The half-moon set, and the night became much darker before John
Derringham rose from his seat by the bench. A stupor had fallen upon
him. He had ceased to reason. Then he got up and made his way back to
the orchard house, under the myriads of pale stars, which shone with
diminished brilliancy from the luminous, summer night sky.
Here he seemed to grow material again and to realize that he was indeed
awake. But what had happened to him? Whether he had been dreaming or no,
a spell had fallen upon him--he had drunk of the poison cup. And
Halcyone filled his mind. He thrilled and thrilled again as he
remembered the exquisite joy of their tender embrace--even though it had
been no real thing, but a dream, it was still the divinest good his life
had yet known.
But what could it lead to if it were real? Nothing but sorrow and
parting and regret. For his career still mattered to him, he knew, now
that he was in his sane senses again, more than anything else in the
world. And he could not burden himself with a poor, uninfluential girl
as a wife, even though the joy of it took them both to heaven.
The emotion he was experiencing was one quite new to him, and he almost
resented it, because it was upsetting some of his beliefs.
The next day, at breakfast, the Professor remarked that he looked pale.
"You rather overwork, John," he said. "To lie about the garden here and
not have to follow the caprices of fashionable ladies at Wendover, would
do you a power of good."
There was no sight of Halcyone all the day. She was living in a
paradise, but hers contained no doubts or uncertainties. She knew that
indeed she had lived and breathed the night before, and found complete
happiness in John Derringham's arms.
That, then, was what Aphrodite had always been telling her. She knew now
the meaning of the love in her eyes. This glorious and divine thing had
been given to her, too--out of the night.
It was fully perceived at last, not only half glanced at almost with
fear. Love had come to her, and whatever might reck of sorrow, it meant
her whole life and soul.
And this precious gift of the pure thing from God she had given in her
turn to John Derringham as his lips had pressed her lips.
She spent the whole day in the garden, sitting in the summer house
surveying the world. The blue hills in the far distance were surely the
peaks of Olympus and she had been permitted to know what existence meant
there.
Not a doubt of him entered her heart, or a fear. He certainly loved her
as she loved him; they had been created for each other since the
beginning of time. And it was only a question of arrangement when she
should go away with him and never part any more.
Marriage, as a ceremony in church, meant nothing to her. Some such
thing, of course, must take place, because of the stupid conventions of
the world, but the sacrament, the real mating, was to be
together--alone.
In her innocent and noble soul John Derringham now reigned as king. He
had never had a rival, and never would have while breath stayed in her
fair body.
By the evening of that day he had reasoned himself into believing that
the whole thing was a dream--or, if not a dream, he had better consider
it as such; but at the same time, as the dusk grew, a wild longing
swelled in his heart for its recurrence, and when the night came he
could not any longer control himself, and as he had done before he
wandered to the tree.
The moon, one day beyond its first quarter, was growing brighter, and a
strange and mysterious shimmer was over everything as though the heat of
the day were rising to give welcome and fuse itself in the night.
He was alone with the bird who throbbed from the copse, and as he sat in
the sublime stillness he fancied he saw some does peep forth. They were
there, of course, with their new-born fawns.
But where was she, the nymph of the night?
His heart ached, the longing grew intense until it was a mighty force.
He felt he could stride across the luminous park which separated them,
and scale the wall to the casement window of the long gallery, to clasp
her once more in his arms. And, as it is with all those beings who have
scorned and denied his power, Love was punishing him now by a complete
annihilation of his will. At last he buried his face in his hands; it
was almost agony that he felt.
When he uncovered his eyes again he saw, far in the distance, a filmy
shadow. It seemed to be now real, and now a wraith, as it flitted from
tree to tree, but at last he knew it was real--it was she--Halcyone! He
started to his feet, and there stood waiting for her.
She came with the gliding movement he now knew belonged in her dual
personality to the night.
Her hair was all unbound, and her garment was white.
All reason, all resolution left him. He held out his arms.
"My love!" he cried. "I have waited for you--ah, so long!"
And Halcyone allowed herself to be clasped next his heart, and then
drawn to the bench, where they sat down, blissfully content.
They had such a number of things to tell one another about love. He who
had always scoffed at its existence was now eloquent in his explanation
of the mystery. And Halcyone, who had never had any doubts, put her
beautiful thoughts into words. Love meant everything--it was just he,
John Derringham. She was no more herself, but had come to dwell in him.
She was tender and absolutely pure in her broad loyalty, concealing
nothing of her fondness, letting him see that if she were Mistress of
the Night, he was Master of her Soul.
And the complete subservience of herself, the sublime transparency
without subterfuge of her surrender, appealed to everything of chivalry
which his nature held.
"Since the beginning," she whispered, in that soft, sweet voice of hers
which seemed to him to be of the angels, "ever since the beginning,
John, when I was a little ignorant girl, it has always been you. You
were Jason and Theseus and Perseus. You were Sir Bors and Sir Percival
and Sir Lancelot. And I knew it was just waiting--Fate."
"My sweet, my sweet," he murmured, kissing her hair.
"And the time you came, when I was so ugly," she went on, "and so
overgrown--I was sad then, because I knew you would not like me. But the
winds and the night were good to me. I have grown, you see, so that I am
now more as you would wish, but everything has been for you from that
first day in the tree--our tree."
