THE STAR DREAMER A ROMANCE

INTRODUCTORY

An ancient gateway, looking as though it were closed for ever; with its carved stone pillar bramble-grown, its scrolled ironwork yielded to silence and immobility, to crumbling rust—and through the bars the wild imprisoned garden....

The haunting of the locked door, of the condemned apartment in a house of life and prosperity, how unfailingly it appeals to the romantic fibre! Yet, more suggestive still, in the heart of a rich and trim estate, is the forbidden garden jealously walled, sternly abandoned, weed-invaded, falling (and seemingly conscious of its own doom) into a rank desolation. The hidden room is enigmatic enough, but how stirring to the fancy this peep of condemned ground, descried through bars of such graceful design as could only have been once conceived for the portals of a garden of delight!—Thus stands, in the midst of the nurtured pleasaunces of Bindon-Cheveral, the curvetting iron gate leading to the close known on the estate as the Garden of Herbs—a place of mystery always, as reported by tradition; and, by the legend touching certain events in the life of one of its owners, a place of somewhat sinister repute. Even in the eyes of the casual visitor it has all the air of

xAnd in truth (being fain to pursue the quotation further)

Ancient haunts of men have numberless tongues for those who know how to hear them speak; therein lies the whole secret of the fascination that they cast, even upon the uninitiated. Those, on the other hand, whose minds are attuned to the sweetness of “unheard melodies” turn to such places of long descent with the joy of the lover towards his bridal chamber, for the wedding of fantasy with truth. Divers, indeed, and many, might be the tales which the walls of Bindon-Cheveral could tell, from what remains of its old battlements to the present mansion.

Its front, which the passer-by upon the turnpike-road may in leafless winter-time descry at the end of the long avenue of elms, has the peaceful and rich stateliness of the Jacobean country seat—but there is scarce a stone of its grey masonry, with its wide mullioned windows, its terrace balustrades and garden stairways, that has not once been piled to the arrogant height from which the Bindon Castle of stark Edward’s times looked down upon the country-side. The towers and walls are gone; but the keep still stands, sleeping now and shrouded under centuries of ivy—a kindly massive prop to the younger house, its descendant. The ornamental waters were once defensive moats: red they have turned with other than the sunset glow, and secretly they have rippled to different causes than the casting of a careless stone or the leap of the great fat carp after a bait. Where the pleasure-grounds are now stretched in formal Italian pride spread, centuries back, the outer bailey of the once famous, now forgotten, stronghold.

Stirring would be the Romance of old Bindon I could recount, as old Bindon revealed it to me—many the tales xiof love, of deeds, of hatred, of ambition. I could tell brave things of the builder of the Castle, and how he held the keep in defiance of Longshanks’ royal displeasure; or of the Walter, Lord of Bindon, Knight of the Garter, High Treasurer to the last Lancaster, and of his fortunes between the Two Roses; or yet of his grandson, beheaded after Hexham; and, under Richard Crookback, of the transfer of the good lands of Bindon to the “Jockey of Norfolk” who perished on Bosworth Field.—And these would be tales of clash of steel and waving banner as well as of wily diplomacy. Great figures would stalk across my page; it would be shot with scarlet and gold, royal colours; and high fortunes, those of England herself, would be mingled with the lesser doings of knight and baron.

I could set forth the truth touching some of those inner tragedies, now legendary, that the warlike walls once witnessed after the first Tudor had restored the estate of Bindon to the last descendant of its rightful owner, a Cheveral, whereby the line of Bindon-Cheveral joined on the older branch.—There was the Agnes Cheveral of the ballad singers—“so false and fair”—who left the tradition of poison in the wine cup as a fate to be dreaded by the Lords of Bindon.—And there was the Sir Richard who kept his childless wife a life-long prisoner in the topmost chamber of that keep now so placidly dreaming under its creepers!

