Beyond Part 23

Mr. Wagge's thick figure seemed to writhe. "Pardon me, ma'am," he spluttered, "but I must call your husband a scoundrel. I'm sorry to be impolite, but I must do it. If I had 'im 'ere, I don't know that I should be able to control myself--I don't indeed." Gyp made a movement of her gloved hands, which he seemed to interpret as sympathy, for he went on in a stream of husky utterance: "It's a delicate thing before a lady, and she the injured party; but one has feelings. From the first I said this dancin' was in the face of Providence; but women have no more sense than an egg. Her mother she would have it; and now she's got it!

Career, indeed! Pretty career! Daughter of mine! I tell you, ma'am, I'm angry; there's no other word for it--I'm angry. If that scoundrel comes within reach of me, I shall mark 'im--I'm not a young man, but I shall mark 'im. An' what to say to you, I'm sure I don't know. That my daughter should be'ave like that! Well, it's made a difference to me.

An' now I suppose her name'll be dragged in the mud. I tell you frankly I 'oped you wouldn't hear of it, because after all the girl's got her punishment. And this divorce-court--it's not nice--it's a horrible thing for respectable people. And, mind you, I won't see my girl married to that scoundrel, not if you do divorce 'im. No; she'll have her disgrace for nothing."

Gyp, who had listened with her head a little bent, raised it suddenly, and said:

"There'll be no public disgrace, Mr. Wagge, unless you make it yourself.

If you send Daphne--Daisy--quietly away somewhere till her trouble's over, no one need know anything."

Mr. Wagge, whose mouth had opened slightly, and whose breathing could certainly have been heard in the street, took a step forward and said:

"Do I understand you to say that you're not goin' to take proceedings, ma'am?"

Gyp shuddered, and shook her head.

Mr. Wagge stood silent, slightly moving his face up and down.

"Well," he said, at length, "it's more than she deserves; but I don't disguise it's a relief to me. And I must say, in a young lady like you, and--and handsome, it shows a Christian spirit." Again Gyp shivered, and shook her head. "It does. You'll allow me to say so, as a man old enough to be your father--and a regular attendant."

He held out his hand. Gyp put her gloved hand into it.

"I'm very, very sorry. Please be nice to her."

Mr. Wagge recoiled a little, and for some seconds stood ruefully rubbing his hands together and looking from side to side.

"I'm a domestic man," he said suddenly. "A domestic man in a serious line of life; and I never thought to have anything like this in my family--never! It's been--well, I can't tell you what it's been!"

Gyp took up her sunshade. She felt that she must get away; at any moment he might say something she could not bear--and the smell of mutton rising fast!

"I am sorry," she said again; "good-bye"; and moved past him to the door. She heard him breathing hard as he followed her to open it, and thought: 'If only--oh! please let him be silent till I get outside!' Mr.

Wagge pa.s.sed her and put his hand on the latch of the front door. His little piggy eyes scanned her almost timidly.

"Well," he said, "I'm very glad to have the privilege of your acquaintance; and, if I may say so, you 'ave--you 'ave my 'earty sympathy. Good-day."

The door once shut behind her, Gyp took a long breath and walked swiftly away. Her cheeks were burning; and, with a craving for protection, she put up her sunshade. But the girl's white face came up again before her, and the sound of her words:

"Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen, I wish I was dead! I DO!"

XVI

Gyp walked on beneath her sunshade, making unconsciously for the peace of trees. Her mind was a whirl of impressions--Daphne Wing's figure against the door, Mr. Wagge's puggy grey-bearded countenance, the red pampas-gra.s.s, the blue bowl, Rosek's face swooping at her, her last glimpse of her baby asleep under the trees!

She reached Kensington Gardens, turned into that walk renowned for the beauty of its flowers and the plainness of the people who frequent it, and sat down on a bench. It was near the luncheon-hour; nursemaids, dogs, perambulators, old gentlemen--all were hurrying a little toward their food. They glanced with critical surprise at this pretty young woman, leisured and lonely at such an hour, trying to find out what was wrong with her, as one naturally does with beauty--bow legs or something, for sure, to balance a face like that! But Gyp noticed none of them, except now and again a dog which sniffed her knees in pa.s.sing.

For months she had resolutely cultivated insensibility, resolutely refused to face reality; the barrier was forced now, and the flood had swept her away. "Proceedings!" Mr. Wagge had said. To those who shrink from letting their secret affairs be known even by their nearest friends, the notion of a public exhibition of troubles simply never comes, and it had certainly never come to Gyp. With a bitter smile she thought: 'I'm better off than she is, after all! Suppose I loved him, too? No, I never--never--want to love. Women who love suffer too much.'

