The star dreamer: A romance

Ellinor read and was dashed, read again and laughed aloud.—Gracious powers what a pair of eccentrics had her relatives grown into!

But she was in high spirits, and hope rose in her heart. She was free from her chains; she was back from her exile, home in England, home in the dearest spot of that dear island! Her first outlook upon the world had been into the closes of the Garden of Herbs; and it had been to her as if the familiar face of a friend had looked back at her unchanged, yet full of promise. The beauty of the freshly-washed woods (still in their autumn coats of many colours: from russet to lemon-yellow, from the vermilion of the turning ash-leaf to the grey-white of the fir needle), she drew it all into her long-starved soul, even as she breathed in the wild purity of the air.

Therefore, as she had sat down to breakfast alone in the gay Chinese parlour where once Miss Sophia had reigned, the refrain of the song in her heart was an undismayed, nay, joyous: “Wait, my masters, wait!”

And therefore, also, as Madam Tutterville walked on to the scene of her past dominion she found a merry, hungry niece; and she was scandalised, for she had come armed with texts wherewith to console the widow.

“‘Him whom he loveth, he blasteth’!” she cried enthusiastically from the threshold, “‘aye, even to the third and fourth generation’—my afflicted Ellinor...!”

She stopped, stared, her manner changed with comical suddenness.

“Mercy on us, child, I must have been misinformed!”

“Misinformed, dear aunt!”

“They told me your husband was dead!”

Ellinor came forward, kissed the lady on either wholesome cheek, divested her of her wet shawl and exclaimed at its condition.

“Tush, child, that is nought. ‘The sun shineth on the evil and the rain raineth on the just.’ Matthew, my dear.”—Madam Tutterville was on sufficiently good terms with her authorities to justify a pleasant familiarity. “They told me,” she repeated, “your husband was dead. I shall chide cook Rachael for unfounded gossip. What saith Solomon: ‘The tongue of the wise woman is far above rubies.’”

Ellinor laughed, then became grave.

“Oliver is dead,” she said.

“Dead!”

The rector’s lady fell into a chair, tossed her hat-strings over her shoulders, and fixed her light, prominent eyes upon her niece.

“Your weeds?” she gasped.

“I do not intend to wear any mourning but this black gown.”

“Ellinor!”

“Please, aunt, not another word upon the subject!”

For yet another outraged, scandalised moment, the spiritual autocrat of Bindon glared. But the very placidity of Ellinor’s determination was more baffling than any other attitude could have been to one who, after all ruled more by opportunity than capacity.

“‘All flesh is hay,’” she remarked at length, in plaintive tones. “We shall speak further of this anon. Now tell me what are your intentions for the future?”

Ellinor’s eyes and dimples betrayed mischievous amusement.

“Do you not think, aunt,” she asked, “that Bindon would be the better for some one who could look after it? The place seems to be going to rack and ruin!”

“Alas, my niece, since to a higher sphere I was called forth from this house, ‘the roaring lion who walketh about has entered in with seven lions worse than himself.’”

Ellinor crossed the floor and suddenly surprised her aunt’s dignity by falling on her knees beside her and hugging her. And, hiding her sunny head on the capacious shoulder, she made vain efforts to conceal the inextinguishable laughter that shook her.

“Why, aunt, why, dear aunt! Oh! Oh! Oh! What has happened since we parted? You’ve grown so—so learned, so eloquent!”

Despite the strength of Madam Tutterville’s brain, her heart was never proof against attack. The clinging, young arms awoke memories and tender instincts. And while the comments upon her new attainments called a smile upon her countenance (which made it resemble that of a huge, complacent baby) she responded to the embrace with the utmost warmth.

“Eh, Ellinor, poor little girl!”

“Oh, Aunt Sophia, it’s good to be home again!”

Once more they hugged; then Ellinor sat back on her heels and Madam Tutterville resumed, as best she could, the mantle of the prophetess.

“You see, my dear, it having pleased the Lord to call me into a place or state of spiritual supererogation, it hath become necessary for me to frame the tongue according to its vocation.”

Ellinor nodded, compressing her dimples.

“My brother Simon and your cousin David—God knows I have done my best for them! But it is casting pearls before—you know the scriptural allusion, my dear—to endeavour to raise them to any sense of duty. The place is indeed going to wrack and ruin. They are no better than Amalakites and Ephesians. Between David’s star-worshipping on the one side, like the Muezzin on his Marinet, and your father’s black arts and other incomprehensible doings in his cave of Adullam, my heart is nearly broken. And yet, my dear child, I have not failed, as Paul enjoins, with the word in reason and out of reason. I fear for you, child in this Topheepot!”

