving woman. And David spoke:

“You need say nothing, Ellinor, need not condescend to answer.”

Alas, what vindication was this!

“Does Mrs. Marvel deny then,” resumed Lady Lochore, “that she was discovered two nights ago——”

David lifted his hand and his voice in a superb unison of anger:

“Be silent. It is I who deny it! And let that suffice!” Then he went on rapidly, with more self-control yet still vibrating with indignation: “I know this to be a base lie, an iniquitous conspiracy. Your motives, my poor sister, are but too obvious! Your treatment of our kinswoman who has brought comfort and gladness to my house, has been odious from the first moment of your uninvited presence here. This is the climax! Now hear my last word:—not only is Mrs. Marvel, as I know her, incapable of desecrating the hospitality she honours me by accepting, but she is incapable of harbouring an unworthy thought.”

David’s countenance was lit by every generous impulse. Yet each vindicating word fell upon Ellinor’s ear like the sounds of her death sentence—death to both honour and happiness! A chasm was opening before her feet, the depths of which she could not yet fathom. One thing alone was dawning upon her moment by moment, with more inexorable light—_David did not know! All this had been but a dream to him._ And even as a dream he remembered nothing. _He did not remember!_ Unconsciously she repeated to herself, even as Lady Lochore awhile before: _Madness and then sleep!_ He knew nothing of his own vows of love to her, he knew nothing of his own words of passion! _He did not know; and her lips were sealed!_

At first Lady Lochore wondered whether David were playing a deep and subtle game; whether the two were in collusion. But a glance from his transfigured countenance to Ellinor’s stricken look, the sight of the rector’s evident perturbation, her own knowledge of the crystal truth of her brother’s character, promptly dispelled the doubt. The game was hers!

“All well and good,” said she. “Your cavalier attitude, most romantic David, is fit to grace the pages of the latest Scotch novel! But allow me to point out that it will not pass current in the every day world. Besides the fact that these eyes of mine and those of my friends beheld a scene in Mrs. Marvel’s room the like of which our honourable house never sheltered before, Margery Nutmeg can tell you how she heard an adventurous climber mount to Mrs. Marvel’s window. How Joyce, your head-keeper, met Colonel Harcourt, skulking through the park at midnight—”

Dr. Tutterville started. David made no movement, but something in his very stillness showed that the words had struck him.

“Mr. Villars, again, could have informed you, how he came upon Mr. Herrick and Colonel Harcourt brawling on the bridge an hour later, both in torn garments and as highly incensed one against the other, as only rivals——”

“Needless, all this,” said Ellinor, in a low clear voice. She had flung back her head and stood, white as death, but composed, holding herself as proudly as a queen. “I deny nothing. It would be useless to deny, did I wish it, what Lady Lochore and her friends and Mrs. Nutmeg have seen for themselves.” She paused, then resumed, gaining firmness in voice and manner: “I give you the truth, in so far as I am myself concerned. Judge of me as you will. Barnaby escaped from his room after my father had locked him up, climbed up to my window, where I let him in—”

“Barnaby,” exclaimed the parson with a loud burst of relieved laughter. “’Pon my word, a pretty storm in a tea-cup, Maud Lochore!”

Lady Lochore grew grey, save for the bloody fingerprint of death upon either cheek.

“And was it Barnaby,” she hissed, “whom you covered with your cloak, to hide him from our eyes?”

Ellinor flung a glance of a sad, yet lovely self-abnegation upon David before she answered:

“No, it was not Barnaby.”

For all its melancholy ring of renunciation the word could not have fallen from her lips in a tone of more exquisite sweetness had it been an avowal of love in the ear of the only one who had a right to demand it. The love that makes the willing martyr, as well as the pride that can face ignominy, had enabled her to surmount the failing of her heart over this bitterness. Was she not bound to silence by a thousand shackles of loyalty, of woman’s reticence, of elementary delicacy, of love for him? The sacrifice was for him. He must never know that it was his madness that had wronged her in the world’s eyes. Her hand could not deal this blow to his fastidious honour. _Moreover, had it not been all a dream?_ How did she know that, waking, he could love her as he had loved her in his dream? Nay, his very defence of her, his calmness and freedom from jealousy seemed to her aching heart to argue a mere friendliness incompatible with passion. Thus for herself, too, her pride could endure to stand with tarnished fame before him, but could not stoop to demand the reparation she knew he would so quickly have offered. She went on, steadily ignoring alike the rector’s shocked distress, Lady Lochore’s triumph and Margery’s insolent silence.

“After Barnaby had taken refuge with me—some one, a man, entered my room. He did not know what he was doing. And because of that I shall never tell his name.”

Lady Lochore quailed before the high soul and generous heart of the woman she was ruining; and quailing, abashed, shamed in her own tempest-tossed desperate nature, hated her but the more.

The poor rector clacked his tongue aloud in dismay, chiding himself for his over-zeal. He had meant to straighten matters, and, lo, they were more inextricably knotted than ever! Here was a mystery to which he had not the beginning of a clue. No man of his mind and heart could look upon Ellinor and deem her a wanton as she now stood; and yet both her self-accusation and her reticence proclaimed how deeply she must love the unknown man she could thus shield with her own honour. Was this the end of all their fond secret hopes for Bindon!

