Chapter III: Not Words, but Hands Meeting

... Indeed I love thee: come
Yield thyself up: my hopes and thine are one:
Accomplish thou my manhood and thyself;
Lay thy sweet hands in mine and trust to me.
—TENNYSON (_The Princess_).

The rector passed half the night in that solitude which was ever respected by his wife as devoted to elegant study. But his energies were occupied by subjects neither classic nor biblic, nor yet philosophic. It was the diplomatic composition of one short letter that kept him employed into the deep hours.

The purpose of this missive was so close to his heart, the matter was so delicate; so necessary was it to display some guile, that the erudite gentleman had seldom set his wits a more difficult task.

The finished draft was of a masterpiece of its kind, though one could hardly say that the impression it conveyed to the reader adhered closely to actual fact. But, as it certainly conveyed the impression desired by the reverend Horatio, he read it over with great complacency before folding and sealing it. And when he retired at last to his couch, his conscience was more placid than altogether became a divine of the Anglican church, who had just been guilty of dealing in Jesuitical casuistry.

About six o’clock the next evening, as the rector sipped his after-dinner cup of bohea, he made casually the following announcement to his spouse:

“My love, I despatched a messenger to Bath by the coach this morning.”

Madam Tutterville put down her spoon and looked up eagerly.

“Indeed, doctor?”

“Yes, Sophia. I discovered that there was positively not another pinch of macabaw in my _tabatière_.”

The lady examined him sharply. Then before his impassive countenance her own fell considerably.

“It is a pity,” she remarked with some dryness, “that you did not make that discovery before I started yesterday.”

“It is, perhaps,” said the rector.

There was a slight pause; then the gentleman rose. “A lovely evening,” said he. “I think, Sophia, I will stroll down the park and meet the coach on its return.”

“My dear doctor, after dinner rest awhile.”

“I am pining, Sophia, for that _rapee_—or did I say macabaw? There’s not a pinch, not a pinch.”

As he passed out into the little garden, he said to himself:

“I am growing positively Machiavelian!” And thereat the abandoned rector breathed in the soft air, luxuriously.

It was a lovely evening, as he had said. September had been drifting on, in peace and suavity; and, this day, summer seemed to pause and watch the coming of inevitable autumn as a beautiful woman pauses and looks down the hill of life with a sweet resignation that lends her a new pathetic charm, unknown to the pride of her June or even to the exquisite promise of her April. The light was golden-yellow over the grass, where the shadows of the elms lay long. Now and then an early-withered leaf crackled under the parson’s foot. The rooks were cawing for their last muster of the day; the kine were lowing towards far-off byres. There was a tramp of feet along the road without the walls and the distant sound of voices. The whole air was full of the music of evening home-comings. A sense of peace descended on the good man’s soul, he bared his grey-crowned head and looked up at the placid sky, and felt a kind of faith in happiness.

It was to him as if the striving, the heat and the burden of the day had passed from their lives, and God’s best gift, rest, was about to be bestowed at last.

Even as he was drawing near the gates, Ellinor was alighting from the coach, pale, tired, anxious-eyed, followed by a dusty Barnaby, who carried under his arm a cross Belphegor. They hurried through the wicket into the green arms of the park. Obedient to his mistress’s gesture, the dumb boy with his burden struck immediately across the grass towards the rectory, while she paused to draw a deep breath and taste for a spell the sad delight of being once more in that beloved enclosure, which had been, and was still, all the world to her.

Presently she was startled to find the reverend Horatio at her side.

“Thrice welcome!” cried he, and there was unwonted emotion in his rich kind voice. She was folded in a paternal embrace. But, with both hands upon his shoulders, she drew back, to scan his countenance; and her eyes shot mingled joy and reproach upon him for that he looked so hale and placid. The while his gaze pitied the narrower oval of her flower face, the paled cheek that had been so warm-tinted, the shadowed eyes that had been so bright.

“My dear, my dear,” he said, “you look very ill!”

“And you, Uncle Horatio, singularly well!” She drew still further from him as she spoke. And suddenly a rush of indignant blood dyed her pallor. “Why have you brought me here?” she cried. “If—oh, sir, this is not right or kind!” With agitated gesture she sought a letter in her reticule. “Indeed, sir, you must have deceived me!”

But the rector smiled on unperturbed. There was no guilt, but rather an expression of self-approval, writ upon his every line. Ellinor unfolded a letter:

“My child, will you come and help nurse back to health a sick and
weary man? I would not summon you, but that I know your kind heart,
and that you give us love for love. I think the sight of you will go
far towards making a cure. I shall expect you to-morrow.—Your old
UNCLE HORATIO.”

“P. S.—You will think that the sickness is sudden—not so sudden,
perhaps! I will not say that it may not be dangerous, if your help is
withheld.”

In resentful tones Mrs. Marvel read out this artful billet. The rector showed no sign of confusion.

“Oh, uncle!” said she, when she had finished.

“Well, child,” he returned, and tucked her rebellious arm under his own, “well, here has Bindon got you again, and here shall Bindon hold you!”

She went a little way by his side in silence. Bindon grass was tender to her feet and Bindon airs balmy to her face. Bindon woods, gathering close about her, seemed to fold her round with a sense of security and faithful guardianship—David’s Bindon, full of him, though empty just now, as she thought, of his dear presence. God, was it not all too sweet? Was not her mad heart too insensately throbbing with that poisoned sweetness of it—and to what end? She wrenched her hand from the close pressure of his elbow:

“Why have you played me this cruel trick? Why have you lured me here on a pretence?” she asked again, resentfully.

Before the passion of her distress, parson Tutterville dropped the amiable banter of speech and manner and became grave.