Or I could reel you a bustling Restoration narrative of the doing of the Edmund Cheveral known in the family as Edmund the Spendthrift, who had roamed England, hunted and fasting, with Charles; had stagnated with him, had junketed and roystered in Holland. He it was who brought over the shrewish little French wife and her great fortune, and also foreign notions of display, to old English Bindon. He it was who pulled down the gloomy loopholed walls, built the present House, laid out the park and the renowned gardens; who introduced the carp into the pacific moat after the fashion of French xiichâteaux; and who, bitten with fanciful scientific aspiration—a friend of Rupert and a member of the Royal Society—laid out in a sunken and wall-sheltered part of the old fortified ground an inner pleasaunce of exotic plants and shrubs, after the manner of Dutch Physick-Gardens.

Or would you have the story of the new heir—a silent, dark man—and of his mystic Welsh wife and of the new wealth and strain of blood that came with her into the race? Or again, no doubt for those who care to hear the call of horn and hounds, to see the port pass over the mahogany; who find your three-bottle man the best company and the jokes of the stable and of the gun-room the only ones worth cracking with the walnut, there were a pleasant rollicking chapter or two to be chronicled anent the generation of fox-hunting, hard-living Squires who kept Bindon prosperous, made its cellars celebrated and its hospitality a byword.

And yet, my fancy lingers upon the spot where it was first awakened; dwells on the story of the deserted Physick-Garden, with its closed exquisitely-wrought gate, its mystery and its melancholy; with its wildness wherein lies no hint of sordidness, but rather a fascinating, elusive beauty. It is of this that I fain would write.

Standing barred out, in this still autumn twilight, as the first stars flash out faintly on the deepening vault; gazing upon its overgrown paths, where the leaves of so many summers make rich mould; inhaling its strange fragrances, the scent of the wholesome decay of nature mixed with odd spices that come from far lands; hearing the wild birds cry as they fly free in its imprisoned space—it seems to me as if the spirit of my romance dwelt in these, and I could evoke it.

A tale of well-nigh a century ago; when George III. lay dying.—It was a strangely silent Bindon then; and the whole house seemed to lie under much such a spell xiiias now holds its Herb-Garden. Yet those same garden paths, if wild, were not deserted; and the gate, though locked to the world at large, still rolled upon its hinges for one or two who had the key.

In those days of slow journeys and quick adventure, had you been a traveller on the turnpike-road between Devizes and Bath, you could not, looking over the park wall from your high seat, but have been struck by the brooding, solitary look that lay all upon this great House, with its shuttered windows and upon these wide lands, so rich, yet so lonely.

The driver of the coach would, no doubt, have pointed with his whip; his tongue would have been ready to wag—was not Bindon one of the wonders of his road?

“Aye, you might well say it looked strange! There were odd stories about the place, and odd folk living there, if all folk said were true. The owner, Sir David Cheveral (as good blood as any in the county, and once as likely a young man as one could wish to see), had turned crazy with staring at the stars and took no bit nor sup but plain bread and water. That was what some said; and others that he was bewitched by an old kinsman of his that lived with him—an old, old man, bearded like a Jew, who could not die, and who practised spell-work on the village folk. That was what others said. Anyhow, they two lived in there quite alone; one on his tower, the other underground. And that was true. And the flowers bloomed in the garden, and the fruit ripened on the walls; there were horses in the stables and cattle in the byres (the like of which could not be bettered in Wiltshire); the whole place was flowing with milk and honey, as they say, and the only ones to use it all were the servants! Oh, there the servants grew fat and did well, while the master

looked up to the skies and grew lean.”

And presently, to the sound of your driver’s jovial laugh the coach would bowl clear of the long grey walls, emerge from under the overhanging branches; and then the well-known stretch of superb scenery suddenly revealed at the xivbend of the road would perhaps so engross your attention that your transient traveller’s interest in the eccentric, world-forsaking master of Bindon-Cheveral would no doubt have evaporated.

But pray you who travel with me to-day give me longer patience. I have to tell the story of Bindon’s awakening.

CHAPTER I FAIR, YOUNG, CAPABLE HANDS

On that evening of the autumnal equinox Master Simon Rickart—the simpler or the student as he liked to call himself, the alchemist as many held him to be—alone, save for the company of his cat, in his laboratory at the foot of the keep, was luxuriating as usual in his work of research.

The black cat sat by the wood fire and watched the man.

