Halcyone: Chapter 22

Chapter 22

It required all Halcyone's fortitude to act the part of unconcern which
was necessary after the post had come in and no letter for herself had
arrived. The only possibility of getting through the time until she
should reach London, and be able to communicate with Cheiron would, be
resolutely to forbid her thoughts from turning in any speculative
direction. _She knew_ nothing but good could come to her--was she not
protected from all harm by every strong force of the night winds, the
beautiful stars and the God Who owned them all? Therefore it followed
that this seeming disaster to her happiness must be only a temporary
thing, and if she bore it calmly it would soon pass. Or, even if it
delayed, there was the analogy of the winter which for more than four
months of the year numbed the earth, often with weeping rain and frost,
but, however severe it should be, there was always the tender springtime
following, and glorious summer, and then the fulfillment of autumn and
its fruits. So she _must not_ be cast down--she must have faith and not
tremble.

She made herself converse gently with her stepfather's wife, and won her
liking before they reached Paddington station. If she had not been so
highly strung and preoccupied, she would have been thrilled in all her
fine senses at the idea of leaving Upminster, further than which she had
never been for the twelve long years of her residence at La Sarthe
Chase; but now, except that all appeared a wild rush and a bewildering
noise, the journey to London made no impression upon her. It was
swallowed up in the one longing to get there--to be able somehow to
communicate with Cheiron, and have her anxiety laid to rest.

The newsboys were selling the evening papers when they arrived, but her
eyes, so unaccustomed to all these new sights, did not warn her to scan
the headlines, though as they were reaching Grosvenor Gardens where Mr.
Anderton's town-house was situated, she did see the words:
"Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs." The sheet had fallen
forward and only this line was visible.

They did not strike her very forcibly. She was quite unacquainted with
the custom of advertising sensational news in London. It might be the
usual political announcements--it surely was, since she saw another
sheet as they got to the door with "Crisis in the Cabinet" upon it. And
it comforted her greatly. John, of course, was concerned with this, and
had been summoned back suddenly, having had no possible time to let her
know. He who was so true an Englishman must think of his country first.
It seemed like an answer to her prayers, and enabled her to go in and
greet her stepfather with calm and quiet.

James Anderton had come from the city in the best of tempers. The day
had been a good one. He had received his wife's telegram announcing that
Halcyone would accompany her on her return, and awaited her arrival with
a certain amount of uneasy curiosity and interest. Would the girl be
still so terribly like Elaine and the rest of the La Sarthe--especially
Timothy, that scapegrace, handsome Timothy, her father, on whose memory
and his own bargain with Timothy's widow he never cared much to dwell?

Yes, she was, d----d like--after a while he decided; with just the same
set of head and careless grace, and that hateful stamp of breeding that
had so lamentably escaped his own children, half La Sarthe, too. It was
just Timothy of the gray eyes come back again--not Elaine so much now,
not at all, in fact, except in the line of the throat.

His solid, coarse voice was a little husky, and those who knew him well
would have been aware that James Anderton was greatly moved as he bid
his stepdaughter welcome.

And when she had gone off to her room, accompanied by the boisterous
Mabel and Ethel, he said to his wife:

"Lu, you must get the girl some decent clothes. She looks confoundedly a
lady, but that rubbish isn't fair to her. Rig her out as good as the
rest--no expense spared. See to it to-morrow, my dear."

And Mrs. Anderton promised. She adored shopping, and this would be a
labor of love. So she went off to dress for dinner, full of visions of
bright pinks and blues and laces and ribbons that would have made
Halcyone shrink if she had known.

Mabel was magnificently patronizing and talked a jargon of fashionable
slang which Halcyone hardly understood. Some transient gleam of her
beloved mother kept suggesting itself to her when Mabel smiled. The
memory was not distinct enough for her to know what it was, but it hurt
her. The big, bouncing, overdeveloped girl had so little of the
personality which she had treasured all these years as of her
mother--treasured even more than remembered.

Ethel had no faintest look of La Sarthe, and was a nice, jolly, ordinary
young person--dear to her father's heart.

At last they left Halcyone alone with Priscilla, and presently the two
threw themselves into each other's arms--for the old nurse was crying
bitterly now, rocking herself to and fro.

"Ah! how it all comes back to me, my lamb," she sobbed. "He's just the
same, only older. Hard and kind and generous and never understanding a
thing that mattered to your poor, beautiful mother. Oh! she was glad to
go at the end, but for leaving you. Dear lady!--all borne to pay your
father's debts, which Mr. Anderton had took up. I can't never forgive
him quite--I can't never."

And Halcyone, overcome with her long strain of emotion, cried, too, for
a few minutes before she could resume her stern self-control.

But at dinner she was calm again, and pale only for the shadows under
her wide eyes.