That between two lovers the thing could be a game never entered her
brain. The thought that it might be wiser to watch moods and play on
this one or that, and conceal her feelings and draw him on with mystery,
could meet with no faintest understanding in her fond heart.
She just loved him, and belonged to him, and that was the whole meaning
of heaven and earth. Any trick of calculation would have been a thousand
miles beneath her feet. And while he was there with her, clasping her
slender willowy form to his heart, John Derringham felt exalted. The
importance of his career dwindled, the imperative necessity of
possessing Halcyone for his very own augmented, until at last he
whispered in her ear as her little head lay there upon his breast:
"Darling child, you must marry me at once--immediately--next week. We
will go through whatever is necessary at the registry-office, and then
you must come away with me and be my very own."
"Of course," was all she said.
"It is absolutely impossible that we could let anyone know about it at
present--even Cheiron--" he went on, a little hurriedly. "The
circumstances are such that I cannot publicly own you as my wife,
although it would be my glory so to do. I should have to give up my
whole career, because I have no money to keep a splendid home, which
would be your due. But I dare say these things do not matter to you any
more than they do to me. Is it so, sweet, darling child?"
"How could they matter?" Halcyone whispered from the shelter of his
clasped arms. "Of what good would they be to me? I want to be with you
when you have time; I want to caress you when you are tired, and comfort
you, and inspire you, and love you, and bring you peace. How could the
world--which I do not know--matter to me? Are you not foolish to ask me
such questions, John!"
"Very foolish, my divine one," he said, and forgot what more he would
have spoken in the delirium of a worshiping kiss.
But presently he brought himself back to facts again.
"Darling," he said, "I will find out exactly how everything can be
managed, and then you will meet me here, under this tree, and we will go
away together and be married, and for a week at least I will make the
time to stay with you, as your lover, and you shall be absolutely and
truly my sweetest wife."
"Yes," said Halcyone, perfectly content.
"And after that," he went on, "I will arrange that you stay somewhere
near me, so that every moment that I am free I can come back to the
loving glory of your arms."
"I cannot think of any other heaven," the tender creature murmured. And
then she nestled closer, and her voice became dreamy.
"This is what God means in everything," she whispered. "In the
Springtime, which is waiting for the Summer--in all the flowers and all
the trees. This is the secret the night has taught me from the very
beginning, when I first was able to spend the hours in her arms."
Then this mystery of her knowledge of the night he had to probe; and she
told him, in old-world, romantic language, how she had discovered the
stairs and Aphrodite, and even of the iron-bound box which she had never
been able to move.
"It contains some papers of that Sir Timothy, I expect," she said. "We
know by the date of the breastplate that it was when Cromwell sent his
Ironsides to search La Sarthe that he must have escaped through the door
and got to the coast; but he was drowned crossing to France, so no one
guessed or ever knew how he had got away--and I expect the secret of the
passage died with him, and I was the first one to find it."
"Then what do you make of the goddess's head?" asked John Derringham.
"Was that his, too?"
"Yes, I suppose so," she answered. "He was a great, grand seigneur--we
know of that--and had traveled much in Italy when a young man, and
stayed at Florence especially. He married a relative of the Medici
belonging to some female branch, and he is even said to have been to
Greece; but in the court of the Grand Duke of Tuscany he would certainly
have learned to appreciate the divine beauty of Aphrodite. He must have
brought her from there as well as the Hebe and Artemis, which are not
nearly so good. They stand in the hall--but they say nothing to me."
"It would be interesting to know what the papers are about," John
Derringham went on. "We must look at them together some day when you are
my wife."
"Yes," said Halcyone, and thrilled at the thought.
"So it was through the solid masonry you disappeared last night? No
wonder, sprite, that I believed I was dreaming! Why did you fly from me?
Why?"
"It was too great, too glorious to take all at once," she said, and with
a sudden shyness she buried her face in his coat.
"My darling sweet one," he murmured, drawing her to him, passion flaming
once more. "I could have cried madly"--and he quoted in Greek:
/$
"Wilt them fly me and deny me?
By thine own joy I vow,
By the grape upon the bough,
Thou shalt seek me in the midnight, thou shalt love me even now."
$/
Mr. Carlyon had not restricted Halcyone's reading: she knew it was from
the "Bacchæ" of Euripides, and answered:
"Ah, yes, and, you see, I have sought you in the midnight, and I am
here, and I love you--even now!"
After that, for a while they both seemed to fall into a dream of bliss.
They spoke not, they just sat close together, his arms encircling her,
her head upon his breast; and thus they watched the first precursors of
dawn streak the sky and, looking up, found the stars had faded.
Halcyone started to her feet.
"Ah! I must go, dear lover," she said, "though it will only be for some
few hours."
But John Derringham held her two hands, detaining her.
"I will make all the arrangements in these next few days," he said. "I
am going to Wendover for Whitsuntide. I will get away from there,
though, and come across the park and meet you, darling, here at our
tree, and we will settle exactly what to do and when to go."
Then, after a last fond, sweet embrace, he let her leave him, and
watched her as she glided away among the giant trees, until she was out
of sight, a wild glory in his heart.
For love, when he wins after stress, leaves no room but for gladness in
his worshiper's soul.