Halcyone

Next morning, John Derringham sat at a late breakfast with his whilom master of Greek and discussed things in general over his bacon and tea.

It was three years since he had left Oxford, and life held out many interesting aspects for him. He was standing for the southern division of his county in the following spring when the present member was going to retire, and he was vehement in his views and clear as to the course he meant to take. He was so eloquent in his discourse and so full of that divine spark of enthusiasm, that he was always listened to, no matter how unpalatably Tory the basic principles of his utterances were. He never posed as anything but an aristocrat, and while he whimsically admitted that in the present day to be one was an enormous disadvantage for a man who wished to get on, he endeavored to palliate the misfortune by lucid explanation of what the duties of such a status were, and of the logical advantages which an appreciation of the truths of cause and effect might bring to mankind. Down in his own country he was considered the coming man. He thundered at the people and had facts and figures at his finger tips. His sublime belief in himself never wavered and like any inspired view, right or wrong, it had its strong effect.

Mr. Carlyon thought highly of him, for a number of reasons.

"If women do not make a stumbling-block for you, John, you will go far," he said as he buttered his toast.

"Women!" quoth John Derringham, and he laughed incredulously. "They matter no more to me than the flowers in the garden—enchanting in the summer time, a mere pleasure for sight and touch, but to make or mar a man's life!—not even to be considered as factors in the scheme of things."

"I am glad to hear you say so," said Mr. Carlyon dryly. "And I hope that jade, Fate, won't play you any tricks."

John Derringham smiled.

"I admit that a woman with money may be useful to me by and by," he said, "because, as you know, I am always hard up, and presently when I want to occupy a larger sphere I shall require money for my ends, but for the time being they serve to divert me as a relaxation; that is all."

"You are contracting no ties, dear lad?" asked the Professor with one eyebrow raised, while he shook back his silvery hair. "I had heard vaguely about your attention to Lady Durrend, but I understand she has had many preliminary canters and knows the ropes."

John Derringham smiled. "Vivienne Durrend is a most charming woman," he said. "She has taught me a number of things in the last two years. I am grateful to her. Next season she is bringing a daughter out—and she has a wonderful sense of the fitness of things." Then he sipped his tea and got up and strolled towards the windows.

"Besides," he continued, "I do not admit there are any ties to be contracted. The Greeks understood the place of women; all this nonsense of vows of fidelity and exaltation of sentiment in the home cramps a man's ambitions. It is perfectly natural that he should take a wife if his position calls for it, because the society in which we move has made a figurehead of that kind necessary. But that a woman should expect a man to be faithful to her, be she wife or mistress, is contrary to all nature."

"We have put nature out of the running now for a couple of thousand years," Mr. Carlyon announced sententiously; "we have set up a standard of impossibilities and worship hypocrisy and can no longer see any truth. You have got to reckon with things as they are, not with what nature meant them to be."

"Then you think women are a force now which one must consider?"

"I think they are as deadly as the deep sea—" and Mr. Carlyon's voice was tense. "When they have only bodies they are dangerous enough, but when—as many of the modern ones have—they combine a modicum of mind as well, with all the cunning Satan originally endowed them with—then happy is the man who escapes, even partially whole, from their claws."

"Whew—" whistled John Derringham, "and what if they have souls? Not that I personally admit that such a case exists—what then?"

"When you meet a woman with a soul you will have met your match, John," the Professor said, and opening his Times, which Demetrius had brought in with the second post, he closed the conversation.

John Derringham strolled into the garden. The place had been greatly improved since Halcyone's first discovery of its new occupant. The shutters were all a spruce green and the paths weeded and tidy, while the borders were full of bedded-out plants and flowers. A famous gardener from Upminster renowned through all the West had come over and given his personal attention to the matter, and next year wonderful herbaceous borders would spring up on all sides. Mr. Johnson's visits and his council, though at first resented, had at length grown a source of pure delight to Halcyone; she reveled in the blooms of the delicate begonias and salvias and other blossoms which she had never seen before. Mr. Carlyon, although desiring solitude, appreciated a beautiful and cultivated one, and the orchard house was now becoming a very comfortable bachelor's home.