She had written her letter to Cheiron--she knew not of such things as
messenger-boys or cabs, and had got Priscilla to post it for her, and
now with enforced quiet awaited his answer which she thought she could
receive on the morrow.

"There has been a crisis in the Cabinet, has there not?" she said to her
stepfather, hoping to hear something, and James Anderton replied that
there had been some split--but for his part, the sooner this rotten lot
of sleepers had gone out the better he would be pleased; a good sound
Radical he was, like his friend Mr. Hanbury-Green.

Halcyone abruptly turned the conversation. She could not, she felt,
discuss her beloved and his opinions, even casually, with this man of
another class.

Oh! her poor mother--her poor, sweet mother! How terrible it must have
been to her to be married to such a person!--though her common sense
prompted her to add he was probably, under her influence, not nearly so
coarse and bluff in those days as now he appeared to be.

Her little stepbrother, James Albert, had not returned from his private
school for the summer holidays, so she perhaps would not see him during
her visit.

As the dinner went on everything struck her as glaring, from the
footmen's liveries to the bunches of red carnations; and the blazing
electric lights confused her brain. She, the little country mouse,
accustomed only to old William's gentle shufflings, and the two tall
silver candlesticks with their one wax taper in each!

She could not eat the rich food, and if she had known it, she looked
like a being from some shadowy world among the hearty crew.

Next morning Mr. Carlyon received her letter as he began his early
breakfast; and he tugged at his silver beard, while his penthouse brows
met.

The matter required the most careful consideration. He enormously
disliked to have to play the r�le of arbiter of fate, but he loved
Halcyone more than anything else in the world, and felt bound to use
what force he possessed to secure her happiness--or, if that looked too
difficult, which he admitted it did, he must try and save her from
further unnecessary pain.

He had the day before received John Derringham's letter written from
Wendover and which Mrs. Porrit had redirected, containing the news of
the intended wedding, and it had angered him greatly.

He blazed with indignation! His peerless one to be made to take a
mistress's place when any man should be proud to make her his honored
wife! "The brutal selfishness of men," he said to himself, not blaming
John Derringham in particular. "He ought to have gone off and left her
alone when he felt he was beginning to care, if he had not pluck enough
to stand the racket. But we are all the same--we must have what we want,
and the women must pay--confound us!"

He had never doubted but that, when he read the letter, Halcyone was
already his old pupil's wife--if indeed such a ceremony were legal, she
being under age. And this thought added to his wrath, and he intended to
look the matter up and see. But, before he could do so, he got an
evening paper and read a brief notice that John Derringham had met with
a severe accident--of what exact nature the press association had not
yet learned--and was lying in a critical condition at Wendover Park, the
country seat of the "beautiful American society leader, Mrs. Vincent
Cricklander," with whose name rumor had already connected the
Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in the most interesting
manner, the paragraph added.

So Fate had stepped in and saved his pure night flower, after all! But
at what sort of price? And Cheiron stared into space with troubled eyes.

He passed hours of anxious thought. He never did anything in a hurry,
and felt that now he must especially consider what would be his wisest
course.

And then, this next morning, Halcyone's letter had come.

It was very simple. It told of Mrs. Anderton's arrival at La Sarthe
Chase and of her own return to London with her--and then the real pith
of it had crept out. Had he heard any news of Mr. Derringham? Because
she had seen his writing upon a letter Mrs. Porrit was readdressing at
the orchard house and, observing it was from London, she presumed he was
there, and she hoped she should see him.

The Professor stopped abruptly here.

"What a woman it is, after all!" he exclaimed. He himself had never
noticed the postmark on John Derringham's envelope! Then he folded
Halcyone's pitiful little communication absently, and thought deeply.

Two things were evident. Firstly, John Derringham had been disabled
before the hour when he should have met his bride; and secondly, she
was, when she wrote, unaware that he had had any accident at all. She
must thus be very unhappy and full of horrible anxiety--his dear little
girl!

But what courage and fortitude she showed, he mused on, not to give the
situation away and lament even to him, her old friend. She plainly
intended to stand by the man she loved and never admit she had been
going to marry him until he himself gave her leave.

"The one woman with a soul," Cheiron muttered, and rubbed the mist away
which had gathered in his eyes.

He revolved the situation over and over. Halcyone must be made aware of
the accident, if she had not already read of it in the morning papers;
but she must not be allowed to do anything rash--and as he got thus far
in his meditations, a waiter knocked at the old-fashioned sitting-room
door, and Halcyone herself brushed past him into the room.

She was deadly pale, and for a moment did not speak.

