The Essential Elinor Glyn Collection. Glyn Elinor
you have found," he said. "Away from all the world."
"No indeed, that cannot be at this time of the year," she answered. "See, there is a squirrel far up in the top and there are birds, and look--down there at the roots there is a rabbit hole with such a family in it. It is only in the winter you can be alone--and not even then, for you know there are the moles even if you cannot see them."
"Creatures are interesting to watch, aren't they?" he said. "I have an old place which I loved when I was a boy. It is let now because I am too poor to live in it, but I used to like to prowl about in the early mornings long ago."
"We are all very poor," said Halcyone simply, "but I am sorry for you that you have to let strangers be in your house--that must be dreadful."
John Derringham smiled, and his face lost the _insouciante_ arrogance which irritated his enemies so. His smile, rare enough, was singularly sweet.
"I don't think about it," he said. "It is best not to when anything is disagreeable."
"Cheiron and I often tell one another things like that."
"Cheiron--who is Cheiron?" he asked.
This seemed a superfluous question to Halcyone.
"The Professor, of course. He is just like the picture in my 'Heroes,'" she answered, "and I often pretend we are in the cave on Pelion. I thought you would perhaps be like one of the others since you were his pupil, too, but I cannot find which. You are not Heracles--because you have none of those great muscles--or neas or Peleus. Are--are you Jason himself, perhaps--" and her voice sounded glad with discovery. "We do not know, he may not have had a Greek face."
John Derringham laughed. "Jason who led the Argonauts to find the Golden Fleece--it is a good omen. Would you help me to find the Golden Fleece if you could?"
"Yes, I would, if you were good and true--but the end of the story was sad because Jason was not."
"How must I be good and true then? I thought Jason was a straight enough sort of a fellow and that it was Medea who brought all the trouble--Medea, the woman."
Halcyone's grave eyes never left his face. She saw the whimsical twinkle in his but heeded it not.
"He should not have had anything to do with Medea--that is where he was wrong," she said, "but having given her his word, he should have kept it."
"Even though she was a witch?" Mr. Derringham asked.
"It was still his word--don't you see? Her being a witch did not alter his word. He did not give it because she was or was not a witch--but because he himself wanted to at the time, I suppose; therefore, it was binding."
"A man should always keep his word, even to a woman, then?" and John Derringham smiled finely.
"Why not to a woman as well as a man?" Halcyone asked surprised. "You do not see the point at all it seems. It is not to whom it is you give your word--it is to you it matters that you keep it, because to break it degrades yourself."
"You reason well, fair nymph," he said gallantly; he was frankly amused. "What may your age be? A thousand years more or less will not make any difference!"
"You may laugh at me if you like," said Halcyone, and she smiled; his gayety was infectious, "but I am not so very young. I shall be thirteen in October, the seventh of October."
John Derringham appeared to be duly impressed with this antiquity, and went on gravely:
"So you and the Master discuss these knotty points of honor and expediency together, do you, as a recreation from the Greek syntax? I should like to hear you."
"The Professor does not believe in men much," Halcyone said. "He says they are all honorable to one another until they are tempted--and that they are never honorable to a woman when another woman comes upon the scene. But I do not know at all about such things, or what it means. For me there is nothing towards other people; it only is towards yourself. You must be honorable to yourself."
And suddenly it seemed to John Derringham as if all the paltry shams of the world fell together like a pack of cards, and as if he saw truth shining naked for the first time at the bottom of the well of the child's pure eyes.
An extraordinary wave of emotion came over him, finely strung as he was, and susceptible to all grades of feeling. He did not speak for a minute; it was as if he had quaffed some elixir. A flame of noble fire seemed to run in his veins, and his voice was changed and full of homage when at last he addressed her.
"Little Goddess of Truth," he said, "I would like to be with you always that you might never let me forget this point of view. And you believe it would have won for Jason in the end--if he had been true to himself? Tell me--I want greatly to know."
"But how could there be any doubt of that?" she asked surprised. "Good only can bring good, and evil, evil."
At this moment, out from the copse the soft head of a doe appeared, and at the thrilling sight Halcyone slipped her hand into her companion's, and held his tight lest he should move or rustle a leaf.
"See," she whispered right in his ear. "She will cross to the other side by the stream--and oh! there is the fawn! Is he not the dearest baby angel you have ever seen--!"
And the doe, feeling herself safe, trotted by, followed by a minute son in pale drab velvet hardly a month old.
The pair in the tree watched them breathlessly until they had entered the copse again beyond the bend, and then Halcyone said:
"That makes six--and perhaps there are more. Oh! how I hope the Long Man will not see them!"
John Derringham did not let go her hand at once; there was something soft and pleasant in the touch of the cool little fingers.
"I want to hear about everything," he said. "Tell me of the Long Man--and the fawns, and why there are only six. I am having the happiest morning I have had for years."
So Halcyone began. She glossed a good deal over the facts she had told Mr. Carlyon upon the subject because she did not feel she knew this stranger well enough to let him into her aunts' private affairs--so she turned the interest to the deer themselves, and they chatted on about all sorts of animals and their ways, and John Derringham was entranced and felt quite aggrieved when she said it was getting late and she must go back to the house for her early dinner. He swung himself down from the tree by the high branch with ease and stood ready to catch her, but with a nimbleness he did not expect, she crept round to the lower side and was landed upon the soft turf before he could reach her.
Then he walked back with her to the broken gate, telling her about his own old home the while, and then they paused to say good-by.
Halcyone carried a twig of freshly sprouting oak which she had brought from the tree, having broken it off in her lightning descent.
"Give me one leaf and you keep the other," he said. "And then, whenever I see it, I will try to remember that I must always be good and true."
With grave earnestness she did as he asked, and then opened the gate.
"I want to tell you," she said--and she looked down for a second, and then up into his eyes from beyond the bars. "I did not like the thought of your coming--and at first I did not like you--but now I see something quite different at the other side of your head--Good-by."
And before he could answer, she was off as the young fawn would have been--a flitting shape among the trees. And John Derringham walked slowly back to the orchard house, musing as he went.
But when he got there a telegram from his Chief had arrived, recalling him instantly to London.
And he did not see Halcyone again for several years.
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