The day was much cooler than it had been of late. There was a fresh breeze though the sun shone. John Derringham wandered down to the apple tree and thence to the gap, and through it and on into the park. His walk was for pleasure, and aimless as to destination, and presently he sat down under a low-spreading oak and looked at the house—La Sarthe Chase. A beautiful view of it could be obtained from there, and it interested him—and from that his thoughts came to Halcyone and her strange, quaint little personality, and he stretched himself out and putting his hands under his head he looked up into the dense foliage of the tree above him—and there his eyes met two grave, quiet ones peering down from a mass of green, and he saw slender brown legs drawn up on a broad branch, and a scrap of blue cotton frock.

"Good morning," Halcyone said quite composedly, "don't make a noise, please, or rustle—the mother doe is just coming out of the copse with her new fawn."

"How on earth did you get up there?" he asked, surprised.

"I swung myself from the lower branch on the other side; it is quite easy—would you like to come up, too? There is plenty of room—and then we could be sure the doe would not see you and she might peep out again. I do not wish to frighten her."

John Derringham rose leisurely and went to the further side of the oak, where sure enough there was a drooping branch and he was soon up beside her, dangling his long limbs as he sat in a fork.

"What an enchanting bower you have found," he said. "Away from all the world."

"No indeed, that cannot be at this time of the year," she answered. "See, there is a squirrel far up in the top and there are birds, and look—down there at the roots there is a rabbit hole with such a family in it. It is only in the winter you can be alone—and not even then, for you know there are the moles even if you cannot see them."

"Creatures are interesting to watch, aren't they?" he said. "I have an old place which I loved when I was a boy. It is let now because I am too poor to live in it, but I used to like to prowl about in the early mornings long ago."

"We are all very poor," said Halcyone simply, "but I am sorry for you that you have to let strangers be in your house—that must be dreadful."

John Derringham smiled, and his face lost the insouciante arrogance which irritated his enemies so. His smile, rare enough, was singularly sweet.

"I don't think about it," he said. "It is best not to when anything is disagreeable."

"Cheiron and I often tell one another things like that."

"Cheiron—who is Cheiron?" he asked.

This seemed a superfluous question to Halcyone.

"The Professor, of course. He is just like the picture in my 'Heroes,'" she answered, "and I often pretend we are in the cave on Pelion. I thought you would perhaps be like one of the others since you were his pupil, too, but I cannot find which. You are not Heracles—because you have none of those great muscles—or Æneas or Peleus. Are—are you Jason himself, perhaps—" and her voice sounded glad with discovery. "We do not know, he may not have had a Greek face."

John Derringham laughed. "Jason who led the Argonauts to find the Golden Fleece—it is a good omen. Would you help me to find the Golden Fleece if you could?"

"Yes, I would, if you were good and true—but the end of the story was sad because Jason was not."

"How must I be good and true then? I thought Jason was a straight enough sort of a fellow and that it was Medea who brought all the trouble—Medea, the woman."

Halcyone's grave eyes never left his face. She saw the whimsical twinkle in his but heeded it not.

"He should not have had anything to do with Medea—that is where he was wrong," she said, "but having given her his word, he should have kept it."

"Even though she was a witch?" Mr. Derringham asked.

"It was still his word—don't you see? Her being a witch did not alter his word. He did not give it because she was or was not a witch—but because he himself wanted to at the time, I suppose; therefore, it was binding."

"A man should always keep his word, even to a woman, then?" and John Derringham smiled finely.

"Why not to a woman as well as a man?" Halcyone asked surprised. "You do not see the point at all it seems. It is not to whom it is you give your word—it is to you it matters that you keep it, because to break it degrades yourself."

"You reason well, fair nymph," he said gallantly; he was frankly amused. "What may your age be? A thousand years more or less will not make any difference!"

"You may laugh at me if you like," said Halcyone, and she smiled; his gayety was infectious, "but I am not so very young. I shall be thirteen in October, the seventh of October."

John Derringham appeared to be duly impressed with this antiquity, and went on gravely:

"So you and the Master discuss these knotty points of honor and expediency together, do you, as a recreation from the Greek syntax? I should like to hear you."

"The Professor does not believe in men much," Halcyone said. "He says they are all honorable to one another until they are tempted—and that they are never honorable to a woman when another woman comes upon the scene. But I do not know at all about such things, or what it means. For me there is nothing towards other people; it only is towards yourself. You must be honorable to yourself."

