So they entered Daniellis in subdued triumph, and said good night before Arabella, with prim decorum, and then Cecilia mounted to make herself look beautiful for the flinging of his congé in John Derringham's face.
CHAPTER XXXIII
When Halcyone left the Fortezza she was conscious of no feeling of depression or grief. Rather a gladness and security filled her heart. She had seen him with her mortal eyes—her dear lover—and he was in truth greatly in need of all her care and tender thoughts. Her beliefs were so intense in those forces of protection with which that God Whom she worshiped so truly surrounded her, that she never for a moment doubted but these invisible currents would be directed to the disentangling of destiny's threads.
She made no speculations as to how this would be—God would find the way. Her attitude was never one of pious resignation to a divine chastisement. She did not believe God ever meant to chastise anyone. For good or ill each circumstance was brought about by the individual's own action in setting the sequence of events in motion, as the planting of seed in the early spring produced fair flowers in the summer—or the bruising of a limb produced pain. And the motion must go on until the price had been paid or the pleasure obtained. And, when long ago she had heard Cheiron and John Derringham having abstruse arguments upon Chance, she used silently to wonder how they could be so dull as not to understand there was no such thing really as Chance—if people were only enabled to see clearly enough. If they could only trace events in their lives to their sources, they would find that they themselves had long ago—even perhaps in some former existence—put in motion the currents to draw the events to themselves. What could be called "chance" in the matter was only another name for ignorance.
And, if people knew about these wonderful forces of nature, they could connect themselves with only the good ones, and protect themselves from the bad. Misfortune came through—figuratively—not knowing just where to put the feet, and through not looking ahead to see what would be the result of actions.
Only, above and beyond all these forces of nature and these currents of cause and effect, there was still the great, eternal Source of all things, who was able to dispel ignorance and to endow one individual with the power to help another by his prayers and thoughts. This God could hasten and bring Happiness, if only He were believed in with absolute faith. But that He would ever stoop to punish was an unheard-of blasphemy. He was only and entirely concerned with good. Punishments came as the results of actions. It followed then that John Derringham, having paid the price of much sorrow for all his mistakes, would now come into peace—and her prayers, and exceptional advantages in having been allowed for years to learn the forces of nature, would be permitted to help him. That he would be obliged to marry Mrs. Cricklander would seem to be an overexaction, and not just. But they were not the judges, and must in all cases fulfill their part of honesty and truth, no matter what might betide.
These were her convictions, and so they caused her to feel only a God-like calm—as she went away into the purple shadows of the old streets.
Cheiron and she had been at San Gimignano for half a week, and almost every child in the place knew and loved her. She had always a gracious word or a merry smile when they clustered round her, as is their friendly way with all travelers, when she came from the Cathedral or the strange old solitary chapel of St. Jacopo.