As Master Simon moved to and fro, the topaz eyes followed him. When he spoke (which he constantly did to himself, under his voice and disjointedly, after the wont of some solitary old people) they became narrowed into slits of cunning intelligence. But when the observations were personally addressed to his Catship, Belphegor blinked in comfortable acknowledgment. “As wise as Master Simon himself,” the country folk vowed: and indeed, wherever the fame of the alchemist had spread through the country-side, so had that of the alchemist’s cat.

4There were two fires in the laboratory. One of timber, that roared and crackled its life away and sank into an ever increasing heap of fair white ash. In the vault-like room this fire burned year in year out on a hearth hewn many feet into the deep wall; and from many points of view Belphegor found it vastly more satisfactory than the other fire, which generally engrossed the best of his master’s attention. That was a stealthy red glow, nurtured on a wide stove built into another wall recess, sheltered behind a glass screen under a tall hood:—a fire productive of the strangest smells, at times evil, but as often sweet and aromatic: a fire also productive on occasions of coloured vapours and dancing flamelets of suspicious nature. There, as the cat knew, happened now and again unexpected ebullitions, disastrous alike to the nerves and to the fur. In his kitten days, Belphegor, led ostensibly by overpowering affection but really by the constitutional curiosity of his genus, had been wont to accompany his chosen master behind the screen. He knew better now. And there was a bald

spot near the end of his tail, where no amount of licking on his part, no cunning unguent of Master Simon’s himself could to this day induce a hair to grow again.

The old man had closed the door of the stove; rearranged, crown-like, a set of glass vessels of engaging shapes: alembics and matrasses, filled with decoctions of green and amber, gorgeous colours shot with the red reflection of the fire; tucked a baby-small porcelain crucible in its fireclay cradle and banked the glowing cinders around it. The touch of the wrinkled hands was neat, almost caressing. After a last look around, he emerged, blowing a breath of content:

“Everything in good trim, so far, for to-night’s work, my cat.”

And Belphegor blinked both eyes.

Faint vapours, herb-scented, voluptuous, rose and circled to the groined roof. The log fire on the hearth 5had fallen to red stillness. In the silence, delicate sounds of bubbling and simmering, little songs in different keys, gurgles as of fairy laughter, became audible.

“Hark to it!” said the simpler, and bent his ear with a smile of satisfaction. He spoke in a monotonous undertone, not unlike the muttering of the sleep-walker—“Hark to it! There is a concert for you—new tunes to-night, Belphegor. Strange, delightful! There is not a little plant but has its own voice, its own soul-song. Hark, how they yield them up! Good little souls! Bad little souls, some of them, he, he! Enough in that retort yonder to make helpless idiots, or dead flesh of a hundred lusty men. Dead flesh of eleven such fine cats as yourself and one kitten, he, he! Yet—for properly directed, friend Belphegor, vice may become virtue—enough here to keep the fever from the homestead for three generations....”

The old man moved noiselessly in his slippers across the stone floor, flung a couple of fresh logs on the sinking hearth, then stretched out his frail hands to the blaze and laughed gently. The flame light played fantastically on his shrunken figure:—a being, it would seem, so ætherealised that it scarcely looked as if blood could still be circulating beneath that skin, like yellow ivory, tensely stretched over the vast, denuded forehead and the bold, high-featured face. Mind alone, one would have thought, must animate that emaciated body; mind alone light up those steel-blue eyes with such keenness that, by contrast with the age-stricken countenance, they shone with almost unearthly vitality.

The cat stretched himself, yawned; then advanced, humping his back and bristling, to rub himself against his master’s legs. The fire roared again in the chimney, a score of greedy tongues licking up the last drops of sap that oozed forth, hissing, from the beech logs.

“Aha,” said Master Simon, bending down somewhat painfully to give a scratch to the animal’s neck, “that’s the fire-song you prefer. I fear, I fear, Belphegor, you 6will never rise beyond the grossest everyday materialism!”

Purring Belphegor endorsed the opinion by curling up luxuriously on his head and stretching out his hind paws to the flame. The little scene was an allegory of peace and comfort. The old man, straightening himself, remained awhile musing:

“Well, it is good music—a song of the people. All of the stout woods of Bindon, of the deep English earth, of the salt English airs. No subtle virtue in it: a roaring good tune, a homely smell and a heap of ash behind—but all clean, my cat, clean!”