And suddenly it seemed to John Derringham as if all the paltry shams of the world fell together like a pack of cards, and as if he saw truth shining naked for the first time at the bottom of the well of the child's pure eyes.

An extraordinary wave of emotion came over him, finely strung as he was, and susceptible to all grades of feeling. He did not speak for a minute; it was as if he had quaffed some elixir. A flame of noble fire seemed to run in his veins, and his voice was changed and full of homage when at last he addressed her.

"Little Goddess of Truth," he said, "I would like to be with you always that you might never let me forget this point of view. And you believe it would have won for Jason in the end—if he had been true to himself? Tell me—I want greatly to know."

"But how could there be any doubt of that?" she asked surprised. "Good only can bring good, and evil, evil."

At this moment, out from the copse the soft head of a doe appeared, and at the thrilling sight Halcyone slipped her hand into her companion's, and held his tight lest he should move or rustle a leaf.

"See," she whispered right in his ear. "She will cross to the other side by the stream—and oh! there is the fawn! Is he not the dearest baby angel you have ever seen—!"

And the doe, feeling herself safe, trotted by, followed by a minute son in pale drab velvet hardly a month old.

The pair in the tree watched them breathlessly until they had entered the copse again beyond the bend, and then Halcyone said:

"That makes six—and perhaps there are more. Oh! how I hope the Long Man will not see them!"

John Derringham did not let go her hand at once; there was something soft and pleasant in the touch of the cool little fingers.

"I want to hear about everything," he said. "Tell me of the Long Man—and the fawns, and why there are only six. I am having the happiest morning I have had for years."

So Halcyone began. She glossed a good deal over the facts she had told Mr. Carlyon upon the subject because she did not feel she knew this stranger well enough to let him into her aunts' private affairs—so she turned the interest to the deer themselves, and they chatted on about all sorts of animals and their ways, and John Derringham was entranced and felt quite aggrieved when she said it was getting late and she must go back to the house for her early dinner. He swung himself down from the tree by the high branch with ease and stood ready to catch her, but with a nimbleness he did not expect, she crept round to the lower side and was landed upon the soft turf before he could reach her.

Then he walked back with her to the broken gate, telling her about his own old home the while, and then they paused to say good-by.

Halcyone carried a twig of freshly sprouting oak which she had brought from the tree, having broken it off in her lightning descent.

"Give me one leaf and you keep the other," he said. "And then, whenever I see it, I will try to remember that I must always be good and true."

With grave earnestness she did as he asked, and then opened the gate.

"I want to tell you," she said—and she looked down for a second, and then up into his eyes from beyond the bars. "I did not like the thought of your coming—and at first I did not like you—but now I see something quite different at the other side of your head—Good-by."

And before he could answer, she was off as the young fawn would have been—a flitting shape among the trees. And John Derringham walked slowly back to the orchard house, musing as he went.

But when he got there a telegram from his Chief had arrived, recalling him instantly to London.

And he did not see Halcyone again for several years.

The seasons came and went with peaceful regularity, unbroken by a jarring note from the outside world. Mr. Anderton, being well assured by the Misses La Sarthe that his stepdaughter was receiving a splendid education, was only too glad to leave her in peace, and Mrs. Anderton felt her duty achieved when at the beginning of each summer and winter she sent a supply of what she considered suitable clothes. It took Priscilla and Hester hours to alter them to Halcyone's slender shape.

Mr. Carlyon was seldom absent from his house during this period, only twice a year, when he spent a fortnight in London in June, and another week in November with his brother, a squire of some note in the Cornish world. Halcyone made green his old age with the exquisite quality of her opening mind. And deep down in her heart there always dwelt the image of John Derringham, and whatever new hero she read about, he unconsciously assumed some of his features or mien. She passed through enthusiasms for all periods, and for quite six months was under the complete spell of the "Morte d'Arthur" and the adventures of the knights contained therein. She read voraciously and systematically, but her first love for all things Greek regained its hold and undoubtedly colored her whole view of life.

Her education was exotic and might have ruined a brain of lesser fiber. But for her it seemed to bring forth all that was clear and fine and polish it with a diamond luster. Twice a week alternately the French and German master from the Applewood Grammar School came to her, and she also learned to read music from the organist at the church, and then played to herself with no technique but much taste.

And of all her masters, Nature and the fearless study of her night moods molded her soul the most.