Now David gazed at Ellinor almost as if the old dream-palsy had returned upon him. As in a dream, too, he seemed to see again some past picture which had foretold this hour. Thus on the first day of her return to Bindon had he seen her pass from sunshine and colour and brilliancy into darkness; seen the goddess turn to a pale woman in a black dress. Was this what his house had brought upon her!

His eyes dilated with pity, his whole being seemed to become broken by pity, given over to pity, till, for the moment, there was no room for any other feeling. Pity of the man for the woman, of the strong for the weak. He sank back into his seat and shaded his eyes with his hand. He could not look upon that high golden head abased.

But Ellinor had lost little of her proud bearing. Love is royalty, and royalty can walk to the scaffold as if to the throne.

“I cannot think,” she said with a pale smile, “that Lady Lochore can have any further need of my testimony.”

“Stay, stay!” cried Dr. Tutterville. “There is more in this than meets the eye. Ellinor, you have let yourself be caught in some cunning trap!”

“Uncle Horatio,” answered she, “you are right. Yes, things are not as you think.”

And upon this enigmatic phrase she left them.

Lady Lochore went straight up to her child. She told herself she was extraordinarily happy. She had been providentially saved from fratricide and yet had encompassed her end:—Ellinor’s position at Bindon had at last been rendered untenable. And her boy’s inheritance was safe! She hugged him, teased him, rollicked with him till he shrieked with joy. But for all that her heart was well-nigh as heavy within her as it had been upon her awakening; if she had not her brother’s death on her conscience, it could not acquit her of all share in Master Simon’s sudden end. David and he had shared the same cup—that was servant’s talk all through the house. And how much did Margery know? That inscrutable woman was now at her elbow; and the sleek and meaning words that fell from her lips, the very feeling of her shadowy presence irritated the guilty woman almost beyond bounds. Yet she could not, dared not, dismiss this Margery.

David lifted a grave face from his shielding hands, looked at Dr. Tutterville and then, arrested by a gesture the words brimming on the elder man’s lips:

“Hush! Do not let us discuss this now.”

The parson, wondering, saw him sort his papers and lay them aside, then ring the bell, and again send for Margery. Sir David looked at her for a brief moment as she stood before him apparently wrapt in her usual smug composure, but, by the twitching of her hands and the furtive working of her lips, betraying some hidden agitation.

“Margery Nutmeg,” said her master then, “in an hour you leave my house and my service.” A sudden livid fury came over the woman’s face. But David’s gesture, his determined speech bore down the inarticulate protest that broke from her. “It is useless to attempt to make me alter my decision. I know how you have considered me bound by promise to your husband, and how you have traded upon it. That promise, in so far as I consider it binding, I shall keep till you die. You shall receive fit and sufficient maintenance from me. But in my house or upon my estate you shall dwell no more.” He dismissed her with a wave of the hand, merely adding: “If you present yourself at the bailiffs office in an hour, you will receive your money. Go!”

And Margery went, without another word.

“Ah, David,” said the reverend Horatio admiringly, “had you but done this earlier!” And in his heart was the thought, based upon too unsubstantial ground to put it into words: “Then things would surely not stand now at this pass!”

Sir David made no reply. He did not even seem to hear. He was seated at his writing table, inditing a letter of reply to Colonel Harcourt’s friend. As he wrote, the crimson of a deep, slow-burning resentment mounted to his face.

Lady Lochore’s enforced departure fitted in well enough in her mind with the new turn of events. Now that Master Simon was dead, Ellinor’s residence at Bindon became an impossibility so soon as she herself had gone. To be sure Madam Tutterville might give her niece harbourage; but Lady Lochore was quite satisfied that if she had failed to convince the rector of Mrs. Marvel’s frailty the rector’s wife had been more easy to deal with. Therefore she hurried on her preparations with a sick desire to escape from surroundings charged with such ugly memories. Even as the four horses drew the travelling chaise up to the door she stood ready in the hall, feverishly hustling her servants.

Sir David was there too, attentive to speed his sister’s parting, but certes, with even less warmth than he had welcomed her arrival. She spoke her bitterly sarcastic word of thanks. He answered by the cold wish that her health might have been benefited, according to her hopes, by her visit to her home of old. This time even the kiss upon the hand was omitted. But as he was leading her across the threshold, her mood changed hysterically:

“David,” said she, in a panting whisper, “oh, no, you cannot let me go like this! Some day you’ll thank me for having saved you ... for you are saved a second time.” She could not keep the taunt out of her mouth. “After all, I am your only sister, and this is the last time we shall ever meet. I am dying!”

“My only sister died to me ten years ago,” said David. His tone was quite unmoved; and he added, almost in the same breath: “There is a high wind rising, you had better wrap your cloak over your mouth.”

