CHAPTER XXI
Canon Beecher took no notice of Hyacinth’s last speech. He had returned with amazing swiftness and ease from the region of high emotion to the commonplace. Excursions to the shining peaks of mystical experience are for most men so rare that the glory leaves them with dazzled eyes, and they walk stumblingly for a while along the dull roads of the world. But Canon Beecher, in the course of his pleading with Hyacinth, had been only in places very well known to him. The presence chamber of the King was to him also the room of a familiar friend. It was no breathless descent from the green hill of the cross to the thoroughfare of common life.
‘Now, my dear boy,’ he said, ‘we really must go and talk to my wife and Marion. Besides, I must tell you the plan I have made for you—the plan I was just going to speak about when you put it out of my head with the news of your love-making.’
For Hyacinth a great effort was necessary before he could get back to his normal state. His hands were trembling violently. His forehead and hair were damp with sweat. His whole body was intensely cold. His mind was confused, and he listened to what was said to him with only the vaguest apprehension of its meaning. The Canon laid a firm hand upon his arm, and led him away from the study. In the passage he stopped, and asked Hyacinth to go back and blow out the candle which still burned on the study table.
‘And just put some turf on the fire,’ he added; ‘I don’t want it to go out.’
The pause enabled Hyacinth to regain his self-command, and the performance of the perfectly ordinary acts required of him helped to bring him back again to common life.
When they entered the drawing-room it was evident that Mrs. Beecher had already heard the news, and was, in fact, discussing the matter eagerly with Marion. She sprang up, and hastened across the room to meet them.
‘I am so glad,’ she said—‘so delighted! I am sure you and Marion will be happy together.’
She took Hyacinth’s hands in hers, and held them while she spoke, then drew nearer to him and looked up in his face expectantly. A fearful suspicion seized him that on an occasion of the kind she might consider it right to kiss him. It was with the greatest difficulty that he suppressed a wholly unreasonable impulse to laugh aloud. Apparently the need of such affectionate stimulant was strong in Mrs. Beecher. When Hyacinth hung back, she left him for her husband, put her arms round his neck, and kissed him heartily on both cheeks.
‘Isn’t it fortunate,’ she said, ‘that you saw Dr. Henry last week while you were in Dublin? You little thought how important that talk with him was going to turn out—I mean, of course, important for us. It always was important for Mr.—I mean for Hyacinth.’