For the first few months after John Derringham's visit Mr. Carlyon often spoke of him and read aloud bits of his letters, and Halcyone listened with rapt attention, but she never embarked upon the subject herself—and then the Professor had an accident to his knee which kept him a prisoner for months. And somehow the interest of this seemed to dwarf less present things, and as time went on, John Derringham grew to be mentioned only by fits and starts, when his rapidly rising political career called forth cynical grunts of admiration from his old master. There had been a dissolution of Parliament and a short term of office for the other side, and then at the General Election John Derringham's Chief had come in again stronger than ever, and he himself had been made Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. It was a tremendous rise for one so young. He was at that time not more than twenty-nine years old—but two years before this happened, when Halcyone was about fifteen, he came again to the orchard house for a short Saturday to Monday visit.

From the moment that she knew he was coming a strange stillness seemed to fall upon the child. She had grown long-legged and was at the fledgling stage when even a pretty girl sometimes looks plain, and she, who had as yet no claim to beauty, was at her worst. She was quite aware of it, with her intense soul-worship of all beautiful things. Some unreasoned impulse made her keep away from her master during the first day, but on the Sunday he summoned her, and, as once before, she came and poured out the tea, but it was a cold and windy autumn afternoon, and it was not laid out of doors. John Derringham had been for a walk, and came in while she sat in a shadowy corner behind the table, teapot in hand.

He was greatly changed, she thought, in the three years. He had grown a beard! and looked considerably older, with his thin commanding figure and arrogant head. He was not handsome now, but peculiarly distinguished-looking. He could very well be Pericles, she decided at once. As for him, he had almost forgotten her. Life had been so full of many things; but, seeing a pale, slender, overgrown girl with mouse-colored clouds of hair now confined in a demure pigtail, it came to his mind that this must be the Professor's pupil again. Had she not been called Hebe or Psyche—or Halcyone—some Greek name? And gradually his former recollection of her came back, and of their morning in the tree.

"Why, how do you do," he said politely, and Halcyone bowed without speaking. She felt much as Hans Andersen's Ugly Duckling used to feel, and when John Derringham had said a few ordinary things about her having grown out of all likeness, he turned to the Professor again, and almost forgot her presence.

His talk was most wonderful to listen to, she thought, his language was so polished, and there was a courtesy added to the former vehemence. They spoke of nothing but politics, which she did not understand, and Cheiron chaffed him a good deal in his kindly cynical way. He was still fighting his chimeras, it seemed, and fighting them successfully. As he spoke, Halcyone, behind the teapot, thrilled with a kind of worship. To be strong and young and manful, and to combat modern dragons, appeared to her to be a god-like task.

In the midst of a heated argument she rose to slip away. Her comings and goings were so natural to the Professor that he was unaware that she was leaving the room until John Derringham broke off in the middle of a sentence, to rise and open the door for her.

"Good-by," she said. "Aunt Roberta is not very well to-day, so I must not be late. Good night, Cheiron"—and she went out and closed the door.

"But it is quite dark!" exclaimed John Derringham. "Is there a servant waiting? She can't go all alone!"

The Professor leaned back in his chair.

"Don't disturb yourself," he said. "Halcyone is accustomed to the twilight. It is a strange night-creature—leave it alone."

John Derringham sat down again.

"She is not nearly so attractive-looking as she used to be. If I remember, she was rather a weirdly pretty child."

"Just a chrysalis now," grunted the professor between [**TR Note: was betwen in original; typesetter's error.] puffs of smoke. "But there is more true philosophy and profound knowledge of truth in that little head than either you or I have got in ours, John."

"You always thought the world of her, Master—you, with your ineradicable contempt for women!"

"She is not a woman—yet. She is an intelligence and a brain—and a soul."

"Oh, she has a soul, then!" and John Derringham smiled. "I remember once you said when I should meet a woman with a soul I should meet my match! I do not feel very alarmed."

One of the Professor's penthouse brows raised itself about half an inch, but he did not speak.

"In which school have you taught her?" John Derringham asked—"you who are so much of a cynic, Master. Does she study the ethics of Aristotle with you here in this Lyceum, or do you reconstruct Plato's Academy? She is no sophist, apparently, since you say she can see the truth."

Mr. Carlyon looked into the fire.