Mrs. Anderton, it appeared, thinking she would be tired from her
unaccustomed journey, had suggested she should breakfast in bed, which
Halcyone, thankful to be alone, had gratefully agreed to; and when on
her breakfast tray which came up at eight o'clock she saw a daily paper,
she had eagerly opened it, and after searching the unfamiliar sheets for
the political news, her eye had caught the paragraph about John
Derringham's accident. In this particular journal the notice was merely
the brief one of the evening before, but it was enough to wring
Halcyone's heart.

She bounded from bed and got Priscilla to dress her in the shortest
possible time, and the faithful nurse, seeing that her beloved lamb was
in some deep distress, forbore to question her.

Nothing would have stopped Halcyone from going out, but she hoped to do
so unperceived.

"Look if the way is clear to the door," she implored Priscilla, "while I
put on my hat. I must go to the Professor at once--something dreadful
has happened."

So Priscilla went and contrived so that she got Halcyone out of the
front door while the servants were busy in the dining-room about the
breakfast. She hailed a passing hansom, and in this, to the poor child,
novel conveyance, she was whirled safely to Cheiron's little hotel in
Jermyn Street, and Priscilla returned to her room, to make believe that
her nursling was still sleeping.

"Halcyone! My child!" the Professor exclaimed, to gain time, and then he
decided to help her out, so he went on: "I am glad to see you, but am
very distressed at the news in the paper this morning about John
Derringham--you may have seen it--and I am sure will sympathize with
me."

Halcyone's piteous eyes thanked him.

"Yes, indeed," she said. "What does it mean? Ought not--we--you to go to
him?"

Mr. Carlyon avoided looking at her.

"I cannot very well do that in Mrs. Cricklander's house," he said,
tugging at his beard, to hide the emotion he felt. "But I will telegraph
this minute and ask for news, if you will give me the forms--they are
over there," and he pointed to his writing-table.

She handed them immediately, and as he adjusted his spectacles she rang
the bell; no time must be lost, and the waiter could be there before the
words were completed.

"When can you get the answer?" she asked a little breathlessly.

"In two hours, I should think, or perhaps three," the Professor
returned. "But there is a telephone downstairs--it has just been put in.
We might telephone to his rooms, or to the Foreign Office, and find out
if they have heard any further news there. That would relieve my mind a
little."

"Yes--do," responded Halcyone eagerly.

The tone of repressed anguish in her soft voice stabbed Cheiron's heart,
but they understood each other too well for any unnecessary words to
pass between them. The kindest thing he could do for her was to show her
he did not mean to perceive her trouble.

The result of the telephoning--a much longer process then than it is
now--was slightly more satisfactory. Sir Benjamin Grant's report, the
Foreign Office official informed them, was that Mr. Derringham's
condition was much more hopeful, but that the most complete quiet for
some time would be absolutely necessary.

"John is so strong," Mr. Carlyon said, as he put down the receiver which
he had with difficulty manipulated--to Halcyone's trembling impatience.
"He will pull through. And all I can do is to wait. He will probably be
up at the end of my fortnight, when I get back home." And he looked
relieved.

"They would not give him a letter from you, of course, I suppose?" said
Halcyone. "If his head has been hurt it will be a long time before he is
allowed to read."

Cheiron nodded.

"I am interested," she went on, looking down. "You will let me know, at
Grosvenor Gardens, directly you hear anything, will you not,
Master?--I--" and then her voice broke a little.

And Cheiron stirred in his chair. It was all paining him horribly, but
until he could be sure what would be best for her he must not show his
sympathy.

"I will send Demetrius with the answer when it comes, and I will
telegraph to Wendover morning and night, dear child," he said. "I knew
you would feel for me." And with this, the sad little comedy between
them ended, for Halcyone got up to leave.

"Thank you, Cheiron," was all she said.

Mr. Carlyon took her down to the door and put her in the waiting hansom
which she had forgotten to dismiss, and he paid the man and reluctantly
let her go back alone.

She was too stunned and wretched to take in anything. The streets seemed
a howling pandemonium upon this June morning at the season's full
height, and all the gayly dressed people just beginning to be on their
way to the park for their morning stroll appeared a mockery as she
passed down Piccadilly.

Whether she had been missed or no, she cared not, and getting out, rang
the bell with numbed unconcern, never, even noticing the surprised face
of the footman as she passed him and ran up the long flights of stairs
to her room, fortunately meeting no one on the way. Here Priscilla
awaited her, having successfully hidden her absence. It was half past
ten o'clock.

Halcyone went to the window and looked out upon the trees in the
triangular piece of green. They were not her trees, but they were still
Nature, of a stunted kind, and they would understand and comfort her or,
at all events, enable her to regain some calm.

She took in deep breaths, and gradually a peace fell upon her. Her
friend God would never desert her, she felt.

And Priscilla said to herself:

"She's prayin' to them Immortals, I expect. Well, whoever she prays to,
she is a precious saint."

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