Part 28 (1/2)

”If John really feels she is a necessity, he will brave everything and marry her openly as soon as he is well. If he does not--then I will not a.s.sist her into a life of misery and disillusion.”

He remembered a talk they had had long ago, when his old pupil had given his views about women and their place in the scheme of things. Not one must expect a man to be faithful to her, were she wife or mistress, he had said. So starting heavily handicapped in the role of his secret and unacknowledged wife, Halcyone would stand a very poor chance of happiness. Cheiron pictured things--John Derringham flattered and courted by the world and surrounded by adoring woman, while Halcyone sat at home in some quiet corner and received the sc.r.a.ps of his attentions that were left.

No! decidedly he would have no hand in aiding the sorry affair.

So he used his influence and even a little cunning in preventing Halcyone from writing to her lover. He was too ill yet to be troubled, and she must wait until he should send some message to her.

”You do not want Mrs. Cricklander to read your letter, child,” he said, when she timidly suggested one day that it would seem kinder if she wrote to say she was concerned at the accident to her old friend.--The sad comedy was still kept up between them.--And Halcyone had stiffened.

No, indeed! not that! She was woman enough in spite of the enn.o.bling and broadening effects of her knowledge of nature, to feel the stab of jealous pain, though she had resolutely crushed from her thoughts the insinuation she had read of in the first notice of the disaster--about Mrs. Cricklander's interest in her lover. Her pride took fire. Certainly until he could receive letters and read them himself, she must wait.

Cheiron would, of course, inform her when that time came. A doubt of John Derringham's loyalty to her never even cast its shadow upon her soul, nor a suspicion that he could doubt her either.

All these things were the frosts and rains of their winter, but the springtime would come and the glorious sun and flowers.

She was growing accustomed to London and the life of continual bustle, and was almost grateful for it all as it kept her from thinking.

Her stepfather and his wife mixed in a rising half-set of society where many people who were not fools came, and a number who were, but to Halcyone they all seemed a weariness. No one appeared to see anything straightly, and they seemed to be taken up with pursuits that could not divert or interest a cat. She saw quite a number of young men at dinners and was taken to the theater and suppers at the fas.h.i.+onable restaurants, and these entertainments she loathed. She was too desperately unhappy underneath to get even youth's exhilaration out of them, and when she had been in London for nearly three weeks and Cheiron was preparing to return to his cottage, having delayed his departure much beyond his ordinary time, she felt she could endure the martyrdom no more.

She had stilled every voice which had whispered to her that it was indeed time that she heard some word from her lover. Because there were now only occasional notices in the papers about his health, he was supposed to be getting well.

”I will implore Cheiron to let me go back with him,” she decided firmly, as she went downstairs to breakfast. ”I will ask if I may not go out and see him this morning,” and, comforted with this thought, she entered the dining-room with a brisker step than usual. No one but her stepfather was down.

He had grown accustomed, if not quite attached, to the quiet, gentle girl, and he liked her noiseless, punctual way--they had often breakfasted alone.

He was reading his _Chronicle_ propped up in front of him, and handed her the _Morning Post_ from the pile by his side. He silently went on with his cutlet which an obsequious butler had placed for his consumption. Halcyone turned rapidly to the column where she was accustomed to look daily for news of her lover. And there she read that Mrs. Cricklander had been entertaining a Sat.u.r.day to Monday party, and that Mr. John Derringham's recovery was now well advanced, even his broken ankle was mending rapidly and he hoped soon to be well.

A tight feeling grew round her heart, and her eyes dropped absently down the columns of the engagement announcements in which she took no interest, and then it seemed that her very soul was struck with agony as she read:

”A marriage has been arranged and will shortly take place between the Right Honorable John Derringham of Derringham in the County of Northampton, Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and Mrs.

Vincent Cricklander of New York, daughter of Orlando B. Muggs of Pittsburgh, U.S.A.”

And it was here that the La Sarthe breeding stood Halcyone in good stead, for she neither fainted nor dropped the paper--but, after a few seconds of acute anguish, she rose and, making some little remark about having forgotten something, quietly left the room.

CHAPTER XXIV

It is possible that, if his revolver had been lying quite near, the morning John Derringham awoke to the remembrance that he was more or less an engaged man, he would have shot himself, so utterly wretched and debased did he feel. But no such weapon was there, and he lay in his splendid gilt bed and groaned aloud as he covered his eyes with his hand.

The light hurt him--he was giddy, and his head swam. Surely, among other things in the half-indistinct nightmare of the preceding evening, he must have had too much champagne.

From the moment, now over a week ago, that he had been allowed to sit up in bed, and more or less distinct thought had come back to him, he had been a prey to hideous anxiety and grief. Halcyone was gone from him--had been s.n.a.t.c.hed away by Fate, who, with relentless vindictiveness, had filled his cup. For the first letters that he opened, marked from his lawyers so urgently that they had been given to him before the bandages were off his head, contained the gravest news of his financial position. The chief mortgagee intended to foreclose in the course of the next three months, unless an arrangement could be come to at once, which appeared impossible.

He was actually at bay. Thus, although in his first moments of consciousness, he had intended to go directly he was well and demand his love openly and chance the rest, this news made that course now quite out of the question. He could not condemn her to wretched poverty and tie a millstone round both their necks. The doctors had absolutely forbidden him to read or even know of any more letters--the official ones the secretary could deal with--but he became so restless with anxiety that Arabella Clinker was persuaded to bring them up and at least let him glance at the addresses.

There was one from Cheiron, which he insisted upon opening--a brief dry line of commiseration for his accident, with no mention of Halcyone in it. The complete ignoring of his letter to announce their marriage cut him deeply. He realized Mr. Carlyon guessed that the accident had happened before that event could take place, and his silence about it showed what he thought. John Derringham quivered with discomfort, he hated to feel the whip of his old master's contempt. And he could not explain matters or justify himself--there was nothing to be said. The Professor, of course, knew of Halcyone's whereabouts--but, after his broad hint of his want of sympathy about their relations, John Derringham felt he could not open the subject with him again. This channel for the a.s.suagement of his anxieties was closed. The immense pile of the rest of his correspondence was at last sorted. He knew most of the writings, and the few he was doubtful about he opened--but none were from his love. So he gave them all back to Arabella, and turned his face from the light physically exhausted and with a storm of pain in his heart.

Mrs. Cricklander had carefully gone through each post as it came, and longed to destroy one or two suspicious-looking communications she saw in the same female handwriting--from his old friend Lady Durend, if she had known!--but she dared not, and indeed was not really much disturbed.

She had laid her own plans with too great a nicety and felt perfectly sure of the ultimate result of their action. Arabella was each day sent up with the subtlest messages to the poor invalid, which her honor made her unwillingly repeat truthfully.