CHAPTER XXVIII
When Arabella Clinker and her mother were settled together at Wendover, a strange peace seemed to fall upon the place. John Derringham was conscious of it upstairs as he lay in his Louis XV bed. By the time he was allowed to be carried to a sofa in the sitting-room which had been arranged for him, July had well set in.
He had parted from his Cecilia with suitable things said upon either side. Even in his misery and abasement, John Derringham was too assured a spirit and too much a man of the world to have any hesitation or awkwardness. Mrs. Cricklander had been all that was sympathetic. She looked superbly full of vigor and the joy of life as she came to say farewell.
"John, darling," she purred, "you will do everything you are told to by the doctors while I am away, won't you?" and she caressed his forehead with her soft hand. "So that I may not have to worry as dreadfully as I have been doing, when I come back. It has made me quite ill—that is why I must go to Carlsbad. You will be good now; so that I may find you as strong and handsome as ever on my return." Then she bent and kissed him.
He promised faithfully, and she never saw the whimsical gleam in his eyes, because for the moment having gained her end her faculties had resumed their normal condition, which was not one of superlative sensitiveness. Like everything else in her utilitarian equipment, fine perceptions were only assumed when the magnitude of the goal in view demanded their presence. And even then they merely went as far as sentinels to warn or encourage her in the progress of her aims, never wasting themselves upon irrelevant objects.
When her scented presence had left the room, John Derringham clasped his hands behind his head, and, before he was aware of it, his lips had murmured "Thank God!"
And then Nemesis fell upon him—his schoolboy sensation of recreation-time at hand left him, and a blank sense of failure and hopeless bondage took its place.
Surely he had bartered his soul for a very inadequate mess of pottage.
And where would he sink to under this scorpion whip? Where would go all his fine aspirations which, even in spite of all the juggling of political life, still lived in his aims. Halcyone would have understood.
"Oh! my love!" he cried. "My tender love!"
Then that part of him which was strong reasserted itself. He would not give way to this repining, the thing was done and he must make the best of it. He asked for some volumes from the library. He would read, and he sent the faithful and adoring Brome to request Miss Clinker to send him up the third and fourth volume of "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." He often turned to Gibbon when he was at war with things. The perfect balance of the English soothed him—and he felt he would read of Julian, for whom in his heart he felt a sympathy.
Arabella brought the volumes herself, and placed them on his table, and then went to settle some roses in a vase before she left the room.
A thin slip of paper fell out of one of the books as he opened it, and he read it absently while he turned the pages.
On the top was a date in pencil, and in a methodical fashion there was written in red ink:
"Notes for the instruction of M. E.," and then underneath, "Subjects to be talked of at dinner to-night—Was there cause for Julian's apostasy? What appealed most to Julian in the old religions—etc., etc."
For a second the words conveyed no meaning to his brain, and for something to say, he said aloud to Arabella: "This is your writing, I think, Miss Clinker. I see you have a taste for our friend Gibbon, too," and then, observing the troubled confusion of Arabella's honest face, a sudden flash came over him of memory. He recollected distinctly that upon the Sunday before his accident, they had talked at lunch of Julian the Apostate, and Mrs. Cricklander had turned the conversation, and then had referred to the subject again at dinner with an astonishing array of facts, surprising him by her erudition.
He looked down at the slip again—yes, the date was right, and the red-ink heading was evidently a stereotyped one; probably Arabella kept a supply of these papers ready, being a methodical creature. And the questions!—were they for her own education? But no—Arabella was a cultivated person and would not require such things, and, on that particular Sunday, had never opened the door of her lips at either meal.
"She prompts Cecilia," in a flash he thought, with a wild sense of bitter mirth. "No wonder she can reel off statistics as she does. 'Subjects to be talked of at dinner'—forsooth!"
And Arabella stood there, her kind plain face crimson, and her brown eyes blinking pitifully behind her glasses.
She was too fine to say anything, it would make the situation impossibly difficult if she invented an explanation. So she just blinked—and finally, after placing the fresh flowers by Mr. Derringham's bed, she left the room by the door beyond.
When she had gone it was as if a curtain were raised upon John Derringham's understanding. Countless circumstances came back to him when his fiancée's apparent learning had aroused his admiration, and with a twinge he remembered Cheiron's maliciously amused eyes which had met his during her visit to the orchard house, when she had become a little at sea in some of her conversation. The whole thing then was a colossal bluff—Arabella was the brain! Arabella was the erudite, cultured person and his admirable Cecilia played the rôle of extremely clever parrot! He laughed with bitter cynical merriment until he shook in his bed.
And he, poor fool, had been taken in by it all—he and a number of others. He was in company at all events! Then he saw another aspect, and almost admired the woman for her audacity. What nerve to play such a game, and so successfully! The determination—the application it required—and the force of character!
But the gall of it when she should be his wife! He saw pictures of himself trembling with apprehension at some important function in case mistakes should occur. He would have to play the part of Arabella, and write out the notes for the subjects to be "talked of at dinner!"
He lay there, and groaned with rage and disgust.
He could not—he would not go through with it!
But next day the irony of fate fell upon him with heavy hand. He received the news that Joseph Scroope, his maternal uncle, was dead, not having produced an heir, so he knew that he would inherit a comfortable fortune from him.
