The Essential Elinor Glyn Collection. Glyn Elinor
were growing more accustomed to the darkness, or Halcyone really had some magic power, for it seemed to him that he could see the divine features quite clearly.
"She is saying," the soft voice of his companion whispered in his ear, "that all the things you will grasp with your hands are but dreams--and the things that you now believe to be dreams are all real."
"And are you a dream, you sweet?" asked John Derringham. "Or are you tangible, and must I drink the poison cup, after all?"
"I would give you no noxious wine," she answered. "If you were strong and wise and true, only the fire which I have stolen from heaven could come to you."
"Long ago," he said, "you gave me an oak-leaf, dryad, and I have kept it still. What now will you grant to me?"
"Nothing, since you fear--" and she drew back.
"I do not fear," he answered wildly. "Halcyone!--sweetheart! I want you--here--next my heart. Give me--yourself!"
Then he stretched out his arms and drew her to him, all soft and loving and unresisting, and he pressed his lips to her pure and tender lips. And it seemed as if the heavens opened, and the Night poured down all that was divine of bliss.
But before he could be sure that indeed he held her safely in his arms, she started forward, releasing herself. Then, clasping Aphrodite and her silken folds, with a bound she was far beyond him, and had disappeared in the shadow of the archway, on whose curve the last rays of moonlight played, so that he saw it outlined and clear.
He strode forward to follow her, but to his amazement, when he reached the place, she seemed to vanish absolutely in front of his eyes, and although he lit a match and searched everywhere, not the slightest trace of her could he find, and there was no opening or possible corner into which she could have disappeared.
Absolutely dumbfounded, he groped his way back to the bench, and sitting down buried his head in his hands. Surely it was all a dream, then, and he had been drunk--with the Professor's Falernian wine--and had wandered here and slept. But, God of all the nights, what an exquisite dream!
CHAPTER XVIII
The half-moon set, and the night became much darker before John Derringham rose from his seat by the bench. A stupor had fallen upon him. He had ceased to reason. Then he got up and made his way back to the orchard house, under the myriads of pale stars, which shone with diminished brilliancy from the luminous, summer night sky.
Here he seemed to grow material again and to realize that he was indeed awake. But what had happened to him? Whether he had been dreaming or no, a spell had fallen upon him--he had drunk of the poison cup. And Halcyone filled his mind. He thrilled and thrilled again as he remembered the exquisite joy of their tender embrace--even though it had been no real thing, but a dream, it was still the divinest good his life had yet known.
But what could it lead to if it were real? Nothing but sorrow and parting and regret. For his career still mattered to him, he knew, now that he was in his sane senses again, more than anything else in the world. And he could not burden himself with a poor, uninfluential girl as a wife, even though the joy of it took them both to heaven.
The emotion he was experiencing was one quite new to him, and he almost resented it, because it was upsetting some of his beliefs.
The next day, at breakfast, the Professor remarked that he looked pale.
"You rather overwork, John," he said. "To lie about the garden here and not have to follow the caprices of fashionable ladies at Wendover, would do you a power of good."
There was no sight of Halcyone all the day. She was living in a paradise, but hers contained no doubts or uncertainties. She knew that indeed she had lived and breathed the night before, and found complete happiness in John Derringham's arms.
That, then, was what Aphrodite had always been telling her. She knew now the meaning of the love in her eyes. This glorious and divine thing had been given to her, too--out of the night.
It was fully perceived at last, not only half glanced at almost with fear. Love had come to her, and whatever might reck of sorrow, it meant her whole life and soul.
And this precious gift of the pure thing from God she had given in her turn to John Derringham as his lips had pressed her lips.
She spent the whole day in the garden, sitting in the summer house surveying the world. The blue hills in the far distance were surely the peaks of Olympus and she had been permitted to know what existence meant there.
Not a doubt of him entered her heart, or a fear. He certainly loved her as she loved him; they had been created for each other since the beginning of time. And it was only a question of arrangement when she should go away with him and never part any more.
Marriage, as a ceremony in church, meant nothing to her. Some such thing, of course, must take place, because of the stupid conventions of the world, but the sacrament, the real mating, was to be together--alone.
In her innocent and noble soul John Derringham now reigned as king. He had never had a rival, and never would have while breath stayed in her fair body.
By the evening of that day he had reasoned himself into believing that the whole thing was a dream--or, if not a dream, he had better consider it as such; but at the same time, as the dusk grew, a wild longing swelled in his heart for its recurrence, and when the night came he could not any longer control himself, and as he had done before he wandered to the tree.
The moon, one day beyond its first quarter, was growing brighter, and a strange and mysterious shimmer was over everything as though the heat of the day were rising to give welcome and fuse itself in the night.
He was alone with the bird who throbbed from the copse, and as he sat in the sublime stillness he fancied he saw some does peep forth. They were there, of course, with their new-born fawns.
But where was she, the nymph of the night?
His heart ached, the longing grew intense until it was a mighty force. He felt he could stride across the luminous park which separated them, and scale the wall to the casement window of the long gallery, to clasp her once more in his arms. And, as it is with all those beings who have scorned and denied his power, Love was punishing him now by a complete annihilation of his will. At last he buried his face in his hands; it was almost agony that he felt.
When he uncovered his eyes again he saw, far in the distance, a filmy shadow. It seemed to be now real, and now a wraith, as it flitted from tree to tree, but at last he knew it was real--it was she--Halcyone! He started to his feet, and there stood waiting for her.
She came with the gliding movement he now knew belonged in her dual personality to the night.
Her hair was all unbound, and her garment was white.
All reason, all resolution left him. He held out his arms.
"My love!" he cried. "I have waited for you--ah, so long!"
And Halcyone allowed herself to be clasped next his heart, and then drawn to the bench, where they sat down, blissfully content.
They had such a number of things to tell one another about love. He who had always scoffed at its existence was now eloquent in his explanation of the mystery. And Halcyone, who had never had any doubts, put her beautiful thoughts into words. Love meant everything--it was just he, John Derringham. She was no more herself, but had come to dwell in him.
She was tender and absolutely pure in her broad loyalty, concealing nothing of her fondness, letting him see that if she were Mistress of the Night, he was Master of her Soul.
And the complete subservience of herself, the sublime transparency without subterfuge of her surrender, appealed to everything of chivalry which his nature held.
"Since