She struck away in fury the hand that held hers, ran down the steps alone, and sprang into the carriage, where, seizing the child, she held him up at the window in a sort of vengeful mute defiance that, louder than any shriek, spoke her secret meaning: “Fool, you shall not keep this hated flesh and blood from ruling in your place some day!”

As the wheels began to crunch round in the gravel, she suddenly became aware of a dull grey face and black eyes looking upon her out of the shade of the opposite seat. It was not her maid! A shudder ran through her frame. She stared without speaking.

But Margery’s voice was silky as ever:

“Asking your pardon, my lady, I made so bold. Mamselle Josephine is in the other coach. Sir David has dismissed me. But I knew your ladyship would offer me a home and welcome, seeing that it is my devotion to your ladyship that’s lost me my bread and my station in my old age. I made so bold,” repeated Mrs. Nutmeg, and the veiled threat was all the more awful to the listener because of the unemotional tone, “knowing your ladyship’s heart as I know it.”

“Mamma,” cried the spoilt child, “let me go! I don’t like your cold hands!”

And thus, with Nemesis by her side, Lady Lochore left Bindon-Cheveral for the last time, and drove through the gathering storm on her speedy way to die Valley of the Shadows.

Ellinor took her last look at her father’s face and laid the wreath of herbs at his feet and a sprig of his Euphrosinum, fatal plant! upon his breast.

Madam Tutterville, in wifely solicitude for her Horatio’s unphilosophic depression, had insisted on his returning with her to the rectory. Without her, Ellinor could not remain at Bindon. But even had it not been so, to abide as David’s guest would have been the one thing to render her trouble unbearable. And there was nothing in the last cruel details that precede the returning of earth to earth to make her desire to linger in the death-chamber. She, therefore, accepted her aunt Sophia’s offer of hospitality. Had she not been all absorbed in her own troubles the lady’s altered manner, and the rebuffingly Christian spirit in which the invitation was offered, might have struck her painfully. But she was past noticing such things.

The falling dusk of that miserable day found her at the door of the tower-wing, Barnaby at her side loaded with her modest baggage, Belphegor ruffled and protesting under her arm. She was dry-eyed: there is an arid misery the desolation of which no well-spring can relieve. In this silent company she sallied out.

A dumb boy, and a cat! After these months of full life, after her gorgeous dream of happiness—this was all that was left her. The road that had opened before her, alluring, fantastic almost in its promise, had led to this desolation.

The Star-Dreamer sat by the open coffin in the laboratory, his head bent, his hands clasped upon his knees, holding between them the sprig of the Euphrosinum which he had absently taken from the heap of wild flowers that lay on his old friend’s breast. He was absorbed in thought.

A great silence was in the room erstwhile so filled with a thousand minute sounds of restless energy. Extinct the hearth; extinct the furnace which for over twenty years had glowed night and day; mute all the little voices, cold the matras and crucibles, all as silent and as cold, as extinguished as the once eager brain of their master. But the watcher’s mind was seething with keen thoughts, busy sorrows. He had lost her—she was gone! She who had come like a lovely vision to this house when it was held as under a spell of twilight dreaming; who had reanimated it with her own life; who had brought, as she had promised, sunshine into its dusk, fresh air into its stagnation, sweetness where the must had lain; she was gone from his sweet hopes, gone in sorrow and shame! Her bright head dimmed as even now was his star under the clouds that were gathering thick and thicker with the brooding storm.

And he, the Star-Dreamer? He had been called back from his unnatural life of solitude, step by step had been brought down from his height, had been taught once more to see the fairness of earth, had been made to feel the desire of the eyes, to hear the cry of his forgotten manhood: all to the end of this vault, this chamber of death, this knowledge of loss. Yet, no! She had once said to him in an unforgettable hour: “Sometimes a harboured sorrow is only fancied, not real; and it may be that real adversity must come to make us see it.” And now he felt that she had been right. His reawakened virility was strong within him. True, he had for a second time, and in middle life, been struck to the heart; yet, strange working of Fate! the new sorrow seemed not only to drive away the last remnant of the old, but actually to strengthen and arm him again for the fight of life. Although from his long sleep he had carried forth no conscious memory of a dream, that hour spent in Ellinor’s room when, in the body’s weakness, his spirit had come so close to hers, had left an ineffaceable stamp upon his mind. He had asked her, in trouble: “Can I trust you?” She had answered him: “To the death,” and he had believed. And now, though he had seen her stand self-accused before him, he believed still.

The crisis often heralds the cure. He was cured of his strange palsy of mind, of his infirmity of purpose, of his sick melancholy. He was a fighting man again in a world where everything must be fought for, above all things happiness. Cured—aye, but too late! She, the joy he might but a few weeks before have taken for his own, she had passed from his gates.

Cured, made strong again.... How? By what? In that soothing draught, of whose nature he had known nothing, but which her own hand had prepared, had she steeped a branch of that wondrous plant which held so many unknown properties? Had that given him a new life and sanity while it had brought death or madness to others? Ah, no! The transformation was her own doing. She had found him weak and ignorant of the one beauty of life, and left him strong, awakened. Awakened, but desolate.