“Do not fear for me,” cried Ellinor; her voice was caught up by little titters. “Perhaps,” she added insinuatingly, “if you advise me things may alter for the better.”

“Advice shall not fail you.”

“I shall coax cousin David to let me manage for him.”

Ellinor was still sitting on her heels. She now looked up innocently at Madam Tutterville. And Madam Tutterville looked down at her with a suddenly appraising eye and was struck by a brilliant inspiration over which, in her determination to keep to herself, she buttoned up her mouth with much mystery.

Ellinor had grown—there could be no doubt of that—into a remarkably handsome woman. There was so much gold in her hair, there were so many twists and little misty tendrils, that one could hardly find it in one’s heart to regret that it should so closely verge on the red. It grew in three peaks and wantoned upon a luminously white forehead.

“She has the Cheveral eyebrows,” thought the parson’s wife, absently tracing her own with a plump, approving finger.

Of the charm of the little straight nose, of the pointed chin, of the curves of the wide, eager mouth, there could be no two opinions. Nothing but admiration likewise for the lines of throat and shoulder and all the rest of the lithe figure on the eve of perfection. It was the beauty of the rose the day before it ought to be gathered. Madam Tutterville gave a small laugh, fraught with secret meaning.

“Amen, child,” said she irrelevantly at last. “Yes, I will have some corporal refreshment; you may give me a cup of tea. But you will have your hands full, I can tell you, with that Nutmeg—Oh, what a house of squanderings and malversations has Bindon become since my days!”

“I saw something of the state of affairs last night,” said Ellinor, as she lifted the kettle from the hob on to the fire to boil again and emptied the contents of the squat teapot into the basin.

Madam Tutterville watched her with approval.

“Another girl would have given me cold slop,” she commented internally. “That husband of hers must have been a brute!”

“Lord, Lord! I never see brother Simon and cousin David, but what I think of Jacob’s dream of the lean kine devoured by the fat ones.” Madam Tutterville, contentedly sipping her tea, had settled herself for a comfortable gossip. “But, there, so long as David is clothed in purple and fine linen (I speak fictitiously, child, as regards colour, for I do not think, indeed, I ever saw David in purple) the servants may rob him as they please. A strange man—never sees a soul, and yet clothes himself like a prince. That old sinner Giles goes to London twice a year and brings back trunks full, all in the fashion of ten years ago. He’ll never use a napkin twice, Ellinor—he don’t care if he never eats but a bit of bread or drinks but water, but it must be from the most polished crystal, the finest porcelain.”

Ellinor listened without manifesting either amusement or impatience. When her aunt paused she herself remained silent for a while; then, in a low voice, she asked:

“And what then occurred to change his whole life in this manner?”

Madam Tutterville’s eyes became rounder than ever. She shook her head with an air of the deepest gravity and importance.

“Do not ask me, my dear—do not ask me, for I may not reveal it,” she said. And the next instant the truth leapt from her guileless lips: “There are only three people here that know the whole secret, and they never would tell me, no matter how I tried. David himself, your father and my Horatio.”

The lady’s countenance assumed a pensive cast, as she reflected upon this want of conjugal confidence.

“His marriage was to have been soon after ours,” observed Ellinor musingly.

“Aye, child, so it was. But the girl David loved and that Lochore man—well, well, I can only surmise. But in the end there was devil’s work, fighting and duelling! David was brought home wounded, mad, and like to die; and for days and nights, my dear, Simon and Horatio nursed him between them and would not let any one near him while his ravings lasted—not even me, think of that! Of course, my love,” she added comfortably, “it is not that my Horatio has not the highest opinion of my discretion; but he had to humour David, and he would die rather than break his word even to a——” She paused, and significantly tapped her forehead. “Well, well, the poor lad got better at last, and then——Oh, if it were not true no one could have believed it! Maud, his sister (I never could endure her, with her bold black eyes and her proud ways), nothing would serve her but she must marry the very man who all but murdered her own brother! She became Lady Lochore—that was all she cared for! Pride was always eating into her! ‘Proud and haughty scorner is her name, and her proud heart stirreth up strife.’—Proverbs, dear.”

“And David?”

