Beyond Part 36

At that first use of his name, Summerhay turned pale and seized her hand.

"Afraid--how--afraid?"

Gyp said very low:

"I might love too much. Don't say any more now. No; don't! Let's go in and have lunch." And she got up.

He stayed till tea-time, and not a word more of love did he speak. But when he was gone, she sat under the pine-tree with little Gyp on her lap. Love! If her mother had checked love, she herself would never have been born. The midges were biting before she went in. After watching Betty give little Gyp her bath, she crossed the pa.s.sage to her bedroom and leaned out of the window. Could it have been to-day she had lain on the ground with tears of despair running down on to her hands? Away to the left of the pine-tree, the moon had floated up, soft, barely visible in the paling sky. A new world, an enchanted garden! And between her and it--what was there?

That evening she sat with a book on her lap, not reading; and in her went on the strange revolution which comes in the souls of all women who are not half-men when first they love--the sinking of 'I' into 'Thou,'

the pa.s.sionate, spiritual subjection, the intense, unconscious giving-up of will, in preparation for completer union.

She slept without dreaming, awoke heavy and oppressed. Too languid to bathe, she sat listless on the beach with little Gyp all the morning.

Had she energy or spirit to meet him in the afternoon by the rock archway, as she had promised? For the first time since she was a small and naughty child, she avoided the eyes of Betty. One could not be afraid of that stout, devoted soul, but one could feel that she knew too much. When the time came, after early tea, she started out; for if she did not go, he would come, and she did not want the servants to see him two days running.

This last day of August was warm and still, and had a kind of beneficence--the corn all gathered in, the apples mellowing, robins singing already, a few slumberous, soft clouds, a pale blue sky, a smiling sea. She went inland, across the stream, and took a footpath back to the sh.o.r.e. No pines grew on that side, where the soil was richer--of a ruddy brown. The second crops of clover were already high; in them humblebees were hard at work; and, above, the white-throated swallows dipped and soared. Gyp gathered a bunch of chicory flowers.

She was close above the sh.o.r.e before she saw him standing in the rock archway, looking for her across the beach. After the hum of the bees and flies, it was very quiet here--only the faintest hiss of tiny waves. He had not yet heard her coming, and the thought flashed through her: 'If I take another step, it is for ever! She stood there scarcely breathing, the chicory flowers held before her lips. Then she heard him sigh, and, moving quickly forward, said:

"Here I am."

He turned round, seized her hand, and, without a word, they pa.s.sed through the archway. They walked on the hard sand, side by side, till he said:

"Let's go up into the fields."

They scrambled up the low cliff and went along the gra.s.sy top to a gate into a stubble field. He held it open for her, but, as she pa.s.sed, caught her in his arms and kissed her lips as if he would never stop. To her, who had been kissed a thousand times, it was the first kiss. Deadly pale, she fell back from him against the gate; then, her lips still quivering, her eyes very dark, she looked at him distraught with pa.s.sion, drunk on that kiss. And, suddenly turning round to the gate, she laid her arms on the top bar and buried her face on them. A sob came up in her throat that seemed to tear her to bits, and she cried as if her heart would break. His timid despairing touches, his voice close to her ear:

"Gyp, Gyp! My darling! My love! Oh, don't, Gyp!" were not of the least avail; she could not stop. That kiss had broken down something in her soul, swept away her life up to that moment, done something terrible and wonderful. At last, she struggled out:

"I'm sorry--so sorry! Don't--don't look at me! Go away a little, and I'll--I'll be all right."

He obeyed without a word, and, pa.s.sing through the gate, sat down on the edge of the cliff with his back to her, looking out over the sea.

Gripping the wood of the old grey gate till it hurt her hands, Gyp gazed at the chicory flowers and poppies that had grown up again in the stubble field, at the b.u.t.terflies chasing in the sunlight over the hedge toward the crinkly foam edging the quiet sea till they were but fluttering white specks in the blue.

But when she had rubbed her cheeks and smoothed her face, she was no nearer to feeling that she could trust herself. What had happened in her was too violent, too sweet, too terrifying. And going up to him she said:

"Let me go home now by myself. Please, let me go, dear. To-morrow!"

Summerhay looked up.

"Whatever you wish, Gyp--always!"

He pressed her hand against his cheek, then let it go, and, folding his arms tight, resumed his meaningless stare at the sea. Gyp turned away.

She crossed back to the other side of the stream, but did not go in for a long time, sitting in the pine wood till the evening gathered and the stars crept out in a sky of that mauve-blue which the psychic say is the soul-garment colour of the good.

Late that night, when she had finished brushing her hair, she opened her window and stepped out on to the verandah. How warm! How still! Not a sound from the sleeping house--not a breath of wind! Her face, framed in her hair, her hands, and all her body, felt as if on fire. The moon behind the pine-tree branches was filling every cranny of her brain with wakefulness. The soft shiver of the wellnigh surfless sea on a rising tide, rose, fell, rose, fell. The sand cliff shone like a bank of snow.

