The Essential Elinor Glyn Collection. Glyn Elinor

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ said John Derringham. "You must tell me now."

      Then Halcyone began in a soft dream voice while her eyes widened and darkened with that strange look as though she saw into another and vaster world. "'I am Pallas Athen and I know the thoughts of all men's hearts, and discern their manhood or their baseness. And from the souls of clay I turn away; and they are blest, but not by me. They fatten at ease like sheep in the pasture and eat what they did not sow, like oxen in the stall. They grow and spread like the gourd along the ground, but like the gourd they give no shade to the traveler and when they are ripe death gathers them, and they go down unloved into hell, and their name vanishes out of the land.'"

      She paused a second and John Derringham was astonished at himself because he was conscious of experiencing a thrill of deep interest.

      "Yes?" he said--and her voice went on:

      "'But to the souls of fire I give more fire and to those who are manful I give a might more than man's. These are the heroes, the sons of the Immortals who are blest but not like the souls of clay, for I drive them forth by strange paths, Perseus, that they may fight the Titans and monsters, the enemies of gods and men. Through doubt and need and danger and battle I drive them, and some of them are slain in the flower of youth, no man knows when or where, and some of them win noble names and a fair and green old age--but what will be their latter end, I know not, and none, save Zeus, the father of gods and men--Tell me, now, Perseus, which of these two sorts of men seem to you more blest?'"

      It was as if she asked him a personal question and unconsciously he answered:

      "I should reply as Perseus did. Tell me his words."

      "'Better to die in the flower of youth on the chance of winning a noble name than to live at ease like the sheep and die unloved and unrenowned.'"

      He bent nearer to her and answered softly: "They are indeed fine words," and there was no mockery whatever in his eyes as he looked at her--and took in every detail of her pure childish face. "You wonderful, strange little girl--soon I too am going like Perseus to fight the Gorgons, and I shall remember this night and what you have said."

      But at that moment Mr. Miller's high, cackling laugh was heard in an explosion of mirth. Mr. Carlyon had made some delightfully obvious joke for his delectation and amidst a smiling company Miss La Sarthe rose with dignity to leave the gentlemen alone with their wine.

      CHAPTER VIII

      Next morning, John Derringham sat at a late breakfast with his whilom master of Greek and discussed things in general over his bacon and tea.

      It was three years since he had left Oxford, and life held out many interesting aspects for him. He was standing for the southern division of his county in the following spring when the present member was going to retire, and he was vehement in his views and clear as to the course he meant to take. He was so eloquent in his discourse and so full of that divine spark of enthusiasm, that he was always listened to, no matter how unpalatably Tory the basic principles of his utterances were. He never posed as anything but an aristocrat, and while he whimsically admitted that in the present day to be one was an enormous disadvantage for a man who wished to get on, he endeavored to palliate the misfortune by lucid explanation of what the duties of such a status were, and of the logical advantages which an appreciation of the truths of cause and effect might bring to mankind. Down in his own country he was considered the coming man. He thundered at the people and had facts and figures at his finger tips. His sublime belief in himself never wavered and like any inspired view, right or wrong, it had its strong effect.

      Mr. Carlyon thought highly of him, for a number of reasons.

      "If women do not make a stumbling-block for you, John, you will go far," he said as he buttered his toast.

      "Women!" quoth John Derringham, and he laughed incredulously. "They matter no more to me than the flowers in the garden--enchanting in the summer time, a mere pleasure for sight and touch, but to make or mar a man's life!--not even to be considered as factors in the scheme of things."

      "I am glad to hear you say so," said Mr. Carlyon dryly. "And I hope that jade, Fate, won't play you any tricks."

      John Derringham smiled.

      "I admit that a woman with money may be useful to me by and by," he said, "because, as you know, I am always hard up, and presently when I want to occupy a larger sphere I shall require money for my ends, but for the time being they serve to divert me as a relaxation; that is all."

      "You are contracting no ties, dear lad?" asked the Professor with one eyebrow raised, while he shook back his silvery hair. "I had heard vaguely about your attention to Lady Durrend, but I understand she has had many preliminary canters and knows the ropes."

      John Derringham smiled. "Vivienne Durrend is a most charming woman," he said. "She has taught me a number of things in the last two years. I am grateful to her. Next season she is bringing a daughter out--and she has a wonderful sense of the fitness of things." Then he sipped his tea and got up and strolled towards the windows.

      "Besides," he continued, "I do not admit there are any ties to be contracted. The Greeks understood the place of women; all this nonsense of vows of fidelity and exaltation of sentiment in the home cramps a man's ambitions. It is perfectly natural that he should take a wife if his position calls for it, because the society in which we move has made a figurehead of that kind necessary. But that a woman should expect a man to be faithful to her, be she wife or mistress, is contrary to all nature."

      "We have put nature out of the running now for a couple of thousand years," Mr. Carlyon announced sententiously; "we have set up a standard of impossibilities and worship hypocrisy and can no longer see any truth. You have got to reckon with things as they are, not with what nature meant them to be."

      "Then you think women are a force now which one must consider?"

      "I think they are as deadly as the deep sea--" and Mr. Carlyon's voice was tense. "When they have only bodies they are dangerous enough, but when--as many of the modern ones have--they combine a modicum of mind as well, with all the cunning Satan originally endowed them with--then happy is the man who escapes, even partially whole, from their claws."

      "Whew--" whistled John Derringham, "and what if they have souls? Not that I personally admit that such a case exists--what then?"

      "When you meet a woman with a soul you will have met your match, John," the Professor said, and opening his _Times_, which Demetrius had brought in with the second post, he closed the conversation.

      John Derringham strolled into the garden. The place had been greatly improved since Halcyone's first discovery of its new occupant. The shutters were all a spruce green and the paths weeded and tidy, while the borders were full of bedded-out plants and flowers. A famous gardener from Upminster renowned through all the West had come over and given his personal attention to the matter, and next year wonderful herbaceous borders would spring up on all sides. Mr. Johnson's visits and his council, though at first resented, had at length grown a source of pure delight to Halcyone; she reveled in the blooms of the delicate begonias and salvias and other blossoms which she had never seen before. Mr. Carlyon, although desiring solitude, appreciated a beautiful and cultivated one, and the orchard house was now becoming a very comfortable bachelor's home.

      The day was much cooler than it had been of late. There was a fresh breeze though the sun shone. John Derringham wandered down to the СКАЧАТЬ