He gathered the folds of his dressing-gown around him; a garment that had once been wondrous fine and set in fashion (in the days of his elegant youth) by no less a person than his present Majesty, King George IV., but now so stained, so singed and scorched and generally faded, that its original hues were but things of memory.

“And now we shall have a quiet hour before supper. What a good thing, my cat, that neither you nor I are attractive to company! The original man was created to be alone. But the fool could not appreciate his bliss, and so he was given a companion—a woman, Belphegor, a woman!—and Paradise was lost.”

Again Master Simon chuckled. It was a sound of ineffable content, weirdly escaping through the nostrils above compressed lips. He took up a lighted candle, stepped carefully over the cat and, selecting between his fingers a key from a bunch at his girdle, approached a wooden press that cut off an angle of the room.

This was built of heavily carved black oak, secured with sturdy iron hinges; had high double doors and small peeping keyholes, suggestive of much cunning. It was a press to receive and keep secrets. And yet, when the panels were thrown open, nothing of more formidable nature was displayed than rows upon rows of inner drawers and shelves, the latter covered some with philosophical instruments, others displaying piles of neatly 7ticketed boxes, ranks of phials, and sealed tubes of various liquids or crystals that flashed in the light with prismatic scintillation.

Holding the candle above his head the old man selected:

“The box of Moorish powder from Tangiers—the bottle of Java Water—the paste of Cannabis Arabiensis—the Hippomane Mancenilla gum of Yucatan.”

He placed the materials on a glass tray and carried them over to the working table.

“Excellent Captain Trevor! The simple fellow has never done thanking me for curing him of his West Coast fever with a course of Herba Betonica; he, he! the common, ignored, humble Wood Betony. Thanking me—he, he! Never did a pinch of powder bring better interest...! Oh, my cat, I’m a mass of selfishness! And here I have at last the Java Water and the Yucatan gum!”

The cat roused himself, walked sedately but circuitously across the room, leaped up and took his position with feet and tail well tucked in on the bare space left, by right of custom, where the warmth of the lamp should comfort his back.

On Master Simon’s table lay a row of small covered watch-glasses, thin as films, each containing a small heap of some greenish crystalline powder. A pair of chemical scales held out slender arms within the walls of its glass case. The neat array looked inviting.

With a noise as of rustling parchment the simpler rubbed his hands; he was in high good humour. The tall clock at the end of the room wheezed out the ghost of nine beats, and the strangled sounds seemed but to point the depth of the environing silence. For the thick walls kept out all the voices of nature, and at all times enwrapt the underground room with a solemn stillness that gave prominence to its whispers of secret doings.

“Nine o’clock!” muttered the self-communer. “Another hour’s peace before even Barnaby break in upon us 8with his supper tray. Hey, but this is a good hour! This is luxury. I feel positively abandoned! Not a soul in this whole wing of Bindon, save you and me—unless we reckon our good star-dreamer above—good youth with his head in the clouds. Heigh ho, men are mostly fools, and all women! Therefore wisely did I choose my only familiar—thou prince of reliable confidants.”

The man stretched out his hand and caressed the beast’s round head. Belphegor tilted his chin to lead the scratching finger to its favourite spot.

“Hey, but man must speak—it is part of his incomplete nature—were it only to put order in his ideas, to marshall them without tripping hurry. And you neither argue nor contradict, nor give a fool’s acquiescence. You listen and are silent. Wise cat! Now, men are mostly fools ... and all women!”

Master Simon lifted the phial of Java Water, a fluid of opalescent pink, between his eye and the light. He removed the stopper and sniffed at it. Then compared the fragrance with that of the Moorish powders, and became absorbed in thought. At one moment he seemed, absently, on the point of comparing the tastes in the same manner, but paused.

“No, sir, not to-night,” he murmured. “We must keep our brain clear, our hand steady. But it will be an experiment of quite unusual interest—quite unusual.... I am convinced the essential components are the same.—Belphegor! Keep your nozzle off that gallipot! Do you not dream enough as it is?”

He pushed the turn-back cuffs still further from his attenuated wrists, and with infinite precaution addressed himself to the manipulation of his watch-glasses, silver pincers and scales: the final stage of weighing and apportioning the result of an analytical experiment of already long standing was at hand.