"She is almost an Epicurean, John, in all but the disbelief in the immortality of the soul. She has evolved a theory of her own about that. It partakes of Buddhism. After I have discussed metaphysical propositions with her over which she will argue clearly, she will suddenly cut the whole knot with a lightning flash, and you see the naked truth, and words become meaningless, and discussion a jest."

"All this, at fifteen!" John Derringham laughed antagonistically, and then he suddenly remembered her words to himself upon honor in the tree that summer morning three years ago, and he mused.

Perhaps some heaven-taught beings were allowed to come to earth after all, now and then as the centuries rolled on.

"She knows Greek pretty well?" he asked.

"Fairly, for the time she has learnt. She can read me bits of Lucian. She would stumble over the tragedies. I read them to her." Then he continued, as though it were a subject he loved, "She has a concrete view upon every question; her critical faculty is marvelous. She never lays down the law, but if you ask her, you have your answer in a nutshell, the simplest truth, which it always appears to her so strange that you have not seen all the time."

"What is her parentage? Heredity plays so large a part in these things," Mr. Derringham asked.

"The result of a passionate love-match between distant cousins of that fine old race, I believe. Timothy La Sarthe was at Oxford before your day, but not under me—a brilliant, enchanting fellow, drowned while yachting when my little friend was only a few months old."

"And the mother?"

"Married again to pay his debts, to a worthy stockbroker, almost immediately, I believe. She paid the debt with herself and died after having three children for him in a few years."

"So your protégée lives with those cameos of the Victorian era we dined with, and never sees the outside world?"

"Never—from one year's end to another."

"What a fate!" and John Derringham stretched out his arms. "Ye gods, what a fate!"

And again Cheiron smiled, raising his bushy left brow.

Halcyone, meanwhile, was walking with firm certain steps across the park, where the dusk had fallen. The turbulent Boreas blew in her face, and she stopped and took off her soft cap and unplaited her hair so that it flew out in a cloud as the wind rushed through it. This sensation was a great pleasure to her, and when she came to a rising ground, a kind of knoll where the view of the country was vast and superb, she paused again and took in great deep breaths. She was drawing all the forces of the air into her being and quivered presently with the joy of it.

She could see as only those who are accustomed to the dark can. She was aware of all the outlines of golden bracken at her feet and the head of a buck peeping from the copse near. The sky was a passionate, tempestuous mass of angry clouds scudding over the deep blue, where an evening star could be seen peeping out.

"Bring me your force and strength, that I may grow noble and beautiful, dear wind," she said aloud. "I want to be near him when he comes again," and then she ran and jumped the uneven places, while she hummed a strange song.

And Jeb Hart and Joseph Gubbs, the poachers, saw her, as she passed within a yard of where they lay setting their snares, and Gubbs, who was a good Catholic from Upminster, crossed himself as he muttered in his friend's ear:

"We'll get no swag to-night, Jeb. When she passes, blest if she don't warn the beasts."

When Halcyone was nearly nineteen and had grown into a rare and radiant maiden, the like of whom it would be difficult to find, an event happened which was of the greatest excitement and importance to the neighborhood. Wendover, which had been shut up for twenty years, was reported to have been taken for a term by a very rich widow—or divorcée—from America it was believed, and it was going to be sumptuously done up and would be filled with guests. Mr. Miller took pains to find out every detail from the Long Man at Applewood, and so was full of information at his monthly repast with the old ladies. Mrs. Vincent Cricklander was the new tenant's name. The Long Man had himself taken her over the place when she first came down to look at it, and his report was that she was the most beautiful lady he had ever seen, and with an eye to business that could not be beaten. He held her in vast respect.

Then Mr. Miller coughed; he had now come to the point of his discourse which made him nervous.

For he had learned beyond the possibility of any doubt that Mrs. Cricklander was, alas! not a lonely widow but had been divorced—only a year or two ago. She had divorced her husband—not he her—he hastened to add, and then coughed again and got very red.

"When we were young," Miss La Sarthe remarked severely, "our Mamma would never have allowed us to know any divorced person—and, indeed, our good Queen Victoria would never have received one at her Court. We cannot possibly call, Roberta."

