The Essential Elinor Glyn Collection. Glyn Elinor
dish, so that at half past seven the cloth had been cleared away by old William (in a black evening coat now and rather a high stock), and the shining mahogany table reflected the two candles in their superb old silver candlesticks.
At this stage, as Halcyone entered the room, it was customary for William to place the dish of apples on the table in front of Miss La Sarthe, and the dish of almonds and raisins in front of Miss Roberta. The dessert did not vary much for months--from October to late June it was the same; and only on Sundays was the almond and raisin dish allowed to be partaken of, but an apple was divided into four quarters, after being carefully peeled by Miss La Sarthe, each evening, and Miss Roberta was given two quarters and Halcyone one, while the eldest lady nibbled at the remaining piece herself.
In her day, children had always come down to dessert, and had had to be good and not greedy, or the fate of Miss Augusta Noble of that estimable book, "The Fairchild Family," would certainly fall upon them. Halcyone, from her earliest memory, had come down to dessert every night--except at one or two pleasant moments when the measles or a bad cold had kept her in bed. Half past seven o'clock, summer and winter, had meant for her the quarter of an apple, two or three strawberries or a plum--and almost always the same conversation.
Miss La Sarthe sat at the head of the table, in a green silk dress cut low upon the shoulders and trimmed with a bertha of blonde lace. Miss Roberta--sad falling off from dignity--had her thin bones covered with a habit shirt of tulle, because she was altogether a poorer creature than her sister, and felt the cold badly. Both ladies wore ringlets at the sides of their faces and little caps of ribbon and lace.
Even within Halcyone's memory, the dining-room had lost some of its adornments. The Chippendale chairs had gone, and had been replaced by four stout kitchen ones. The bits of rare china were fewer--but the portrait of the famous Timothy La Sarthe, by Holbein, still frowned from his place of honor above the chimneypiece. All the La Sarthes had been christened Timothy since that time.
The affair of the governess seemed to be troubling Miss Roberta. At intervals she had found comfort in these denizens of the outer world, and, free from the stern eye of Sister Ginevra, had been wont to chat with one and another. They never stayed long enough for her to know them well, and now this lady--the fifth within two years--had refused to return. Life seemed very dull.
"Need I have any more governesses, Aunt Ginevra?" Halcyone said. "There is an old gentleman who has bought the orchard house and he says he will teach me Greek--and I already know a number of other tiresome things."
Halcyone had not meant to tell her aunts anything about Cheiron--this new-found joy--but she reasoned after she heard of Mademoiselle's non-return that the knowledge that she would have some instructor might have weight with those in charge of her. It was worth risking at all events.
Miss La Sarthe adjusted a gold pince-nez and looked at the little girl.
"How old are you, Halcyone?" she asked.
"I was twelve on the seventh of last October, Aunt Ginevra."
"Twelve--a young gentlewoman's education is not complete at twelve years old, child--although governesses in the house are not very pleasant, I admit"--and Miss La Sarthe sighed.
"Oh, I know it isn't!" said Halcyone, "but you see, I can speak French and German quite decently, and the other things surely I might learn myself in between the old gentleman's teaching."
"But what do you know of this--this stranger?" demanded Miss La Sarthe. "You allude to someone of whom neither your Aunt Roberta nor I have ever heard."
"I met him to-day. I went into the orchard as usual, and found the house was inhabited, and I saw him and he asked me in to tea. He is a very old gentleman with a long white beard, and very, very clever. His room is full of Greek books and we had a long talk, and he was very kind and said he would teach me to read them."
This seemed to Halcyone to be sufficient in the way of credentials for anyone.
"I have heard from Hester," Miss Roberta interposed timidly, "that the orchard house has been bought by an Oxford professor--it sounds most respectable, does it not, sister?"
Miss La Sarthe looked stern:
"More than thirty-five years ago, Roberta, I told you I disapproved of Hester's chattering. I cannot conceive personally, how you can converse with servants as you do. Hester would not have dared to gossip to me!"
Poor Miss Roberta looked crushed. She had often been chided on this point before.
Halcyone would like to have reminded her elder aunt that William, who was equally a servant, had announced some such news to her that afternoon; but she remained silent. She must gain her point if she could, and to argue, she knew, was never a road to success.
"I am sure if we could get a really nice English girl," hazarded Miss Roberta, wishing to propitiate, "it might be company for us all, Ginevra--but if Mrs. Anderton insists upon sending another foreign person--"
"And of course she will," interrupted the elder lady; "people of Mrs. Anderton's class always think it is more genteel to have a smattering of foreign languages than to know their own mother tongue. We may get another German--and that I could hardly bear."
"Then do write to my stepfather, please, please," cried Halcyone. "Say I am going to be splendidly taught--lots of interesting things--and oh--I will try so hard by myself to keep up what I already know. I will practice--really, really, Aunt Ginevra--and do my German exercises and dear Aunt Roberta can talk French to me and even teach me the Italian songs that she sings so beautifully to her guitar!"
This last won the day as far as Miss Roberta was concerned. Her faded cheeks flushed pink. The trilling Italian love-songs, learnt some fifty years ago during a two years' residence in Florence, had always been her pride and joy. So she warmly seconded her niece's pleadings, and the momentous decision was come to that James Anderton should be approached upon the subject. If the child learned Greek--from a professor--and could pick up a few of Roberta's songs as an accomplishment, she might do well enough--and a governess in the house, in spite of the money paid by Mr. Anderton to keep her, was a continual gall and worry to them.
Halcyone knew very little about her stepfather. She was aware that he had married her mother when she was a very poor and sorrowful young widow, that she had had two stepsisters and a brother very close together, and then that the pretty mother had died. There was evidently something so sad connected with the whole story that Priscilla never cared much to talk about it. It was always, "your poor sainted mother in heaven," or, "your blessed pretty mother"--and with that instinctive knowledge of the feelings of other people which characterized Halcyone's point of view, she had avoided questioning her old nurse. Her stepfather, James Anderton, was a very wealthy stockbroker--she knew that, and also that a year or so after her mother's death he had married again--"a person of his own class," Miss La Sarthe had said, "far more suitable to him than poor Elaine."
Halcyone had only been six years old at her mother's death, but she kept a crisp memory of the horror of it. The crimson, crumpled-looking baby brother, in his long clothes, whose coming somehow seemed responsible for the loss of her tender angel, for a long time was viewed with resentful hatred. It was a terrible, unspeakable grief. She remembered perfectly the helpless sense of loss and loneliness.
Her mother had loved her with passionate devotion. She was conscious even then that Mabel and Ethel, the stepsisters, were as nothing in comparison to herself in her mother's regard. She had a certainty that her mother had loved her own father very much--the young, brilliant, spendthrift, last La Sarthe. And her mother had been of the family, too--a distant cousin. So she herself was La Sarthe to her finger tips--slender and pale and distinguished-looking. She remembered the last scene with her stepfather before her coming to La Sarthe Chase. It was the culmination after a year of misery and unassuaged grieving for her loss. He had come into the nursery where the three little girls were playing--Halcyone and her two stepsisters--and he had made them all stand up in his rough way, and see