The star dreamer: A romance

It was late at night when Colonel Harcourt dismounted, stiff and tired, in front of the Cheveral Arms. He had successfully sought at Bath a pair of friends who were to call upon Sir David on the morrow; but he had, somewhat morosely, declined their proffered hospitality. For some ill-defined reason he had been drawn back to Bindon.

The sleepy landlord had but a poor supper to serve: per contra an excellent bottle of wine. One, indeed, that so curiously resembled the Clos-Royal of which the colonel had approved at Bindon House that, as he tasted it, he found himself sardonically regretting that he had not pressed a more handsome gratuity into old Giles’s palm.

Indeed, he soon called for another bottle. Yet he was in no better a humour after the cracking of the second seal. The thoughts seething in his brain remained as dark and heavy as the liquor in his glass, but were far from being as generous.

His physical equilibrium was disturbed. It had always been a part of Antony Harcourt’s power with men, as with women, that no matter how seriously they might take him, he should take himself and them with gentlest ease. But to-night he was a prey to two passions that would not let their presence be denied. A passion of resentment against his whilom host; a longing to feel his own hand striking that cold, pale cheek, or yet to see a thin stain of blood upon that affectedly old-fashioned waistcoat spreading and running down, whilst he should smile and wonder that it should actually show red.

The other passion! He was in love with the widow Marvel—as damnably in love as the raw boy, Herrick, himself, with the added torture of the roué who has never yet known denial, of the materialist who can console himself with no poetic fancies and can dull his senses with no falutin of sensibility.

A month ago, if anyone had told him that his elegant person should house two such wild beasts, he would not have thought the suggestion even worth the trouble of a smile. Now, as he lay back on his wooden chair, eyeing the ruby in his glass with a deep, vindictive eye, Colonel Harcourt felt his savage guests tear at him, and was in as dangerous a mood as ever undid a fool or made a criminal. All at once the heat of the room, of the wine, of his own fierce mood, stifled him. He rose, lit himself a cigar, and sallied out, bare-headed and uncloaked, into the sweet, still night.

The inn stood a little apart from the village—a gunshot distance from the gates of Bindon Park. Colonel Harcourt paced a few steps down the moonlit white road and paused, drawing reflective puffs, feeling almost without noticing how grateful was the cool air upon his head, hearing without listening the mysterious whisper of the trees on the other side of the park walls. He moved his cigar from his lips and hesitated.

Then, on an impulse that was as sudden as it was purposeless, he turned off from the hard road, silver in the moonlight, and struck over the stile into the darkness of the narrow, tree-shaded path that led to the church on the grounds. From this, giving the Rectory a wide berth, he branched off, and, aimlessly enough, directed his steps towards the House. Twelve strokes of the night floated gravely from the little square church tower. A dog bayed in the village and was answered in deeper note from Bindon stable-yards. On went Antony Harcourt fitfully, slowly, now pausing, now beating time with steady footfall to an evil little pipe of song that the dark secret world and his own heart seemed to take up, one after the other, like a catch.

A dry stick snapped sharply under his feet, the light of a lantern flashed upon his face, a hand fell heavily on his shoulder. It was one of the keepers, who instantly apologised profoundly to Bindon’s personable guest and sped him on his way with a reverential “Good-night, sir,” succeeded by a stare and a shrug. The ways of gentle-folk were strange.

Burgundy is a wine that long remains hot in the blood. Colonel Harcourt’s pulses were throbbing. A curious excitement pervaded his being. Like the sails of a mill under a fitful breeze, anon his brain whirled with plans, anon seemed to stagnate, unable to formulate a thought. He found himself at last standing at the entrance of the ruins, at the back of the Herb-Garden. Before him the tower-wing of the house cut the shimmering star-shine with pointed gable, with massed chimney stack, with the huge black square of the keep, all fantastically picked out by stripes of moonlight. The curious exotic spices of the Herb-Garden rose against his nostrils.

He flung upwards a look of scorn:—was the brain-sick star-gazer even now at his telescope? Upon the sweep of his downward glance an illumined window caught and arrested his attention. He made a rapid calculation from the gables—Mistress Marvel’s window!