And all was inhabited, as a moonlit night is wont to be, by a magical Presence. A big moth went past her face, so close that she felt the flutter of its wings. A little night beast somewhere was scruttling in bushes or the sand. Suddenly, across the wan gra.s.s the shadow of the pine-trunk moved. It moved--ever so little--moved! And, petrified--Gyp stared. There, joined to the trunk, Summerhay was standing, his face just visible against the stem, the moonlight on one cheek, a hand shading his eyes. He moved that hand, held it out in supplication. For long--how long--Gyp did not stir, looking straight at that beseeching figure. Then, with a feeling she had never known, she saw him coming. He came up to the verandah and stood looking up at her. She could see all the workings of his face--pa.s.sion, reverence, above all amazement; and she heard his awed whisper:

"Is it you, Gyp? Really you? You look so young--so young!"

VII

From the moment of surrender, Gyp pa.s.sed straight into a state the more enchanted because she had never believed in it, had never thought that she could love as she now loved. Days and nights went by in a sort of dream, and when Summerhay was not with her, she was simply waiting with a smile on her lips for the next hour of meeting. Just as she had never felt it possible to admit the world into the secrets of her married life, so, now she did not consider the world at all. Only the thought of her father weighed on her conscience. He was back in town. And she felt that she must tell him. When Summerhay heard this he only said: "All right, Gyp, whatever you think best."

And two days before her month at the bungalow was up, she went, leaving Betty and little Gyp to follow on the last day. Winton, pale and somewhat languid, as men are when they have been cured, found her when he came in from the club. She had put on evening dress, and above the pallor of her shoulders, her sunwarmed face and throat had almost the colour of a nectarine. He had never seen her look like that, never seen her eyes so full of light. And he uttered a quiet grunt of satisfaction.

It was as if a flower, which he had last seen in close and elegant shape, had bloomed in full perfection. She did not meet his gaze quite steadily and all that evening kept putting her confession off and off. It was not easy--far from easy. At last, when he was smoking his "go-to-bed" cigarette, she took a cushion and sank down on it beside his chair, leaning against his knee, where her face was hidden from him, as on that day after her first ball, when she had listened to HIS confession. And she began:

"Dad, do you remember my saying once that I didn't understand what you and my mother felt for each other?" Winton did not speak; misgiving had taken possession of him. Gyp went on: "I know now how one would rather die than give someone up."

Winton drew his breath in sharply:

"Who? Summerhay?"

"Yes; I used to think I should never be in love, but you knew better."

Better!

In disconsolate silence, he thought rapidly: 'What's to be done? What can I do? Get her a divorce?'

Perhaps because of the ring in her voice, or the sheer seriousness of the position, he did not feel resentment as when he lost her to Fiorsen.

Love! A pa.s.sion such as had overtaken her mother and himself! And this young man? A decent fellow, a good rider--comprehensible! Ah, if the course had only been clear! He put his hand on her shoulder and said:

"Well, Gyp, we must go for the divorce, then, after all."

She shook her head.

"It's too late. Let HIM divorce me, if he only will!"

Winton needed all his self-control at that moment. Too late? Already!

Sudden recollection that he had not the right to say a word alone kept him silent. Gyp went on:

"I love him, with every bit of me. I don't care what comes--whether it's open or secret. I don't care what anybody thinks."

She had turned round now, and if Winton had doubt of her feeling, he lost it. This was a Gyp he had never seen! A glowing, soft, quick-breathing creature, with just that lithe watchful look of the mother cat or lioness whose whelps are threatened. There flashed through him a recollection of how, as a child, with face very tense, she would ride at fences that were too big. At last he said:

"I'm sorry you didn't tell me sooner."

"I couldn't. I didn't know. Oh, Dad, I'm always hurting you! Forgive me!"

She was pressing his hand to her cheek that felt burning hot. And he thought: "Forgive! Of course I forgive. That's not the point; the point is--"

And a vision of his loved one talked about, besmirched, bandied from mouth to mouth, or else--for her what there had been for him, a hole-and-corner life, an underground existence of stealthy meetings kept dark, above all from her own little daughter. Ah, not that! And yet--was not even that better than the other, which revolted to the soul his fastidious pride in her, roused in advance his fury against tongues that would wag, and eyes that would wink or be uplifted in righteousness?

Summerhay's world was more or less his world; scandal, which--like all parasitic growths--flourishes in enclosed s.p.a.ces, would have every chance. And, at once, his brain began to search, steely and quick, for some way out; and the expression as when a fox broke covert, came on his face.

"n.o.body knows, Gyp?"