Halcyone | Page 7

cheeks flushed pink. The trilling Italian love-songs, learnt some fifty
years ago during a two years' residence in Florence, had always been

her pride and joy. So she warmly seconded her niece's pleadings, and
the momentous decision was come to that James Anderton should be
approached upon the subject. If the child learned Greek--from a
professor--and could pick up a few of Roberta's songs as an
accomplishment, she might do well enough--and a governess in the
house, in spite of the money paid by Mr. Anderton to keep her, was a
continual gall and worry to them.
Halcyone knew very little about her stepfather. She was aware that he
had married her mother when she was a very poor and sorrowful young
widow, that she had had two stepsisters and a brother very close
together, and then that the pretty mother had died. There was evidently
something so sad connected with the whole story that Priscilla never
cared much to talk about it. It was always, "your poor sainted mother in
heaven," or, "your blessed pretty mother"--and with that instinctive
knowledge of the feelings of other people which characterized
Halcyone's point of view, she had avoided questioning her old nurse.
Her stepfather, James Anderton, was a very wealthy stockbroker--she
knew that, and also that a year or so after her mother's death he had
married again--"a person of his own class," Miss La Sarthe had said,
"far more suitable to him than poor Elaine."
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