Lady Lochore still kept them at late hours it seemed, in this whilom sleepy house! The fair widow was doubtless but just disrobing for the night. As he gazed somewhat sentimentally—what tricks will Clos-Royal and the witchery of a Lammas-night play even with a middle-aged gentleman of vast experience and acute sense of humour!—suddenly he started and stared, open mouthed upon a curse.

Something black and tall and slight, a man’s figure, had appeared against the bright open window, cutting it across with outstretched arms and, almost at the same moment, something dimly pale and of soft outline, a woman’s figure, flung itself between his eyes and the unexpected vision. He caught a glimpse of white bare arms. Then all vanished again as if it had not been, and there was naught but the lighted window, open to the night, confiding, innocent, tranquil.

Colonel Harcourt gnashed his teeth and cursed long and deep within himself. For all his libertine theories and Lady Lochore’s denunciations he had never doubted for a moment but that Mrs. Marvel’s favours were a prize as yet untouched. And now—behold! One more audacious than himself had slily reached up and plucked the golden fruit!

“By the Lord, I’ll run that Lovelace to earth!” This was the first articulate thing out of his fury.

He began scrambling through the ruins in his frantic desire to reach a closer point of view. A dangerous way, in truth, but one that would perchance prove more dangerous by daylight, since the perils that are unknown do not exist and the god of chance proverbially favours the reckless. Colonel Harcourt risked his life a score of times and knew it not. Hot in his determination, he scarcely felt the hurt when he fell; and, when he spurned the crumbling, slipping stone beside him, the sound of its drop into unknown vaults evoked no image of what he himself had escaped. As little had he heeded the song of the bullet in his ear or the roar of the mine beside him when he had led his lads up the French lines at Barrosa, a dozen years before. Torn, panting, bruised, he landed at length safely on a poison-plot of the Herb-Garden. Even as he looked up again the light at the gable-end window went out.

With that light went out his own heat of disappointed passion. Homme à bonnes fortunes as he was, he was not the man to care to come second anywhere. Mrs. Marvel’s chief charm after all had been her unattainableness. The colonel, as he stood in the moonlight, was all at once a sober man. It seemed to him now that, culminating with that second bottle, he had gradually been getting drunk this whole fantastic fortnight.

“What, in all the devils’ names, did it really matter that a weak-minded recluse should slight him and his fellow guests, that he should have taken upon himself this absurd challenge, from which there was now no retreat? What was there in the country widow? And why should he have seen red because of the timely discovery that she was wanton and not virtuous? And how the devil was he to get out of this infernal garden?”

A pretty situation wherein to bring his forty-eight years’ experience and his thirteen stone of flesh! As he ruefully felt over his bruised body and damaged garments, his fingers struck against a hard outline in his waistcoat pocket. The key! He gave a soft chuckle. It was a poor end to a summer night’s venture, but an undoubted relief to be able to extricate oneself in commonplace fashion by walking out through an open gate.

Wrapping his philosophical humour round him as the best cloak to cover his sense of moral dilapidation, he was cautiously picking his way, when he became aware of a hasty footstep behind him. As he turned round, the moonlight showed him a tall, slender black figure, a haggard, white face!

“Luke Herrick!”

“Colonel Harcourt!”

The older man was the first to speak. He was not astonished—only (he told himself) highly amused. There was a tone in his voice, however, which belonged less to amusement than to some biting desire to use the keenest-edged weapon wits could provide.

“How fortunate that I should have the key of the gate and be able to let you out, Mr. Herrick!”

He began to fumble for the lock in the darkness of that shaded spot, and laughed as he felt the young man press forward suddenly behind him and then draw back a step with a hissing breath. The gate creaked on its hinges. Colonel Harcourt, with a gesture the mocking courtesy of which was lost in the night, invited the other to proceed.

“After you, sir. Why do you hesitate? It is quite fit that dashing youth should take precedence of middle-age on certain occasions.”

Herrick clenched his fist; then with a desperate effort regained control of his most sore and injured self and stalked out of the garden, spurning that earth his feet would tread for the last time.

“You walk late, my young friend,” resumed Harcourt, as he joined him.

“So do you, sir!” cried Herrick thickly.

The colonel laughed with quite a mellow sound. In proportion as Herrick’s discomfiture became manifest his own geniality returned.

“Our ways lie together as far as the moat-bridge,” remarked he.