“David, when he heard the news, fell into the fever again; worse than ever. Many was the night Horatio never came home at all, expecting each morning to be the last! It was a terrible time, but, thank the Lord, he got well, if well it can be called. And then this kind of thing began. He withdrew himself completely, no one was ever admitted. Bindon became a waste and a desert. He cannot forgive, child, and he cannot forget—and that is the long and the short of it! Horatio has secured an honest bailiff for the estate, ’twas all he could avail—but, inside, that rogue Margery Nutmeg reigns supreme! And, upon my soul, if something’s not done, brother Simon and cousin David will be both fit for bedlam before the end of the chapter!”

Here the flow of Madam Tutterville’s eloquence was suddenly checked. She sniffed, she snorted; there was a rattle of buckram skirts as of the clank of armour resumed. With finger sternly extended she pointed in the direction of the window—all the gossip in her again sunk in the apostle.

Ellinor’s eyes followed the direction of the finger.

The casement gave upon a green-hedged path that led from one of the moat-bridges to the courtyards behind the keep. By this path the villagers were admitted to Bindon House.

The head of a lame man bobbed fantastically across Ellinor’s line of vision. This apparition was succeeded immediately by that of a fiery shock of hair over which met, in upstanding donkey’s ears, the ends of a red handkerchief folded round an almost equally red expanse of swollen cheek. The silhouette of a girl holding her apron to one eye next flitted past.

“In the name of Heaven,” exclaimed Ellinor, “is the whole of Bindon sick this morning? And what brings them to the house?”

“The evil one is still busy among them,” quoth the parson’s wife oracularly, “and I grieve to say it is your father who is his minister!”

There was something so irresistibly comic in the angry disorder noticeable on the face, heretofore so kindly placid, of Madam Tutterville, that her niece was again overcome by laughter.

“Do not laugh!” said the lady severely; “‘The mirth of fools is as the cackle of thorns’—Ecclesiastes—We may all have to laugh one day at the wrong side of our mouths. I live in fear of a great calamity. There have been mistakes already!” she added, lowering her voice to a mysterious whisper, “as Horatio and I know.”

Ellinor had grown grave again.

“Even doctors are not infallible,” said she reproachfully. “Is poor father the minister of evil because he may have made a mistake?”

“Ah, child, that’s just it! Brother Simon is not a doctor, he is—I don’t know what he is. He tries his herbs and plants upon the village folk. They flock to him and swallow his drugs because he bribes them, my love, by playing on their heathen superstitions about spells and fairies and bogles and what not. They believe themselves cured because they believe him to be in league with the powers of darkness—a warlock, Ellinor! Bred in the bone, alas! Horatio may joke about it, but so long as I have life I will combat that back-sliding influence. God knows, it is ill and hard work. I am as the voice of one crying in the wilderness to the locusts and wild honey, but I’ll not lift my finger from the plough now!”

She rose. “Come child,” she commanded; and followed by Ellinor, led the way downstairs and through long passages to a small dairy room, the window of which gave upon the outer entrance to Master Simon’s laboratory.

Here, with tragic gesture, she halted, and bade her niece look forth.

The lagging sun of autumn had travelled but a small part of its ascent, and the green inner courtyard of what was known as “the keep wing” of Bindon, so stilly enclosed by its three tall walls and the towering screen of the keep itself, was yet in shadow—not the cheerless, universal grey of a clouded sky, but the friendly, coloured shadiness that is the sunshine’s own doing.

Against the grey stone walls the spreading branches of the blush-rose trees that had yielded of yore so much sweetness to Ellinor’s childish grasp, clung, yellowing and now but thinly clad, yet not all dismantled, with here and there a wan flower or a brave rosebud to bear witness, like the gems of poor gentility, to past riches.

The scene, the special savour of wet grass, the fragrant breath of the dairy were of old familiar to Ellinor; but not so the bench placed upon the flags alongside the wall, with its row of dismal figures; not so the businesslike-looking table, whereat, behind a score of gallipots and phials, a basin of water and a basket full of leaves, stood Master Simon in his flowing gown. He was gravely investigating through his spectacles the finger which a boy whimperingly upheld for his inspection. The while, Barnaby, uncouthly busy, flitted to and fro between his master’s chair and the steps that led down to the laboratory.

Ellinor leant out of the window to gaze in surprise. Here, then, was the work which her father could only pursue in solitude! She now understood the nature of this branch of his studies: the student was testing upon the corpus vile of the willing population the virtues of his simples! “Fortunately,” thought Ellinor, “such remedies can proverbially do but little harm and often do much good.” And she watched his doings with amused interest.

But Madam Tutterville could not look upon them in the same tolerant spirit. When she had numbered the congregation, she stood a moment with empurpled cheeks and rounded lips, inhaling a mighty breath of reprobation, preparatory to launching forth the “word in reason and out of reason” as soon as she saw her chance.

