The Essential Elinor Glyn Collection. Glyn Elinor
"And, you are sure, Sir Benjamin, that he will get quite well?" she said tenderly, allowing her handsome eyes to melt upon the surgeon's face. "It matters enormously to me, you know." Then she looked down.
Thus appealed to, Sir Benjamin felt he must give her all the assurance he could.
"Perfectly, dear lady," he said, pressing her soft hand in sympathy. "He is young and strong, and fortunately it has not touched his brain. But it will take time and gentlest nursing, which you will see, of course, that he gets."
"Indeed, yes," the fair Cecilia said. And when they were all gone, she summoned Arabella.
"You will let me know, Arabella, every minute change in him," she commanded, "especially when he seems conscious. And you will tell him how I am watching over him and doing everything for him. I can't bear sick people--they upset my nerves, and I just can't stand them. But the moment he is all right enough to see me so that it won't bore me, I'll come. You understand? Now I must really have a trional and get some rest."
And when she was alone she went deliberately to the glass and smiled radiantly to herself as she whispered aloud:
"So he isn't going to die or be an idiot. In a few years he can still be Prime Minister. And I have got him now, as sure as fate!"
Then she closed her mouth with that firm snap Arabella knew so well, and, swallowing her sleeping draught, she composed herself for a peaceful siesta.
CHAPTER XXII
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