Herrick made no reply. What though she had fallen, and fallen to such an one, she was still a woman; and through him, who had worshipped her, shame should not come upon her. Let Harcourt mock and jeer in his triumph, he would be patient ... till a fitter moment.

“By George! our little Romeo is discreet,” thought the colonel. “But I’ll loosen your tongue yet, you dog!—A charming night!” quoth he aloud. “Delightful last remembrance to carry away with one, is it not?”

Herrick paused for an appreciable instant; then steadily took up his way again, still in silence.

“I presume you leave to-morrow?” pursued the elder man. “Our good host——”

“You, I presume,” interrupted Herrick, “intend to remain, at least in the neighbourhood!”

They were in the thickest shade of the shrubbery, but each knew the other’s eye upon him. Their attitude, morally, was like that of men fencing in the dark, feeling blade on blade yet never venturing a full thrust.

“You are right. I do not leave just yet. In truth, I have a transaction to complete before I altogether withdraw from this delightful spot. But you——”

“I, sir?” echoed Luke, breathing quickly through his nostrils.

“Oh, you——” Harcourt laughed good-humouredly, almost paternally. “I was going, I declare, to commit the folly, unpardonable in my years, of offering a young man advice. I was going to say, my good lad, that from the poetic point of view, your visit here must have been so inspiring, so, what shall I say? so eminently successful, that it would be a thousand pities for you to prolong it. Disillusion,” he added, with a light sigh, “swiftly follows upon joy.”

Herrick chewed a thousand savage retorts, but let not one escape beyond his clenched teeth.

“You have doubtless a vast experience, sir,” he responded at last; and the colonel was forced to admit in his own mind that his adversary was stronger than he had deemed him.

In this mood they reached the moat-bridge, and the full-spaced moonlight. Then both paused, and, for the first time, saw each other clearly. The imaginary rivals stood a moment and took stock of each other’s tell-tale appearance.

“By the Lord,” thought Colonel Harcourt, running his eye sardonically over the dark stains on Herrick’s handsome evening suit, his tossed and dishevelled hair, “it is all correct and complete! He’s had to come down by the window! The deuce!... I who thought the situation would have suited me!” He had another quiet laugh which enraged the youth almost beyond endurance. For one voluptuous moment Herrick saw himself laying this triumphant elderly Lothario at his feet. For every stain, for every rent in that riding suit, for every stone scratch on those heavy boots—brute beast, who could enter thus into his lady’s presence!—he should feel the cuffing of an honest fist! Nor were Colonel Harcourt’s next words likely to conduce to the young man’s self-control.

“Most poetical Herrick,” he said, “you have lost your hat, and you are in sad need of a brush!”

“For the matter of that, sir, where is your hat? And as for requiring a brush——”

Then he clenched his fist, this time for a most deliberate purpose. The situation was undoubtedly strained. Suddenly a piping voice drew their attention to quite a new quarter.—Upon the other side of the moat-bridge stood the quaint be-frilled, be-ringletted, tightly be-pantalooned figure of Mr. Villars. And even as they gazed this worthy hobbled across and came close to them, his face under the moonlight visibly quivering with excitement.

“My dear Harcourt! ... Luke, my poor lad!”

They turned upon him like angry dogs disturbed in the preliminaries of a private quarrel. The colonel’s somewhat precarious and thin-spread geniality was not proof against this witness of his inexplicable plight.

“My good friends,” pursued Villars, the mystification on his countenance giving way to a gloating delight as he looked from one to the other, “what has happened? This has been indeed a night of adventures! We thought you had gone to Bath, Colonel. Luke, lad, the ladies have missed you—at least some of them, he—he—he!” The skin of his dry hands crackled as he rubbed them. “This is extraordinary. This is something quite romantic, he—he!”

“Mr. Villars,” interrupted Harcourt suddenly, “is it not time you were in your beauty sleep, and your hair in curl papers?”

He turned his broad back upon the inquisitive gentleman and fixed Herrick for a couple of seconds with a hard straight look.

“Colonel Harcourt,” cried the boy hotly in answer, “I am at your service.”

“Mr. Herrick,” returned the other, “you are an understanding youth. I regret to be unable to respond just now as I should wish. But in a few days perhaps—I have a good memory.”