“Now, Thomas Lane,” said the unconscious Master Simon impressively, as he wrapped round the finger a rag smeared with green ointment, “if you do as I bid you the fairies won’t pinch your poor thumb any more; let me see it next Tuesday. Who is next?”

The buxom damsel, whom Ellinor had noted and who still held the corner of her apron to her eye, advanced and curtseyed.

“Deborah!” cried Madam Tutterville, recognising with horror one of her model village maids.

Master Simon shot a swift glance upwards from under his bushy brows; too well did he recognise the tones of his sister’s voice. Ellinor had not deemed him capable of looking so angry; and, unwilling to be associated with any hostile interference, she moved away quietly from her aunt’s side, left the room and proceeded to the courtyard itself. She was drawn thither also by another reason. There is the woman who shrinks from the sight of sores and wounds; and there is the woman whose sensitiveness takes the form of longing to lave and bind. She was of the latter.

When she reached the table the action had briskly begun between Madam Tutterville and her brother. The artillery on the lady’s side was characterised rather by rapidity of delivery than by accuracy of aim. The old man’s replies were few and short, but every shot told.

Deborah, distracted between awe of the wizard’s cunning and deference to a reproving yet liberal mistress, stood whimpering between the two fires of words, her apron making excursions from the sick to the sound eye. Some of the patients grinned, others looked alarmed.

“Are ye not afraid of the Judgment?” Madam Tutterville was saying, ever more fancifully biblical as her wrath rose higher. “So it’s your eye that’s sore, Deborah! I’m not surprised. Remember how Elijah the sorcerer was struck blind by Peter!”

Deborah wailed:

“Please, ma’am, it wasn’t Peter, it was the cat’s tail!”

“The cat’s tail, Deborah! There is no truth in thy bones!”

“Tut, tut!” here interposed Master Simon. “Who bid you go to the cat’s tail?—Sophia, life is short. You are wasting an hour of valuable existence. Go away!”

“’Tis the punishment of the deceitful man,” intoned Madam Tutterville from her window as from a pulpit, and emphatically pounded the sill. “‘By their figs ye shall know them!’ This cat’s tail work is the fruit of the tree of your black art, Simon Rickart, of your unholy necrology!”

The simpler’s voice cut in like a knife:

“Who bid you rub your sore eye with a cat’s tail?”

“Please, sir, please, ma’am, Peter hadn’t anything to say to it, indeed he hadn’t. But, please, ma’am, it was parson’s brindled cat, and Mrs. Rachael—that’s the cook at Madam’s, sir—she do tell me nothing be better for a sore eye than the wiping of it with a brindled cat’s tail. And please, ma’am, I held him while she did rub my sore eye.”

“Mrs. Rachael!”

This was none less than Sophia’s own estimable cook, who read her Bible as earnestly as Madam herself, and was the stoutest church woman (and the best cook) in the country; the model, in fact, of Madam Tutterville’s making.

Master Simon was deftly laving the inflamed eye. And into the silence allowed for this startling minute by his sister’s discomfiture he dropped a few sarcastic words:

“You are fond of texts, Sophia.—Here is one for you: ‘First cast the beam out of thine own eye.’ You have an admirable way of applying them, pray apply this: ‘Cast the sorcery out of thine own kitchen.’ Cats’ tails, indeed! Now, remember, child! (has anyone got a soft handkerchief) I am the only proper authorised magician in this county. If you want magic, come to me and leave Mrs. Rachael and her brindled receipts severely alone. You understand what I mean; I am Bindon’s sorcerer as much as parson is Bindon’s parson.”

Here he seized the silk handkerchief which Ellinor silently offered and began to fold it neatly on the table. Next, from his basket he selected certain bright-green leaves of smooth and cool texture. One of these he clapped over the flaming orb, and tied the silk handkerchief neatly across it.

“And with that upon your eye, my dear, you may defy,” he remarked, maliciously, “even the witch and her cat.—Let me see it next Friday.”

The poor lady at the window was by no means willing to admit defeat; but, nonplussed for the moment, she babbled more incoherently than usual in the endeavour to return the attack.

“The Devil can quote scripts from texture!”

“But give him his due, Sophia, give him his due: he can quote at least with accuracy! Ha, ha!—Now, Amos Mossmason, come forward! I thought you’d come to me at last! I have ready for thee a brew of the most superlative quality! You’re pretty bad, I see, but we shall have you dancing at the harvest-home. Here are seven little packets, one for every day in the week in a cup of water. The little plant, Amos, from which I have extracted this precious stuff, was known to Hippocrates as Chara Saxifraga (think of that!), and those wise and learned men, the Monks of Sermano—”

At this Madam Tutterville again lifted up her voice, and with such piercing insistence that it became impossible to ignore her.