She sat on that bench a long time before it came into her mind that she was due at Monsieur Harmost's for a music lesson at three o'clock. It was well past two already; and she set out across the gra.s.s. The summer day was full of murmurings of bees and flies, cooings of blissful pigeons, the soft swish and stir of leaves, and the scent of lime blossom under a sky so blue, with few white clouds slow, and calm, and full. Why be unhappy? And one of those spotty spaniel dogs, that have broad heads, with frizzy topknots, and are always rascals, smelt at her frock and moved round and round her, hoping that she would throw her sunshade on the water for him to fetch, this being in his view the only reason why anything was carried in the hand.

She found Monsieur Harmost fidgeting up and down the room, whose opened windows could not rid it of the smell of latakia.

"Ah," he said, "I thought you were not coming! You look pale; are you not well? Is it the heat? Or"--he looked hard into her face--"has someone hurt you, my little friend?" Gyp shook her head. "Ah, yes," he went on irritably; "you tell me nothing; you tell n.o.body nothing! You close up your pretty face like a flower at night. At your age, my child, one should make confidences; a secret grief is to music as the east wind to the stomach. Put off your mask for once." He came close to her. "Tell me your troubles. It is a long time since I have been meaning to ask.

Come! We are only once young; I want to see you happy."

But Gyp stood looking down. Would it be relief to pour her soul out?

Would it? His brown eyes questioned her like an old dog's. She did not want to hurt one so kind. And yet--impossible!

Monsieur Harmost suddenly sat down at the piano. Resting his hands on the keys, he looked round at her, and said:

"I am in love with you, you know. Old men can be very much in love, but they know it is no good--that makes them endurable. Still, we like to feel of use to youth and beauty; it gives us a little warmth. Come; tell me your grief!" He waited a moment, then said irritably: "Well, well, we go to music then!"

It was his habit to sit by her at the piano corner, but to-day he stood as if prepared to be exceptionally severe. And Gyp played, whether from overexcited nerves or from not having had any lunch, better than she had ever played. The Chopin polonaise in A flat, that song of revolution, which had always seemed so unattainable, went as if her fingers were being worked for her. When she had finished, Monsieur Harmost, bending forward, lifted one of her hands and put his lips to it. She felt the scrub of his little bristly beard, and raised her face with a deep sigh of satisfaction. A voice behind them said mockingly:

"Bravo!"

There, by the door, stood Fiorsen.

"Congratulations, madame! I have long wanted to see you under the inspiration of your--master!"

Gyp's heart began to beat desperately. Monsieur Harmost had not moved. A faint grin slowly settled in his beard, but his eyes were startled.

Fiorsen kissed the back of his own hand.

"To this old Pantaloon you come to give your heart. Ho--what a lover!"

Gyp saw the old man quiver; she sprang up and cried:

"You brute!"

Fiorsen ran forward, stretching out his arms toward Monsieur Harmost, as if to take him by the throat.

The old man drew himself up. "Monsieur," he said, "you are certainly drunk."

Gyp slipped between, right up to those outstretched hands till she could feel their knuckles against her. Had he gone mad? Would he strangle her?

But her eyes never moved from his, and his began to waver; his hands dropped, and, with a kind of moan, he made for the door.

Monsieur Harmost's voice behind her said:

"Before you go, monsieur, give me some explanation of this imbecility!"

Fiorsen spun round, shook his fist, and went out muttering. They heard the front door slam. Gyp turned abruptly to the window, and there, in her agitation, she noticed little outside things as one does in moments of bewildered anger. Even into that back yard, summer had crept. The leaves of the sumach-tree were glistening; in a three-cornered little patch of sunlight, a black cat with a blue ribbon round its neck was basking. The voice of one hawking strawberries drifted melancholy from a side street. She was conscious that Monsieur Harmost was standing very still, with a hand pressed to his mouth, and she felt a perfect pa.s.sion of compunction and anger. That kind and harmless old man--to be so insulted! This was indeed the culmination of all Gustav's outrages! She would never forgive him this! For he had insulted her as well, beyond what pride or meekness could put up with. She turned, and, running up to the old man, put both her hands into his.

"I'm so awfully sorry. Good-bye, dear, dear Monsieur Harmost; I shall come on Friday!" And, before he could stop her, she was gone.

She dived into the traffic; but, just as she reached the pavement on the other side, felt her dress plucked and saw Fiorsen just behind her. She shook herself free and walked swiftly on. Was he going to make a scene in the street? Again he caught her arm. She stopped dead, faced round on him, and said, in an icy voice:

"Please don't make scenes in the street, and don't follow me like this.

If you want to talk to me, you can--at home."