The Essential Elinor Glyn Collection. Glyn Elinor

The Essential Elinor Glyn Collection - Glyn Elinor


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she had committed a breach of taste in thus descending upon La Sarthe Chase unannounced. And instead of the sensation of complacent importance which she usually enjoyed when among her own friends and acquaintances, she was experiencing a depressed sense of being a very small personage indeed.

      Her highly colored comely face was very hot and flushed and she rather restlessly played with her parasol handle. Miss La Sarthe's voice grew a little acid as she said:

      "This is our great-niece, Halcyone La Sarthe, Mrs. Anderton"--and then--"It is unfortunate that you should have been so long absent, child."

      "I am very sorry," Halcyone returned gently, and she shook hands. She made no excuse or explanation.

      Mrs. Anderton plunged into important matters at once.

      "Your father, Mr. Anderton"--how that word "father" jarred upon Halcyone's sensitive ears!--"wished me to come and see you, dear, and hopes you will return with me to-morrow to London, for a little visit to us, that you may make the acquaintance of your brother and sisters."

      Halcyone had already made up her mind what to do, before she had left her room. She would agree to anything they suggested in order to have no obstacles put in her way--not admitting for a moment that these people had any authority over her. Then, if in the morning she received a letter from her Beloved, she would follow its instructions implicitly. Always having at hand her certain mode of disappearance, she could slip away, and if it seemed necessary, just leave them to think what they pleased. Priscilla would be warned to allay at once the anxiety of her aunts, and for the Andertons she was far too desperate to care what they might feel.

      "Thank you; it is very good of you," she said as graciously as she could. "My old nurse has told me of your kind invitation, and is already beginning the preparations. I trust you left Mr. Anderton and my stepbrother and sisters well?"

      "Hoity-toity!" thought Louisa Anderton. "Of the same sort as the old spinsters. This won't please James, I fear!" But aloud she answered that the family were all well, and that James Albert, who was thirteen now, would soon be going to Eton.

      Over Halcyone, in spite of her numbness and the tension she was feeling, though controlled by her firm will, there came the memory of the red, crying baby, for whose life her own sweet mother had paid so dear a price. And Mabel and Ethel--noisy, merry little girls!--she had thought of them so seldom in these latter years--they seemed as far-off shadows now. But James Anderton and her mother stood out sharp and clear.

      The strain and anguish of the day had left her very pale. Mrs. Anderton thought her plain and most uncomfortably aloof; she really regretted that she had put into her husband's head the idea of giving this invitation. He would gladly have left Halcyone alone, but for her kindly thought. Mabel was just seventeen, and such a handful that her father had decided she should stay in the schoolroom with her sister for another year, and Mrs. Anderton had felt it would be a good opportunity for Halcyone to rejoin the family circle at a time when her presence, if she proved good-looking, could not in any way interfere with her stepsister's debut.

      And here, instead of being overcome with gratitude and excitement, this cold, quiet girl was taking it all as quite an ordinary circumstance. No wonder she, Louisa Anderton, felt aggrieved.

      They had hardly time for any more words, for Mrs. Anderton had already put off her departure by the seven-twenty train from Applewood to Upminster on purpose to wait for Halcyone, and now proposed to catch the one at nine o'clock--her fly still waited in the courtyard--and they made rapid arrangements. Halcyone, accompanied by Priscilla, was to meet her the next day at the Upminster junction at eleven o'clock, and they would journey to London together.

      And all the while Halcyone was agreeing to this she was thinking, if in the improbable circumstance that she should get no letter in the morning, it would be wiser to go to London. There was her Cheiron, who would help her to get news. But of course she would hear, and all would be well.

      Thus she was enabled to unfreeze a little to her stepfather's wife, who, as they said good-by at the creaking fly's door, felt some of her soft charm.

      "Perhaps she is shy," she said to herself as she rolled towards the station. "Anyway, it is restful, after Mabel's laying down the law."

      That night Halcyone took her goddess to the little summer house upon the second terrace.

      "If I start with John to-morrow, my sweet," she said, "you will come with me as I have promised you. But if I must go to that great, restless city, to find him, then you will wait for me here--safe in your secret home." And then she looked out over the misty clover-grown pleasance to the country beyond bathed in brilliant moonlight. And something in the beauty of it stilled the wild ache in her heart. She would not admit into her thoughts the least fear, but some unexplained, unconquerable apprehension stayed in her innermost soul. She knew, only she refused to face the fact, that all was not well.

      Of doubt as to John Derringham's intentions towards her, or his love, she had none, but there were forces she knew which were strong and could injure people, and with all her fearlessness of them, they might have been capable of causing some trouble to her lover--her lover who was ignorant of such things.

      She stayed some time looking at the beautiful moonlit country, and saying her prayers to that God Who was her eternal friend, and then she got up to steal noiselessly to bed.

      But as she was opening the secret door, to have one more look at the sky, after she had replaced Aphrodite in the bag, it seemed as though her lover's voice called her in anguish through the night: "Halcyone!" and again, "Halcyone! My love!"

      She stopped, petrified with emotion, and then rushed back onto the terrace. But all was silence; and, wild with some mad fear, she set off hurriedly, never stopping until she came to their trysting tree. But here there was silence also, only the nightingale throbbed from the copse, while the faint rustle of soft zephyrs disturbed the leaves.

      And Jeb Hart and his comrade saw the tall white figure from their hiding-place in the low overgrown brushwood, and Gubbs crossed himself again, for whether she were living or some wraith they were never really sure.

      At the moment when Halcyone opened the secret door, John Derringham was just recovering consciousness in a luxurious bed at Wendover Park, whither he had been carried when accidentally found by the keepers in their rounds about eight o'clock. It was several days since they had visited this part of the park, and they had lit upon him by a fortunate chance. He had lain there in the haw-haw, unconscious all that day, while his poor little lady-love waited for him at the oak gate, and was now in a sorry plight indeed, as Arabella Clinker bent over him, awaiting anxiously the verdict of the doctors who had been fetched by motor from Upminster. Would he live or die?

      Her employer had had a bad attack of nerves upon hearing of the accident, and was now reclining upon her boudoir sofa, quite prostrated and in a high state of agitation until she should know the worst--or best.

      Arabella listened intently. Surely the patient was whispering something? Yes, she caught the words.

      "Halcyone!" he murmured, and again, "Halcyone--my love!" and then he closed his eyes once more.

      He would live, the physicians said after some hours of doubt--with very careful nursing. But the long exposure in the wet, twenty-four hours at least, with that wound in the head and the broken ankle, was a very serious matter, and absolute quiet and the most highly skilled attention would be necessary.

      It was Arabella who made all the sensible, kind arrangements that night, and herself sat up with the poor suffering patient until the nurses could come. But it was Mrs. Cricklander who, dignified and composed, received the doctors after the consultation with Sir Benjamin Grant next day, before the celebrated surgeon left for London, and she made her usual good impression upon the great man.

      That the local lights thought far more highly of Arabella did not matter. Mrs. Cricklander was wise enough to know, it is upon the exalted that a good effect must be produced.


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