“Now, indeed, has Satan revealed himself! Amos Mossmason, beware! Have nought to do with these Popish spells—it is thus the Scarlet Woman disseminates poison!”

At the word poison the patient hurriedly dropped the packets back on the table, and stared in dismay from the lady of the church to the gentleman of science.

Ellinor, keeping well in the shadow of the window-ledge, out of the range of her aunt’s vision, was startled in the midst of her amusement by an unexpected thunder in her father’s voice:

“Sophia,” he commanded, “go back to your home, open your Bible and seek among the Proverbs for the following text, to wit: ‘The legs of the lame are not equal, so is a parable in the mouth of fools.’ ... Thereupon meditate! You are a good creature, but weak in the brain, and you do not know your place among the people. Go!”

Madam Tutterville gave a small cry like that of a clucking hen suddenly seized by the throat. She staggered from the window and retired. To confound her by a text was indeed to seethe the kid in its mother’s milk.

“Amos,” said Master Simon, “don’t you be a fool too; take your powders and begone likewise, and let me hear of you next week. Now who will hold the bandage while I dress Ebenezer Tozer’s sore ear?”

“I will,” said Ellinor.

“So you are there?” said the father, without astonishment. “Why, you seem always to be at hand when wanted!”

And Ellinor smiled, well content.

Madam Tutterville sat on a stool in the dairy, fanning herself with her kerchief. She was in a sort of mental swoon, unable as yet to realise the fact that she and the church had been worsted before their own flock.

Presently, with deliberate step, emphasised by a rhythmic jingle of keys, the housekeeper of Bindon appeared in the doorway and looked in upon her in affected astonishment.

Mrs. Margery Nutmeg had a meek and suave countenance under a spotless high-cap unimpeachably goffered and tied under her chin. Her cheeks looked surprisingly fresh and smooth for her sixty-five years; her hair, banded across her placid forehead, was surprisingly black. Her eye moved slowly. She was neither tall nor short, neither fat nor thin. Her hands were folded at her waist. Anything more decent, more respectful, more completely attuned to her proper position, it would be impossible to imagine. Yet before this redoubtable woman, Bindon House and village shook; and in spite of valiant denunciations at a distance Madam Tutterville herself was rather disposed to conciliate than to rebuke her when they met.

There was indeed no one at the present moment whom she so little desired as witness to her discomposure. Quite deserted by her usual volubility, she had no word by which to retrieve the situation. It was almost an imploring eye that she rolled over the fluttering kerchief. She knew Margery Nutmeg.

“Ain’t you well, ma’am?” asked that dame, with dulcet tones of sympathy.

Madam Tutterville tried to smile, gave it up, panted and shook her head.

“Don’t you, ma’am,” implored Margery, after a moment’s unrelenting gaze, “don’t you, now, so agitate yourself. It’s not good for you, Miss Sophia, I beg pardon, I mean ma’am. It’s not indeed! And you so stout and short-necked! Eh, we’re all sorry for you: the way you’ve been treated, and before the villagers too! But, there, Master Rickart is a very learned gentleman! You ought to be more careful of yourself, ma’am, knowing what a loss you’d be to us all! It do go to my heart to hear your breath going that hard! Let me get you a glass of buttermilk—’tis a grand thing for thinning the blood.”

Madam Tutterville pushed away the officious hand and moved past the steady figure with an indignant ejaculation:

“Margery, you’re an impudent woman!”

She had not even the relief of a text upon her tongue. Her florid cheek had grown pale as she tottered out again through the now empty courtyard. Yes, it was a painfully broad shadow that went by her side. She longed for the comfort of her Horatio’s philosophic presence; for the respectful atmosphere of her own well-ordered household. But she dared not hurry: for there was no doubt of it, her breathing was short.

“Dear, dear,” said Master Simon, “what can have become of my ‘Woodville’?”

Ellinor looked up from the little packet of powdered herbs that for the last hour, in the stillness of the laboratory, she had been weighing and dividing.—Great had been her delight to find her help accepted without fresh demur, for she was bent on making herself indispensable.

“My ‘Woodville,’ child!” repeated Master Simon. “Ah, true, true, it has been taken back to the library. David is a good lad, but I could wish him less absolutely particular about his books. Books are made for use, not to show a pretty binding on a shelf! But stars and books—’tis all he cares for!”