“My dear child,” he answered, taking both her hands in his— “there was no pretence. There is a sick man here who needs you very much, sorely indeed!”

His meaning flashed into her soul almost before the words had left his lips. She formed the word: “David!” And he felt her tremble violently.

“I understood David was away,” she said. “He is ill?”

He was shocked at himself for the anxiety he had unwittingly caused; and, moved to the very core by this depth of feeling he had hitherto barely guessed at:

“Forgive me, child,” he said gently. “David returned yesterday. He is not sick in body—no,” hastily reading yet whiter terror on her face, “nor yet in mind, thank God! But he is sick at heart.”

“Sick at heart!”

“Aye, for want of you!”

Once more Ellinor crimsoned, but this time it was the “lovely banner of love” that flaunted on her poor white face.

“Did David send for me?”

The cry smote the good man now with its sound of irrepressible joy. Short as their interview had been, he felt ever more strongly how clumsy were even his well-meaning fingers upon this delicate thing—a woman’s heart. “One man only,” he said to himself, “has the right to play on that lute—that is the man she loves.” And aloud:

“No, David does not know,” he replied.

“Then why am I here-what will he think?”

She looked wildly round, almost as if she would have started running back all those miles to her hiding-place. The rector laid a restraining hand upon her shoulder. She turned on him fiercely.

“You should not have brought me here!”

“My child, you should never have left us!”

When there was that tone in Horatio Tutterville’s voice and that look in his kind eye, his rarely exercised authority made itself irresistibly felt. Ellinor’s reproachful anger was turned to a filial pleading:

“Dear uncle, how could I remain, how can I remain?... after ... after——” Her lips trembled: they could not frame the words of the odious charge which still lay against her fair fame.

“And have we been so wanting towards you, Ellinor, all this time, that you feel there is not one of us to whom you could give your confidence?”

She gave a little cry as if the reproach had stabbed her.

“Ah, no! Tis not like that! Oh, Uncle Horatio, it is because I cannot speak. If you knew, you would be the first to see that I cannot speak.”

Then all the shrewd surmises that had been floating in Dr. Tutterville’s brains ever since David’s own confession assumed the complexion of certainty. No need for him to pry further. He knew. At least he knew quite enough. His first triumph at his own sagacity was succeeded by a gush of admiration for the steadfast self-abnegation of the woman.

“Keep your secret, child,” he said tenderly. “We are all, mark me, all, quite ready to trust you.”

But Ellinor no longer heard him. She was looking past him, towards the house. Her eyes had become fixed—then dilated. She shivered again slightly, and then she stood quite still. David, with long, quick strides, was coming across the chequered shade and light of the avenue.

Horatio Tutterville caught his breath slightly and stepped back against the bole of a vast-girthed elm so as to sink his noticeable personality almost out of sight. The crisis had come sooner than he expected. He had planned it to be under Bindon’s roof—well, it was fated to be under the arches of Bindon’s trees! Now were the matters passing out of his muddling hands. Now was the crucial moment of the two lives on which he hung all his own hopes, the lives of those who were to him son and daughter, to whom he looked to be the crown of his old age. Good man, his ambition was selfless enough: all he asked of these two was to be happy! From behind the springing twigs he watched, with a beating heart.

When her lover was within a few paces of her, Ellinor, moved by some uncontrollable impulse, went forward to meet him. She took a hasty step or two and then stood, hands outstretched. And David saw her, with a shaft of yellow light striking her white forehead and flaming in her enaureoled hair, poised in lovely waiting for his welcome—even as, now nearly a year ago, he had first seen her and deemed that his beauteous star-vision had taken human shape.

There were no words—their hands met. There was no surprise in his eyes: only a great joy.

“Something drove me hither,” he said presently, “and it was you! The whole day I could not rest, and you were coming home, coming back to me! Oh, Ellinor, never leave us again! We are dead without you, Bindon and I!”

She looked up at him with brimming eyes, eyes as blue as his star.

“Never again,” she returned, “if you and Bindon want me!”

Then David bent and laid his lips upon hers. And hand-in-hand, gravely they walked together through the trees.

The parson looked after them, a broad smile upon his lips. Then he wiped his forehead and then he wiped his eyes. Then he came out from his discreet place and blew deep a puffing breath of relief. How he had plotted and planned; how cautiously and tortuously he had worked for this; how many convincing speeches he had rehearsed; how many intricate scenes, tearful or passionate, through which his tact alone was to pilot the sensitive lovers.... And behold! It was so simple! Oh, simple. Not a word of explanation, no start, no cry, no inquiry, no tears!—They met and clasped hands and kissed. And yet how natural it all was! The inevitable coming together of two who could not live without each other.

“I will allow them a couple of hours of paradise,” said the rector importantly to himself, as, quite forgotten, he turned in the opposite direction, “before calling them to earth again. I will even bring the news to Sophia and bid her prepare the guest-chamber.”

“A special licence,” thought the reverend gentleman, professionally, as he reached his garden gate. “Only a special licence, I believe, will meet the requirements of the case.” His hand on the latch he began to laugh softly: “I have certainly been on the verge of wiliness. It is fortunate that Sophia will have a vast deal to occupy her mind before the nuptials, for I am not going to spoil these wondrous results by one word. Poor Sophia, I fear there are certain explanations which are destined to be for ever withheld from thee!”

He could afford to feel superior over the thought of her unsatisfied curiosity, his superior acumen having put him out of reach of any such mortifying situation. The reverend Horatio knew Ellinor’s secret, and was content that she should keep it. He would not even allow himself to speculate upon whether she would reveal it to David; and if so, in what manner. That was part of the sacredness of their future life. It belonged to the sanctuary which every lover keeps for the beloved, and into which, not even with uncovered feet or bowed head, might the most reverent stranger dare to enter.