Poor Miss Roberta's face fell. She had been secretly much elated by the thoughts of a neighbor, and to have all her hopes thus nipped in the bud was painful. She had heard (from Hester again, it is to be feared!) that Mrs. Cricklander's maid, who was a cousin of the baker in Applewood, and who had originally instigated her discovery of Wendover, had said that her lady knew all the greatest people in England—lords and duchesses by the dozen, and even an archbishop! Surely that was respectable enough.

But Miss La Sarthe, while again deploring the source of her sister's information, was firm. Ideas might have changed, but they had not. Since the last time they had curtsied to the beloved late Queen, in about 1879, she believed new rules had been made, but the La Sarthe had nothing to do with such things!

Halcyone caught Miss Roberta's piteous, subdued eye, and smiled a tender, kind smile. With years her understanding of her ancient aunts had grown. They were no longer rather contemptible, narrow-minded elders in her eyes, but filled her with a pitiful and gentle respect. Their courage under adversity, their firm self-control, and the force which made them live up to their idea of the fitness of things, appealed to her strongly. She had John Derringham's quality of detached consideration, and appreciated her old relatives as exquisite relics of the past, as well as her own kith and kin.

"In America, divorce is not considered the heinous crime it was once in England," Mr. Carlyon said. "Perhaps this lady may have been greatly sinned against and deserves all our pity and regard."

But Miss La Sarthe remained obdurate. The point was not as to who was in the right, she explained, but that certain conventions, laid down by one whose memory was revered, had been outraged, and she could never permit her sister or Halcyone to have any intercourse with the tenant of Wendover Park!

The preparations for the new arrival went on apace all the autumn and winter. Armies of workpeople were reported to be in possession, and whole train-loads of splendid French furniture were known to have arrived at Applewood, to augment the antique and time-worn pieces which were Wendover's own.

Miss Le Sarthe sent for the Long Man. Things had been rather better of late, and no more precious belongings had been forced to be parted with. An investment which had been valueless for years now began to produce some interest which was a great comfort, for Miss La Sarthe was now seventy-nine and Miss Roberta seventy-six.

The orders that the agent received were precise. The gate between Wendover and La Sarthe Chase which had been closed for over a hundred years was to be boarded up, and their side of the haw-haw which for nearly a mile divided the two parks was to be deepened and cleared out, and the spikes mended in any places where the ground might have seemed to have fallen in sufficiently, or the irons to have become broken enough to make the passage easy.

This would be unnecessary, Mr. Martin (the Long Man) told her. The haw-haw was still as perfect as ever and a wonder of concealed traps for the unwary, but the gate should be seen to at once.

Thus La Sarthe Chase was armed fully against Wendover, when, about Easter, Mrs. Cricklander decided she would come down and bring a few friends. It was with a sudden violent beating of the heart that Halcyone learned casually from Mr. Carlyon that John Derringham would be of their number.

The aunts took in the Morning Post, but until she was eighteen they had rigorously forbidden Halcyone's perusal of it. Newspapers, except one or two periodicals, were not fit for young ladies' reading until they were grown up, they felt. However, their niece, having now come to years of discretion, sometimes had the pleasure of reading John Derringham's speeches and thrilled with joy over his felicitous daring and caustic wit. The Government could not last much longer, but he at least, as far as he could, would keep it full of vigor until the end. She knew, therefore, that the last sitting before the Easter recess had been a storm of words sharp as sword-thrusts—it was before the days of the language of Billingsgate and the behavior of roughs. There were quite a number of gentlemen still in the House of Commons, who often behaved as such.

Those wonderful forces which Halcyone culled from all nature, and especially the night, gave her a serenity over the most moving events, and when the sudden beating of her heart was over, she waited calmly for the moment when she should see John Derringham again.

Mr. Carlyon took in the Graphic as well as his Quarterly Review and the Nineteenth Century, and it was her only medium for guessing even what the outside world looked like, but from it she was quite aware that a beard was a most unusual thing for a young modern man of the world, and that John Derringham for that reason must always be distinguished from his fellows. Carpenters and hedgers and ditchers wore them, and nondescript young fellows she remembered seeing when she went into Upminster with her aunts; but these excursions had been discontinued now for the past five years, so the villagers of Sarthe-under-Crum and the denizens of the rather larger Applewood were the only human beings she ever saw.

The party at Wendover were to arrive on the Thursday before Good Friday—Priscilla had told her that—and it was just possible that some of them might be in church.