Ellinor rose and slipped from the room. Well, she remembered the old “Woodville,” in its grey-tooled vellum with the thick bands and clasps. She knew its very resting-place, between “Master Parkinson,” in black gilt calf, and “Gerard’s Herbal,” in oaken boards.

Once outside she stretched her limbs after the cramping work and began humming the refrain of a little song that came back to her, she knew not how or why, as she plunged into the loneliness of the rambling corridors:

At a bend of the passage she stopped: she thought she heard a stealthy footfall behind, and her heart beat faster for the moment with a sense of long-forgotten child-terrors. Then the woman reasserted herself. Yet, as she took up the burden of her catch again and walked on steadily, Mrs. Marvel tossed her head in just the same defiant manner as had been the wont of the child Ellinor, who would have died rather than own to fear.

Dim was the library, but with a warm and golden dimness that was as far removed from gloom as the warm twilight of a golden day.

The scent of the burning wood upon the hearth mingled with the spice of the old leather—Persian, Russian, Morocco, Calf—with the pungency of the old parchment and of the old print upon ancient paper. The air was filled as with the breath of ages.

There is not one of our senses which so masterfully controls the well-springs of memory as that rather contemned and (in this our western hemisphere) uncultivated sense of smell. With a rush as of leaping waters, the founts of the past now fully opened upon Ellinor—bitter and sweet together, as the waters of memory always are. Here had she taken refuge many a time, in the days when nothing stirred in the library but the fire licking the logs, and (as she loved to fancy) the kind, honest spirits of the dead.

Every imaginative child has its bugbear, self-created, or imposed on its helplessness by the coward cruelty of some older person. Her childish dreams had been haunted by that perfectly respectable-looking and urbane bogey, Margery Nutmeg. Under the housekeeper’s sleek exterior she had instinctively felt an extraordinary power of malice, and had always recoiled from her most coaxing approach with a repulsion that nothing could conquer. Just now, as she came along the passage, she had vaguely thought, just as in the old days, that Margery might be secretly following her.

She laughed at herself as she closed the door; but the sound of the catching lock struck comfort in her heart, and so did the enclosed feeling of sanctuary, of protection.

“Oh, dear old room!” she said aloud. “Dear old books, dear friendly hearth! God grant this may indeed be home at last!”

She looked round, from the oriel window, purple-hung with its deep recess; from its shelves, seat, and screen, set apart like the side chapel of a cathedral for private devotion, to the high-carved ceiling where, in faded colours, the coat-of-arms of past Cheverals displayed honours that could never fade. She kissed her hand to the full length Reynolds of that Sir Everard Cheveral, whose daughter had been her own mother, empanelled above the stone mantelpiece. It was sweet to feel one of such a house.

Again she spoke, half to herself, half to the mellow, genial presentment of her ancestor:

“You would have said that no daughter of Bindon should seek refuge elsewhere but in the house of her fathers.”

“Please, ma’am,” said a low voice at her elbow.

Ellinor started. A woman whom life had taught to keep her nerves under control, it is doubtful whether anything but the old terrors of her childhood would have had the power to send the blood thus back to her heart. Mrs. Nutmeg was at her elbow—Mrs. Nutmeg hardly changed, with the same obsequious smile and deadly eye, dropping another curtsey of greeting as their glances met, and speaking in the familiar, purring manner:

“Mrs. Marvel, ma’am, begging you’ll forgive the liberty in offering you my respectful welcome! I made so bold as to follow you and trust you will excuse the intrusion.”

“How do you do?” said Ellinor.

This, of all possible greetings, was the one she least desired. She hated herself for her weakness; but as she held out her hand, she shrank inwardly from the remembered touch.

“How do you do, ma’am?” responded the other, with perfunctory humility. “I trust I see you well.”

“Thank you,” said Mrs. Marvel over her shoulder, more shortly than her wont, and turned to the shelf to look for her father’s book.

But the obnoxious presence was not so easily dismissed. It followed her to the shelves; it stood behind her; it breathed in her ear. After a minute of irritated endurance, during which her mind absolutely refused to work, Ellinor whisked round impatiently.

“Well?”

“Asking your pardon, ma’am. But, as you are aware, I was unable to attend to you last night, having only returned this morning from Devizes. I must beg your forgiveness for anything you might have to complain of, not having been made aware that you were coming.”

“Oh, everything was quite comfortable,” began Ellinor. Then suddenly remembering her raid over-night, she hesitated and fell silent.

