CHAPTER XXIII
Meanwhile, John Derringham lay betwixt life and death and was watched over by the kind eye of Arabella Clinker. She had gathered quite a number of facts in the night, while she had listened to his feverish ravings—he was light-headed for several hours before the nurses came—then the fever had decreased and though extremely weak he was silent.
Arabella knew now that he loved Halcyone—that wood nymph they had seen during their Easter Sunday walk—and that he had been going to meet her when the accident had happened. The rest was a jumble of incoherent phrases all giving the impression of intense desire and anxiety for some special event. It was:
"Then we shall be happy, my sweet," or "Halcyone, you will not think me a brute, then, will you, my darling," and there were more just detached words about an oak tree, and a goddess and such like vaporings.
But Arabella felt that, no doubt the moment he would be fully conscious, he would wish to send some message—for during the two following days whenever she went in to see him there was a hungering demand in his haggard eyes.
So Miss Clinker took it upon herself to stop at the Professor's house on one of her walks, meaning to beard Cheiron in his den, and find out how—should it be necessary—she could communicate with Halcyone. And then she was informed by Mrs. Porrit that her master would be away for a fortnight, and that Miss Halcyone La Sarthe had been taken off by her stepmother—she did not know where—and that the two old ladies had actually gone that day, with Hester and old William, to some place on the Welsh coast they had known when they were children, for a change to the sea! La Sarthe Chase was shut up. Arabella Clinker was not sufficiently acquainted with the habits of its inmates to appreciate the unparalleled upheaval this dislodgment meant, but she saw that her informant was highly surprised and impressed.
"I expect the poor old gentry felt too lonely to stop, once that dear Miss Halcyone was gone," Mrs. Porrit said, "but there, when I heard it you could have knocked me down with a feather!—them to go to the sea!"
All this looked hopeless as far as communicating with Halcyone went—unless through a letter to the Professor. Arabella returned to Wendover rather cast down.
She had been reasoning with herself severely over a point, and when her letter went to her mother on the next Sunday, she was still undecided as to what was her course of duty, and craved her parent's advice.
The case is this [she wrote]. Being quite aware of M. E.'s
intentions, am I being disloyal to her, in helping to frustrate them
by aiding Mr. Derringham to establish communications with the person
whom I have already vaguely hinted to you I believe he is interested
in? I do not feel it is altogether honorable to take my salary from
M. E. and to go against what I know to be the strong desire of her
life at the present time. On the other hand, my feelings of humanity
are appealed to by Mr. Derringham's weakness, and by the very poor
chance he will have of escaping M. E. when she begins her attack
during his convalescence. I have felt more easy in conscience
hitherto because I have merely stood aside, not aided the adversary,
but now there is a parting of the ways and I am greatly disturbed. I
like Mr. Derringham very much, he has always treated me with
courteous consideration not invariably shown to me by M. E.'s guests;
and I cannot help being sorry for him, if—which I fear is almost a
certainty—she will secure him in the end.
Then the letter ended.
Arabella was much worried. However, she felt she might remain neutral so far as this, that, when Mrs. Cricklander indulged in endless speculations as to why John Derringham should have been trying to cross that difficult and dangerous haw-haw, she gave no hint that his destination could have been other than the Professor's little house. She did swerve sufficiently to the other side to remark that to cross the haw-haw would save at least a mile by the road if one were in a hurry. And then her loyalty caused her to repeat, with extra care, to John Derringham in a whisper the fib which Mrs. Cricklander wished—namely, that she, the fair Cecilia, was there ready to come to him and sit up with him, and do anything in the world for him, and was only prevented by the doctor's strict orders, fearing the slightest excitement for the patient—and that these orders caused her great grief.
John Derringham's eyes looked grateful, but he did not speak.
His head ached so terribly and his body was wracked with pain, while his ankle, not having been set for twenty-four hours, had swollen so that it rendered its proper setting a very difficult matter, and caused him unspeakable suffering. Sir Benjamin Grant had to come down to Wendover twice again before things looked in more hopeful state.
And what agonizing thoughts coursed through his poor feverish brain—until through sheer weakness there would be hours when he was numb.
What could Halcyone have thought waiting for him all that day! and now she, of course, must have heard of his accident and there was no sign or word.