The aunts now drove a low basket shay which had been their pride in the sixties, but which for countless years, until the investment began to pay, they had been unable to keep a pair of ponies for. Now, however, the shay was unearthed from the moldy coach-house and for the past year two very old and quiet specimens of Shetland had been found for them by Mr. Martin and they were able to drive to church every Sunday in state, William sitting up behind, holding the reins between his mistresses, while Miss La Sarthe flourished a small whip whose delicate handle was studded with minute turquoises. From it dangled a ring which she could slip on her finger over her one-buttoned slate-colored glove, and so feel certain of not dropping this treasure. Halcyone always walked.

On Good Friday there was not a sight of the Wendover party in church, and Halcyone went back by the orchard house to look in at Cheiron, who had had a cold in the last few days.

Stretched in the armchair she found John Derringham.

The brisk walk in the fresh spring air had brought some faint color to her pale cheeks, her soft hair was wound about her head with becoming simplicity, and she wore an ordinary suit which could not disguise her beautiful slender limbs, so long and thin, a veritable Artemis in her chaste perfection of balance and proportion.

Halcyone could pass in any crowd and perhaps no one would ever notice her and her mouse-like coloring, but once your eye was arrested, then, like looking at some rare bit of delicate enamel, you began to perceive undreamed-of graces which soothed the sight until you were filled with the consciousness of an exquisite beauty as intangible as her other charm—distinction. An infinite serenity was in her atmosphere, a promise of all pure and tender things in her great soft eyes. The mystery and freshness of the night seemed always to hang about her. Her ways were noiseless—the most creaking door appeared to forget its irritating habit when under her touch. Thus it was that John Derringham, smoking a cigar, never even glanced up until a voice of extreme cultivation and softness said gently:

"Good morning. And how are you?"

Then he bounded from his chair, startled a little, and held out his hand.

"My old friend, Miss Halcyone, the Priestess of Truth!" he exclaimed, "as I am alive!"

She smiled serenely while they shook hands, and sat down demurely by the Professor's side.

"I thought you would have been translated to Olympus long ago," the visitor said. "Have you honored this ordinary earth and our friend Cheiron's cave, ever since?"

"Ever since!"

"There can be nothing left for you to learn. Master, it is you and I whom she could teach," he laughed.

"How do you know all this?" asked Halcyone quietly, while her eyes smiled at his raillery. "Do I look such an old-fashioned blue-stocking, then?"

"You look perfectly sweet," and John Derringham's expressive eyes confirmed what he said.

"Enough, enough, John. Halcyone is quite unaccustomed to gallants from the world like you," the Professor growled. "If you pay her compliments she won't believe you can really make a speech."

So Mr. Derringham laughed and continued his interrupted conversation. He seemed in good humor with all the world. He was going to stay at Wendover for the whole of Easter week. Mrs. Cricklander had an amusing party of luminaries of both sides—she was the most perfect hostess and had a remarkable talent for collecting the right people.

"She is quite the best-read woman I have ever met, Master," John Derringham said. "You must let me bring her over here one day to see you—you would delight in her wit and beauty. She does not leave you a dull moment."

"Yes, bring her," the Professor returned between the puffs at his long pipe. "I have never met any of these new hothouse roses grafted upon briar roots. I should like to study how the system has worked."

"Quite admirably, as you will see. I do not know any Englishwomen who are to compare to such Americans in brilliancy and fascination."

Over Halcyone, in spite of her serenity, there crept a feeling of cold. She did not then analyze why, and, as was her habit when anything began to distress her, she looked out of the window, whether it were night or day. She always did this, and when her eyes saw Nature in any of her moods, calm returned to her.

"She will simply revel in La Sarthe Chase when she sees it," Mr. Derringham went on, now addressing Halcyone. "She is a past-mistress in knowledge of the dates of things. You are going to have the most delicious neighbor, Miss Halcyone, and in learning, a foeman worthy of your steel."

Cheiron was heard to chuckle wickedly, and when his former Oxford pupil asked him with mild humor the reason of his inappropriate mirth, he answered dryly:

"She is never likely to see the inside of the park even. Queen Victoria did not receive divorced persons, and the Misses La Sarthe, in consequence, cannot either. You will have to bring her here by the road, John!"

Halcyone winced a little. She disliked this conversation; it was not as fine as she liked to think were the methods of both the men who were carrying it on.