“Yes, ma’am,” pursued the housekeeper, who, among other uncanny characteristics, possessed that of answering thoughts rather than words. “Yes, I was sorry indeed to hear that you had to get things for yourself. I am sure if Sir David knew, it would go near to make Mr. Giles lose his place, that a guest should be treated so—him that has the cellar key on trust, so to speak.”

“I shall explain to your master,” said Ellinor, after a perceptible pause.

“Thank you, ma’am. Mr. Giles and me would be obliged. No doubt my master will give me instructions. But I should be grateful—having to provide, and gentlemen liking different fare. (I ought to know their tastes by this time, ma’am.) But ladies being otherwise, and not proposing to lay before you what satisfies us humble servants—I should be grateful to you, ma’am, to let me know how many days your visit at the House is likely to be.”

Again there was silence. Ellinor stood looking down, struggling against the feeling of helplessness that seemed to be closing in upon her. Once more the undignified side of her position reasserted itself. But she fought against the thought. Why, between high-minded people of the same blood should this sordid question of give and take come to awaken false pride? Nay, could she not actually serve David by her presence? The hand and eye of a mistress were sorely needed here. Truly, she had heard enough from Madam Tutterville, seen enough herself on the previous night, to realise that Bindon House had become but as a vast cheese in the heart of which the rats preyed unrebuked.

“I cannot tell you yet,” said she steadily, though the ripe colour still mounted in her cheeks.

Margery blinked softly like a cat, and, like a cat with claws folded in, she stood. Her voice had a comfortably shocked note as she replied:

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“That will do,” cried Ellinor.

“Yes, ma’am, thank you. No doubt. But until my master gives me my instructions——”

She stopped; in the listening silence of the room a slight noise had caught her ear. She looked slowly round and Ellinor followed the direction of her eye. From the window recess Sir David himself had emerged, pen in hand, and now came towards them.

Mrs. Nutmeg passed the corner of her apron over her lips and dropped her curtsey. Ellinor stood, her head thrown back like a young deer, watching her cousin’s advance with a look of confidence, though beneath her folded kerchief her heart beat quick.

He took her hand, bent, and kissed it. Then retaining it in his, turned upon the housekeeper. Ellinor, with the clasp of his fingers going straight to her heart, was unable to shift her gaze from his face.

“You wish for instructions, Margery,” said he, “take them now. You shall obey this lady as you would myself. While she remains here you shall treat her as my honoured guest. Long may it be! And further, if she so pleases, Mr. Rickart’s daughter shall be looked upon as mistress at Bindon. And what she does or orders to be done shall be well done for me.”

Margery dipped humble acquiescence to each command.

Ellinor had not thought those dreamy eyes of David’s could give so cold and yet angry a flash. His brows were hardly knitted, and his voice, though raised to extra clearness, was singularly under control; yet she had a sudden revelation, not only of present anger in the man, but of an extraordinary capacity for strong emotion. And she thought that if ever an evil fate should bring her beneath his wrath, it would be more than she could bear.

“Go, now,” said Sir David, still addressing his servant, “but remember, and let the household remember, that though I prefer to watch the stars rather than your doings, I am not really blind to what goes on.”

“I am truly glad, sir, to be authorised to give the servants any message from you,” said Mrs. Nutmeg.

She reached the door, paused and threw one of her expressionless glances for no longer than a second or two towards Ellinor; raising her eyes, however, no higher than the knees. Then the door closed softly upon the retreating figure.

David’s slightly slackened grasp was tightened for a moment round his cousin’s fingers, then it relinquished them.

“Forgive me, Ellinor,” said he, “a bad master makes a bad host.”

“David,” said she, looking him bravely in the eyes, “I have hardly a guinea in the world.”

“Oh,” he cried quickly, “you humiliate me——”

She interrupted him in her turn, and as quickly:

“Oh, no, indeed do not think that because of what she said I should seek such protestation from you. But David, though I came here because it was the only refuge open to me, I could not stay unless I had a task to do. I saw last night—before I had been in dear old Bindon an hour—that sadly you want one honest servant here. Let me be that servant to your house; let me be at least now what Aunt Sophia was. I can do the work.”

She had flushed and paled as she spoke, but gained confidence towards the end; and she looked what she felt herself to be, a strong, capable woman.

His eye dwelt upon her, not as last night in exaltation that amounted to hallucination, but as one whose deep and restless sadness finds an unsought peace.

“Will you, indeed?” he said at last. “Will you indeed take under your gracious care my poor, neglected house?”