Or was there—and were those cruel doctors not giving him the message? The day came—the Wednesday after Arabella had sent her letter to her mother—when he was strong enough to speak. He waited for the moment when Miss Clinker always arrived with Mrs. Cricklander's bunch of flowers and morning greeting—and then, while the nurse went from the room for a second, he whispered with dry lips:
"Will you do me a kindness?" And Arabella's brown eyes gleamed softly behind her glasses. "Let Miss Halcyone La Sarthe know how I am—she would come and meet you any day at Mr. Carlyon's—" then he stopped, disturbed by the blank look in Miss Clinker's face.
"What is it?" he gasped, and Arabella saw that pale as he had been, with his poor head all bandaged, he grew still more pale—and she realized how terribly weak he must be, and how carefully she must calculate what she could reply.
"I understand that Mr. Carlyon is in London upon a visit, and that the Misses La Sarthe have gone to the sea—" and then, as his eyes touched her with their pitiful questioning surprise, she blurted out the truth.
"Miss Halcyone La Sarthe was fetched away on last Thursday by her stepmother—I did not hear the name—and no one knows where she has gone. La Sarthe Chase is shut up."
John Derringham closed his eyes—his powers of reasoning were not strong enough yet to grasp the actual meaning of this—it seemed to him as though Halcyone were dead, taken away from him by some fate and that all things were at an end.
Arabella grew very frightened.
"Mr. Carlyon telegraphs from London every day," she ventured to announce.
But this appeared to bring no comfort, and the nurse returning, signed to her to leave the room, for John Derringham lay still as one dead.
And, when Arabella arrived at her own sanctum, she burst into tears. What a fool she had been to tell him that, she felt.
All these days, Halcyone passed in a repressed agony in spite of her prayers and unshaken beliefs. She knew it was her winter time and she must bear it until the spring should come, though it was none the less hard to support. But she got through the hours with perfect surface calm—and her stepsisters thought her stupid and dull, while Mrs. Anderton decided there was something unnatural about a girl who took not the slightest interest in shopping, and was perfectly indifferent about all the attractive garments which were put upon her back. She always expressed her thanks so gently, and was ever sweet and willing to be of use, but the look of pain remained deep in those star-like, mysterious eyes, and caused sensations of discomfort to grow in Mrs. Anderton's kindly breast.
Cheiron's laconic messages were delivered to Halcyone every day by Demetrius.
John Derringham was no worse.
He was having every care.
Sir Benjamin Grant had gone down again.
His ankle was satisfactorily set.
But never a word that he had asked for her, and yet she read in the morning papers each day, as well as knew from her Professor's information, that her lover was going on splendidly, and would soon be embarked upon a convalescence. The paper appeared to regard the accident as safely over, and the patient as returning to health.
For Mrs. Cricklander, well-skilled in the manipulating of reporters in her own country, knew exactly what impression she wished to give to the press. And she had no intention of the idea getting abroad that her injured visitor was in a very exhausted condition, because there were those she knew who would suggest that she had bagged him while he was at her mercy—when, later on, they heard the news of her engagement, which she felt was each day growing more certain of becoming a fact. And in Halcyone's brave heart not a doubt ever entered—she waited and believed and endured, in silent pain.
After Arabella's unfortunate announcement, for two or three days John Derringham was too ill to know or care what occurred, and then other and further tormenting thoughts began to trouble his weary brain.
If Halcyone had a stepmother who had come and taken her away, there were then more persons than her ancient aunts to reckon with. She could not now slip off into a secret marriage with himself with small chance of awkward questionings. That phase of the dream was over, he felt.
No letters of any sort were given him by the doctor's strict orders, and his private secretary had come down, an amiable and intelligent youth, and was dealing with the necessary official correspondence—as best he could—growing each day more infatuated with his fair hostess who felt that no pawn on the chessboard which contained John Derringham as king was worth neglecting. The Professor was not enjoying his fortnight in London, and almost tugged his silver beard out while he smoked innumerable pipes. He had come to some conclusions.
John Derringham having been unable to keep the tryst with Halcyone was plainly the working of the hand of Fate, which did not intend that his sweet girl should occupy the invidious and humiliating position of secret wife and apparent mistress to the ambitious young man. Therefore he—Arnold Carlyon—had no right to assist her again into John Derringham's arms. They must both suffer and work out their destinies however cruel that might seem.
"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 assist 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 rôle 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 scraps 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 ennobling 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 fashionable 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 Saturday 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.