John Derringham reddened up to his temples, where there were a few streaks of gray in his dark hair which added to the distinction of his finely cut, rather ascetic face. The short, well-trimmed beard was very becoming, Halcyone thought, and gave him a look of great masculinity and strength. His hawk's eyes were shadowed, as though he sat up very late at night; which indeed he did. For John Derringham, at this period of his life, burnt the candle at both ends and in the middle, too, if it could add to the pleasure or benefit of his calculated career, mapped out for himself by himself.

A sensation almost of wrath rose in his breast at his old master's words. These ignorant country people, to dare to criticise his glittering golden pheasant, whom he was very nearly making up his mind to take for a wife! This aspect of the case, that even these unimportant old ladies could question the position of his choice, galled him. He had spent up to the last penny of his diminished income in his years of man's estate, and Derringham was mortgaged to its furthest acre—and a gentleman must live—and with his brilliant political future expanding before him, lack of means must not be allowed to stand in his way. He would give this woman in gratified ambition as much or more than she would give him in wealth, so it would be an equal bargain and benefit them both. And, above all, he was more than half in love with her, and could get quite a large share of pleasure out of the affair as well. He had been too busy to trouble much over women as a sex since he had left the University—except in the way he had once described to his old master, regarding them as flowers in a garden—mere pleasures for sight and touch, and experiencing ephemeral passions which left no mark. But women either feared or adored him; and this woman, the desired of a host of his friends, had singled him out for her especial favors. It had amused him the whole of the last season; he had defied her efforts to chain him to her chariot wheels, and in the winter she had gone to Egypt, and had only just returned. But the charm was growing, and he felt he would allow himself to be caught in her net.

"Mrs. Cricklander would be very much amused could she hear this verdict of the county," he said with a certain tone in his voice which did not escape Halcyone. "In London we do not occupy ourselves with such unimportant things—but I dare say she will get over it. And now I really must be going back. May I walk with you through the park, Miss Halcyone, if you are going, too? I am sure there must be an opening somewhere, as the two places touch."

"Yes, there is just one," Halcyone said. "The haw-haw runs the whole way, and it is impossible to pass, except in the one spot, and I believe no one knows of it but myself. There are a few bricks loose, and I used to take them out and put them back when I wanted to get into Wendover—long ago."

"Then it will be an adventure; come," he said, and Halcyone rose.

"Only if you will not give away my secret. Promise you will not tell anyone else," she bargained.

"Oh! I promise," and John Derringham jumped up—his movements were always quick and decided and full of nervous force. "I will bring my hostess to see you on Monday or Tuesday, Master," he announced, as he said good-by. "And prepare yourself to fall at her feet like all the rest of us—Merlin and Vivien, you know. It will be a just punishment for your scathing remarks."

When they were outside in the garden Halcyone spoke not a word. The beds were a glory of spring bulbs, and every bud on the trees was bursting with its promise of coming leaf. Glad, chirruping bird-notes called to one another, and a couple of partridges ran across the lawn.

John Derringham took in the lines of Halcyone's graceful person as she walked ahead. She had that same dignity of movement from the hips which the Niké of Samothrace seems to be advancing with as you come up the steps of the Louvre.

How tall she had grown! She must be at least five feet nine or ten. But why would she not speak?

He overawed her here in the daylight, and she felt silent and oppressed.

"Whereabouts is our tree that we sat in when I was young and you were old?" he asked, after they had got through the gap in the hedge. A little gate had been put in the last years to keep out the increasing herd of deer.

"It is over there by the copse," she said shyly. "The lower branch fell last winter, and it makes a delightful seat. One is not obliged to climb into the tree now. See: Demetrius helped me to drag it close, and we nailed on these two arms," and she pointed to a giant oak not far from them, which John Derringham pretended to recognize.

He tried his best to get her to talk to him, but some cloud of timid aloofness on her part seemed to hang between them, and very soon below the copse they came to the one vulnerable part in all the haw-haw's length. She showed him how to take the bricks out and where to place his feet, and pointed out how secluded from any eye the place was. Then, as he climbed down and then up again, and looked across at her from Wendover lands, she said a sedate good-by, and turning, went on among the thickly growing saplings of the copse and, never looking back, was soon out of sight.

John Derringham watched her disappear with a strange feeling of ruffled disquietude in his heart.