Their eyes met again. It was a silent compact. After a little pause:

“Do you not think I am very brave to be ready to face Margery?” she asked, with a mischievous dimple.

At this his rare smile flashed out—that smile before which she felt, as she had already over-night, that, in her heart, she abdicated.

“Oh, I know Margery well,” he said, “but her husband was my father’s faithful man, and to keep her was a promise to his dying ears. She knows it and trades on it. I am not—do not believe it,” he added, “quite the lunatic cousin Simon would make me out. At least, I have my lucid moments. This is one. I have profited by it.”

“So have I,” said Ellinor with a lovely smile of gratitude that robbed the words of any flippancy.

They turned together, tall woman behind tall man, the crest of her copper curls on a level with his eyes. Thus they traversed together the great length of the room. Once she paused, mechanically to draw a bunch of dead roses from a dried-up vase—roses placed there, God knows how many summers ago! He marked the action by a glance. Almost unconsciously she lifted the powdering flowers to her lips, inhaling their faint, ghostly fragrance.

As they passed the window recess where, unknown to the new-comers, he had been sitting at his work, he stopped in his turn to lay a paper-weight on the loose sheets that were scattered on the table. A great map, from Hevelius’s Atlas of the Stars, lay outspread, and displayed its phantom-like constellation figures. Ellinor bent down to look.

“See,” said he gravely, placing his finger on the regal crown that the genial old astronomer had lovingly designed for Corona Borealis—“see, it is there that the new star has come into being; a fresh gem to the Crown of the North, fairer even, with its sapphire glance, than Margarita the pearl——”

She looked up, inquiringly:

“Your star?”

“My star,” he answered.

Her words pleased him, and he marked the earnest brilliancy of her blue eyes. His answering look, though unconsciously, was tender as a caress; and she felt it most sweetly. The crumbling rose-leaves scattered themselves in powder upon his papers. She brushed them impatiently away with a superstitious feeling that the past was already too much with her, too much with him. And as she leaned over the table, the live, real, blushing rose that she had gathered in the courtyard that morning loosened itself from her bosom and fell softly on the outmost sheet of the manuscript notes. Here David’s hand had sketched boldly the wreath-like constellation that had borne him an unexpected blossom.

Ellinor saw her flower lie upon it with pleasure.

“Could Hevelius have seen his crown so enriched—but it is given to few to chronicle a name in the Heavens! A star may appear and then wane, but not this one, not this one!” He spoke half to himself.

“When was the last great star born?” she asked.

“Before this old Hevelius’ day,” said David. He drew another map from under the tossed book and flung it open for her, never heeding that it rested on the petals of her rose. “But see here, 1660—on a day of rejoicing for England—the King had returned to his own—what seemed to many to be a new star appeared, brightly burning. Flamsteed named it, out of the joy of the people, Cor Caroli—the Heart of Charles.”

“The heart of Charles,” she repeated. “It is pretty. What will you call yours?”

“I dare not name it yet,” he said.

“Dare not?” she echoed astonished.

“Lest it should belie me—fade and leave me the poorer,” he answered.

There came a silence. The clock punctuated the fitful rushing sound of the wind round the house, ticked off a minute of life for Ellinor as full of thought and as pregnant of possibility, as sweet and as rich in promise as any she had ever passed in her already eventful life.

She had the impression of some extraordinary happiness that might be hers; that yet was so elusive, so high, so shy a thing, that it would melt away in the grasp of human hands. She had, too, a little unreasonable foreboding, because her rose lay crushed under his astronomy. With a sigh at last, chiding herself for folly and dreams unworthy of her new life—she who had offered herself, and been accepted as his servant, no more—she moved away from the table.

The action roused him. He went with her. On the way to the door he made another halt, and indicated by a slight gesture the urbane countenance of that common ancestor whom Ellinor had addressed and who now, lighted up by a capricious ray, seemed to look down upon them with a living eye of favour. She stood confused as she remembered how boldly, as if by right of kinship, she had claimed aloud in that silent room the hospitality of Bindon.

“I only represent him here,” said he, divining her thought.

“Ah, cousin David,” said she, “say what you will, my father and I will always be deeply in your debt.”

He turned and looked at her gravely.

“Surely,” he answered, after a pause, “a man’s inheritance is not solely his own. It is but a trust. It is to be used and passed on. Those that come after me,” added he musingly, “will not be the poorer, but the richer for my unwonted mode of life. Yet, meanwhile, Ellinor, you can help me to put to better purpose the wealth yearly expended in this house. For there are abuses in a household which only a woman’s hand can reach.”

“They shall be reached then,” said she.