His tone was now as hard as his eye. He nodded towards the speechless poet with a little wave of the hand that was full of significance. Then without further noticing Mr. Villars, he turned on his heel and walked away towards the trees where he was instantly swallowed in the black shadows.

As Herrick stood glaring after him into space, his wrist was seized and a wrinkled eager face was thrust offensively close to his.

“My dear boy, I know all about it—all about it. The Deyvil! But that was a brilliant idea of yours to fox under that cloak. Her suggestion, eh? Naughty boy. Lucky dog, he—he! But what about the colonel, eh? What? You don’t mean to say the pretty widow has two——”

In the great silence of this hour before the dawn the sound of a master slap rang out sharp as a pistol shot; and the echo of it came back like a jeer from the terrace walls.

“A raving lunatic,” said Villars to himself with wry lips, as he nursed his cheek and blankly watched Herrick stride towards the house. “Certainly not worth taking the least notice of!”

Nevertheless, if that young man’s paper ever fell into his hands!

But Herrick was taking to his rooms a heart heavy enough to have satisfied even the financier’s vindictiveness.

Ellinor, after hastily donning a few garments, stole on light foot in her visitors’ wake and reached the cross-door at the instant when, on the other side, the key was being turned by Margery. There she waited in the darkness until voices and footsteps had died away beyond, when, feeling for the old disused bolt on the inside, she drew it into its socket. Then she ran back to her own room. She had arduous work to perform before Margery should have time to return round by all the basement passages to the keep wing and resume her office of spy. She had, by some means or other, to convey David back to his tower so that none should ever know the truth of this night’s events—none but he and she.

How with her unaided strength she was to achieve this she did not stop to consider: it must be done. As she re-entered the room it was a joyful relief to find Barnaby kneeling on the floor beside Sir David.—Barnaby! In the agitation of the night she had forgotten his presence. Barnaby—the ideal silent helper.

The dumb lad looked up, nodded, then pillowed his cheek on his hand, closed his eyes, drew a few deep breaths in pantomime of sleep and nodded again. She knelt down for a moment beside him and laid her hand lightly on David’s brow and over his heart. It was in truth a deep, and it seemed a healing, sleep. Then she rose to her purpose. And in a shorter space of time than she had dared to hope, Barnaby with her help had safely laid Sir David on the couch in the observatory. A pillow was placed under his head, his furred cloak over his feet; and still he slept like a tired-out soldier.

After a quick look round, Ellinor closed the rolling dome and shut out the sky, drew the heavy curtains before the door, and, satisfied that all was as well as she could make it, was hurrying forth again when Barnaby arrested her.

He had been passive enough under her imperative demand for help, but now, to her surprise, the old look of distress and pleading had returned upon his face. Again he plucked her by the sleeve and gesticulated, then stopped short, pointed to the sleeper, and once more made that gesture of conveying something to his lips which he had repeated so often after his attack on Lady Lochore that afternoon.

Ellinor stood still, palsied by the lightning stroke that flashed into her brain: she had divided the cup between David and her father! Now she knew who it was Barnaby was seeking help for with such persistence.

The space of time between the moments when she fled from David’s side and reached the threshold of the laboratory was ever a blank in Ellinor’s memory. She had no consciousness even of Barnaby’s piteous joy at being at last understood, of the long passages, the steep, winding stairs, down and ever down. She never knew that she had crossed Margery coming up with lighted candle, and staring at them in blank amazement. She only knew that, when she stood upon the threshold of the room that had received her with so dear a welcome, there in his chair, under the light of the lamp, sat Master Simon, his grey head fallen forward on his breast. He seemed profoundly and peacefully asleep—just as she had left David. But even before she had laid her hand on his forehead to find it stone cold, she knew in her heart that her father was dead.

Squatting on the old man’s knee, Belphegor gazed at her inquiringly with yellow eyes.

Out of warm slumber, tinted like his books with rich and sober hues of fawn and russet, with here and there a glint of faded gold, Parson Tutterville was roused in the chill encircling dawn by a cry beneath his windows—a wild and urgent cry that drew him from his down before he was well awake:

“Uncle Horatio, for God’s sake!”

And as he thrust his night-capped head out of the casement, he asked himself if he had not suddenly wandered into a terrible dream, for the voice went on:

“My father is dead, and David, for aught I know, is dying!”

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:

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.