Halcyone had only been six years old at her mother's death, but she kept a crisp memory of the horror of it. The crimson, crumpled-looking baby brother, in his long clothes, whose coming somehow seemed responsible for the loss of her tender angel, for a long time was viewed with resentful hatred. It was a terrible, unspeakable grief. She remembered perfectly the helpless sense of loss and loneliness.
Her mother had loved her with passionate devotion. She was conscious even then that Mabel and Ethel, the stepsisters, were as nothing in comparison to herself in her mother's regard. She had a certainty that her mother had loved her own father very much—the young, brilliant, spendthrift, last La Sarthe. And her mother had been of the family, too—a distant cousin. So she herself was La Sarthe to her finger tips—slender and pale and distinguished-looking. She remembered the last scene with her stepfather before her coming to La Sarthe Chase. It was the culmination after a year of misery and unassuaged grieving for her loss. He had come into the nursery where the three little girls were playing—Halcyone and her two stepsisters—and he had made them all stand up in his rough way, and see who could catch the pennies the best that he threw from the door. His brother, "Uncle Ted," was with him. And the two younger children, Mabel of five and Ethel of four, shouted riotously with glee and snatched the coins from one another and greedily quarreled over those which Halcyone caught with her superior skill and handed to them.
She remembered her stepfather's face—it grew heavy and sullen and he walked to the window, where his brother followed him—and she remembered their words and had pondered over them often since.
"It's the damned breeding in the brat that fairly gets me raw, Ted," Mr. Anderton had said. "Why the devil couldn't Elaine have given it to my children, too. I can't stand it—a home must be found for her elsewhere."
And soon after that, Halcyone had come with her own Priscilla to La Sarthe Chase to her great-aunts Ginevra and Roberta, in their tumble-down mansion which her father had not lived to inherit. Under family arrangements, it was the two old ladies' property for their lives.
And now the problem of what James Anderton—or rather the second Mrs. James Anderton—would do was the question of the moment. Would there be a fresh governess or would they all be left in peace without one? Mrs. James Anderton, Miss Roberta had said once, was a person who "did her duty," as people often did "in her class"—"a most worthy woman, if not quite a lady"—and she had striven to do her best by James Anderton's children—even his stepchild Halcyone.
Miss La Sarthe promised to write that night before she went to bed—but Halcyone knew it was a long process with her and that an answer could not be expected for at least a week. Therefore there was no good agitating herself too soon about the result. It was one of her principles never to worry over unnecessary things. Life was full of blessed certainties to enjoy without spoiling them by speculating over possible unpleasantnesses.
The old gentleman—Cheiron—and old William and the timid curate who came to dine on Saturday nights once a month were about the only male creatures Halcyone had ever spoken to within her recollection—their rector was a confirmed invalid and lived abroad—but Priscilla had a supreme contempt for them as a sex.
"One and all set on themselves, my lamb," she said; "even your own beautiful father had to be bowed down to and worshiped. We put up with it in him, of course; but I never did see one that didn't think of himself first. It is their selfishness that causes all the sorrow of the world to women. We needn't have lost your angel mother but for Mr. Anderton's selfishness—a kind, hard, rough man—but as selfish as a gentleman."
It seemed a more excusable defect to Priscilla in the upper class, but had no redeeming touch in the status of Mr. Anderton.
Halcyone, however, had a logical mind and reasoned with her nurse:
"If they are all selfish, Priscilla, it must be either women's fault for letting them be, or God intended them to be so. A thing can't be all unless the big force makes it."
This "big force"—this "God" was a real personality to Halcyone. She could not bear it when in church she heard the meanest acts of revenge and petty wounded vanity attributed to Him. She argued it was because the curate did not know. Having come from a town, he could not be speaking of the same wonderful God she knew in the woods and fields—the God so loving and tender in the springtime to the budding flowers, so gorgeous in the summer and autumn and so pure and cold in the winter. With all that to attend to He could not possibly stoop to punish ignorant people and harbor anger and wrath against them. He was the sunlight and the moonlight and the starlight. He was the voice which talked in the night and made her never lonely.
And all the other things of nature and the universe were gods, also—lesser ones obeying the supreme force and somehow fused with Him in a whole, being part of a scheme which He had invented to complete the felicity of the world He had created—not beings to be prayed to or solicited for favors, but just gentle, glorious, sympathetic, invisible friends. She was very much interested in Christ; He was certainly a part of God, too—but she could not understand about His dying to save the world, since the God she heard of in the church was still forever punishing and torturing human beings, or only extending mercy after His vanity had been flattered by offerings and sacrifices.
"I expect," she said to herself, coming home one Sunday after one of Mr. Miller's lengthy discourses upon God's vengeance, "when I am older and able really to understand what is written in the Bible I shall find it isn't that a bit, and it is either Mr. Miller can't see straight or he has put the stops all in the wrong places and changed the sense. In any case I shall not trouble now—the God who kept me from falling through the hole in the loft yesterday by that ray of sunlight to show the cracked board, is the one I am fond of."
It was the simple and logical view of a case which always appealed to her.
"Halcyone" her parents had called her well—their bond of love—their tangible proof of halcyon days. And always when Halcyone read her "Heroes" she felt it was her beautiful father and mother who were the real Halcyone and Ceyx, and she longed to see the blue summer sea and the pleasant isles of Greece that she might find their floating nest and see them sail away happily for ever over those gentle southern waves.
CHAPTER III
Mr. Carlyon—for such was Cheiron's real name—knocked the ashes from his long pipe next day at eleven o'clock in the morning, after his late breakfast and began to arrange his books. His mind was away in a land of classical lore; he had almost forgotten the sprite who had invaded his solitude the previous afternoon, until he heard a tap at the window, and saw her standing there—great, intelligent eyes aflame and rosy lips apart.
"May I come in, please?" her voice said. "I am afraid I am a little early, but I had something so very interesting to tell you, I had to come."
He opened wide the window and let in the May sunshine.
"The first of May and a May Queen," he told her presently, when they were seated in their two chairs. "And now begin this interesting news."
"Aunt Ginevra has promised to write to my step-father at once, and suggest that no more governesses are sent to me. Won't it be perfectly splendid if he agrees!"
"I really don't know," said Cheiron.
Halcyone's face fell.
"You promised to teach me Greek," she said simply, "and I know