The noose had, indeed, tightened round his neck,—he could not now release himself from his engagement to Cecilia Cricklander. Some instincts of a gentleman still remained with him in full measure. The hideous, hideous mockery of it all. If he had waited, he would now have been free to seek his darling, his pure star, Halcyone, in all honor. He could have taken her dear, tender hand, and led her proudly to the seat by his side—and crowned her with whatever laurels her sweet spirit would have inspired him to gain. And it was all too late! too late!
He reviewed the whole chain of events, and perceived how it had been his own doing—what had happened in each step—and this knowledge added to the bitterness of his pain. It was from now onward that his nights were often agony. Every movement, every word of Halcyone came back to him, from the old days of long ago when she had given him the oak leaf, to the moment of her looking into his eyes, with all her soul in hers, as she had answered his passionate question. "Afraid? How should I be afraid—since you are my lord and I am your love? Do not we belong to one another?"
And in spite of the peace Mrs. Cricklander's absence caused in the atmosphere, John Derringham grew more unutterably wretched as time went on.
His cup seemed to be filling from all sides. The Government was going out in disaster, and, instead of being able to stand by his colleagues and fight, and perhaps avert catastrophe by his brilliant speeches and biting wit, he was chained like a log to a sofa and was completely impotent.
It was no wonder his convalescence was slow, and that Arabella grew anxious about him. She felt that some of Mrs. Cricklander's wrath and disgust because of this state of things would fall upon her head.
His ankle was a great deal better now, it was five weeks since the accident, and in a day or two he hoped to leave for London. Mrs. Cricklander would be obliged to take an after-cure at the highly situated castle of an Austrian Prince, an old friend of hers—where the air was most bracing, she wrote. For her strict instructions to Arabella before she left, after telling her she might have her mother to keep her company, and so earning the good creature's deep gratitude, had been:
"You must keep me informed of every slightest turn in Mr. Derringham—because, until he is perfectly well and amusing again, I simply can't come back to England. His tragic face bores me to death. Really, men are too tiresome when there is the slightest thing the matter with them."
And Arabella had faithfully carried out her instructions.
In common honesty she could not inform her employer that John Derringham was perfectly well or amusing!
Poor Miss Clinker's happy summer with her mother was being a good deal dimmed by her unassuaged sympathy and commiseration.
"Of course, he is grieving for that sweet and distinguished girl, Miss Halcyone La Sarthe," she told herself—and with the old maid's hungering for romance, which even the highest education cannot quite crush from the female breast, she longed to know what had parted them.
Mr. Carlyon had gone abroad, she had ascertained that, and La Sarthe Chase was still closed.
The night before John Derringham left for London, he hobbled down to dinner on crutches. He was not to try and use his foot for some weeks still, but the cut on his head was mended now. It was a glorious July evening, the roses were not over on the terrace, and every aspect of avert disaster, he must just stand aside in these last weeks of the session and see the shipwreck. An unspeakable bitterness invaded his spirit. The moon was rising when he got outside, one day beyond its full. It seemed like a golden ball in the twilight of opal tints, before it should rise in its silver majesty to supreme command of the night. Nature was in one of her most sensuously divine moods. The summer and fulfillment had come.
John Derringham sat down in a comfortable chair and gazed in front of him.
There had been moonlight, too, when he had spent those exquisite hours with his love, now six weeks ago—a young half moon. Could it be only six weeks? A lifetime of anguish appeared to have rolled between. And where was she? Then, for the first time, the crust of his self-absorption seemed to crumble, and he thought with new stabs of pain how she, too, must have suffered. He began to picture her waiting by the gate—she would be brave and quiet. And then, as the day passed—what had she done? He could not imagine, but she must have suffered intolerably. When could she have heard of the accident, since the next day she had been taken away? Why had she gone? That was unlike her, to have given in to any force which could separate them. And if he had known this step also was unconsciously caused by his own action in having his letter to Cheiron posted from London, it would have tortured him the more. Another thought came, and he started forward in his chair. Was it possible that she had written to him, and that the letter had got mislaid, among the prodigious quantity which accumulated in those first days of his unconsciousness?
Then he sank back again. Even if this were so, it was too late now. Everything was too late—from that awful night when he had become engaged to Cecilia Cricklander.
She had put the announcement into the paper not quite three weeks after the accident. What could Halcyone have thought of him and his unspeakable baseness? Now she could have nothing but loathing and contempt in her heart, wherever she was—and what right had he to have broken the beliefs and shattered the happiness of that pure, young soul?
He remembered his old master's words about a man's honor towards women. It was true then that it was regulated, not by the woman's feelings or anguish, but by the man's inclination and whether or no the world should hold him responsible. And he realized that this latter reason was the force which now prevented his breaking his engagement with Mrs. Cricklander. He had behaved with supreme selfishness in the beginning, and afterwards with a weakness which would always make him writhe when he thought of it.
His self-respect was receiving a crushing blow. He clasped his thin hands and his head sank forward upon his breast in utter dejection; he closed his eyes as if to shut out too painful pictures. And when he opened them again it was darker, and the moon made misty shadows through the trees, and out of them he seemed to see Halcyone's face quite close to him. It was tender and pitiful and full of love. The hallucination was so startlingly vivid that he almost fancied her lips moved, and she whispered: "Courage, beloved." Then he knew that he was dreaming, and that he was gazing into space—alone.