Halcyone | Page 8

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