The Essential Elinor Glyn Collection. Glyn Elinor

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СКАЧАТЬ Mr. Carlyon's old eyes looked away into distance and seemed to see a slender shape wrapped in a spotted fawn's skin, its head crowned with leaves, joining the throng of those other early worshipers of Dionysus as they beat their weird music among the dark crags of Parnassus--searching for communion with the spiritual beyond in the only way they knew of then to reach it, through a wild ecstasy of emotion. Here was the same impulse, unconscious, instinctive. The probing of nature to discover her secrets. Here was a female thing with a soul unafraid in her pure innocence, alone in the night.

      Halcyone did not interrupt his meditations, and presently they came to the broken gate close to the house.

      Cheiron paused and leaned on the top bar.

      "Is this the elves' home?" he asked.

      "Yes," she answered gravely. "But so late in the day you cannot see them. You must wait again until the sun is setting; and I expect when it is warm they come in the moonlight, too, but I have not been able to get a fine enough night--as yet. This avenue is the most beautiful of all, because a hundred years ago the La Sarthes had a quarrel with the Wendovers, whose land just touches at the end of it, and they closed the gate, and so the turf has covered the gravel. And look at the tree--you can see the fairy ring where they dance, and I always fancy they sup under the one with the very low branch at the side--but I don't believe I should like 'marrow of mice,' should you?"

      "Not at all," said Cheiron.

      Then they wandered on. Halcyone led him to each of the favorite points of view, and he became acquainted with the great serpent, and so vivid was her picturing that he almost fancied he saw the Golden Fleece, nailed to the tree beyond, and heard Orpheus' exquisite melodies charming the reptile to sleep while Jason stepped over his slumbering coils.

      "But I do not have Medea here," she said; "I play her part myself, and I make her different. She was too cunning and had wicked thoughts in her heart, and so the poor Heroes suffered. If she had been good and true and had not killed Absyrtus, things might have had a different ending. I never like to think of Absyrtus in any case--because, do you know, I once hated my baby brother, and would have been glad if anyone had killed him."

      Her eyes became black as night with this awful recollection. "It was very long ago, you understand--when I was quite a little girl before I knew the wonderful things the wind and the flowers and the stars tell me."

      Cheiron did not ask the cause of this hate; he reserved the question for a future time, and encouraged her to tell him of her discoveries in wonderland.

      Some trees had strange personalities, she said. You could never guess the other side of their heads, until you knew them very well. But all had good in them, and it was wisest never even to see the bad.

      "I always find if you are afraid of things they become real and hurt you, but if you are sure they are kind and true they turn gentle and love you. I am hardly ever afraid of anything now--only I do not like a thunderstorm. It seems as if God were really angry then, and were not considering sufficiently just whom He meant to hit."

      Justice to her appeared to hold chief place among the virtues.

      "Do you stay here all the year round?" asked Cheiron, presently, "or do you sometimes have a trip to the seaside?"

      "I have never been away since I first came--I would love to see the sea," and her eyes became dreary. "I can just remember long ago with my mother, we went once--she and I alone--" then she turned to her old companion and looked up in his face.

      "Had you a mother? Of course you had, but I mean one that you knew?"

      The late Mrs. Carlyon had not meant anything much to her son in her lifetime, and was now a far-off memory of forty years ago, so Cheiron answered truthfully upon the subject, and Halcyone looked grave.

      "When we have been friends for a long time I will tell you of my beautiful mother--and I could let you share my memory of her perhaps--but not to-day," she said.

      And then she was silent for a while as they walked on. But when they were turning back towards the orchard house she suddenly began to laugh, glancing at the old gentleman with eyes full of merriment.

      "It is funny," she said, "I don't even know your name! I would like to call you Cheiron--but you have a real name, of course."

      "It is Arnold Carlyon, and I come from Cornwall," the old gentleman said, "but you are welcome to call me Cheiron, if you like."

      Halcyone thanked him prettily.

      "I wish you had his body--don't you? How we could gallop about, could we not? But I can imagine you have, easily. I always can see things I imagine, and sometimes they become realities then."

      "Heaven forbid!" exclaimed Cheiron. "What would my four legs and my hoofs do in the little orchard house, and how should I sit in my armchair?"

      Halcyone pealed with merry laughter; her laughs came so rarely and were like golden bells. The comic side of the picture enchanted her.

      "Of course it would only do if we lived in a cave, as the real Cheiron did," she admitted. "I was silly, was not I?"

      "Yes," said Mr. Carlyon, "but I don't think I mind your being so--it is nice to laugh."

      She slipped her thin little hand into his for a moment, and caught hold of one of his fingers.

      "I am so glad you understand that," she said. "How good it is to laugh! That is what the birds sing to me, it is no use ever to be sad, because it draws evil and fear to yourself, and even in the winter one must know there is always the beautiful spring soon coming. Don't you think God is full of love for this world?"

      "I am sure he is."

      "The Aunts' God isn't a very kind person," she went on. "But I expect, since you know about the Greeks, yours and mine are the same."

      "Probably," said Cheiron.

      Then, being assured on this point, Halcyone felt she could almost entrust him with her greatest secret.

      "Do you know," she said, in the gravest voice, "I will tell you something. I have a goddess, too. I found her in the secret staircase. She is broken, even her nose a little, but she is supremely beautiful. It is just her head I have got, and I pretend she is my mother sometimes, really come back to me again. We have long talks. Some day I will show her to you. I have to keep her hidden, because Aunt Ginevra cannot bear rubbish about, and as she is broken she would want to have her thrown away."

      "I shall be delighted to make her acquaintance. What do you call her?"

      "That is just it," said Halcyone. "When I first found her it seemed to me I must call her Pallas Athen, because of that noble lady in Perseus--but as I looked and looked I knew she was not that; it seems she cannot be anything else but just Love--her eyes are so tender, she has many moods, and they are not often the same--but no matter how she looks you feel all the time just love, love, love--so I have not named her yet. You remember when Orpheus took his lyre and sang after Cheiron had finished his song--it was of Chaos and the making of the world, and how all things had sprung from Love--who could not live alone in the Abyss. So I know that is she--just Love."

      "Aphrodite," СКАЧАТЬ